Further to my last post regarding Curanto, I wanted to share a dish prepared in Bolivia, that has the same concept of cooking, down in the Mother Earth, or “Pachamama” as the Inca’s named her.
The dish is called “Hautía”, and there are some variation in Perú as well as the northern part of Chile, which were also dominated by the Inca empire (Quechua culture).
The first time I tried it, I had great expectations, as my brother mentioned for about a month, that once the potato crop was due, we would prepare the Huatía.
I knew the concept: cook in the earth that was previously heated, but was curious if the food would get dirty, especially the meat. Later I found out that the meat was cooked on a clay oven, although in Perú they use also meat in the process.
Let’s get to the preparation, you need “Broad beans” and “Oca” (Oxalis tuberosa, which is a perennial herbaceous plant, grows underground stem tubers, the Quechua name is “Uqa” and in New Zealand “Yam”).
In the same groove where you harvest the potatoes early that day, you stack large blocks of soil like a pyramid, leaving space to lit a fire. Once the soil turns towards the red color, you are ready to prepare the Huatía. You open the top of the pyramid, place the 3 ingredients inside and collapse the pyramid flattening the earth blocks and covering the pit with additional earth.
Between one to two hours you leave the pit, while drinking “Paceña” the local bear, better if it has the logo “Huari”, as the water of this brewery has certain characteristics that make this bear superb.
After a few bears, you have to carefully remove the soil and separate the food from the earth, local people do it with bare hands, I would use thick leather gloves.
The traditional dish you eat the potatoes, Oca and Broad beans with cheese and “Phasa”, that is a very fine clay that is extracted from humid places, near the rivers that flow to Lake Titicaca, it is soaked in a container a little salt to eat with the potatoes, it’s said to be very nice. However, the version I had, the cheese and Phasa were replaced by an oven cooked lamb with red hot spices.
It all started at 10AM, we left by 7PM.
