Backpacking South America

Our date with our new friend, Stephen, finally arrived. After spending the afternoon bustling around town trying to find good deals on wine, we settled on 2 Sauvignon Blancs, 1 Carmenere, and a dessert wine. We checked into our hostel (Andes Hostel, comfortable hostel, disorganized staff) to find Stephen already in the midst of preparing a fume for the entire filet of fish he bought at the market that day.

Aside from being a three-star chef, who by the assistance of Julia Child found himself in culinary school and cooking in top restaurants and for famous people around the world, Boy George included, eventually he took the long rode to Croatia and started a catering company, but is once again on the road seeking out his next culinary adventure.  However, this is only half the story.

Carra and I prepped the rooftop patio for cocktail hour and our first two courses and while waiting for our guest Enrique to arrive, we polished off a bottle of white wine used for cooking…can’t let a good thing go to waste.

Our first course was a super fresh Waldorf Salad with substituted fresh figs for raisins. Surprisingly, for the first course, we moved to the Reserva Carmenere, which paired perfectly well with the figs.

However, the Carmenere found its true companion in our second course – Filet kabobs with mushrooms and cherry tomatoes topped with a spicy pepper sauce. Delicious.

It was time to move to the basement, closer to the kitchen, and transition back to white wine for the main course. Before we received the main course though, we received the chef’s supris (surprise), which was fresh mussels in a buttery, garlic, parsley and lemon sauce – absolutely mouth watering. It altered our tastebud’s expectation from the meat in the kabobs to prepare us for what was next.

For the main course, we were treated to fresh Reineta, perhaps one of the most popular white fish of Chile, dressed with a butter, onion and mushroom sauce, accompanied by asparagus with hollandaise and rice. It was absolutely delicious.

For these two courses, we had a dry, fresh Sauvignon Blanc that paired exceptionally with the mussels and a much smoother Sauvignon Blanc that matched perfectly with the meaty fish and rich sauces.

The next surprise was that we had more than one dessert to pair with our late harvest wine. First up was vanilla ice cream with fresh bing cherries. Following that was a plate of blue cheese, a perfect way to end the perfect meal. Sweet and Savory: Life doesn’t get any better than this!