So, On Saturday I wrote a teaser:
We’re not going ashore so early tomorrow so I’m going to try and write in the morning after breakfast.
We came into Puerto Montt this morning and it was gray and gloomy but not raining. That managed to hold up until 1 or 2pm in the afternoon then it started raining miserably. Finally, as we were leaving, the sun came. It was a beautiful sunset.
Anyway. We went on what I felt was the best excursion we’ve been on ever, “A Taste of Chile: Fresh Fusion.” There were only twenty of us. We were driven to the local market in Puerto Montt where we met a chef and he took us around and we learned all about the local Chilean produce as well as seafood. And then we rode in the bus with him to a private dining room.
It was like being at someone’s house with a long table and spending five hours prepping a meal and eating it. We even helped. So much wine, so much pisco, and so much food.
I never got around to writing the entry, at least not here. It was a busy weekend!
Yesterday was The Boss’s first tender ride – and they sat her by the open doorway. Fortunately it wasn’t raining and the boat wasn’t bouncing. I was jealous regardless, though.
As I said, our excursion yesterday was “A Taste of Chile: Fresh Fusion.”
We rode a bus (19 people) to a market and met a chef.
The market was primarily a seafood market but also had a number of vegetable and other vendors. Many of them started handing out samples even though they knew we weren’t going to buy anything, such as in the above she started handing us spicy pickled olives which I could have eaten all morning.
Sadly, the oysters were not fresh enough or purchase. The chef has his own standards for buying things such as these which make sense. “Tap it and if it moves, however small, it’s good.” I don’t know if that works for us at home as nearly everything is on ice.
This wasn’t the garlic he used for cooking. In their market they have both Chinese garlic (identical and the same price as the packs of four we get in the supermarket for a buck or two) as well as local, Chilean garlic with a little dirt on it (identical to the garlic we buy at the farmer’s market, or what we’re trying to grow ourselves but keep failing at).
Eventually we made our way to Puerto Varas where his private kitchen is that he’s using this year. We were given the option to stay and cook – or drink wine. The alternative was to go shopping in Varas. Only one person chose to join the guide for the shopping excursion. The rest of us drank. Eventually he invited us to join us with prep and five or six of us all got up to assist – all men. We split tasks between shelling beans, splitting clams, and cleaning mussels.
Eventually. He started handing us food to sample (mind you, we’d been sampling since at the market – where vendors handed us grapes, pickled spicy olives, cheese, and a number of other treats).
One of the things I tried was the raw clam. Our second dish after we sat down was actually the cooked version thereof – put under the broiler briefly enough to cook it in butter but that’s it, as it gets tough quickly. It’s the same delicacy that’s required to cook shrimp just until where they’re done as well – something I’ve managed to capture at home in the saute pan but not yet on the grill.
His team also deboned and fileted their own fish removing the parts to keep for stock. The heads and so forth were simmered with onions, chives, parsley, and other stuff for a stock; he reminded us to never boil seafood stock. When the stock was ready he kept the fish heads and we ate the cheeks with our forks at the table.
His ceviche was majority sea asparagus which was cleaned by one of our fellow cruise passengers. We always have ceviche which is spicer at home and often is more tart, but Chef has a way of making it not so much.
His version of ceviche is more balanced than what we’ve encountered. Less tart than usual. He also served us pieces of hake that had been stewed with the stock and some apple cider.
I don’t remember what else we ate. We did have blueberries in custard which was good. Every time we turned around they refilled our glass. At one point they switched from Carmenere to a lesser-known Cinsault which was really, really good and a “reserve” bottle. We asked if we could buy a bottle and yes, they let us take one home. Or rather, to the ship. I’m told it’s definitely coming home with us.
It poured rain all afternoon until we were back on the ship at which point glorious sunshine returned. We spent much of the rest of the day and evening resting in our cabins and watching football – they have it available on the NFL channel, but otherwise on the ship aside from the casino bar not so much.
In Retrospect 