Pastel de choclo ("corn

pie A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit (as in an apple pie), nuts (pecan pie), brown sugar ( sugar pie), sweete ...

" or "corn

cake Cake is a flour confection made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients, and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate ...

") is a South American dish made from

sweetcorn Sweet corn (''Zea mays'' convar. ''saccharata'' var. ''rugosa''), also called sugar corn and pole corn, is a variety of maize grown for human consumption with a high sugar content. Sweet corn is the result of a naturally occurring recessive muta ...

choclo Choclo, also referred to as Peruvian corn or Cuzco corn (after Cuzco, the capital city of the Inca empire), is a large-kernel variety of field corn from the Andes. It is consumed in parts of Central America and South America, especially in Ecua ...

. It is similar to the pastel de elote found in

Mexican cuisine Mexican cuisine consists of the cooking cuisines and traditions of the modern country of Mexico. Its earliest roots lie in Mesoamerican cuisine. Its ingredients and methods begin with the first agricultural communities such as the Olmec and ...

and to the English

corn pudding Corn pudding (also called pudding corn, puddin' corn, hoppy glop, or spoonbread) is a creamy culinary dish prepared from stewed corn, water, any of various thickening agents, and optional additional flavoring or texturing ingredients. It is typic ...

. The filling usually contains

ground beef Ground beef, minced beef or beef mince is beef that has been finely chopped with a knife, meat grinder (American English), mincer or mincing machine (British English). It is used in many recipes including hamburgers, bolognese sauce, meatloaf, ...

chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adu ...

raisin A raisin is a dried grape. Raisins are produced in many regions of the world and may be eaten raw or used in cooking, baking, and brewing. In the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia, the word ''raisin'' is reserved for the ...

s, black olives,

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus '' Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the on ...

s, or slices of

hard boiled egg Boiled eggs are eggs, typically from a chicken, cooked with their shells unbroken, usually by immersion in boiling water. Hard-boiled eggs are cooked so that the egg white and egg yolk both solidify, while soft-boiled eggs may leave the yolk, ...

Preparation

Pastel de choclo is prepared with sweetcorn ground into a paste. It is then seasoned with ground basil that is blended into the corn. The mixture is pre-cooked with milk and a little

lard Lard is a semi-solid white fat product obtained by rendering the fatty tissue of a pig.Lard
entry in the ...

and used as a topping for the filling. The filling, known as "''pino''", contains minced beef cooked with onions,

paprika Paprika ( US , ; UK , ) is a spice made from dried and ground red peppers. It is traditionally made from '' Capsicum annuum'' varietals in the Longum group, which also includes chili peppers, but the peppers used for paprika tend to be milder ...

, other spices, and sometimes chicken, is also used as a filling for traditional Chilean

empanada An empanada is a type of baked or fried turnover consisting of pastry and filling, common in Spanish, other Southern European, Latin American, and Iberian-influenced cultures around the world. The name comes from the Spanish (to bread, i ...

s. The ''pino'' is laid in the bottom of the ''paila'' with slices of hard boiled egg, olives and raisins.

In popular culture

The

Argentinian Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish (masculine) or ( feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Argentines, ...

poet Florencio Escardó wrote the following ode to pastel de choclo, published in 1876:Escardó, Florencio "Reseña histórica, estadística y descriptiva con tradiciones orales de las Republicas Argentina y Oriental del Uruguay." La Tribuna, Montevideo, 1876. p. 129.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pastel De Choclo Argentine cuisine Chilean cuisine Latin American cuisine Porridges Maize dishes Pies Peruvian cuisine Paraguayan cuisine Uruguayan cuisine Venezuelan_cuisine

Preparation

In popular culture

See also

References