La Comida (The Food)

A little bit about food in Chile...

First, their main ingredients in anything are salt, vegetable oil, vinagre, lemon and cilantro. Things they add to just about everything are ketchup, mayonaise and Ahi. Anyone´s heart burning?

I have told you about the Empanadas and the completos (hot dogs), so I will start with something new...

Often times, we have palta. Palta means avocado. You take an avocado and mash it with a fork, Then you add oil and salt. This tasty little spread can be put on a freshly toasted peice of bread and it is quite tastey.

Another type of mash we put on our toast is mashed eggs. Th eggs are hardboiled. Mash the eggs, add oil, and salt, and you have another tastey spread for your toast.

Pebre....mmm...pebre...is chili (ahi), minced onion, minced cilantro, oil, and salt, sometimes some garlic too....you can spread it on bread and it is good, or add a couple of spoons to your soup for flavor. My family adds it to everything when they have it. Potatos, meat, salad...whatever. They also pu ketchup on their pesto pasta, or cheese pasta, or the creamy sauce pasta that I can´t remember the name of...ketchup on pasta makes my stomach turn.

Lomo a la Pobre...poor man´s steak...aka..heart attack meal...this is either french fries or mashed potatoes with a steak and two fried eggs on top. Anything a la pobre seems to mean with two fried eggs. My host mom one day had white rice with two fried eggs on top...with ketchup of course. Yesterday we had mashed potatoes (puree) with wo hotdogs, and two fried eggs. Interesting to say the least.

There is alot of celery in Chile and compared to the celerey we buy at home...it is about twice as long. It is giant! Celerly is often cut into little sticks, salted, oiled, lemon-ed, and vinager-ed....it tastes delicious. Really. Another combo with the same sort of flavorings are tomatoes with onion. Other salad items with these flavors are corn, beets, carrots, brussel sprouts...and more. Salad here means a vegetable or various vegetables in little piles on your plate. You don´t buy a chef´s salad or Ceasar salad.

Parilladas...I don´t know if I have talked about this one before or not...but, we went out for Parilladas one night a while ago. A parillada is basically a bowl of meat. You know those paintings of bowls of fruit? They look so nice and elegant...well, replace the fruit with various types of meat and you have a parillada. It is family style bowl of meat. It has chicken legs and breasts. It has pork, beef, and some braided intestine looking things which I tried but....oohh...not tasty. There was blood sausage and churipan (a spicey sausage injected with ahi). The meal is definately equals heartburn but it is tastey.

Chileans are die hard meat eaters. They are also heavy bread eaters. At the store they have bread freshly baked about three times a day. The little bun styled peices of bread are sliced in half and put in the toaster. It is usually white bread and tastes alright. But, when you buy them...you either select a paper bag (for hot bread) or a plastic bag (for cold bread). You load a bag full of bread and take it to the person at the bread couter. The person there weighs the bread. Yes, you pay for bread by the Kilo here...although, you can buy loaves of bread for a specific price which is comparable to a loaf of bread at home. We eat bread for breakfast with margerino (marg) and mermalada, then I tried to avoid it the rest of the day...but, at night sometimes we have it with Palta and eggs.

Sopaipillas are tastey too. It is made of squash or potatoes...it is a bread that is fried, at least at our house. I tastes good with a little pebre or other salsas.

Another great salsa is jalapeños, garlic, cilantro, oil, salt, and a squeeze of lemon. Yum! Maybe even a little onion.

Cazuela is another tastey treat. It is very good on a cold day since it is a soup. It is a broth with rice. Then there is a peice of pumpkin or squash, potato, beef or chicken, and a chunk of corn on the cob. You eat the broth first with your spoon, then you eat the peices of meat and vegatables with a knife and fork.

Churrasco is a tasty sandwich! It is beef marinated, cut into thin slices, slices of salted and oiled tomatoes, and green beans (french cut style) on top of the tomato...between two slices of toasted bread. Good!

We have peanut butter. The Europeans have Nutella and the Chileans have Manjar. Manjar is carmelized sweet and condensed milk (at least that is my analysis). It was super tasty in my first Chilenito and it was tasty in this fried bread stick with manjar in the middle, but I have had so much of it that I just don´t like it. They used it for frosting on cakes. They put it on the pancakes. The put it on anything they want sweet. I cannot do it anymore. There aren´t too many things I won´t eat here. But, of the things I can only take in small doses...Manjar is on that list.

The other thing on my small doses list is sopa de Machas...or is it Manchas...no machas...machas are razor clams...manchas are stains. The razor clams are good, but it isn´t my favorite. We have them in soup. And, we have them baked with parmesian cheese. After they are baked, you sqeeze lemon over the top then eat it...OR, you can put a little bit of pebre on top.

So, that is kind of a quick run down on what I have been eating. I did go to McDonalds one day, because you have to go to McDonalds when you are out of the country. I honestly think the best mcD´s burger I have ever had is here in Chile. The meal deals are about $5-$6...burger, fry, and medium drink (with only two pieces of ice). They have a sandwhich they call the McNifica. It is a burger, tomato, lettuce, and some onion....so what is that, a big mac?

There really wasn´t anything that stuck out for me at the Mc D´s besides the Mc Nifica...it seemed to be the same. I thought they served empanadas, but I didn´t see them on the menu.

I will have to cook a Chilean meal when I get home....

jami