Pastel de choclo
The dish of the Chilean summer: a beef “pino” with onion, hard-boiled egg, olive and chicken, topped with a sweetcorn and basil paste and browned with sugar in an earthenware dish.
Ingredients
- 8 ears of fresh sweetcorn (or 800 g frozen sweetcorn)
- 1 bunch of basil
- 200 ml milk
- 500 g beef, chopped by hand
- 3 onions
- 2 cooked chicken thighs
- 3 hard-boiled eggs and 12 black olives
- 50 g raisins (optional)
- Cumin, paprika, oregano, salt and sugar
How to make it at home
- Soften the chopped onions, add the meat and spices and cook for 15 minutes: that’s the “pino”.
- Blend the corn and cook it with the milk, chopped basil and salt, stirring, until it thickens like a purée.
- Spread the pino in earthenware dishes or a baking dish, with pieces of chicken, hard-boiled egg, olives and raisins.
- Cover with the corn paste and sprinkle with a little sugar.
- Bake at 200 °C for about 30 minutes, until the top is golden.
The trick: The sugar on top is what makes it Chilean: sweet and savoury at once.