This week, I’m traveling around Chile (that long, thin country in South America), and have found myself falling in love–yet again–with another Latin American nation.
Highlights?
Sharing dinner and some local wine under the stars with Chilean bloggers and podcasters in Santiago, talking about national identity, digital media, and–of course–Obama!
Eating the freshest seafood ever and realizing I actually like it.
Listening to a live karaoke rendition of the song “Sweet Child of Mine,” a heavy metal favorite from my adolescence, at a bar in the capital.
Watching the sun rise over the Andes this morning.
Fulfilling one of my life dreams of seeing the home of the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda (well, one of the three, anyway).
Tromping around the raw, wild landscape of what’s just shy of the southernmost point in South America, penguin watching and meeting super-friendly locals for conversation around a fireplace.
Turning around and seeing a double rainbow out my window this afternoon.
Walking everywhere with these words of Neruda in my head:
Voy a cumplir con todos
porque debo
a todos mi alegría.
No se sorprenda nadie porque quiero
entregar a los hombres
los dones de la tierra,
porque aprendí luchando
que es mi deber terrestre
propagar la alegría.
Y cumplo mi destino con mi canto.
What do you know about Chile? What would you like to know? Have you ever thought about visiting? Leave a comment below!
Text by Francisco Collazo
Photo by Julie Schwietert Collazo
* With all the excitement of our election night blogging experience at NPR, it’s taken us awhile to follow up on a request from a student in my cooking class to post a recipe for my cream of basil soup.
We first tasted cream of basil soup at the extraordinary Hotel Villa Ganz in Guadalajara, Mexico a couple months ago. At the time, we weren’t sure what the soup was. We spent 10 minutes guessing the ingredients and finally realized that the unexpected flavor of the soup was attributable to basil. An easy soup to make, and one that’s surprising and pleasing to guests because of its uniqueness, I decided to replicate the soup by devising my own recipe…and adding a final flourish.
Ingredients:
2 Tablespoons of olive oil
3 cups of broth (vegetable or chicken)
1 clove of garlic, minced (or in a paste after roasting in the oven, which is even better!)
1 cup of heavy cream
1.5 cups of basil leaves, chopped fine
1 medium onion, minced
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon of anise seed (optional)
chile serrano to garnish (1 per serving) (optional)
* Directions:
1. In a saucepan or soup pot, sautee the minced onion and the garlic in the 2 Tb. of olive oil just until golden.
2. Add basil to the onion and garlic mixture; sautee for two minutes.
3. Add broth to the basil/onion/garlic mixture. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat. Simmer for five minutes then remove from heat and allow to cool.
4. Once the soup is cool, puree in a blender or using an immersion blender.
5. After blending, return the soup to the pot and heat on medium.
6. Add the heavy cream and anise seed. Cook until the soup thickens somewhat; stir continuously during this process.
7. Remove from heat and serve.
8. If you’d like to make the dish slightly more impressive, roast serrano chiles on the stove and garnish each bowl of soup with a single chile (uncut and unseeded).
9. Serve and enjoy!
In addition to experimenting with live blogging, NPR has been spending its election night trying out a brand new technology: closed captioning for radio, which it has pioneered. Here’s a rough cut video straight from NPR’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.:
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