Pachamanca

The Pachamanca ( Spanish, from the Quechua " Erd-Topf/-Speise " ) is a dish of younger Andean cuisine and is considered a Peruvian national dish and the Instituto Nacional de Cultura del Perú (INC ) declared a national cultural heritage. Main Ingredients are several pieces of meat ( eg, pork, lamb, guinea pigs ), potatoes and other root vegetables ( sweet potato, yuca, Oca ), and beans, all wrapped in corn leaves. Spices used are hot peppers ( aji ), cumin, salt and pepper, often in the form of a spice paste.

Add the ingredients

Cooking in a mound

Open the Watia

The preparation takes place in the Watia (sp. Huatia ), an earth oven using heated stones in the fire. The stones are heated initially stacked in a pyramid, then there you add the food and leaves it, covered with alfalfa and plenty of earth to cook for a long time. The exact form of the preparation is often highly ritualized, and the pile of dirt is lavishly decorated.

The Watia itself is very old. Traces that suggest that stones were used as part of a earth oven, can be found in the cultures of Telarmachay to Junín and Viru, is qalaphurka under the Aymara name from the chronicler Bernabé Cobo 1653 reported it. The now widespread variation of the original Central Andean Pachamanca is only at the beginning of the twentieth century developed in Lima and spread out in Peru.