My last meal would have to be a pachamanca feast. In the indigenous quechua language, that means “cooking underground”, and this is how we often celebrate birthdays or fêtes in Peru.
There is great ceremony and ritual to it. First, in the morning, you dig a big hole – maybe 1m-wide and just as deep – and you fill it with wood, which you burn for a while. The ground must be as dry as possible. While it burns, you prep your food, wrapping marinated meats in leaves. Once the fire is ready, cover it in hot stones, then add the meat, then a thick layer of herbs, such as Peruvian black mint and marigold, then a cape of hessian, then soil, then more hessian, so the hole in the ground contains a mini hill of sealed heat. The cooking goes on for two or so hours.
Pachamancas are typical of Andean cuisine, but I’d want to replicate this just outside London, with all my family – including my siblings and 14 cousins. I’d invite anyone who really loves food. We’d need to be in the hills, near a lake – a nod (albeit subtly) to the altitude and majestic scenery of the Andes.
We’d probably start cooking the day before. I’d marinate lamb, rabbit and guinea pig – meats with enough fat content so that they don’t dry out – in a herby sauce with thyme, coriander, mint, garlic, smoked chilli and seasoning. On the day of the event, the meats would be wrapped in corn husks with nutty, waxy Andean potatoes, tamale and whole broad bean pods, and made into an airtight parcel – one for each guest.
There’s a fermented corn drink called chicha. It’s light-coloured, cloudy and fairly sour in flavour. Adults would have that, while kids and non-drinkers could have a purple maize version with honey, pineapple skins and quince.
Chicha is also an art movement and lifestyle. We’d be playing chicha music, a folkloric derivative of cumbia, as well as some of my favourite Peruvian funk, like Traffic Sound and Black Sugar.
This meal would be about tradition, so it would only be right to have an Andean classic for pudding. Mazamorra morada, or purple pudding, would hit the spot – a dessert of purple corn with fruit chopped into it. That and afroz, a version of another typical Peruvian dessert, a burnt sugar rice pudding I like to make with quinoa, amaranth and maca – “the ginseng of Peru” – for a final burst of energy after this big, long lunch.
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Martin Morales is a Peruvian cookbook author and restaurateur, at Ceviche and Andina restaurants. @martinceviche
