Latin Cuisine

Latin American cuisine is the typical foods, beverages, and cooking styles common to many of the countries and cultures in Latin America. Latin America is a highly diverse area of land whose nations have varying cuisines. Some items typical of Latin American cuisine include maize-based dishes arepas, pupusas, tacos, tamales, tortillas and various salsas and other condiments ( guacamole, pico de gallo, mole, chimichurri, chili, aji, pebre). Sofrito, a culinary term that originally referred to a specific combination of sautéed or braised aromatics, exists in Latin American cuisine. It refers to a sauce of tomatoes, roasted bell peppers, garlic, onions and herbs. Rice and beans are also staples in Latin American cuisine.

Latin American beverages are just as distinct as their foods. Some of the beverages can even date back to the times of the Native Americans. Some popular beverages include coffee, mate, hibiscus tea, horchata, chicha, atole, cacao and aguas frescas.

Desserts in Latin America are generally very sweet in taste. They include dulce de leche, alfajor, rice pudding, tres leches cake, teja and flan.

Cultural influences

Native American influence

Information about Native American cuisine comes from a great variety of sources. Modern-day Native peoples retain a rich body of traditional foods, some of which have become iconic of present-day Native American social gatherings (for example, frybread). Foods like cornbread are known to have been adopted into the cuisine of the United States from Native American groups. In other cases, documents from the early periods of contact with European, African, and Asian peoples allow the recovery of food practices which passed out of popularity in the historic period (for example, black drink). Archaeological techniques, particularly in the subdisciplines of zooarchaeology and paleoethnobotany, have allowed for the understanding of other culinary practices or preferred foods which did not survive into the written historic record. The main crops Native Americans used in Mexico and Central America were corn and beans, which are used in contemporary dishes such as pupusas, tamales, pozole, chuchitos, and corn tortillas. The main Native American crops used by Natives of South America were potatoes, corn and chuño, used mainly in modern-day Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Chilean, Bolivian and Paraguayan dishes such as arepas, papa a la huancaína, humitas, chipa guasu, locro and many more.

African influence

Africans brought and preserved many of their traditions and cooking techniques. They were often given less desired cuts of meat, including shoulder and intestines. Menudo, for example, was derived from the habit of the Spaniards of giving the slaves cow's intestines. Enslaved Africans developed a way to clean the offal and season it to taste. African slaves in the southern United States did the same thing with pig's intestines, creating the dish known today as chitterlings. In South America, the scraps of food the landlords did not eat were combined to create new dishes that nowadays have been adopted into the cuisines of their respective nations (such as Peruvian tacu-tacu) and (Ecuadorian guatita).

European influence

Europeans brought their culinary traditions, but quickly adapted several of the fruits and vegetables native to the Americas into their own cuisines. Europe itself has been influenced by other cultures, such as with the al-andalus in Spain, and thus their food was already a mix of their world. The European influence for many Latin American cuisine mainly comes from Spain, Portugal, Italy, and to a lesser extent France, although some influences from cuisines as diverse as British, German and Eastern European are also evident in some countries' cuisines such as Argentina and Uruguay, which have Italian cuisine as a main influence, with great Spanish, British, German, Russian, French, and Eastern European influence as well.

Asian influence

A wave of immigrants from Asia, such as China and Japan, also influenced the cuisine of Perú, Brazil, Panama, and Ecuador. The Chinese brought with them their own spices and food-styles, something that the people of Latin America accepted into their tables. Not only that, but several Asian restaurants also adapted many Latin American food-styles into their own. This case can clearly be seen in the Peruvian and Ecuadorian chifa. Other countries in Latin America such as Uruguay and Argentina have adapted Armenian and Israeli cuisine due to mass immigration from those countries to Argentina and Uruguay. The high Lebanese presence in certain South Americans countries has made some Lebanese foods like kibbeh a common staple.

=North America=

North American cuisine is a term used for foods native to or popular in countries of North America, as with Canadian cuisine, Cuisine of the United States, Cuisine of the Caribbean, Cuisine of Central America, and Cuisine of Mexico. It has influences from many international cuisines, including Native American cuisine and European cuisine.

The cuisines of nearby Central America and the Caribbean region – sometimes grouped with the North American continent – may be considered part of North American cuisine in the technical sense that they are not assigned to their own continents.

Caribbean

Caribbean cuisine is a fusion of Amerindian, African and European cuisine. These traditions were brought from the many homelands of this region's population. In addition, the population has created from this vast wealth of tradition many styles that are unique to the region.

Seafood is one of the most common cuisine types in the islands, though this is certainly due in part to their location. Each island will likely have its own specialty. Some prepare lobster, while others prefer certain types of fish. For example, the island of Barbados is known for its "flying fish."

Another Caribbean mainstay is rice, but the rice on each island may be a little different. Some season their rice, or add peas and other ingredients such as coconut. Sometimes the yellow rice is served on the side, but it is often part of a dish.

Cuba

Cuban cuisine is a distinctive fusion of Spanish, African and Caribbean cuisines. Cuban recipes share their basic spice palette (cumin