Buen provecho

The food in Chile has been a revelation. After Argentina we were not too sure of what to expect, so I'm guessing our expectations were pretty low, or at least thats what Mauricio, our Columbian friend who we stayed with in Santiago attributes to our excitement! The wine here is even better. To be fair, the Argentinian wines are fantastic too . Chile produces a wine called Carmenere, the grape for which is only grown here. It is a fantastic wine and a great bottle costs under $5, much cheaper than beer and sometimes even water! A really good reserse, won't put you back more than $10-$12. In Rupees that is between Rs 150 - 500. Pisco Sour is the national drink. Its a kind of Cashacha drunk mixed with a lime mixer. Its sweet, but quite nice. Pretty potent like a  grapa really. They make a similar drink in Peru but its a little more evolved. They add some spice, egg white etc and so its not that sweet. I liked the peruvian version more. Chileans also have a sangria equivalent, generally made with cheap red wine in the winter, and white in the summer. Basically its wine with some sweetner, and strawberries. Its very refreshing and a pretty damn good drink! Would be nice on a hot Mumbai sunday afternoon!

The staple food as one would expect with a country that has a coast line this long, is sea food. They make a soup called Palle Marinara which is basically all sea food they can get their hands on cooked together eaten as a soup. It has shrimp, octopus, mussels, squid, fish and some stuff I haven't encountered before. I like the concept, but somehow cooking all this together did not hit the spot. The flavour of the different sea food all meld together so you can't really taste each component which is shame when you have quality sea food in the broth. Chilean food uses a spicy sauce called Aji Pembre and a chile they called Merken, both of which make me feel a little more at home. They also have a lot of different kinds of food including choclo etc, which I can't describe since we didn't eat it!! Its kind of tough to get decent Chilean food in Santiiago, and outside of Santiago we did not really know what to order in terms of local cuisine.

Chilean food comprises a lot of vegetables and hats fascinating in how inexpensive the Avacados are. We ate tons of Avacadoes, on bread, in salads, and just as a snack! Dominoes, a popular  local burger chain, makes a great Chilean version of the burger. Lots of veges, a huge slice of meat, really well grilled, but they use too much mayo. Luckily that  can be controlled if you take on the chef early enough. Naturally, he  just can't undertand how any amount of Mayo is too much!

We ate a fish preparation that was divine. The waiter could not expain what fish it was so I guess it will remain a mystery for sometime. It was fish but tated more like lobster, and the sauce  it  was cooked in was a slightly spicy beautiful sauce. You could taste the sauce but the fish did not lose its own flavour!

The meat is great, and cooked beautifully. The sanwiches fantastic! The  empanadas are very popular but not my favourite. They make them with mussels which is great when its fresh, but if its a few hours old then it gets a uncomfortable sea smell. We also ate barbecued  lama meat, a bit too tough, fatty and gamey for me!

One intersting thing about the meat especially the beef in both Argentina and Chile is that they use the cut with fat. This makes the meat cook a lot nicer and the barbecued fat is great! Not sure its doing anyone a favour health wise, but rarely is something that taste this great, healthy!

We also got to taste some Colombian food, by far the most exciting food I've  had on this trip. Bandega Paille I think it was called. Basically consisted of beef mince in a Indian type masala although not spicy, rice, chorizo, pork skin that was fried and a bit hard to eat, plantains like the ones we get in Kerala that were fried, and a friend egg on the rice. The flavours were amazing! We also tried a chicken in muishroom sauce with coconut rice! The rice was a bit sweet but it was all amazing! 

Btw every Colombian we have soo far encountered has been real fun and make a huge effort to be friendly!Pity we won't make it to Colombia this time, but I guess the icing on the cake is that this forces us to make another trip tp these parts soon!