LUNCHING WITH LIZ
On a rainy Sunday I arranged to meet Liz Caskey for lunch at her loft in Barrio Brasil, an old neighborhood now sprucing up with smart coffee shops and restaurants.
A young Pennsylvanian, Liz has resettled in Santiago. She is a gifted cook and has drifted from banking into leading culinary tours. After meeting at a subway stop, we walked through atmospheric old streets where English Tudor, Spanish and Moorish buildings, some more than a century old, stand side by side. The oddest was a Tyrolean castle that had been the headquarters of a popular soccer team, Colo Colo.
Liz’s loft is on the second floor of a 1920s building in a part of the barrio known as Barrio Yungay. Before going there, we shopped for lunch ingredients at a feria libre, an open-air farmers market.
Chileans use only freshly harvested produce rather than importing fruits and vegetables out of season. Oranges were just coming into the market, brightening the gloomy day with their brilliant color. Gorgeous artichokes and asparagus, delicate, small red lettuce heads, avocados and the first of the season’s strawberries were irresistible.
Liz bought bundles of mixed herbs that included celery leaves, cilantro, parsley, oregano and mint as well as lemons, fava beans, peas in the pod and many other things.
I bought the last of a spice vendor’s supply of merquen, a smoked red pepper seasoning from southern Chile that has become trendy, and packets of an all-purpose ground herb mixture known as alino.
Loaded with sacks, we climbed to Liz’s loft and set to work. Usually I was alone on my tours. This time I was joined by Tod Mostero, a Californian who moved to Chile to become winemaker at the prestigious Almaviva winery, a joint venture between Concha y Toro and the House of Rothschild.
Tod and I peeled fava beans and shelled peas while Liz brought us puff pastry empanadas filled with herbed goat cheese. She also whipped up pisco sours flavored with fresh ginger.
The peas went into a beautiful fresh soup garnished with mint and strands of thick cream. We drank a Tamaya blend of Viognier, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc with this course.
Liz sauteed the favas with smoked chorizo from southern Chile to make the base for herb-crusted white fish. She seasoned the fish with Dijon mustard, merquen and the herbs she had bought at the market, then seared and baked it.
A spoonful of tomato vinaigrette and strands of Dijon and balsamic vinegar added to the complex blend of flavors. The wine for this course was a Botalcura reserve Merlot.
We finished with a handsome cherimoya-ricotta cheesecake that Liz had made previously and cups of rich-tasting espresso from Brazil.
As Liz cooked, I wrote down each step so that someday I can copy her dishes. I even bought the brand of pisco that she used in order to duplicate her pisco sours. The brand is Los Artesanos del Cochiguaz Pisco Especial, which comes from the Elqui Valley, an agrigultural center some 300 miles north of Santiago.
The pisco sour is the favorite aperitif in both Peru and Chile. There is a heated dispute between the two countries over which originated pisco, the grape-based spirit used in the drink. But that’s another story, for another trip.
For information on Liz Caskey’s culinary tours, go to www.lizcaskey.com or email to [email protected].
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