#34 - Chile

We made empanadas for Argentina, so decided to break the mold and go with something a bit different for Chile this week. We made Pastel de Choclo which we all thought seemed like a South American version of Shepherd's Pie! The base is made of chicken, onions, olives, chopped egg and raisins and the topping is pureed corn. It was a bit heavy on the corn flavour but was otherwise quite tasty! I think that it is traditionally made with beef, but we found a chicken variation and went with that. Definitely something we'll make again!

There were a ton of variations on Dulce de Leche online, but one particular recipe appealed to me, largely because of the story associated with it. The woman who posted it described how her grandmother would make it for her when she got home from school everyday in Chile, and how she now does the same thing for her kids in Paraguay. She was pretty clear that she would consider this a Chilean dessert. It's called Leche Nevada, which I guess translates to "floating islands", and is basically a vanilla custard with meringues sitting on top sprinkled with cinnamon. The idea was very appealing, but the taste wasn't great (I suspect this was due to poor execution on my part).

Finally, after a few weeks of discussing poverty and food insecurity for the countries we've been "eating", this week Ruth's fun facts included the fact that Chile is home to the world's largest swimming pool (with a $2million annual maintenance bill), there's a desert that is the dries place on earth and may not have experienced rain EVER, it's one of the world's largest producers of wine and Easter Island has one of the most extensive lava cave systems on earth. Much lighter fare this week!