Chilean Chef visits Portland

Chef Ruth Van Waerebeek, Chilean Chef and wine expert is visiting Portland to give a food and wine pairing class at In Good Taste on Monday October 4^th 2010.

With the recent economic climate Chilean wine is gaining a lot of recognition and popularity and with it there is an increased interest in Chilean food. A sort of ‘what do those Chileans eat with their wine’ scenario. It’s a fun new discovery into a new cuisine that does not currently enjoy the same recognition as say French, Italian or Spanish cuisine.

Chef Ruth is a wonderful resource who can discuss what Chilean cuisine is all about, background on Chilean culture, their love for food and wine and not least the spirit the country has shown when faced with recent disasters. She can share with you some recipes and pairings for your readers.

Chef Ruth owns a Culinary Guest house in Chilean where she gives cooking classes, farmer’s market, and winery tours.  Gourmet magazine included it in their round up of top culinary vacations across the world a year or so ago before they went out of business.  Please visit her website: http://www.mapuyampay.cl for more details

Chef Ruth is also a cookbook author, teacher and winery chef at Concha y Toro, one of Chile’s leading wineries.

Ruth Van Waerebeek is an adventurous traveler, international chef and cookbook author from Belgium. She was born in 1959 in Ghent, Belgium, where she learned to cook at the side of her mother, grandmother and her great-grandmother. This wealth of home cooking knowledge would eventually lead Ruth on a marvelous journey around the world and to some of America’s important culinary schools and positions.

In 1985, Ruth set out on what was to become the adventure of her life, sailing around the Atlantic Ocean on a small two-man sailing yacht. Stopping in Africa, South America and the Caribbean, Ruth continued to work in restaurants and exclusive resorts to enable her and her friend to continue their journey. In every place, she learned a great deal about culinary traditions, as well as enjoying some unique culinary experiences.

She returned to Belgium, continuing to work as a chef in the trendy FLOR restaurant before moving on to a number of positions in the culinary world, including Head Chef and Manager of the kitchen in the Hotel Mount Nevis, in Nevis, West Indies; Executive Chef at the corporate headquarters of Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, New York City; a full-time management and teaching position at Peter Kump’s School of Culinary Arts in New York.

With the wealth of knowledge acquired regarding America’s cuisine and traditions on her trips, Ruth quickly became familiar with the new trend called the “New Latin Cuisine” that was born in United States and trumpeted by the chef Douglas Rodríguez (New York) , Norman Van Aken (Miami) and Guillermo Perron (Philadelphia). It was in this way that she began to use traditional French cooking techniques together with products from America, paving the way for the birth of unusual and exotic tastes.

Eventually, Ruth would bring this new trend with her when she came to Chile. She first settled in Melipilla, a small town in Chile’s Central Valley, where she promptly started a small restaurant with Chilean friends. Her passion over the munificence of nature would then grow to new limits.

In Chile, she discovered the extent to which the vitality of Chilean wines complemented the flavors issuing from her kitchen. “I found the perfect match for these flavors: the vibrant Concha y Toro wines possess a natural affinity with these new foods. What we have before us is the successful marriage of the products of this new land”. Since 2000, she is Concha y Toro’s official chef and culinary advisor for the Company’s large events abroad and in Chile.

Recently, Ruth opened her spacious adobe home, set in the foothills of the Andean Mountains, as an exclusive guesthouse, the “Mapu Yampai”, or “Land of Resplendence” in the language of the Mapuche Indians, Chile’s native population. Here the fortunate guests can taste firsthand her culinary creations combined with the best wines of Concha y Toro and other wineries from the region.

Ruth has published the below cookbooks and written articles in Food & Wine magazine and is a regular culinary contributor to the Chilean magazine Paula

• Everybody eats well in Belgium Cookbook, by Workman, 1996
  The Chilean Kitchen, HPBooks,1999

For more information on Ruth’s guest house visit: www.mapuyampay.cl