Cookbook celebrates diverse ingredients of Chilean cuisine

What comes to mind when you think of Chilean gastronomy (if you think of Chilean gastronomy at all)? Ummm … wine? Maize, potatoes and quinoa? Those are ingredients, not dishes.

Until recently, all I knew about the cuisine is that it had variations on dishes it shares with other Spanish-speaking cultures, such as tamales and empanadas. Rodolfo Guzmán’s Boragó (2017) isn’t going to give us much enlightenment on what ordinary Chileans eat on a daily basis, but it shows the enormous diversity of ingredients they have to work with.

Guzmán, whose Boragó establishment in Santiago is No 42 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, writes that, when he started his career, the food at high-end restaurants in Chile was influenced by the more progressive cuisines of France and Spain, with chefs ignoring the natural abundance of their own country.

He wasn’t immune, either. “I discovered magazines and books about wonderful Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe, where everything seemed magical and amazing. I read about their incredible approaches to food that seemed to work perfectly and looked like nothing I had ever seen before.

At that time in Chile, our own food culture wasn’t considered important at all. The most popular and celebrated restaurants were those whose owners travelled to Europe, Asia or North America, and brought restaurant concepts back to Chile to copy.” It took going away to work at top restaurants to make him appreciate “my country’s serious potential for gastronomy”.