High in Peru's Amazonia

Swimming in the Pacific one day, on a board in an Andean market the next – that's the fate of a sea bass bound for the traditional Peruvian dish of cerviche.

However interesting the debates on the origin of the dish might be they miss a crucial aspect that's forgotten when it's now being eaten in plush and trendy restaurants in Europe and the US. This dish doesn't need cooking! Or better to say it's 'cooked' in the fiery acid of Peruvian limes.

I was in Peru when the price of cooking fuel oil went up by 30 times in a month. In those circumstances cerviche wasn't a westerners 'luxury' it was literally a matter of life and death. Getting protein that was reasonably cheap became a priority and the trucks that nightly plied the route from the coast, up the steep, bumpy and precipitous dirt roads, through countless hairpin bends to the the towns of the cordillera were a life line equivalent to the convoys sent into famine zones.

Yes, the dish is tasty; yes it looks colourful with slices of red onion, small pieces of red and yellow aji – the small and head-blowing Peruvian chilli peppers – and a small chunk of yellow choclo (cooked maize); yes, it's a 'social' event when people crowd around roughly made wooden tables, sitting on rickety benches in those very same markets (there's not a great deal of conversation, Andean peasants are taciturn to say the least); yes, it's the street food found throughout the country. But that all misses the point.

Traditional foods developed, wherever in the world, because they had two basic ingredients – they were cheap and easy to make. But from such simple components some of the finest dishes are produced.

Hamburger/fried chicken/something indiscernible inside bread fast food joints are becoming ubiquitous throughout the world bringing with it some of the worse aspects of so-called western 'modernisation'. This has the affect of marginalising the traditional foods which are seen by (especially) some of the young as representing an undeveloped or uncivilised past.

Yes, you get an idea of a culture in these newer fast food places, but it's one that's distorted through the eyes of multinational business concerns and the negative aspects of 'globalisation'. To get an true understanding leave the bright lights, mirrors and chrome behind. Search out the crowded tables where the poor are eating (at least in the Peruvian Andes) quietly but also the best quality food.