HOME COOKIN’:
A Chilean dish—cooked in dishes from Chile—uses heaps of Taber corn to capture the taste of the old country.
The Ulloa Family’s Pastel del Choclo.
f or the Ulloa family, fall means buying cases of Taber corn and making large quantities of pastel de choclo, a special-occasion dish from Chile. The family’s matriarch, Eduviges Ulloa (whom everyone calls Lela, a short form of abuela, “grandmother” in Spanish), and her daughter, Catalina Ulloa, are both masters of the dish.
Catalina’s daughter Susana Choi, hosts the clan at her Deer Run home, where they cook outside, husking and cutting the kernels off dozens of cobs of corn. A kind of Chilean shepherd’s pie, pastel de choclo is made with a base of pino—a mixture of ground beef, onions, garlic and spices—topped with cooked chicken thighs, hard-boiled eggs and olives, and covered with sweet corn.
Catalina makes the pino using a secret recipe (she cooks late at night once everyone has gone to bed) that calls for merkén, a spice blend with a base of smoked peppers, and lots of garlic. She boils the onions first, which she says makes them easier to digest and eliminates heartburn. The ingredients are layered in earthenware bowls brought from Chile, baked until bubbly, and served with a quick salad of fresh tomatoes, purple onion and cilantro, dressed with olive oil and salt.