Side Dishes

6 recipes

Completo

The Chilean street hot dog and the proper night-out food after a few drinks in any city in the country. You start with a long soft frankfurter roll, poach the frankfurter in barely-simmering water for five minutes, dice tomato fine and salt it to draw out the water, and mash avocado with lime and salt to a thick paste. The build is bottom-up: split roll, frankfurter, diced tomato, sauerkraut, a heroic layer of smashed avocado, mayonnaise piped generously over the top, a squiggle of mustard if you like. Wrap in paper, hand it over, eat with both hands while walking down a Santiago street.

25 minutes Serves4

Lentejas Chilenas

A Chilean lentil stew, the kind of one-pot that turns up at any Sunday lunch through autumn and winter. You render smoked bacon in a heavy pot until the fat runs clear, then soften onion, garlic and carrot in the rendered bacon fat. Tomato and a generous scatter of dried oregano build the base. Green or brown lentils go in with stock and simmer for forty-five minutes until tender. Potato chunks join for the last twenty minutes. A splash of red wine vinegar at the end brightens the whole stew and pushes it from heavy to balanced. Eaten with crusty bread, a chopped salad on the side, and a glass of red.

1 hour 30 minutes Serves4

Marraqueta

Chile's everyday bread, the small crusty roll with four lobes that pulls apart cleanly along its deep score. You make a lean dough from bread flour, yeast, water and salt (no sugar, no fat) and give it a long first rise of an hour to develop flavour. Divide into sixteen small balls, pair into four-lobe shapes (two balls side-by-side, pressed in the middle to form four humps), and let them rise briefly again. Bake at 230°C with steam (a tray of hot water at the bottom of the oven) until the rolls are deeply crusty on the outside and tender inside. Eaten warm, torn open and spread with butter, mashed avocado, or a slice of fresh cheese. The morning bread of Chile.

2 hours 17 minutes Serves8

Papas Mayo

A Chilean potato salad, the Sunday-lunch staple that sits next to grilled meat and an ensalada chilena at any asado worth the name. You boil floury potatoes whole in their skins, peel and dice them while still warm so they soak up the dressing properly. Hard-boiled egg goes in halved or quartered, sliced spring onion adds bite, Dijon and mayonnaise bind, and a splash of white wine vinegar lifts the lot. Toss gently so the egg doesn't pulverise, with chopped parsley scattered over. Best slightly warm - the mayo grips the potato and the egg breaks into soft creamy crumbles. Eaten with grilled meat or as part of a wider lunch spread.

40 minutes Serves4

Pebre

Chile's table salsa, the fresh chunky relish that turns up in a small bowl next to bread before any meal and stays on the table until everything is gone. You chop tomato, onion and coriander fine (smaller than a chopped salad, almost a relish), then combine with crushed garlic, ají chilli (or red chilli if ají isn't around), olive oil, vinegar or lemon, salt and pepper. Fold gently and let sit for ten minutes so the flavours mingle. Eaten with fresh bread before a meal, spooned over grilled meat, alongside empanadas, with chorrillana, with cazuela. Basically with anything savoury that comes out of a Chilean kitchen.

12 minutes Serves6

Sopaipillas

Chile's rainy-day flatbread, the pumpkin-and-flour disc that turns up at street stalls on cold winter afternoons and gets dunked in mustard or pebre by every passer-by. You boil pumpkin (or butternut) cubes until soft, drain and mash, then mix the warm purée with flour, melted butter, baking powder and salt to a soft pliable dough. Rest for thirty minutes, roll to five millimetres thick, stamp out eight-centimetre rounds, pierce each one twice with a fork (which keeps them from puffing into balloons), and fry at 170°C for ninety seconds per side until deep gold. Eaten warm with pebre, mustard, or a smear of butter, ideally while the rain is still falling.

1 hour 20 minutes Serves6