EDITOR’S NOTE: Traveleater Kyle G. Roesler, author of The Navel of the World, shares his experiences eating Chile’s national dish of pastel de choclo.

Comfort food, South American style. That’s how I think of pastel de choclo, a casserole-like dish that is common in many Andean countries. To wax a bit more poetic for a moment, pastel de choclo is more like a gold medal in culinary arts, its golden glow usually presented to the diner in a round casserole dish and it makes you feel like you must have done something good to be eating food as tasty as all this.

Save This on Pinterest!

No time to read this now? Click on the red save button and pin it for later!

But we’re not done! Some chefs add slices of hard-boiled egg, too, making for a dish with a great variety of textures. And that’s not all! We’re just getting to my favorite part, the icing hidden in the cake, if you will: raisins and black olives! This is where, if I were to make the dish, I’d probably go overboard on both the raisins and the black olives, because I like them both so very much, but don’t worry: calmer heads prevail in all kitchens except mine so these delicacies don’t overwhelm the main parts of the dish.

Put it all together, and you have one amazing, all-in-one meal: it sticks to your ribs in oh-so-satisfying a way. I first tried pastel de choclo in the Atacama Desert after a hot, dusty day of site seeing, and it was just the perfect meal to revitalize me after the exertions of the day. But, it was even better a week or two later when I ordered it on a cold day in Patagonia – comfort food on a cold, blustery day, is there anything better than that?

Download The Navel of the World from Amazon. It’s available for Nook and iPad, and in paperback. Please note these are Amazon affiliate links.

Feature photo: Diegostraight, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons / Processed in Photoshop and Lightroom

Found this article useful? Help us help other travelers by sharing it!