Dinner Buried at Dawn

Near a small lake ringed with steam, Polly found a row of large pots standing beside deep holes cut into the bare, blackened ground. A cook in a heavy apron worked down the line, lowering a sealed pot into each hole with a rope, and Polly settled on a nearby rail to watch, curious what could possibly be worth cooking in a hole in the ground.

Kraj malog jezera obrubljenog parom Polly je našla niz velikih lonaca kako stoje pokraj dubokih rupa iskopanih u goloj, pocrnjeloj zemlji. Kuhar u teškoj pregači radio je niz taj red, spuštajući zatvoreni lonac u svaku rupu na užetu, a Polly se smjestila na obližnju ogradu i gledala, znatiželjna što bi uopće moglo biti vrijedno kuhanja u rupi u zemlji.

Each pot held layers of meat, sausage, cabbage, and root vegetables, sealed tight and lowered into earth heated from below to roughly the temperature of boiling water. No flame touches any of it. The heat comes entirely from the volcano beneath the whole valley, rising up through cracks that were dug out and marked with stone rings generations ago, long before anyone measured the temperature scientifically.

U svakom su loncu bili slojevi mesa, kobasica, kupusa i korjenastog povrća, čvrsto zatvoreni i spušteni u zemlju zagrijanu odozdo otprilike na temperaturu kipuće vode. Nijedan plamen ne dodiruje ništa od toga. Toplina dolazi u cijelosti od vulkana ispod cijele doline, dižući se kroz pukotine koje su naraštajima prije iskopane i označene kamenim prstenovima, davno prije nego što je itko znanstveno izmjerio temperaturu.

The cook explained, more with gestures than words, that the pots go in early and stay buried for six or seven hours while everyone goes off to visit the lake, the gardens, or the town, coming back only when it is time to dig dinner up again. It is, he seemed to say, the easiest meal on the island to start and by far the strangest kitchen to cook it in.

Kuhar je objasnio, više rukama nego riječima, da lonci ulaze rano i ostaju zakopani šest ili sedam sati dok svi odlaze razgledati jezero, vrtove ili gradić, vraćajući se tek kad je vrijeme da se večera opet iskopa. Činilo se da kaže kako je to najlakši obrok na otoku za pripremiti i daleko najčudnija kuhinja u kojoj se sprema.

When the first pot came up, steam poured out of it in a thick cloud, and the smell of slow-cooked meat and cabbage drifted across the whole clearing. Polly did not stay for the meal itself, but she watched the cook carry it away proudly, as if he, and not the mountain, had done all the work.

Kad je prvi lonac izašao, iz njega je pokuljala para u gustom oblaku, a miris sporo kuhanog mesa i kupusa raširio se cijelom čistinom. Polly nije ostala na samom objedu, ali je gledala kako ga kuhar ponosno odnosi, kao da je sav posao obavio on, a ne planina.