Vegetarian in Chile

If you arrived here in search of that North American favorite, vegetarian chili, you have misgoogled; this is about vegetarian food in Chile. But it might be worth reading further; Chile has an extensive repertory of meatless dishes that fed the upper classes on meatless Fridays and the poor all year round.

The food of the country people is very simple….  most of the time eating vegetables and above all potatoes, beans, peas, wheat and corn boiled like rice or as toasted flour, and on rare cases meat, preferring to sell the animals they raise and never lack.  When it is the hacienda owner who feeds them, they seem to still be in the middle ages for the great uniformity of their food, because it is made up of only a single plate of beans in the north and peas in the south, simply cooked in water or seasoned with a little fat or pork cracklings. This is the diet of all year round, which they prefer and request, feeling that it makes them strong and long suffering for their work, which the results seem to confirm.[1]

Whether the Chilean peasantry’s diet was largely meatless by choice, as Claudio Gay’s 1860s work suggests, or through poverty, as is more likely (note that food for festivals and weddings was not meatless) they developed a large variety of meatless dishes, some now classics of Chile’s Creole cuisine.

The food of the indigenous Mapuche, which blended with colonial Spanish cooking to produce Creole cuisine, was based on maize, potatoes, common and lima beans, squash, and quinoa, along with the meat of domesticated llamas and wild game, fish and shellfish.  Some of today’s popular meatless dishes are direct descendants of Mapuche foods:

Humitas, Chilean tamales (and incidentally the subject of the first post in “Eating Chilean”) continue to be among the 10 most popular Chilean home cooked foods.[2] The original Mapuche humitas were made solely of maize (corn) picked while still in the milky stage, but today’s humitas also include lard, onion and basil, though a vegetarian or vegan version is a simple modification of the recipe in the link above.

Porotos Granados, shell beans cooked with corn and squash, are also among Chileans’ top ten home cooked meals.  Cranberry beans are boiled with a bit of onion.  When within 30 minutes or so of being done, winter squash (zapallo) is added, and when it has cooked soft,  corn cut from the cob is added and cooked for an additional 10 minutes until the stew is thick.  For a more detailed and illustrated recipe, take a look at this one by Chilean Gringa blogger Eileen Smith.  And for a winter version using dry beans and spagetti, there is Porotos con riendas (beans with reins).

Tomatican, another Chilean Creole dish with indigenous origins, is a stew of tomatoes, corn, and onions, which may include meat, lima beans or cochayuyo, eatable kelp. Vegetarian versions are common and have entered the international repertory of meatless dishes.  Here is a recipe from Mooswood Restaurant Cooks at Home.  The version with cochauyo seems not to be available elsewhere in English, so here’s one adapted from Recetas de Cocina.

Incidentally cochayuyo is an excelent addition to meatless cooking of all kinds. types.  In Chile it replaces meat in dishes ranging from stews and soups to pastas to empanadas.  There are several more recipies in English at Seaweed: Cochayuyo and Luche.  It is occasionally available by mail in the US at Amigo Foods or Tu Chile Aquí and in Europe at Cresta Ecologia. 

 

Vegetarianism as a movement, which began in England in 1847[3], seems to have arrived in Chile in the late 19^th century, along with many other European influences.  Der Vegetarier for June 15, 1891:  “Herr Rudolf Franck describes the progress of Vegetarianism in Chili. Though the Valparaiso Society numbers only 12 members, it possesses a library and reading room, but, as yet, no restaurant. The chief reason for this want is the difficulty in finding a manager.”   Three years later “the Valparaiso Vegetarian Society, which was founded in 1889, now counts 25 members, mostly Germans...” [4]

By the 1930s, there were evidently enough Chilean vegetarians to support publication of a cook book, the 1931 Manual of Chilean Vegetarian Cuisine, [5] which, along with many French, Spanish and Italian recipes (pastas, tortillas, vegetable pies and puddings) includes a variety of clearly Chilean dishes: pancurtas (dumplings or noodles for soup), maize chupe (chupes are milk based stews), humitas, stewed hominy, cochayuyo “meatballs,” cochayuyo pudding, fried cochayuyo, stuffed cochayuyo, etc.

Her recipe for Stewed Hominy (mote de maiz guisado) is as follows: 

First pass the maize kernels through clear lye, and when the husks are loose, remove them and boil until cooked, then grind in the machine [food mill], fry in vegetable shortening with a little minced onion and parsley and lighten with milk. To serve, top with two egg yokes, grated cheese and cream, and surround with fried potatoes.

http://eatingchile.blogspot.com/2011/05/vegetarian-chile.html