All three fish are fabulous in Chilean ceviches.\u00a0Machas<\/em>, meanwhile, are surf clams, one of the most traditional foods of coastal South America, and found off beaches from Chile to Peru. Traditionally, they were harvested \u2013 and in some places still are \u2013 by beach fishermen wading into the sandbanks just offshore and, sometimes at great risk from riptides, disturbing the sand with their feet to shuffle up any machas<\/em> just below the surface. Nowadays, airlines and snorkels have made macha<\/em> fishing a little easier, but it’s still hard work.<\/p>\n Jim Stuart also informs us that apparently Chileans no longer eat as much fish as they used to, or maybe ought to do, because the fact that Chile is one of the world’s biggest fish exporters means that domestic consumers have to compete with big-scale fish-buyers from Asia and the rest of the world, which pushes up prices.<\/p>\n This is not something you’d imagine after a short time in the country, as fish and seafood are fixtures on most menus, even in simpler restaurants, and make up many of the most treasured Chilean dishes.<\/p>\n And any decline in Chilean fish culture is least evident at the fishermen’s market on Valpara\u00edso’s waterfront, where restaurant buyers and ordinary individuals come to buy fabulously fresh fish and shellfish truly straight from boat (which may be pulled up alongside the stall with today’s stock). Which is handy, of course, so long as you have somewhere to cook it.<\/p>\n Beyond any fish-consumption crisis, the one strange thing about Chileans’ seafood-eating habits that can be rapidly apparent to any outsider is their obsession with mixing fish, seafood and cheese, a combo that appears in all sorts of dishes. One of the most popular ways of eating machas<\/em> is a la parmesana<\/em>, coated in a parmesan cheese gratin, a ‘Chilean classic’ apparently invented by an Italian immigrant chef in the 1950s, who decided to celebrate his new home and appeal to Chilean tastes by doing something he would never have been allowed to do in Italy, and coat shelffish in cheese.<\/p>\n You get used to it: and one of the Chilean seafood standards that’s most worth trying is the chupe de locos<\/em>. Locos<\/em> in Chile doesn’t just mean mad people but also the Pacific abalone, one of the country’s most traditional foods, and a chupe<\/em> is a thick cheese-based, chowder-like soup, with a gratinated top. You can have chupes<\/em> with many ingredients, but the most popular is with locos<\/em>. Strangely enough the hefty cheese doesn’t destroy the flavour of the seafood, and it’s deliciously satisfying on a cold day (which, given Chile’s ocean weather, can happen).<\/p>\n Foodie reasons for visiting Chile, number 1: fish and seafood Firstly, because they’re so good, and the centre of much the most interesting Chilean food; and second, because, at least for anyone from the Northern\/Atlantic hemispheres, they’re so fascinatingly new and unfamiliar.\u00a0The most popular fish are\u00a0reineta,\u00a0congr\u00edo\u00a0and\u00a0corvina, and a star among the range of shellfish are\u00a0machas. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[46,8,6,9],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chile","tag-chile","tag-food","tag-travel","tag-valparaiso"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nick-rider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nick-rider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nick-rider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nick-rider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nick-rider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nick-rider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nick-rider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nick-rider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nick-rider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nick-rider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Machas](\"https:\/\/www.nick-rider.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Valparaiso-fish-1.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Congr\u00edos](\"https:\/\/www.nick-rider.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Valparaiso-fish-2.jpg\")
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