Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Mud-oven Chicken Dinner

There are easier ways to cook a chicken, but can anything compare with dinner baked in a mud oven?

Recipe:

Catch, kill and clean the chicken. Stack some spare adobe bricks into a small oven.

Stoke it with firewood for several hours.

...And while waiting, prepare mud.

Rake the coals flat when they have heated the adobe walls white hot.


Slide in the tray of potatoes, camote (sweet potatoes), carrots, and bananas.

Then the pan of spiced chicken - covered with newspaper.


Close the oven and seal with mud so not even a wisp of smoke escapes.

In an hour the aroma of the chicken will beckon you to break open the oven

and strip off the yellowed newspaper to reveal the golden chicken dinner.

A dinner made exquisite by pleasant company.

Our muddy - handed hosts were Willie and Fabiola Aliaga, former students of the University

and good friends of Paul since he lived here in 2000.


Willie manages a large pig operation. Together they raise and sell their own pigs and chickens.

Willie is the designated community leader of the pueblo of Carmen Pampa this year.

In that role he has participated in small group meetings at the capitol with Evo Morales, the Bolivian president.