Every Seed has a Recipe...

This article is an interweaving of situated dialogues, critical reflections, and expanded knowledges through the lenses of «not knowing in the presence of» (as per Marisol de la Cadena’s essay of 2021) gardens and chacras, and kitchens of steel and earth in Cusco, Peru and Basel, Switzerland. Centring four seasons of exchanges with Isaac Riquelme Mamani (mi querido maestro/my beloved teacher), we look at a recipe, ritual, and seasonal gathering rooted in Peruvian Andean food culture through the Pachamanca (a traditional dish which means comida y ritual bajo la tierra or «pot/meal underneath the earth» in the language of Quechua Runa Simi). In the middle of writing my PhD (which feels more like indigestion) and enacting consent processes, I began to make sense of how Pachamanca and the values and technologies of collective food practices could hold the space to rehearse situated and regenerative relationships with land. So, how and why to cook with land(-scape)? I don’t know, but I can rehearse it…