35 Chile

The Republic of Chile is a country in the west of South America. It is a long narrow country situated between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean. It is the southernmost country in the world and closest to Antarctica. It shares borders with Peru, Bolivia and Argentina.

Spain colonised the region in the 16th century and its national language is Spanish. Before this the country was ruled by the Incas. Chile gained independence in the 1818 and is now the most stable country in South America.

Chilean cuisine is a reflection of the countries diverse locations with an assortment of seafood, beef, fruit and vegetables. Traditional recipes include asado - a type of barbecue; cazuela - a type of stew; and empanadas - a baked or fried pastry filled with meat.

We decided to make empanadas - basically because Gary is Cornish and they are similar to the excellent Cornish pasty!

We wanted to make Chilean Pebre Salsa as an accompaniment - but an ice storm prevented our trip to the shops so we had to go without. It contains cilantro, tomatoes, onion, chili peppers, garlic and red wine vinegar.

For a change we also decided to make a dessert - the ice storm meant we had to put this off until we could get to the store to buy a tin of sweetened condensed milk to make Brazo de Reina, Chilean Dulce de Leche cake.

The filling for the empanadas has to be made the day before. You use ground beef, beef broth, onions, flour, red pepper and cumin. The meat and onion are fried until brown then the spices are added and finally the broth. This is simmered for 30 minutes, cooled and put in the fridge over night.

The pastry is made from milk, warm water, flour, salt, egg yolks and lard. It's quite firm. Once it is all combined you make even sized balls - we were making one third of the recipe and I made 6 balls. I even got the scales out to weigh them!

You also need an olive for each empanada - they are meant to be black but we only had green, 2 raisins and some slices of boiled egg.

                    The pastry is rolled into a 7 inch circle and the                 filling arranged in the middle.

                     The sides and bottom of the empanada                   are folded in and brushed with egg.

Then they are baked for 30 minute.

This is what they look like inside! mmmm

Finally we were able to get out and buy the ingredients for our Chilean dessert. Brazo de Reina is Chilean Dulce de Leche cake.

The tin of condensed milk had to be boiled for three hours.
I haven't done this since university when my flat mate used to do this regularly and then dunk a banana into it instead of using it to make banoffee pie!

To make the cake you whip the eggs whites to make stiff peaks and then slowly add them to the combined egg yolk, sugar and vanilla essence.
Then you fold in the flour.

I had a panic at this time as there didn't seem enough mixture
 to fill the pan. It spread very thinly.

While the cake was baking I braved opening the tin of condensed milk. It had turned a really creamy caramel colour and tasted very sweet.

The baked cake had to be cooled for 5 minutes
then turned onto a tea towel.
 I trimmed the edges

Then I carefully rolled it up and left the cake to cool.

The dulce de leche spread on the unrolled cake.

Rolled up again, sprinkled with icing sugar and ready to eat.

The Verdict

The empanadas were really good - not as good as Cornish pasties obviously, but still much more tasty than I had expected. It's a shame we didn't have the salsa to go with them - I think that would have added to the authentic taste.

The Brazo de Reina was surprisingly morish - but extremely sweet. We have loads of the dulce de leche left and I'm not quite sure what we are going to do with it! Haha. The actual cake wasn't too sweet so it offsets the cream a bit. I think I'll continue to just put strawberry jam in my Swiss rolls in the future!