In some regards this is the case. You can find fresh, dried, and powdered maca for sale at weekly neighbourhood markets, such as the Thursday and Sunday Feria in the El Tambo district. I even found some maca being sold by a woman who grew it herself in her Junín fields. At the same market, I tasted a hot maca drink, slightly sweet and thick, brewed together with quinoa, kiwicha, anise seeds, and raw sugar. A few blocks away, a colourful storefront on the main street sells a maca juice "especial": a blend of brewed maca root with papaya, quinoa, kiwicha, milk, and sugar, served cool in a tall glass by a sweet, tiny lady.
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| Maca for sale at the El Tambo feria |
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| A colourful cafe serving tasty maca juice blends |
On one of the dozens of blocks of vendors surrounding the central Mercado Mayorista, a group of vendors sell the strangest of the maca offerings: a medicinal drink, served warm in plastic cups and brewed in a huge steel pot, each containing a top secret brew of maca, herbs, frogs, and other mystery ingredients. Out of curiosity, I accepted the offer to taste a sip of one such brew. The maca and sugar made it sweet and thick, but the undertones of frog left me slightly queasy. Maybe it was just in my mind, but I'm not rushing to try it again, even if it is a miracle cure!
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| Closeup of a medicinal brew containing whole maca roots, herbs, frogs, and snails |
At specialty markets, maca manufacturers promote their products. These are generally value-added health products, manufactured in Huancayo with organic maca sourced from the Junín area. The vendors I met at the El Tambo Saturday Organic Feria and a pop-up artisan feria in the Real Plaza (Huancayo's big, modern mall) offered a liquid supplement of maca mixed with honey, an instant maca drink to which one just adds hot water or milk, maca powder to add to juices or smoothies, maca capsules, and a maca liquor. These are specialty products, largely for export or for sale at natural medicine shops in Perú.
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| Maca "Ponderoso" products on display at an artisanal feria |
What I didn't see here was the presence of maca in foods, such as the maca bread for sale at a vegetarian cafe in Cusco or the maca pizza base in Lima. I also found fewer maca candies and supermarket products such as oats with maca. I did, however, encounter some "maca-chips" ice cream at the Sunday Mercado! This absence may simply be connected to the lack of tourists in the area as well as to the relative uniformity of restaurant menus in Huancayo. While there are several restaurants that prepare tasty food, menus tend to lack in creativity or innovation.
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| Maca ice cream alongside other "frutos exóticos nutritivos y medicinales de la región" |
Overall, it seems that maca remains a specialty health food or supplement in Huancayo, just as in the rest of Perú. The only difference is that some influence from Junín is found in a few examples of more "traditional" preparations, such as the maca juice blend and the warm medicinal drinks. In fact, the tiny woman and her husband who run the maca juice shop learned to prepare this juice when he was working as an agronomist in the Junín area. However, aside from these few exceptions, maca is still a novelty here, regarded specifically as a medicinal or supplementary product and not as a regular foodstuff.
