Chilean

A long thin country between desert and Antarctica gives a kitchen built on Pacific seafood (loco, jaibas, machas), Andean potatoes and corn, and a deep tradition of slow-cooked stews. Cazuela, pastel de choclo, empanadas de pino, ceviche and a national obsession with avocado define the everyday plate. Pebre (the table salsa of tomato, onion, coriander and ají) appears with almost every meal; pisco sour and mote con huesillos handle the drinks.

18 recipes

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Desserts 4 recipes

Side Dishes 6 recipes

Snacks 3 recipes

Recipes

Cazuela de Vacuno

The Chilean Sunday-lunch one-pot, the soup-stew that turns up on every kitchen table from Santiago to Patagonia. You brown bone-in beef shin to colour, then drop it into a simple broth of onion, garlic, oregano and cumin and simmer slowly for ninety minutes until the meat is tender and the broth has built depth. The vegetables go in for the last twenty-five minutes - a thick chunk of pumpkin, a section of corn-on-the-cob, a whole potato, a handful of green beans - each piece kept whole because the cazuela is meant to arrive in the bowl looking like a still life. Rice or vermicelli cooks separately in a ladle of the broth and joins at the very end. Served in deep bowls with chopped coriander and a wedge of lime, the steam rising while you eat. Comfort food at its plainest and deepest.

2 hours 15 minutes Serves4

Chorrillana

The Valparaíso bar classic, the giant shareable platter that lands in the middle of the table at every port-city watering hole. You deep-fry thick-cut chips until they're crisp and gold, sear thinly-sliced sirloin (lomo) hot in a wide pan, soften and lightly char onion in the same fat, and fry eggs sunny-side up. Everything piles into a single wide platter: chips on the bottom, steak and onion on top, eggs cracked over the lot so the yolks can run down. Some versions add slices of chorizo. Eaten communally with forks reaching from every side and a cold beer doing the rounds.

1 hour 5 minutes Serves4

Empanadas de Pino

Chile's national pastry, the half-moon empanada that turns up at every Independence Day asado and most Sunday lunches. The pino filling is the dish's identity: knife-chopped beef (not minced - the texture matters), browned, then slow-cooked with three times its weight of onion until the onion melts into the meat and the whole mixture turns dark and sweet. Cumin, paprika, oregano and ají de color season it, and the filling rests overnight ideally so it firms up and slices cleanly. The dough is rich and buttery, made with flour, butter, lard, egg yolks, salt and warm milk. Each empanada wraps a generous spoonful of pino with a hard-boiled egg quarter, a black olive and a couple of raisins, then folds, seals, and bakes at 200°C until deeply burnished. Eaten with a glass of Chilean red.

2 hours Serves6

Ensalada Chilena

The Chilean table salad, three ingredients done properly. The defining technique is what you do with the onion: you slice sweet white onion thin and soak it in cold salted water for fifteen minutes, which draws out the harsh sulphurous bite and leaves a clean, mild allium that doesn't punish the rest of the salad. Ripe tomatoes slice into half-moons, everything tosses with olive oil, lime and salt, and a generous scatter of fresh coriander goes on top. That's it. Eaten alongside roast meat, empanadas, pastel de choclo, or anything off the grill. The soaked-onion technique is the difference between this and any other tomato salad.

30 minutes Serves4

Pastel de Choclo

Chile's summer corn cake, the layered casserole made when fresh sweetcorn is at its peak and the asado has yielded leftover meat. You cook the pino first: onions softened slowly with cumin, paprika and oregano, beef mince browned in, raisins and olives folded through with a splash of stock to keep it moist. Chicken pieces poach separately and shred. The corn topping is the star: fresh sweetcorn (or a kabocha-corn mix in winter) blends with milk, butter and fresh basil into a thick batter. Layer in clay dishes (or one large baking dish): pino, shredded chicken, hard-boiled egg slices, corn batter poured over the top. A heavy dust of sugar finishes it, which caramelises under the grill into a sweet crusted top. Eaten with ensalada chilena on the side and a glass of red wine.

1 hour 55 minutes Serves6