By Isabel Alvarez

Characteristics:

The bean is a leguminous plant native to America.  In Spanish, there are different names for it: frijoles, frejoles and porotos. All these names are accepted by the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language.

In Spain it is called Alubias an in other parts of Europe Judias.  In Peru it has been found bean grains inside pre-hispanic thombs of more that 10 000 years old.  However, there is no consensus about its paleobotanical place of origin in America.

Nowadays Peru has a lot of varieties such as: black beans, cowpeas, Chancay beans, etc.. Its consumption is widely spread along the whole coast.

It is considered that it was the Mexican culture which introduced the use of bean and corn in its cookery.  Corn-Bean, this coexistence (gramineae-leguminous) represents an excellent nutritional association.

In Peru there is a very native bean variety which is called “pigeon pea”.  It is a tree which produces pods of up to 50cm of length which contains seeds of 4 to 5 cm diameter.  It grows between 1550 to 2500 meters over the sea level.

It is a bean which is consumed in its fresh state, it has a white, delicate and delicious peel.  It is used in home-made casseroles or added to soups, giving a rich texture.  It has 20% o proteins.  The tree can produced up to 200kg of beans per year.  Finally, it should be remembered that the beans appeared beautifully painted on pre-hispanic ceramics of the cultures Moche, Chimu and Vicus, as a kind of worship of the land.