Mote con huesillos is a common snack served throughout spring and summer in Chile, mostly sold from carts on street corners and in family-style restaurants. It isn’t precisely a beverage, but it comes in a glass (with a spoon) and you do drink (part of) it. It can be quite refreshing, as it’s served ice [...]

Raspberries are not quite in season yet, but the spring weather already has us craving berries. Sean recently requested a raspberry cream pie, and as I still had a bag frozen from last year, I was happy to comply. Frozen raspberries work fine here, since they are puréed and then strained. For the pastry cream, I [...]

Although we had a couple of days of rain earlier this month, overall it’s been a really dry year in Chile, especially here north of Santiago. Like California, Chile receives virtually all of its rain in the winter (June through August), with the season extending out a month on either end. There’s a saying that [...]

Swordfish (called albacora in Chile) is seasonal at our local fishmonger, appearing for several weeks in the winter. I enjoy the chance to sample all the tuna recipes in my favorite cookbooks, since the rest of the year I can only read through them wistfully. This year I experimented with my own take on an [...]

We’ve done a lot of work in our little Tempranillo vineyard this year. In addition to radically changing our pruning system, we brought in a team to plow the soil in preparation for the growing season. This being rural Chile, the team involved a horse. I’m not sure how you would even do this in [...]