The Southern Cone · Volume 26, Coast, Valley and the Mapuche and German South
Mültrün, or catuto
Araucanía, Mapuche (Talca)
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- Not statedNo source states a time and the atlas has too few comparable dishes to estimate one.
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
A traditional Mapuche wheat bread or dumpling, documented here with real quantities from a genuinely strong government source, credited directly to Elena Pilquinao Huaquinao of Talca.
As tradition built it
Bake 10 minutes, or shallow-fry until lightly golden.
Ingredients
- 500g whole wheat
- 1 tbsp lard
- 1 tbsp butter, optional
- to taste salt
- to taste honey, jam, butter, pebre or a garlic and herb sauce, to serve
Method
- Cook half a kilogram of wheat on high heat for 30 to 45 minutes, until the outer husk just begins to separate.
- Cool until handleable, then grind through a mill, grinding stone or food processor to a relatively even paste.
- Mix with lard, optionally butter, and salt, then knead and shape into small loaves pointed at both ends.
- Bake 10 minutes, or shallow-fry until lightly golden.
- Serve hot with honey or jam, or with butter, pebre or a garlic and herb sauce.
What a modern chef changes
Piñón flour worked through the paste, and both traditional methods served side by side
Method
- Fold ground, toasted piñón through the spice grinder into a portion of the wheat paste, for a genuinely nuttier, more araucaria-forward loaf, following contemporary Pewenche chef precedent.
- Fry in clarified butter passed through a chinois, for a cleaner finish and a higher smoke point than whole butter allows.
- Serve one batch baked, one shallow-fried, side by side, giving the two documented traditional methods equal, deliberate weight rather than picking one as more authentic than the other.