In early December I got the amazing opportunity to attend a Pachamanca at the house of one of the participants in a program I work for. Pachamanca (meaning "earth pot" in Quechua) is an Andean manner of cooking where you either dig a hole in the earth or make a brick oven, build a fire and heat very hard stones over it. You then remove the stones from the fire, fill the oven with various types of potatoes and sweet potatoes , cover those with rocks, and then layer various types of meats with hot rocks, before coving the whole thing in rocks and topping it with fava beans. You then wrap the whole oven in wet cardboard, followed by plastic tarps, followed by blankets, and seal it so no heat escapes. Then you let everything cook at this super hot temperature for 30 minutes to an hour, and then uncover it all and dig in! Traditionally, you stand over the oven and eat everything fresh from the oven with your hands. We started that way, and then moved things over to plates :)
Here is a picture guide from start to finish of how to make Pachamanca - plus a few other recipe goodies I learned that day.
