Wine and dine: A taste of Chile
Intense flavours and brilliant aromas define the dishes of this superb country
Irecently left our cold, damp climate and flew to the sunny, warm temperatures of Santiago, Chile. It was my first time to this country on the west coast of South America.
Before my visit, I knew only about the superb seafood and great wines of Chile. I didn’t realize the country was so long and narrow, about 4,300 kilometres in length along the coast and about 175 kilometres in width on average.
Because of the massive length of the country, it has a variety of climates and soil types, from the Atacama Desert ( the driest in the world) to the polar Antarctica.
I flew to Santiago, the capital, and found myself in one of Latin America’s most modern metropolitan cities, with gleaming towers that seem to soar upward from the valley floor to the height of the surrounding mountains.
While there, I visited the original brick- and- iron central market buildings, which were filled with a glorious bounty of early summer fruits, from cherries, strawberries and grapes from the south to a cornucopia of mangoes and pineapples from the north.
My favourite was the cherimoya, or custard apple. We get this luscious fruit, which is native to the Andes, when they’re in season here in our Asian markets, but they never have the same flavour intensity as they do there. It’s perfectly ripe, custardy soft, and sweet and aromatic with a flavour blend I can only describe as banana, pineapple, papaya, peach and strawberries — all in one fruit.
The Chileans love eating their cherimoyas simply, often just with a drizzling of fresh- squeezed orange juice.
With the country’s elongated coastline, I wasn’t surprised to see the vast variety of seafood available at their Mercado Central, from the ubiquitous sea bass, tuna, sweet scallops and salmon to the more adventurous gooseneck barnacles and wild abalone. But it was the city’s outlying valleys that were my focus — home to some of the country’s important wineries.
As we mark this year’s Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival and its featured country of Chile, not only do we celebrate their wonderful wines, we also look forward to the variety of Chilean cuisine at various culinary events.
That food is a fusion of various countries that have influenced Chile over the years, mainly Spain and other European countries such as Germany and France, as well as the Middle East.
Ceviche, the popular seafood dish, which likely originated in Peru and was adopted by Chile, is typically made with fresh raw seafood “cooked” in marinades of citrus juices laced with seasonings such as chilies, cilantro and onions.
You’ll also find their famous empanadas, the wonderful baked or fried savoury pastries stuffed with a variety of fillings, from aromatic minced beef and chicken to cheese. Throughout my culinary travels in the southern hemisphere, I have routinely sampled empanadas just to see how they vary from region to region. Toward the end of my visit to Chile, my travelling companion started to complain that his body shape was turning into an empanada.
One of the remarkable ingredients I was introduced to was merkén, the smoked chili spice blend that originated with the indigenous Mapuche people from the south of Chile. I love any spice with chilies, but this unique blend is nothing like anything I’ve tasted before; it has a mild smokiness, but with depth, and a fiery heat that’s not too intense, and a lovely aroma from the toasted coriander and cumin seeds.
But it’s Chile’s superb wines and wineries that impressed me on this visit — particularly the passion, the history and the quality of wines, including the most biodynamic and organic productions I have ever encountered. And the great dishes that were cooked and paired with these showcase wines. It was just a couple of decades ago that Chilean wines were seen as common table wines. Now thanks to technological advances and soil improvements, the country is producing some outstanding international- quality wines.
Today, I’m sharing 10 wonderful dishes from 10 of the top wineries I visited in Chile. If you get a chance this week, go and sample some of these wines at the Playhouse Festival.