Gareth and Lauren on Sabbatical in South America: Chile Con Cooking

Alongside Trip Advisor, we use the 'Lonely Planet' guides to give us Information on a country/city both before we get there and after we've arrived. They also give you recommendations on restaurants, hotels and things to do in each area. If you've not read them, next time you visit a new country or city, take a read as they are really informative and are written by very experienced travellers.

I'd read in the South America Lonely Planet guide that in the heart of Valparaiso there was a Chilean cooking school and as Lauren and I both love food (& cooking!) I booked us in to their seafood course for Wednesday.

We were given a meeting point and as we arrived at the cafe in the flat part of the city we bumped into Tim who we'd meet the day before on the Tours for Tips walk around the city. The second coincidence was that he was staying at the same guest house as us!

We were then introduced to Christina (the 4th student) and Ines, our Chilean Chef for the day.

Ines ran through the recipes with us and then we headed out to the local fish market to buy our ingredients.

We choose our fish and the fishmonger filleted it for us while we waited.

Then we crossed the street to the vegetable market and bought the vegetables, herbs & spices we needed.

The cooking school was held in the next town, 20 mins up the road "Vińa Del Mar". This was because Valparaiso had no water for 24 hours due to a major water pipe repair. Being without water for 24 hours really makes you appreciate it more!

We got on the metro and felt Christmassy for the first time! There was an opera singing busker in our carriage singing "Silent Night". She had a lovely voice and it was a great moment. Being in a hot country in the lead up to Christmas definitely makes it more difficult to get into the Christmas spirit!

We arrived at the cooking school and were each given knives, chopping boards, aprons and chefs hats!

Christina, Tim, Lauren (looking akin to Where's Wally!) and yours truly

Our menu for the day was:

Salsa

Fish ceviche

Razor clams with garlic butter, white wine and cream

Fish and chorizo bake

Fresh fruit with organic palm honey

Before we started cooking though we kicked off with a tasting session of Chilean wines!

Our favourite was a lovely Carmenere. A smooth, medium bodied red from the local area.

Then we got started, chopping, preparing and concocting some amazing Chilean food under the supervision of Ines.

Whilst the fish & clams were cooking, Ines taught us how to make the traditional Chilean cocktail, Pisco Sours. They tasted amazing!

Then it was time to eat our Chilean creation and drink some more Chilean wine!

Fish ceviche

Razor clams with garlic butter, white wine and cream

Fish and chorizo bake

Fresh fruit with organic palm honey

It really was a memorable day and all four. All of us got on so well that we ended up going out to a cafe afterwards!

The previous day, René, our guest house owner, had invited us to a wine tasting evening with him and so we invited Tim and Christina to join us and we had an informative, hilarious and rather raucaus evening as these photos show!

Apparently, out of all your senses, smell is the most easy to forget so our wine expert, Carmen, had brought glasses with grated chocolate, coffee beans, lemon zest and other common flavours associated with the 'nose' of a wine. It was the first time I'd done this in a tasting and it really helped pick out the specific smells in the wine.