Sorry, I sort of lost track of my "going-housewively-homely" subject in the last post.
Yet I believe it is thanks to this tendency that my repertoire of Chilean recipes is up by over 100 % - to 5 (five!) recipes! (yes, I completely made up that "process". I just suck at introductory paragraphs. Anyway, I want to write about my feats.)
So far I was able to make ensalada chilena - which is (give and take and ignore R's strange pride in the dish) basically tomato-onion salad, albeit a good one - as well as Pebre, a spicy coriander-tomato-onion-chili-dip (works as purée as well. I like playing with the mixer).
My two new accomplishments are called porotos granados, meaning beans "so far untranslatable to me." Rose said they are called cranberry beans in English, which I find equally intriguing. The beans do look sort of purple-spotted. green-purple. I don't know much about beans, my way of distinguishing until now went: They are green, red or white. Green with some red is confusing.
But I also had generally little clue as to a bean's original state (with shells/pods and all). Anyway, the dish is great. I'm a big fan of the current choclo season, young choclo, big choclo, as well as the ubiquitous pumpkin. And porotos granados contains the beans, the pumpkin, corn, and a number of other ingredients I don't remember right now.
My next dishes were pastel de choclo and humitas, and that now is really as Chilean as it gets. I mentioned the slightly disappointing (in terms of novelty) tomato salad, then there are of course empanadas (like in every country on this continent), Pisco was Peruvian first, and the porotos are an stew, when it comes down to it ...
But! Pastel de choclo - and also it's relative humitas are fairly "exotic", at least for me, and even though humitas are basically the same thing as the Mexican Tamale (different name same species, as ALF would say... ).
It is quite an elaborate preparation to get the corn paste you need for both dishes. Here's your recipe:
Buy ten or so of the big choclos.
Rip off the leaves (it's harder than it sounds).
Get rid of the "hair" of the corn (it has hair. did you know that?).
Cut off the grains with a knife (spray yourself and everything around you with juice while you're at it), grind the corns (since you don't have a grinder, be in perpetual fear that your improvised mix-thingy will explode from heat exhaustion).
for humitas
Add to that paste slowly-sautéed onions and aji and lots of Basil. (which they call albahaca, but because Chileans notoriously drop or swallow sounds and sillables, it sounds like albaca. So it makes me think of lamas and I get all confused).
Fill them in the "best leaves" of the corn, which you selected earlier (sorry.. forgot that..). I have no clue how to select them, and R kept being contradictory in the selection process.
Put 2 leaves that "go well together" (same irreproducible process as for the selection) one over the other, put paste on it, wrap together quickly.
This you must do rapidly (even though you don't know how)
Now bind it together with a string (what? I needed string??)
If you are making pastel, it's comparatively easy.
Put paste of choclo (without basil, but if you want with an egg or milk.. there are different recipes) layered with the onion-chicken paste. Like a lasagne.
Put sugar on top.
Oh, this is really important, and I was at first adversed to the idea but it is absolutely necessary to eat both dishes WITH SUGAR! only then are they really good...
here's proof I really did this:
No comments:
Post a Comment