And the very first country is... Argentina!
I'm hoping to have our international meals on Tuesdays, which makes things a bit rushed this week because it wasn't officially January until Saturday. So only a few days to plan and make the meal!
The national food of Argentina is beef. Just beef, that's it. Apparently Argentines eat beef at least once aday, if not more, and they usually cook it on a real grill. Turns out that pan-frying steaks is also a common method of preparation, so I thought that was an okay substitution, but I'm almost positive that my plan to bake my chorizo would have been against The Rules.
An interesting fact that I learned is that many Argentines are of Italian heritage, so the cuisine of Argentina has a strong Italian influence. Seems like an Italiandiet, but with more beef. I really noticed it while I was cooking, because everything was made with plenty of garlic, basil, oregano, etc. and felt like making Italian food, especially with the roasted eggplant.
Since I only had a few days to prepare this week, I used a complete menu that I found online for a big traditional Argentine dinner. The menu is attached. I must admit I was a bit nervous about the flan, but any excuse to buy ramekins, which, for some reason, I love, and which I found for only £1 at the wonderful GPP!
Overall it went pretty well. I accidentally bought smoked chorizo instead of raw, so it didn't need to be baked after all, but it also just tasted like regular old sausage you would have wit
h cheese and crackers. Not very exciting or exotic. But the em
panadas were great! so our hors d'oeuvres were rescued from mediocrity. They were so pretty. I rolled out the dough with a trusty ketchup jar, which worked perfectly, and tried to ignore the high cream cheese/heavy cream/butter concentration in the recipe. It was a bit of a challenge to cut it down from 12 servings to only 2 (how do you measure 1/6th of a half teaspoon?) but they came out great. Very tasty and we liked the additions of the green olives and raisins, which were unexpected. We ate them by squeezing a lime wedge onto each bite, which was delicious.
The salad was good - grapefruit and avocado are a great combination for tangy-creamy and crunchy-smooth. High
ly recommended and luckily we have leftovers of
both. I wasn't able to find hearts of palm so I omitted them (sadly), though I think I probably could have substituted artichoke hearts. I didn't because I thought it better to omit than to risk not being authentic!
The steak was ok, pretty anticlimactic for a main course. It was just steak, but with incredibly spicy chimichurri sauce. I think that was partly from the red pepper flakes, but also because we don't have a food processor so the garlic was just minced, and taking big mouthfuls of raw garlic turned out to be eye-opening and somewhat sweat-inducing. On the upside, our Argentine wine was delicious.
Finally, the flan. It was perfecto! I was pretty impressed with myself. It was easy to make and came out just right; I would definitely make it again.
Our impression of our Argentine meal was that the food was, on the whole, bland, but always with some spicy or unexpected kick on top. Regular pan-fried steak, but with a colorful, spicy sauce; uniformly cumin-flavored ground beef in the empanadas, but with sudden bites of sour olives or sweet raisins; salad with benign avocado plus tart grapefruit and spicy dressing.
This week's menu was a lot of work, but it was fun. We also loved our Argentine radio station - it's listed on the menu - check it out!
fun with burnt sugar :)
