Photo:  Meridith Kohut / WWF-US. Retrieved from worldwildlife.org

It all begins with red-hot rocks, which members of the Indigenous Huilliche community on the island of Chiloé in southern Chile, have cooked over a bonfire all morning. These smoldering stones are the first items placed into the ground, in a two-feet-deep hole, to commence one of the oldest continuously practiced cooking techniques in the Americas: the curanto.

Next comes trays of chicken, sausage and smoked pork, followed by heaping sacks of clams, blue mussels and giant ribbed mussels, which the community harvested at low tide from the shore nearby. This bountiful pile of proteins grows within the earthen oven. It’s enriched, minutes later, by the endemic potatoes gathered from the patchwork fields visible on the rolling green horizon.

On top of the curanto, forming the final layer, are two versions of a disk-shaped potato bread: milcao (cooked potato mixed with raw grated potato) and chapalele (ground cooked potato kneaded together with flour, butter and pork rinds). Once placed in the hole, the community seals everything shut with the fan-like leaves of Chilean rhubarbs, as well as spindly branches from Chilean myrtles, to form a pressure cooker. This belt-busting feast, first made 11,000 years ago, will be ready to eat in about 90 minutes later.

Potatoes are a key player in a curanto. They are, after all, served in three different ways. “The reality is that we cook potatoes every day of our lives,” says Colivoro, noting that they’re used for stews, roasts, pancakes, porridge and even desserts. Chiloé is home to 286 native varieties, and DNA studies show that 99 percent of potatoes cultivated worldwide descend from those found here.