Longanizas

Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
-Otto von Bismarck

Although Chillán is, in most ways, a pretty unassuming agricultural town, it is famous all over Chile for its longanizas, spicy sausages made of pork and/or beef. No matter where we have traveled in Chile this year, when people learn that we are living in Chillán they almost always mention the longanizas first (and the extreme weather second). We have enjoyed eating longanizas in soups and hot off the grill with fresh rolls, known as choripán (chorizo with bread). Longanizas really are fantastic and worthy of their fame.

There are many local brands, and most residents of Chillán have definite preferences about which brand is best. We have sampled many of them, and tried to keep track of which ones we like best, but in the end we liked them all and tended to make our buying decision based on which butcher we felt most connected to. This brings me to the guys in stall 67 in the main meat market, from the left to right in this picture, Gabriel, Alvaro, and Luis. They have always been especially friendly and are great salesmen, often handing out free samples, which got me hooked on their brand in the first place.

Since I love to cook (and eat) I have been trying to learn to cook many of the local specialties here in Chile: cazuela, pastel de choclo, empanadas, and porotos. Disregarding the advice of Bismarck, I have also had the desire for quite awhile to know how longanizas are made. Last week I went to the guys in stall 67 and told them that I wanted to watch them make longanizas and write about it on the web. They were receptive, and took me over to stall 61 to meet their jefe, don Marcelo. I repeated the whole pitch to him and he agreed that he could help me out. To the left in the picture of don Marcelo here you can see the team picture of the local soccer team, the Ñublense Diablos Rojos. One of the other guys working in stall 61 told me that there is a norteamericano playing for the team. Luckily, Catherine and I had been to a game a couple of weeks ago and I had seen him play so I knew just who he was talking about. Sports and food, the connections were there. We made a date for the next Tuesday.

I returned on Tuesday and talked to don Marcelo. He directed me to the actual factory, in another part of town about 10 minutes by foot from the meat market. He gave me the address and said he would call ahead so that they would be expecting me. Of course, street signs are pretty scarce once you move away from the center part of town, but after asking directions about five times I eventually found the factory, a nondescript building that at first I thought was deserted.

I rang the bell and was greeted by Manuel and his crew of three. They were busy cutting and grinding meat, adding spices and mixing a huge batch (nearly 600 pounds) of longaniza stuffing as I arrived. They were also cooking up a batch of head cheese, a bubbling cauldron of pig heads and tongues, seen here being tended by Manuel. I was given a quick tour, shown the freezer where the meat is kept before it is made into longanizas. Manuel also showed me the spice room and the recipe of spices per 100 kg of longaniza that is taped to the wall, which I shall not publish on the web to protect their secret.

After about 15 minutes of mixing, the crew unloaded the longaniza mixture and brought it over to the machine where it would be extruded into the pig intestine casings. I was impressed by the professionalism of the crew. While Manuel and Hugo were unloading, Salgado and Ivan were cleaning the table and the extrusion machine. They loaded the extruder in batches and manned their stations along the side of the long stainless steel table.

Below you can see a video of how the longanizas are made. The extruder, manned by Salgado, spits a continuous tube of filled casing onto the table where Hugo and Manuel and Ivan tie and twist the divisions for the individual longanizas. The whole process is remarkably fast and fluid. As the longanizas are twisted off they are hung on bamboo poles in preparation for the smoking step.

As each bamboo pole fills up with fresh longanizas, they are taken to the smoking room and hung from the rafters. Once the whole batch is racked this way, a slow smoky fire will be started and the longanizas left for several hours, maybe even overnight. Longanizas prepared this way are known as "ahumadas". Although they still seem only partially cooked after the smoking, Manuel let me know that they could be eaten at this point, and cut off a chunk of a freshly smoked longaniza and provided a hunk of bread so that I could try it right there and then. Below you can see the finished product, ready to go off to market.



Finally, getting back to the Bismarck quotation that started this entry, I found that watching longanizas be made did not in any way diminish my appreciation of them. In fact, I found the process to be reassuring. I saw the list of ingredients taped to the wall and watched a small team work together to make longanizas that contain just exactly what the label says they contain. If only lawmaking were this transparent and honest.

(Click in the label to zoom in. What you see is what you get)

No leaf blowers

We are now deep into the autumn, and leaves are falling like crazy. The cool and sometimes rainy weather reminds us of home. Yet, as we walk the streets of Chillán, there is something missing, something that sets this fall apart from the ones back in the USA. Ah, yes, it is the silence. No leaf blowers. Not one. Instead there are people with rakes and brooms gathering the leaves into piles. The only sounds are the slight scraping of the rakes on the ground and the conversations among the people raking side-by-side. Call me old-fashioned, but those are the sounds of autumn that I like best.

Por fin! Completo

The sand is running out of the hour glass for our time in Chile. With less than two months to go, we are beginning to think of all the things we haven't done here and the places that we haven't been able to visit. The list is long. One of my goals while in Chile has been to sample as many of the typical Chilean foods as I can. We have had many empanadas and churrascos, endless bowls of cazuela and porotos, pastel de chocolo, asados, and of course, my favorite, longanizas. I have even tried chupe de guatitas (tripe stew), but found it not to my liking.

But there was one typical Chilean food that I hadn't tried yet, the completo, which is a hot dog with a large bun loaded with condiments and a mountain of mayonnaise. According to Sarah, who lived here in Chile in 2001, the best time to enjoy a completo is at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning after a long night in the bars (she says she heard that from a Chilean friend). Since our lifestyle here doesn't include wild nights in the bars, I have not found myself in the proper conditions to enjoy the completo yet. But time is running out, so I didn't want to go back to the states without at least trying a completo. (Catherine, a much wiser and healthier eater than I, has decided that the completo is not high on her list of must-dos)

Luckily, I have a friend at school, Paulo, who takes great pleasure in talking to me about Chilean music and food. He is the one who took me out to eat chupe de guatitas and laughed with me when I didn't like it. When he heard that I hadn't eaten a completo yet, he appointed himself as my personal guide, and we resolved to go to the best completo stand in Chillán. Last night around 9:00 pm, Paulo and his wife Carolina came by to pick me up. We drove just a few minutes to El Completón, which is a hole-in-the-wall food stall that specializes in completos. We were among the early crowd, since they stay open till 4:30 am every night. Paulo and I had the standard completo: a hot dog with tomatoes and mayonnaise, while Carolina had a completo italiano, which has tomatoes, avocado, and mayonnaise, (red, green, and white, the colors of the Italian flag.)

The completo was good, but even better was the conversation. We talked politics, both Chilean and US. As I explained the Democratic and Republican parties, Carolina said, "you must be a democrat". "Yes," I said, "how did you know?" She replied, "You sing Victor Jara." We talked about our families, and Paulo and I hatched a plan to export longanizas from Chillán to Portland.

We also talked about our respective cultures. My impression of Chile is that the culture is pretty consistant from North to South. They take great pride in the unity of the country. For example, the Chilean flag has only one star, and the explanation is that they are one people, one country, as opposed to the 50 stars on the US flag. Everywhere in Chile there are completos, cazuela, and people dance the cueca. We are often asked questions like, what is the national dance of the US? what is the national food? and we find it hard to answer. The US is so much more diverse, with so many cultures contributing their food and dance. It is hard to think of the equivalent to the late-night completo stand in the US? Is our national food the Big Mac? the Happy Meal? Or is our culture more regional? In Portland I would take Paulo and Carolina out for micro brews and tacos. In Philadelphia we would have Philly Cheese Steak. In Texas it would be barbecue. There may be fewer choices here in Chile, but there is a depth and richness in those choices, and a cohesiveness of belonging to a culture that is traditional and well-defined. Who knows what will happen in the coming years as Chile continues to open to the world and the waves of globalization wash over the valleys, right up into the Andes. I hope that Chile can retain its own identity and that the national night time snack does not become the Big Mac. Long live the completo!

Deeter-mined in Chile

While we were kayaking in Parque Pumalin (blog post 3/4/07) one of our guides, Ludwig, frequently spoke fast and furious in his excellent English—all very comprehensible: however at one point he used the word deeter-mined several times before we understood that he was saying determined. His original pronunciation has since become our code for bull-headed nothing-stands-in-my-way determination.

When we learned of our Chile destination in February 2006 we immediately purchased several guide books and started planning our travels. Many of the places we planned to go were remote yet seemed fully accessible according to the books. We began fantasizing early on about visiting Chile’s natural wonders. Once we arrived and started exploring we found that it wasn’t nearly as easy as the travel books implied. Sure, we read about fabulous hikes, but once here we wondered: Where can we get maps? Do we need a 4X4 to get to the National Reserves? Where are the camp sites, huts, or refugios? Oftentimes even the basics, such as where to find the trailhead, escaped us.

The hard truth is that one is expected to hire a guide for nearly every excursion into the wilderness, so we forked out an average of 30 dollars each per day for a guided hike for the first month or two. Certainly we visited some stunning places and some of our guides truly earned their title with extensive explanations of the flora and flana, punctuated with juicy myths or better yet, stories about the indigenous Mapuche connections to a site and its sacred significance. There came a time, though, when we were ready to go solo. While we support the tourist industry and acknowledge that guides need to make a living, too, we are residents of Chile this year. For all the backcountry exploring we planned to do, we knew that paying an escort each time would strain our pocketbook. Enladrillado (blog post 1-26-07) was a monumental step forward—the purest expression of deeter-mined to date. Not only were we strongly advised to do this trek with a guide, we were also told that it was not do-able as a one day hike.

Fast forward to the last weekend of March. My dear friend and colleague, Elena, was visiting during her spring break and we had to make the most of her short stay, so we did the Andes, the beach, and on this particular weekend, Parque Conguillío in the Lakes District. This was our second excursion to Conguillío. The first was in February with Shay and Stephen who are like family to us. Then it was the peak of the summer travel season with limited accommodations and a freak snow storm thrown into the mix. We hiked in the park but were stymied by too much snow on the trail! A menacing cloud cover obscured the peak of Volcano Llaima—nonetheless, even with its decapitated top it commanded awe. Still, we were disappointed about the less than ideal weather conditions and not being able to find a place to stay within the confines of the park.

True confessions: I wanted to return to Conguillío to see Llaima and the surrounding mountains naked and fully exposed. A spectacular autumn and a desire to showcase Chile’s splendors for Elena provided the perfect occasion for another adventure there. On our first day Elena, Dan, and I trekked about 14 miles along the Sierra Nevada Trail and were regaled with unforgettable vistas of the Llaima lava flows in the foreground, Volcano Villarrica in the background, all framed by the abundant araucarias (monkey puzzle trees). By the time we returned to the trailhead late in the day we were content and spent. Nonetheless, we thought we’d hike another trail to see the madre araucaria which is estimated to be 1500 years old. The park was deserted, along with the CONAF office, so the only reference we had was the off-scale map posted on a visitor notice board, which indicated that the mother tree was a scant 10 minute walk. The 3 of us forged ahead and eventually, after a half an hour, Elena and Dan began lagging behind. We were out of water and food. Despite total exhaustion I marched on. Others had sung the praises of this magnificent tree and there was no way I was going to miss it my second and last time in Conguillío this year. With fading light and deepening shadows the trees in this old growth forest appeared to be looking down and mocking me. Deeter-mined to a fault they seemed to murmur. All of a sudden I encountered a father and son pair coming in the opposite direction and asked how much further to the mother tree. They said 45 minutes more. They also said it was not to be missed.

At this point we turned back, led by our growling stomachs and aching muscles. Fortunately this time we had a comfortable cabaña in the park and we knew we could easily return the next day, which we did.

Being deeter-mined has proven to be a vital survival skill this year in myriad ways. We’ve frequently wandered off the beaten path to discover new portals into magical places in the wilderness and we always seem to find our way back home. On a more practical front, it has also helped us to stay afloat on the stormy seas of teaching here. The ribbon of time seems to be unfurling even faster as our departure in mid-July looms on the horizon. We hope to share more stories about what it’s like to be a teacher in Chile where scoring high on the deeter-mined aptitude test is a must!