"Cooking is essentially memory, you try to trap those memories - the grandmother moment, mother moment, the first girlfriend moments. These are flavour moments."
Peruvian superstar Gaston Acurio runs 32 restaurants across South America and the US, he has a television cookery show, designs dishes for the president and set up a cookery school in one of the country's poorest slums.
He set up his cookery school in Pachacutec, a sprawling shantytown an hour's drive north of central Lima, to help youngsters from the poor local families train to become chefs. It is part of an initiative to promote youth achievement and break the poverty chain by teaching employable skills. Many go on to gain work experience in Acurio's restaurants.
His other passion is his country's culinary heritage - his particular favourites being the under-appreciated Peruvian anchovy, the raw fish dish cebiche and the 8,000 different potato varieties growing in the Andes. He wants to boost the fortunes of the potato farmers and the food producers, and showcase their wares to the world.
Sweets made from... potatoes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19000375
Peruvian chef Gaston Acurio and Spanish pastry chef Jordi Roca team up in Lima to work together for the BBC's Collaboration Culture project.
Together they devise sweets made from different varieties of Peruvian potatoes grown high in the Andes, such as potato and chilli jellies and roses made from potato petals and caramel.
Peruvian chef Gaston Acurio
Gaston Acurio, whose restaurant Astrid y Gaston in Lima also appears on the top 50 restaurants list, is not just Peru's most famous chef, but has been described as "the best-known Peruvian in the world".
He owns 32 restaurants in 12 different countries and is a well-known television star in Peru, where he has his own weekly cable show called Aventura Culinaria.
He has published 20 books which are all bestsellers in Peru, and has set up the Pachacutec School of Cuisine, which trains underprivileged young people in the art of cooking. His mission is to bring Peruvian cuisine to the world, and make national dishes like cebiche as popular and refined as sushi has become in the past decade.
Spanish pastry chef Jordi Roca
Jordi Roca runs a three Michelin-starred restaurant, El Celler de Can Roca, in Girona near Barcelona, Spain.
It has been on the list of the world's 50 best restaurants for the past seven years and it was recently voted number two in the world for the second year in a row.
He is the pastry chef at the restaurant, which he runs with his two older brothers, and he has a reputation for creating some of the most innovative and artistic desserts to be found on menus anywhere in the world.
Roca is particularly famous for creating a range of spectacular puddings based on perfumes, such as Calvin Klein's Eternity and Dior's Poison, using flowers, sugar sculpture and hi-tech cooking methods.
He also runs an ice cream parlour nearby, serving up delicious sweets with candy floss and rose petals, creating the stuff of childhood dreams.
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