Pastel De Choclo Y Humitas (Corn and Beef Casserole and Humitas)

Today, according to an (unscientific) survey conducted by a Chilean internet mag, pastel de choclo is Chile 's favorite home cooked repast, favored by 21% of respondents. [1]

Among the nearly Chilean of dishes, Pastel de choclo is a pie filled with beef and onions, a piece of chicken, an olive and a quarter boiled egg, and covered with dough made of fresh corn. (Choclo is Andean Spanish for ear of corn, from the Quechan chocollo.) It is always on the menu of Chilean restaurants serving "typical foods," and appears oftentimes in workers' lunchrooms, and neighborhood cafes. It is sold in Independence Day celebration booths, supermarkets, bakeries, and by sidewalk vendors. It was the first meal my future wife served me when I came to Santiago , and surely would exist much appreciated past hungry mourners when I depart.

Pastel de chocloI (or pastel de maiz—standard Spanish for "corn pie") is mestizo cooking at its most straightforward: it combines the filling for Castilian empanadas with a crust of the corn dough used to brand humitas, the indigenous tamales of the Andean cultures. And similar humitas and empanadas information technology must be very sometime and very Chilean, surely originating, every bit Chilean anthropologist Sonia Montecino Aguirre suggests, at the easily of Mapuche cooks in the kitchens of the Castilian conquerors. [2]

Just does it?
Chilean novelist Isabel Allende has it a little differently, as fiction allows. Her heroine Inéz Suárez, Pedro de Valdivia'due south mistress and companion in the conquest of Chile, invents empanadas with a corm crust—which can hardly be anything other than pastel de choclo—in Cuzco, Republic of peru, in 1539.

I had a clay oven built in the patio and Calatlina and I begin making empanadas. Wheat flour was very dear, but nosotros learned how to brand them from corn repast. They never had time to cool after they came from the oven because the odour spread throughout the neighborhood and people came running to purchase them. ….The potent aroma of meat, fried onion, cumin and baked dough soaked into my pare and so deeply that I have never lost it. I will die smelling like an empanada. [3]

Allende seems to take gotten 1 office right; Chile's iconic pastel de choclo appears to have a Peruvian origin; or at least the earliest mention of pastel de choclo comes from Republic of peru . Peruvian historian Ricardo Palma tells of a remarkable banquet served in Cuzco in 1608:

…the Dominicans gave a banquet for the reconciled [Augustinians and Franciscans], But what a feast! There was theological soup, fried giblets, blimp turkey, rabbit carapulcrta [stewed with peanuts], lamb stew, pipian and locro of pigs feet, meat in adobo [spicy marinade] St. Peter and St. Paul (beans with meat, spices and vinegar) and pastel de choclo… [four]

And since information technology existed in colonial Peru, one would expect to find pastel de choclo in colonial Chile , but it isn't mentioned, as far as I can tell, in any of the colonial sources. The primeval cl mention I've encountered is from Claudio Gay, French botanist and naturalist who explored Republic of chile in the 1830s. Writing virtually the food and potable of fundamental Chilean peasants he describes a meat pie—conspicuously a less elegant version than served at the Dominicans' banquet--that today we would call a pastel de choclo:

….in the great fiestas, and higher up all at weddings… chicha, immature wine, or wine itself accompanies the pies so well enjoyed and made of picadillo [hash] or pino ["filling" in the Mapuche linguistic communication] of mutton, mixed sometimes with craven, and covered with a layer of corn ground with sugar and fat, and seasoned as e'er with a lot of chili and other condiments. These pies were also fabricated with green beans, onions, olives, etc., and were cooked the same twenty-four hour period to be eaten hot. They were seldom missing from the table on a solar day of commemoration. [ 5]

Nor does this pie announced in 19^th century accounts of travelers in Republic of chile , who ofttimes describe the meals, humble or elegant, they were served. Chilean historian Martín Lara, who obviously is besides interested in such things, notes:

It is interesting that in the diary of Mary Graham, as in the rest of the books and memoirs consulted, the classic Chilean foods of the nowadays such equally pastel de choclo or empanadas practise non appear. …In contrast to the empanadas and pastels, [is] the constant and repeated reference fabricated to charquicán as a very mutual dish on the tables of Chileans of all social statuses. [6]

The next example occurs some 40 years later on, in 1877, when Chilean writer and politician Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna mentions pastel de maiz in a context that also advise that it is a dish of the common people. He writes:

We don't know if modern presidents of this corn country still like corn, like Alonso de Rivera [governor of Chile , 1601-05] did, or if they serve humitas, pastel de maiz, or fifty-fifty the humble chuchoca [corn meal] at their tables. [7]

So, pastel de choclo (or maiz) surely exists in 19th century Republic of chile, at to the lowest degree amidst campesinos, fifty-fifty if the 19^th century cookbooks do not include it, non even the comprehensive 1882 New Kinchen Manual containing 377 selected dishes from the cuisines of French republic, Kingdom of spain, Chile, England and Italy, which devotes a chapter to empanadas and meat pies. [8] Nor is it in Palma Alvarado's fine study of the food and drink of Santiagueños in the late xix^th century. [9] And 1000 ost surprisingly, Chilean historian Eugenio Pereira Salas has no mention of pastel de choclo in his classic Notes for the History of Chilean Cuisine, kickoff published in 1943. I wonder why.

Information technology's inescapable: Chile 'due south famous pastel de choclo didn't achieve its mythic status until the well into the twenty^thursday century. And it may have come via Peru, Bolivia or Argentina where information technology was common. [10]

Pastel de Choclo recipes

The earliest recipe I take found comes, not from Republic of chile, but from an 1890 Argentine cookbook, where it is chosen pastel de choclo Sucre [ Bolivia ] fashion:

Pastel de choclo a la sucrense

Grate the corn, and grind very well, on a grinding stone or mortar. Add a cup of milk, stir well and strain through a sparse cloth, squeezing difficult to extract the juice. Return the corn to the mortar, add together some other loving cup of milk, grind again, and strain. To this corn juice, add white corn flour or cornstarch a spoonful at a time, stirring as yous pour the flour, and beat until thickened. Season with salt and a footling sugar, at near a tablespoon or two, to bring out the natural sweetness of the corn. Melt a big lump of butter, and mix with the dough, stirring and tossing, until the butter has been incorporated. If the dough has thickened more than usual; add a little milk, and e'er stirring, cook over a moderate fire. Test ofttimes, so past the gustatory modality you will know when it is cooked and set. Then remove information technology from the heat, add butter, stir and cool. When cold, add four egg yokes, and stir to incorporate into the dough.

Butter the lesser of a heat resistant ceramic dish and spread a layer of corn dough. On this identify your filling; what e'er kind you lot like, either of pieces of dove in seasoned marinade [adobo] or stewed, or with a hash seasoned with spices, raisins of Malaga , almonds and olives. Over the filling, symmetrically identify slices of hard boiled eggs and olives. Cover the filling with another layer of corn dough and put in the oven.

When the surface of the cake has browned to a deep aureate, it is done and should go direct from the oven to the table, because the hotter, the more delicious. Natalia R. Dorado (Cochab) [ Cochabamba, Bolivia ] [11]

This interesting recipe, with its smooth dough, butter, raisins of Malaga , and almond is clearly from a social condition well to a higher place that of Chilean peasants. Information technology is probably the descendant of the Dominicans' version of 1608, but it has some mutual elements to the primeval Chilean recipe I've plant: La Negrita Doddy'due south 1911 recipe for pastel de maiz [12] including eggs and sugar in the dough, a bottom equally well as a top layer of corn dough, and raisins.

Her pino, or filling, which is the same as for her empanadas, is very much like today'south:

Cut an onion into a small dice, fry with l grams of lard; and when browned add double the quantity of roasted meat, also cut into pocket-size cubes, reserving the juice. Dark-brown, adding a tablespoon of flour, salt, the reserved meat juices and a cup [200 ml.] of broth. After information technology has boiled, remove from the fire and add raisins, well washed and seeded, olives, a tablespoon of parsley, green or cherry chili, and let to cool. It is meliorate prepared the solar day before.

Oddly, the showtime Chilean recipe I've fond that calls the dish pastel de choclo rather that … de maiz, uses only a top crust, and was published in the U.s.a. . Evidently by the 1920s it had become so popular that the US Embassy in Santiago submitted a recipe to appear among other classic Chilean dishes in the 1927 The states Congressional Club Melt Volume: Favorite National and International Recipes. [13]

The Congressional Social club recipe, above, is a good ane; a flake spicier than today's near common version which doesn't tend to include "red pepper" or tomato, simply does include a piece of chicken. For the standard Chilean recipe, the obvious source is the classic Chilean Cookbook, the 700 folio La Gran Cocina Chilena (8^th edition, 2000):

Pastel de Choclo

8 ears of corn [see note, below]

ane kg. ground beef

1/2 kg. chicken pieces

vi onions

two cloves garlic

1 tablespoon cumin

1/8 kg olives (5 oz)

1/8 kg raisins (ditto)

two eggs

Milk

Salt and pepper

Cut the onions into a pocket-sized dice and fry, and then add the ground meat, garlic, table salt, pepper, and cumin, and simmer over depression heat for 20 minutes. Eddy the chicken and cutting into pieces. Boil the eggs and cut into rounds.

Grate the corn and blend to a purée in a blender, add together a fiddling milk and fry the mixture in a little oil without called-for it.

In an oven proof pan [or ideally in private earthenware bowls of greda de Pomaire] place the pieces of chicken, separated, and the olives and raisins and over that the prepared filling and the egg rounds, topped by a layer of the corn purée, sprinkling a little carbohydrate on superlative to assist in browning. Broil in a hot over for 15 minutes.

Annotation: The corn used is "field corn," which is starchier than sweet corn and will melt into a thick paste. Meet Chilean Corn (Choclo Chileno) . If field corn is not available add corn meal to thicken the mixture. In Chilean supermarkets prepared corn dough for humitas and pastel de choclo is available frozen.

And the mystery? The origins of the Chilean version of pastel de choclo are clearly humble; it was never a sophisticated dish like that of the Dominicans in 1608 or the Argentineans and Bolivians of 1890. The dish Gay saw in the 1830s among rural peasants either arose spontaneously in rural Chile , as Sonia Montecino suggests, or arrived with some low level conquistador's woman, to become the heart slice in peasant fiestas and rural hacienda kitchens, but not in elegant homes. And not in Santiago .

At least non until the 1900s. Santiago 's population grew from 190,000 in 1882 to 406,500 in 1916, [14] due primarily to clearing from rural communities. Among those rural migrants, we can suppose in that location was a woman; a descendant peradventure of Allende'southward Inez, a strong contained woman. She supported herself and her children past baking her rural specialty, pastel de choclo. She was a good cook and a better businesswoman; her pies sold well and soon she expanded her sales. Others followed and past the finish of the first decade of the xx^th century, pastel de choclo (or pastel de maiz as the gentry called it) had go popular; so popular that a recipe even appeared in the elegant French-influenced cookbook of La Negrita Doddy. And from at that place it grew and grew.

A just-so story?

"How the Pastel de Choclo became Republic of chile 's favorite food."

Certain, why not?

[3] Allende, Isabel. 2007. Ines of My Soul: A Novel. New York : Harper Perennial. p. 88.

[four] Palma, Ricardo. 1893. Tradiciones Peruanas Quinta Serie, III Agustinos y franciscanos Ricardo Palma, p 193. On line at

[7] Vicuña Mackenna, Benjamín. 1877. De Valparaiso a Santiago, datos, impresiones, noticias, episodios de viaje: guía del Ferro-carril central. Serie Biblioteca de la Imprenta de la librería del Mercurio. (1a. Ed.), Imprenta de la Librería del Mercurio, de E. Undurraga y Cía., Santiago, Región Metropolitana de Santiago, Republic of chile. On line at http://books.google.com/books?id=txAIAAAAQAAJ&dq=editions:OXFORD591013765

[x] As a search for "pastel de choclo" in 19^th century Google Books in Castilian will ostend.

[13] Congressional Gild Melt Book: Favorite National and International Recipes. The Congressional Club, 1927. On line at http://schlar;lib.vt.euc/digital_books/pdf/TX715.C755.pdf The embassy "recipe" actually said only to combine the filling from the empanada recipe with the corn dough from the humitas, both submitted past the wife of the Chilean military attaché. The recipe here is a cut-and-paste from the originals.

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Source: http://eatingchile.blogspot.com/2010/07/pastel-de-choclo-corn-pie-mystery.html