Cooking the Argentine Way

I love food. I love reading about food (including reading cookbooks and recipes), I love watching cooking shows on TV and instructional cooking videos¹ on the interwebs, I love food preparation from chopping to sautéeing, and I love baking. I am also passionate about eating. In short, food is my favourite hobby, and having a year sabbatical I have been hoping to spend more time on this hobby. So far I've mostly focused on the eating part (see: +1.5 kg). Aside from one (successful) foray into the world of empanadas a few weeks ago, I hadn't cooked any traditional Argentine fare until yesterday, when I attended the lovely and talented Norma Soued's Argentine cooking class.

Before we moved to Buenos Aires I searched² for cooking classes, but only found classes taught in English and geared to tourists (read: expensive). A few weeks ago when I was perusing Craigslist³ I came across Norma's ad. I wrote to her to ask for more information about the class, and to confirm that she would, in fact, teach in Castellano⁴. Yesterday I went to her sunny apartment in Belgrano to learn how to make empanadas, guiso de lentejas (lentil stew), and alfajores.

I was very excited about the alfajores, as the only recipe I have seen for these delicious treats was in a Martha Stewart magazine, and it was insanely complicated (surprise surprise). I'm pretty sure it involved milking your own cow to make the dulce de leche.

Norma's class was great. She and the other student, Valeria, both speak English fluently, but since I really wanted to practice my Spanish they graciously (and patiently) agreed to speak Castellano. (Patience, for real: My brain on Spanish is Windows 98 on a 386.) We prepared all three dishes together, and everything was very well explained and hands-on. When we finished cooking, we enjoyed the delicious delicious fruits of our labour with a glass of red wine in Norma's beautiful dining room.

Taking a cooking class was a great way to further my burgeoning Spanish skillz, and happily I am now all set to make empanadas and alfajores⁵ for Ken's birthday shenanigans next weekend!

P.S. Norma also offers a Middle-Eastern cooking class that you can read all about over on her blog. I haven't taken it yet but if I do, you'll be the first to know.

¹ Before I made empanadas the first time, I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube to figure out the technique of sealing the empanada called La Repulgue. In my searches I came across this empanada video that is totally worth 6 1/2 minutes of your time if you like things that are awesome.

² I have since searched en español and found many more schools and classes that I'm interested in. Hooray!

³ Craigslist isn't so huge here. Most of the postings are for bars showing NBA games.

⁴ Latin American Spanish. Castellano:Español = English:British

⁵ Some alfajores will be filled with jam, because Ken doesn't like dulce de leche. I KNOW. [Candace: This is what is wrong with him.]

Cost of Living

30 Pesos
Originally uploaded by Kitty LaRoux.

In an effort to lose the 1.5 kg I've gained since we moved to this fair city, I now stop regularly at the verduleria (veggie stand) after I go to the gym. This morning's haul included 2 avocados, 2 grapefruits, 2 red peppers, a shredded salad (I like to mix that with balsamic vinegar, salt & pepper, and a little chimichurri powder, and throw a boiled egg on top for lunch), 1/2 kilo of cherry tomatoes, 1/4 kilo of green olives, 6 bananas, and the hugest bunch of broccoli I've ever seen. The grand total was 30 pesos, or around $8US.

While beef is super cheap here (we can get 2 T-Bone steaks for around 12 pesos, or $3.50), chicken and eggs at the grocery store are pricey (we've seen eggs at upwards of 20 pesos, or $6, per dozen). On Saturday we passed through a very small farmer's market in Plaza Armenia with a booth selling various meats. They had boneless skinless chicken breasts for 16 pesos/kilo ($2/lb) and 30 eggs at the bargain-basement price of 10 pesos (less than $3).

We have instituted a Sunday brunch tradition of steak-and-eggs, which means our cholesterol levels are rising proportionally to the happiness of our taste buds.

Cinco de Mayo

For The Soul
Originally uploaded by Kitty LaRoux.

We spent the weekend in Mar del Plata, and on the 5 1/2 hour bus ride there we both caught colds. I spent most of Friday tilting my head awkwardly in an attempt to clear out at least part of one nostril through which to breathe. Saturday we located some psuedoephedrine, which helped matters greatly.

In other news, we left our Spanish school that was in the Centro (a neighbourhood that's more or less Manhattan's midtown--read: crowded, unfun). We now have a private tutor (Sofía) with whom we are both slightly enamoured. The lessons are fun: Yesterday we made up a whole story about a lawyer named "Mauricio" who used to be a hippie, and today we played the Spanish version of "Clue"!

And tonight, in honour of Cinco de Mayo and our waning illnesses, I cooked us up some Chicken Soup with Lime and Avocado.

Finally, I've started running again. Hooray for me! I ran an 8k race two weeks ago and finished in around 47 minutes. I have a few more 10k races lined up, and I've started training regularly with two lovely American expats who will be here to keep me going for at least another month or two.

Carne Times

Vegetarians, caveat emptor: This post contains a lot of meat.

A few weeks ago at the gym, our trainer, Adrián, proposed a trip with us and our friends Dave and Mersal to what he deemed the "best parrilla [grill/BBQ] in the universe." Of course I agreed that Ken and I would love to go; after all, who am I to argue with a porteño about meat? (It didn't hurt that he also said that we wouldn't have to count any food we ate at the parrilla. Free calories!)

The parrilla in question was Los Talas del Entrerrianos, located about 45 minutes from our neighbourhood. Adrián arranged for a taxi to drive us there and wait while we consumed copious amounts of meat. Los Talas started out as a choripán stand for labourers and grew into a huge, comfortable restaurant that feels kind of like an Oktoberfest tent. Apparently all of the meat at Los Talas comes from their own estancia (ranch).

We started with house-made chorizo sausage, then ordered the lechón, or suckling pig. It's the specialty of the house, and it was beyond delicious. We sampled some of the crispy skin of the pig (which Adrián called the "galleta" or cookie) - it was crispy and salty and very, very yummy. The chicken was the best I've had so far in Buenos Aires - cooked just perfectly to be tender and juicy all the way through. We shared an order of mochillas (sweetbreads), then moved onto the beef: vacío (flank steak) and asado. While asado refers to roasting or barbecue in general, it's also used to describe a cut of meat (short ribs or spareribs).

Suffice to say we were pretty much sweating meat by the end of the meal. The ol' meat sweats didn't stop us, however, from sharing a couple of desserts, and we managed to squeeze some ice cream into our bellies somewhere between the pork and the spareribs. I swear the taxi groaned a bit when we piled back in for the drive home.

More pics on Flickr.

Steak & Eggs

A day that starts out with this breakfast - at 2 p.m., no less - can't be all bad, now, can it?

Baking in Buenos Aires

In honour of our Spanish teacher Alejandro's birthday next week, I decided to bake cookies. Tyler recently tagged a delicious-looking Smitten Kitchen recipe for me, so a few days ago I decided to give it a go. The only hitch: I couldn't find what I've always considered the most basic of baking ingredients at either of our local supermarkets. The stores only carried artificial vanilla extract, and brown sugar was nowhere in sight. While our package of oatmeal has a recipe for oatmeal cookies with chips de chocolate, I couldn't find those, either.

Since today was a holiday and we didn't have school, we decided to check out the widely-lauded and appropriately-named Jumbo Supermarket. You can read more about Jumbo on other sites, but it was pretty much akin to Wal-Mart or the Real Canadian Superstore. The produce at Jumbo was better than our local stores, but prices were more or less the same and the selection was almost overwhelming. I did manage to find baking soda and settled for artificial vanilla extract and baking chocolate that I could chop into chunks for the cookies, but was unable to find brown sugar, which I suspected would be key to the chewiness factor in this particular recipe. I finally bought a bag of azucar negra, or black sugar. Even though it looked much darker than standard American light brown sugar, it had a similar "sticky" feeling when I squeezed the bag (i.e., it didn't feel as granulated as white sugar).

When I poured the sugar into a bowl to measure it, it looked a LOT darker than I'd expected. Behold:

Sparkly!

Aside from this substitution, the rest of the ingredients were as written, except I measured by weight instead of volume because we have a kitchen scale but no measuring cups or spoons. When I creamed the butter and sugars the resulting mixture was the colour and texture of used coffee grounds, and I was skeptical as to whether the recipe would actually work. To add to my skepticism is our oven dial (the one in the middle). Can you spot what's missing?

If you said a temperature setting, you're right! I set it somewhere in the middle and watched the first 2 batches of cookies very carefully to figure out the correct baking time.

And...? Success! I'm happy to report that we have a delicious batch of (very dark) chocolate chip cookies. We think they taste delicious; I'll let you know what Alejandro thinks.

For Goodness' Sake

I've been eating these super-hippy shakes lately for breakfast and sometimes even for dinner! I mocked Ken for bringing home protein powder a few weeks ago, but it turns out that stuff is my friend, and when you put it in a blender with some berries and yogurt and milk, you can throw in a handful of spinach and not even notice.

Hippy Hippy Shake
(adapted from Clean Eating Magazine)

- 1/2 c skim milk
- 1/2 c nonfat plain yogurt
- 1 scoop vanilla protein powder (we have Designer Whey, but you know, whatever you like)
- generous handful of spinach (I probably throw 2 cups in there)
- 1 T ground flax seeds (here's where it gets all hippy-like)
- 1/2 c frozen berries (I like strawberries best)
- 1 T agave nectar (mmm... hippy sweetener) (optional; you could also use honey or maple syrup)

Directions: Blend. Drink.

I'm also waaaay into oatmeal these days, and pretty much just thinking about it makes my mouth water. I make McCann's Quick-Cooking Irish Oats (mmm... endosperm).

Gillian's Mouth-Watering Oatmeal
(adapted from Clean Eating Magazine)

- 1/2 c oats
- 1/2 c skim milk
- 1/2 c water
- 1 tsp almond butter
- 1 tsp honey
- 1 T ground flax seeds
- cinnamon
- salt (get the good stuff for this - it's expensive but so worth it)

Combine the first 3 ingredients in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring, until it turns into oatmeal. Remove from heat and stir in almond butter, honey, and flax seeds. Sprinkle with cinnamon and salt. Enjoy with a cup of Earl Grey tea in your favourite mug.