Posted on August 19, 2012 by Meghan
2 Comments
We’ve started the tradition of having a
pachamanca party at our house each summer. This year was the second year we’ve done it, and it turned out really great – I can only imagine what next year might be like. The basic premise is to dig a hole in the dirt, heat stones over a fire in the pit, add meat and veggies to the hot stones, and bury the whole thing for a few hours to let it cook.
Lots and lots of photos and description after the jump. . .
The first thing to do in the morning before the guests arrived was arrange the flowers. I bought some individual bunches of flowers at the supermarket and then supplemented with flowers from our garden, mostly with the big beautiful hydrangeas we have.
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| This arrangement was completely from our garden |
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| All of these flowers were from the supermarket |
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| I brought these glass pop bottles back from Paraguay – they’ve got great names and unusual shapes blown into the bottles (from l to r: Simba, Kandy, Pulp and Mirinda). The flowers are gerbera daisies. |
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| This bouquet is another supermarket/garden mix. The container is an empty olive oil container. |
Next we needed to set up chairs and tables, put out the snacks and drinks, and finish the decorations.
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| The bar setup: Can you believe this bottle didn’t even get opened?! |
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| Beer |
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| Juices and Sodas |
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| Ribbon wrapped around the poles near the Pachamanca pit |
Finally that was all done and the guests began to arrive, which meant we could start the show. The first thing you have to do is dig the hole in the ground: we were lucky because we’d already dug it last year and left it intact (we’d filled it in with bricks and covered it over with dirt to keep water and children out of it).
Next we built a fire (two, actually) to heat the rocks up.
Once the rocks were good and hot it was into the pit, followed by the food.
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| There was some debate over whether the Incas had the “Ove-Glove“ |
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| Yukon gold potatoes, sweet potatoes and yellow corn waiting to go into the pit. |
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After the pit was filled with food it was covered over with banana leaves, then more hot rocks were added to the top, then wet burlap went over that to be covered finally by a mound of dirt.
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| These guys look like they’re ready for a cold cerveza |
Two hours later and this is what we ended up with . . .
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| The top layer was corn and potatoes |
And at the end, all there was left was to clean up.
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| The aftermath |
– Edited to add everything else in this post except this bit “This is just a placeholder post until tomorrow – I’m too exhausted to do it now! ‘nite all!”
OMG…wish I could convince my hubby to do this. What a great idea for entertaining…and delish too, I’m sure! Thanks for sharing.
Oh I highly recommend it – its the best party we have all year for sure, and the food comes out so good. Thanks for stopping by!