Seasoned minced beef, chicken, egg, olives and raisins under a golden crust of ground fresh corn, dusted with sugar and baked in a clay dish — Chile's way of celebrating summer corn.
Pino under a corn crust
The base of the dish is pino, the same filling used in Chilean baked empanadas: beef, minced or finely chopped, cooked slowly with a large quantity of onion and seasoned with cumin, paprika and oregano. On top of it go pieces of cooked chicken, slices of hard-boiled egg, black olives and raisins.
Choclo is the Andean word for fresh corn on the cob. The kernels are cut off and ground into a coarse paste, then cooked with milk, butter and fresh basil until thick enough to spread. This pastelera is smoothed over the filling, sprinkled with sugar and baked until the top browns and caramelises.
Every forkful therefore mixes sweet and savoury, soft and crisp: sugary corn, salty olives, sweet raisins and well-spiced meat. It is traditionally baked and served in individual earthenware bowls.
A summer dish
Pastel de choclo is tied to the season. It is made in the Chilean summer, from roughly January to March, when the large, starchy local corn is ripe. The same harvest supplies humitas, ground corn paste wrapped and steamed in its own husks, and the two often appear on the same tables.
The dish brings together two worlds. Corn was domesticated in the Americas and cultivated in the Andes long before the Spanish arrived, while beef, chicken, olives and raisins came with colonisation. The result is a typical example of the mestizo cooking found in Chilean homes and countryside restaurants.
Telling it apart from its neighbours
Corn-topped pies are also made in Peru, Bolivia and Argentina, and corn paste in general is a shared Andean tradition. What makes the Chilean version distinctive is the pino underneath, with its onion-heavy, cumin-scented beef, and the sugar on top.
In the game, a guess in Argentina, Bolivia or Peru will not be far off, but the long, narrow country along the Pacific coast is the classic home of this dish.
