Menu: A Chilean Family Lunch

Craving the warming cuisine of Chile and Argentina, we turned this week's menu planning over to an expert: Sisha Ortúzar, chef of Riverpark and a native of Chile. Here's his take on a leisurely Sunday lunch:

This is the type of meal you would have with your family on a Sunday afternoon in Chile, where I'm from. You start off with some snacks, like matambre and empanadas, accompanied by pisco sours. Then move on to a leisurely lunch served family-style, that goes on for a few hours, with copious amounts of wine and finished with a little sweet like alfajores, a common treat in Chile and Argentina first introduced by Catholic nuns from Spain. After lunch you would retire to watch the futbol game, followed by a siesta. As the afternoon wears off and when hunger starts creeping in again you have "onces," a light meal before dinner. I suggest a post-siesta snack of kuchen de frambuesa, a raspberry cream cake indicative of the German influence on the region's food, (which is especially apparent in some of the pastries). A slice of kuchen and a cup of tea is always the right combination for waking up from siesta, before you start thinking about dinner.

The Menu

Planning Tips

Combine the pisco with muddled rosemary and mint the night before for best results on the herb-infused pico sour, a new take on a cocktail claimed by both Chileans and Peruvians as their own. The seafood empanadas�a Chilean specialty thanks to a few thousand miles of coast with very cold water�can also be made in advance. While you can make empanadas in any size, when serving them with cocktails, it makes sense to keep them small.
Matambre, which literally means "hunger killer," is meant to keep you sated as you wait for the main course. This dish is best served cold, after the meat has had a chance to rest and absorb back all the cooking liquid, but it can also be served warm as an entrée.
Porotos Granados is one of my favorite Chilean dishes, so simple and so good. It also reflects Chile's Mapuche heritage better than any other dish. I omit the lima beans because I like to let the cranberry beans shine, but either way it's delicious. When served in small portions, porotos granados is the perfect first course, but also makes a great vegetable main�I like to drizzle good olive oil and vinegar over my bowl before digging in.
The smashed beets with goat cheese is an interesting side dish from one of my favorite cookbooks, Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way by Francis Mallmann (Artisan, 2009). Here you can see the Italian influence mixed with the South American tradition of cooking by wood fire. The balance of sweetness from the beets, with the tart goat cheese and the wonderful bitter base notes from the charring makes for a perfect dish.

The cuisines of Chile and Argentina are very similar; the climates are basically the same�temperate rather than tropical�and both countries have been influenced by the German and Italian immigrants who arrived after the Spanish colonized the continent. For more on South American cuisine, see SAVEUR's Essential South America »
For tunes to listen to while cooking, check out my picks on Spotify »