A soundtrack of Joy Division fills the sunny kitchen of his Cambridge, Massachusetts, restaurant La Royal, as Peruvian-born chef JuanMa Calderón deftly maneuvers his skillet over a roaring flame. The heady scent of flash-seared meats and vegetables waft through the room as he drops in a tangle of pasta, tossing it all together with an umami-rich mix of soy sauce, oyster sauce and red wine vinegar. A squirt of lime juice completes the dish.

Calderón tips the stir-fry onto an enamelware tray, making sure to drizzle in any stray pan juices—what he calls “the gold.” Each forkful is a vibrant collision of flavors: the sweet-­savory one-two punch of the soy sauce and oyster sauce, heightened by the bright acidity of the vinegar and lime, with a burst of spice from hot peppers.

This is tallarín saltado, a simple, classic Peruvian noodle dish. It’s one of Peru’s many saltados, the stir-fries that are a staple of the Chinese-­influenced cuisine known as chifa—a product of the vast wave of Chinese immigration to Peru in the 19th century. In Peruvian cooking, South American, East Asian and European culinary roots deliciously intertwine.

Maria Rondeau, Calderón’s partner, notes the adaptive nature of chifa cuisine. “The Chinese immigrants married into the Peruvian culture, so they made Chinese food with a lot of Peruvian inflections,” she says. Which is how lo mein transformed into tallarín saltado, making use of locally available red wine vinegar, lime juice, ají amarillo peppers (a moderately spicy pepper native to Peru) and Italian pasta. “It’s all about bringing flavors together,” Rondeau says. “It’s about the joy on the plate.”

And, like any stir-fry, it’s also about heat and speed: Heat the pan until smoking, add the meat and aromatics to caramelize them, then quick-­sear the vegetables before incorporating the al dente noodles, which finish cooking in the rich sauce (made silky thanks to a splash of pasta cooking water).

In our version, we keep things fairly traditional. But in the spirit of adaptation, we swap in either Fresno or jalapeño peppers (a common substitute for ají amarillo, which is challenging to source in the U.S.), and we use balsamic rather than red wine vinegar, for extra depth. In Peru, tallarín saltado can be made with a variety of proteins; we opted for chicken. The result is a stir-fry bursting with flavor, deeply savory and smoky, yet sweet and tangy, with a pleasant heat from the chili. Truly, joy on a plate.