Pachamanca, Peruvian Cooking Pit

Food entries are essential for travel writing, and Peru is becoming famous for its cuisine.  This is partly due to famous TV chefs like Gaston Acurio, but for centuries, the Quechua have cooked food in pits of stones.

Called Pachamanca (Quechua meaning "Earth pot") this style of cooking would be too labor intensive for a dinner for two, but for a few dozen, it seems to be worth the time.

A pit three feet wide and about as deep, lined with bricks, is used to build a fire -  round stones of black granite are used to cover the coals.  When the stones become hot, about half of them are placed aside, and various cuts of pork and quartered chicken, along with whole potatoes, are placed directly onto the remaining stones.  The rest of the hot rocks are then put back, and they start to char the food right away.

Loading the Pachamanca pit

On this day, our gourmet Quechua chefs covered this hottest layer with little packets - I don't know what else to call them.  The husks of the Choclo (corn, but with giant white kernels) was used as the wrapper for a mash of corn meal and cinnamon, making neat little tamale-like packages of goodness.

The final layer was a giant sack of Lima beans, still in the shells, which completely covered the other layers.  Apparently, the order of the food is important in the process, as the flavors of the searing meat rise to permeate the vegetables, and the juices work their way into the surrounding potatoes. In order to seal in all the flavors, the whole pit was then covered with burlap-like cloth and sealed with heavy brown-paper sacks.  The last few stones held it all down.

Here it is when it's done. Yum!

For those who preferred something other than Pachamanca, there was an abuelita (little grandma) cooking trout on the grill and deep-frying cuy (guinea pig) in a big pot of oil - everything fueled by a wood fire.

The fifty-or-so Peruvians who were waiting for lunch had seen the process before, but they weren't wasting time.  A boisterous game of volleyball was ongoing, as were games of sapo.  Sapo, or "frog" is like Peruvian beer-pong.  Heavy brass tokens are tossed at a specially made box, about the size of a nightstand.  If one of the tokens lands in one of 16 holes in the top of the box, it is worth points.  The greatest number of points is earned if the player can land a token in the mouth of the brass frog bolted to the top of the box.  It seems to be played by all ages, although it looks to be the most fun when alcohol is involved.

Our outdoor "restaurant."  The Pachamanca pit can be seen on the far right near the white chair.

Our hosts started bringing out the Pachamanca about a half-hour later.  We sat on wooden picnic tables under thatch roofs and drank Cusqueña malt beer.  Moments like this are among the perfect ones in life, with a warm sun and gentle breeze, nature's silence broken only by the laughter of people, and some of the best food I have ever tasted.

Sorry, Gaston, you're #2.



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Redneck Diplomat in Huancayo

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Our adventure continues in the Suburbs of Huancayo

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Read about how we got here, by riding the train from Lima to Huancayo, the second highest in the world.

Because we were so thrilled with his service, I am going to insert a shameless plug here for our guide, IncasdelPeru, who set the whole thing up for us.  They offer train packages, but will tailor a custom tour for your family, native arts and crafts instruction, and even treks through the jungle, depending on what you would like to see in or around Huancayo.  Ask for Lucho.