Re-creando la receta de una mantecada vegetariana. La cocina como espacio de negociación de conocimientos y para el conocimiento

Abstract

This article examines cooking and the kitchen as scenarios of production, circulation, negotiation, and subversion of knowledge. It strives for an “anthropology of cooking” that recognizes the act of cooking, and the kitchen itself as important subjects for theoretical elaboration. This article questions what a vegetarian mantecada (shortbread) might be and describes its preparation in a cooking class in Bogota, Colombia. First, it explores how the written recipe, despite being an apparently stable device, is infinitely adaptable and it is continually changing. Then, it recreates the recipe, paying attention to the processes of translation and negotiation entailed in making the vegetarian mantecada. It purports that cooking is an act of coordination between bodies, ingredients, utensils, and different environments whereby knowledge is produced, shared and negotiated. It discusses as well how each preparation is an ephemeral ensemble that is completed only in a bite and purports that as academics, we still lack words to refer to the sensual and subjective dimensions of cooking.