When Gastón Acurio, the Peruvian chef who has been leading his country’s culinary boom, was invited to open the academic year at Lima’s top university in 2006, many academics grumbled. Why was a cook being asked to give a landmark lecture at a temple of knowledge?
秘鲁美食行业蓬勃发展，身为领军人物的秘鲁大厨加斯顿•阿克瑞奥(Gastón Acurio)曾在2006年受邀参加利马一所顶级大学的开学典礼，当时很多学者对此颇有微词。为什么要请一名厨师在一个知识的殿堂发表具有重要意义的演讲呢？
The lecture, however, highlighted how food has become a trailblazer for national pride in Peru as well as an engine for tourism, the restaurant business, agriculture and fisheries.
然而，这次演讲突显出，食品已成为秘鲁民族自豪感的重要源泉，并且成了促进旅游业、餐饮业、农业和渔业等多个行业发展的引擎。
According to Apega, Peru’s gastronomic society, the food industry has been growing at an average rate of 7-8 per cent in recent years, while the number of restaurants has more than doubled from 45,000 in 2005 to 100,000 in 2013. Some 5.5m Peruvians benefit directly or indirectly from the industry.
根据秘鲁烹饪协会Apega的数据，最近几年，秘鲁食品行业平均以7%至8%的速度增长，餐馆数量从2005年的4.5万家增至2013年的10万家，翻了一番还多。约550万秘鲁人直接或间接受益于食品行业。
When Mr Acurio and his peers began to stir things up a decade ago, there were few if any cooking schools in the country. Today, more than 80,000 Peruvian youngsters have swapped books for spoons and are studying cookery. Mr Acurio himself attended cookery school in secret when his father, a former minister, sent him to Madrid in the 1980s to study law.
10年前，当阿克瑞奥和他的同行们开始掀起这股美食热潮时，秘鲁只有寥寥几家烹饪学校。如今，8万多名秘鲁年轻人把书本换成了汤勺，学习烹饪。上世纪80年代，阿克瑞奥的父亲（曾担任部长）把他送到马德里学习法律，他自己却偷偷进了一所烹饪学校。
However, in a country in which about a third of the population still lives in poverty, Mr Acurio’s goals go beyond cultivating foodies. He wants to democratise the food trade, bridging gaps between the city and the countryside, the poor peasant and the increasingly demanding client. Cooking is not just something playful and aesthetic, “as for decades the French made us believe”, he says, pushing back his unruly hair. “It is an agent of social change, a tool for wealth creation, peace and fraternity.”
然而，在这个大约三分之一人口仍生活在贫困之中的国家，阿克瑞奥的目标不仅仅是培养美食家。他希望在食品行业推动民主，弥合城乡区别，拉近贫困农民与要求越来越高的顾客之间的差距。烹饪并不只是有趣和美观，“就像几十年来法国让我们相信的那样”，他把散乱的头发向后面拢了拢，说道，“它是社会变革的一个触媒，是财富创造、和平与博爱的工具。”
Based on that idea, he co-founded the Pachacútec Institute of Cooking, located in one of the capital’s most deprived neighbourhoods. “As cooks, we have a role to accomplish, so we built the best cooking school in a place where there is a high density of youngsters, probably without opportunities,” he says.
怀着这种理念，他与人合作成立了Pachacútec烹饪学院(Pachacútec Institute of Cooking)，学校位于利马最贫穷的社区之一。他表示：“作为厨师，我们要发挥自己的作用，因此我们在这个年轻人众多、但可能缺乏机会的地区，创建了这所最优秀的烹饪学校。”
Located in an isolated and nondescript red-brick building atop a misty and deserted hill, the cookery school – which is part of a broader vocational institution – has been training some 100 chefs a year for the past six years. Mr Acurio strongly believes Pachacútec is the hotbed for some of the world’s best future chefs.
Pachacútec烹饪学校隶属于一所职业学院，建在一座薄雾笼罩的荒山顶上，设在一栋偏远且毫无特色的红砖楼里。过去6年，这所学校每年培养出约100名厨师。阿克瑞奥坚信，Pachacútec烹饪学院将培育一批全球最优秀的厨师。
“Cooks from all over the world love this. They can’t believe the lucidity of these kids, who have a clear idea of the potential being a cook has these days, and the capacity they could have in influencing society,” says Mr Acurio.
阿克瑞奥表示：“全世界的厨师都会喜欢这里。他们无法相信这些年轻人有着多么清醒的头脑，他们对于现在成为一名厨师所需要具备的潜质以及他们本身可能具有的影响社会的能力，都有着清晰的认识。”
Aside from himself and other renowned Peruvian cooks, the school has boasted visiting professors such as Ferran Adrià, the superchef who used to run Catalonia’s elBulli restaurant. Mr Adrià taught twice at Pachacútec and was surprised by the willingness and good standard of the students. “Gastón has turned himself into an icon and what he has managed to do with Peru’s cuisine is admirable,” says Mr Adrià.
除了他自己以及秘鲁其他知名厨师之外，这所学校还拥有曾经管理加州elBulli餐厅的超级厨师费兰•阿德里亚(Ferran Adrià)等访问教授。阿德里亚在Pachacútec烹饪学院教授过两次课，他对学生们的学习意愿和优秀素质感到吃惊。阿德里亚表示：“加斯顿已把自己变成了一个偶像，他在推广秘鲁美食方面取得的成功令人钦佩。”
As the night gets started and the kitchen busy in Astrid and Gastón, Mr Acurio’s flagship restaurant in Lima, Elba Velarde, one of Pachacútec’s leading former students, says she is determined to be one of the world’s best chefs. “I’ve got the building blocks from Gastón already, that in itself is just wonderful,” she says, scrubbing her hands on the white and red apron.
阿克瑞奥在利马的旗舰餐厅叫做Astrid and Gastón，夜幕降临时，厨房里一片忙碌景象，Pachacútec烹饪学院前优秀学员艾尔巴•维拉德(Elba Velarde)表示，她决心成为全球最优秀的厨师之一。“我从加斯顿那里学到了基础知识，这本身就很棒，”她表示，双手在她那红白相间的围裙上抹了抹。
For Mr Acurio, Ms Velarde is a good example of how the cooking bug has already bitten the new generation of Peruvians who are eager to spread the Andean country’s rich and multicultural culinary culture throughout the world.
在阿克瑞奥眼里，维拉德是一个很好的例子，表明烹饪已吸引新一代秘鲁人，他们渴望将这个位于安第斯山脉的国家那融合了多元文化、丰富多彩的烹饪文化，传播到全世界。
“What we are trying to do with the Peruvian food is what the French accomplished over 200 years, the Italians over 100 years, the Japanese over 50 years – and we will do it in 25 years,” he adds.
他说：“关于秘鲁美食，我们希望取得像法国人、意大利人和日本人那样的成就，他们分别用了200年、100年和50年，而我们将用25年达到目标。”