Continued from Food And Cooking In Argentina: Setting A Few Things Straight

Quick Summary: Chimichurri does not have to be a bright green fresh sauce. The whole population does not enjoy drowning their meats and marinating everything with the tangy mixture.

While I could probably write a book pointing out how many times chimichurri is misrepresented in the media, here are a few points that are increasingly on the rise:

• Serve immediately or use within a few days
• A vibrant, bright green sauce
• Argentineans love to use chimichurri on everything

Although there is nothing inherently wrong with the first two points, chimichurri can be a vibrant green and some do use it immediately or within a few days, but there appears to be a rising trend that the sauce has to look this way or used that way. The final point is just plain wrong. Would you say all Americans love to use smoky tomato-based barbecue sauce on everything? No, right?

Continued from Food And Cooking In Argentina: Setting A Few Things Straight

Quick Summary: Grilled steak with chimichurri is not called a gaucho steak in Argentina.

Often refers to grilled steak that is marinated, basted, or served with chimichurri. Restaurants that either offer a mix of various Latin American cuisines or those that want to take advantage of chimichurri’s popularity might have this item on the menu. Celebrity chefs and cookbook authors also enjoy offering a recipe to the population when they cover Latin America or Argentina or, as with restaurants, to take advantage of chimichurri’s popularity. This then trickles down to the food bloggers who go on to create their gaucho steak posts.

One of my main objectives with this site is to explain to those who are interested, Argentinean cuisine at the household level. The recipes or methods of cooking one might not experience or view on their visit to Argentina or in some form of media. Sure I tend to stray at times or come off as a hypocritical ass, but I try to stick to that objective as much as possible. The cuisine, ingredients, and cooking styles may vary from region to region or from town to city but I try to find the common similarities and present a general picture of Argentina and its cuisine. Since most of what I write about relates to the asado, that is a much easier task to accomplish than say covering empanadas, casseroles, stews, or humitas. In addition to talking to the people around me, I dig through news archives, menus, books, ingredient lists on products, and information given by organizations or government entities. If I give out wrong information I hope that someone will correct me.

Up north, summer is just around the corner and for the past few months numerous grillers have been dusting off their gear to cook steaks, BBQ, hamburgers, chicken, and many other delicious smokey food. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t get the ritual. Is it because most lack the criadillas to grill out in the cold while others follow some local food mantra that states they must eat butternut squash soup and braised cabbage simply because those are the only foods grown locally? As if when ramps start sprouting out of the ground do they finally have permission to drag the grill out onto the open from its dark recess and light the fire.

Katie Alley, of the wonderfully written blog Seashells & Sunflowers, is sharing with the readers of Asadoargentina.com her delicious recipe for niños envueltos. Katie, who moved from Philadelphia to the seaside city of Necochea, Argentina, has a passion for sharing recipes passed through the generations of her Argentinean boyfriend’s family. In addition to the beautifully photographed presentations of her recipes, you can discover the joys and difficulties one faces on such a large move to a different country and culture. She also posts resourceful information on Argentinean food & travel as well so be sure to check out her site. (All images are property of KatieAlley, All Rights Reserved)

Rosa, my boyfriend’s great-aunt, knows her way around the kitchen. After living on the Argentine pampa for more than 50 years – first as a child with her Italian immigrant parents and later with her gaucho husband – Rosa learned the virtues of simple, honest food. No stranger to hard work, she has cooked for hungry paisanos on a cattle ranch and the well-heeled at the Necochea Rowing Club here in my adopted hometown; she has stuffed and cured her own chorizo sausages and baked the most luscious, dulce de leche-filled confections you could imagine. I’m always excited when Rosa comes for a visit, not just because I enjoy her company and her stories, but because I’m always treated to something tasty when she’s here (like last winter when we fried up churros [photo] on a dreary, pouring-down, mess of a day)! Though Rosa traded the country life for a city existence some years ago, she still recognizes that uncomplicated, homemade food often provides the most satisfying and memorable experiences.

My wife brought me a sampler box of three beers–pilsen, pale ale, and porter–from the Cerveceria Cape Horn when she was in Ushuaia this week. I should have picked up a few bottles on previous trips but I kept failing to remind myself before heading back home each time. I’m not sure how long they have been around since I only noticed their bottles in stores on a trip last year. The label has an email account from a national ISP so no help from a web site giving out that information either.

Ok, not really. Spanish Manchego is protected under the Designation of Origin (DO) classification system and in order for a cheese to win that precious title, it has to follow all sorts of rules. One of which requires the cheese to originate from the region of La Mancha, Spain. Nor do the producers of this cheese I’m writing about try to market their product as such. Say, by labeling it with tipo Manchego, the regional equivalency of adding on flavored, type, style, etc. in order to skirt around the problems one may face when duplicating a product classified under DO. However, the cheese pictured below is made with sheep’s milk, has a semi-firm texture, and is probably aged from 3-4 months. So, I guess, one could say it is somewhat similar to a young Manchego cheese if you toss out all of the other rules.

Food trucks offering various cuisines from around the world appear to be popping up all over the place in the U.S. these days–some even fusing together the flavors of different cultures. If you live or work in or around Emeryville, California, there is now an asado argentino truck in your neck of the woods. After winning praise from friends for his backyard asado parties, Javier Sandes, originally from Argentina, decided to take his show on the road. Javier’s main specialties include slow-roasted free range chicken and grass-fed tri-tip (colita de cuadril) served up with some tangy chimichurri. You can compliment those meats with mashed sweet potatoes with spinach or empanadas stuffed with chicken or vegetables. Although he hopes to open a restaurant one day, for now you will just have to follow his Twitter or Facebook feed to learn where he decides to park his truck.

Website (under construction): Primo’s Parrilla
Twitter: @VamosPrimos
Facebook: Primo’s Parrilla

Quite some time has passed since my last “From The Past” post, so I decided to jump back into the news archives at Google for any interesting articles that may have been missed or added since. With this latest search I found that Argentinean asados might have been a somewhat popular topic back in the early 1960. I have no concrete proof of this of course, since I was born a decade later, but due to the number of articles found, asados were at least a novel curiosity at the time. The interesting topic to note are the repeated descriptions of how peons-a term still used to this day in Argentina in regards to those who work on estancias, consume their roasted meat by biting and slicing off morsels of meat. The tradition dates back to the era of the gauchos and how they roasted and ate freshly slaughtered cattle with nothing more than their trusty facónes, or gaucho knives. For the journalists who witnessed this act during their journey to Argentina, it must have been quite the spectacle.

I was asked recently if I could provide a recipe that matches or comes close to some of the cream-based seafood dishes found in the finer restaurants of Tierra del Fuego. While most are rather simple, consisting of nothing more than cream, butter, parmasean cheese, and perhaps a few signature herbs and spices, I decided to pass along a more complex recipe that was submitted to a local cookbook by the chef and owner of Tia Elvira restaurant in Ushuaia. Last November I was able to finally enjoy a meal at Tia Elvira for the first time and sample this dish, except with trout instead of Chilean sea bass (merluza negra aka black hake)–what the recipe calls for, but only after some recent research did I realize that the recipe has been available to me for the past few years. Part of the reason why is hinted at below but let me just say that overall, the edition in my hands, the 5th, is a bit lacking in all aspects.

Well, 2009 is coming to an end and the webosphere is bursting at the seams with holiday guides tossing out ideas for those who are stumped on what to give or cook. Here’s my little contribution for those Argentinean flair to their holidays.