Tecti (Cuzco Spiced Chicha)

History

Tecti is an Andean peanut chicha. Behind the spelling lies a drink still made today — tejti, a beverage counted as typical of La Paz, built on rice, toasted peanuts, cinnamon, clove and chancaca (unrefined cane sugar). Peanut chicha is not an outlier but a recognized branch of the wider chicha family, the Andean world of maize and grain drinks, in which a peanut version sits alongside those made from purple corn, quinoa or molle. What sets tecti apart from a plain corn chicha is exactly what its 1890 contributor prized in it — the seasoning it carries: peanuts, walnuts and sweet almonds ground into the water with rice and a handful of toasted maize, then the whole strained and perfumed with cinnamon, clove, fennel and orange leaves. It is an Andean base dressed in criollo finery, the native peanut and maize joined to rice, tree nuts and warm spices that arrived from across the Atlantic.

The recipe reaches the book from Hortensia Gutierrez de Pinilla, writing from La Paz — the city where the drink still lives — though her note holds that it is best made in Cuzco. The record does not settle which claim to prefer, and both cities sit inside the same highland tradition. One difference between her tecti and the drink as it is made now is worth keeping in view: the living tejti is boiled and non-alcoholic, a sweet refresco, while the version set down here is put to ferment for three days and takes its place on the table, in the contributor's own words, among the most prized wines. That is the older, wine-like face of the same preparation rather than a mistake. Beyond this the source is quiet: it does not tell us how the name traveled between Cuzco and La Paz, how strong the finished ferment grew, or how far one household's tecti differed from the next.

Ingredients

• 1 arroba (~16 L / ~25 lb measure) water
• 1 libra (pound) rice
• 1 libra (pound) toasted peanuts (maní)
• 1 libra (pound) walnuts (nueces)
• 4 onzas (ounces) sweet almonds
• 1 puñado (handful) toasted corn (maíz tostado)
• 1 manojito (small bunch) fennel (hinojo)
• sugar
• cinnamon
• clove (clavo)
• orange leaves (hojas de naranjo)

Instructions

1. In an arroba of water, cook a pound each of rice, toasted peanuts and walnuts, and four ounces of sweet almonds, all cleaned and ground.
2. Add a handful of toasted corn and a small bunch of fennel.
3. When well cooked, pass through a strainer.
4. Set to ferment seasoned with sugar, cinnamon, clove, and orange leaves.
5. Three days of fermentation produce a delicious drink.