Pastel de Choclo

My cure for homesickness

Hello and welcome to this month edition of Latina Cooking. As always, thank you for being here. Today I am bringing my recipe of Pastel de Choclo. I wrote about it in January! I know it’s April now, but this year has proven to be going way too fast.. and finally here it is!

I am so excited to share that I am going to be part of the British Library Food Sessions this year!! (real pinch me moment). Melissa Thompson and Polly Russel invited me to curate this event about Latin American ingredients and the community that it fosters in the UK. I can’t wait! Hope to see you there.

I was busy at the begining of April with this fun Pop Up I did with Helen and her team at Eric´s Bakery. We cooked with Original Beans South American varieties of chocolate and it was a success! A HUGE THANK YOU! to everyone that went and supported my work. I couldnt stop smiling!

Back in January, I wasn’t having the best time. My partner, Dieter, was in Antarctica (he shared a beautiful picture for you down here!) and our conversations were few and far between — patchy connections and time zones will do that to you. On top of that, it was my first winter in London, far from everything and everyone I’d known for the past ten years. The combination left me feeling pretty blue. Fast forward to now, and things are looking a lot brighter. I’ve been keeping busy — cooking full-time at e5 Bakehouse (which I love) and working on my book proposal with the Oxford Cultural Collective (if anyone has tips or advice on this process, I’m all ears). I feel incredibly grateful for this opportunity, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t hard. Balancing a full-time kitchen job with writing a book proposal feels... intense. How do people do it? Honestly — I’m still figuring that part out.

An iceberg floating in the Antartic Sea captured by Dieter 💙

Well, I am drifting apart from today’s post, which is my recipe for homesickness cure (Chilean version) I had wanted to share it with you, but you know.. life happens.

As I had mentioned in this January post it is my favourite dish and one of the ones I tend to miss the most while away is Pastel de Choclo. "Choclo" comes from the Quechua word chocllo, which means "an ear of corn" and “Pastel” refers to the creaminess of the dish. The sweetcorn is ground into a paste and seasoned with salt and basil. The mixture is pre-cooked with milk and used as a topping for the filling. The filling, known as "pino", contains minced beef cooked with onions, smoked chilli powder (merken) and other spices. The pino lays in the bottom of the paila and goes in the oven where the top caramelizes and forms the perfect shell to crack the pastel, almost like a sugar top on a creme brulee. I am vegetarian so to replace the meat I use mushrooms and onion to create the pino.

Pastel de Choclo

Serves: 6 or 2 very hungry people in my case (you can freeze it or refrigerate it until the next day and pop it in the oven to warm it up)

Prep time: 30 min | Cook time: 45 min | Total: 1 hr 15 min