Pastel de choclo ("corn pie" or "corn cake") is a South American dish made from sweetcorn or choclo. It is similar to the pastel de elote found in Mexican cuisine and to the English corn pudding. The filling usually contains ground beef, chicken, raisins, black olives, onions, or slices of hard boiled egg.Albala Ken. 'Food Cultures of the World.' ABC-CLIO Vol. I, pp. 69-70. It is traditional in the cuisines of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. An early Chilean description of a dish corresponding to pastel de choclo appeared in Claudio Gay's 1862 Historia física y política de Chile: Agricultura, which described a filling of minced lamb, sometimes mixed with chicken, covered with ground corn seasoned with sugar, fat, chili and other condiments.
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 and used as a topping for the filling. The filling, known as "pino", contains minced beef cooked with onions, paprika, other spices, and sometimes chicken, is also used as a filling for traditional Chilean empanadas.Chilean Empanadas - Empanadas de Pino aboutchile.com Marian Blazes Retrieved March 17, 2013 The pino is laid in the bottom of the paila with slices of hard boiled egg, olives and raisins.
In popular culture The Argentinian 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.
See also
List of maize dishes List of porridges
References