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Recipe: argentine empanadas

Four weeks in Argentina as a field assistant on a GPS campaign is enough to know when you are in love with a cuisine. The Argentines know how to cook (they’re all Italians, for crying out loud) and dance and drink and smoke and drive like maniacs and look beautiful. I have some favorite foods from what we sampled in restaurants, from the grocery stores, and in the homes of so many kind hosts. The best part was the asados – argentine barbecues that literally had 7-8 courses of MEAT. First we start with morcillas (blood sausages) and chinchulines (organ meat sausages) and then various cuts of beef like lomo and bife de chorizo at the end. You work yourself up to the best cuts, but of course by then I was drunk from all of the flowing red wine and probably had colon cancer to boot. I also loved the morning dose of dulce de leche on tortas warmed over the parilla in camp in the morning.

Recipe: sticky buns

I haven’t done any yeast doughs since we moved from sea-level. If you consider the pizza dough we make, it isn’t actually we, but Jeremy who makes that. I really love the yeasty smell and flavor of home baked breads. I tend not to bake breads because I know I’ll just end up eating them. I’m a sandwich whore. The other main deterrent for not baking breads is that I wasn’t a seasoned bread baker at sea-level and then tossing our elevation into the mix makes for quite some uncertainty. We’re not even at a “nice” elevation like 5000 feet which is what “high altitude” directions usually target. 8500 feet delves into the realm of “who the hell lives up there?” We do.

Recipe: lemon bars

I realized today that I don’t bake anymore. I make pastries. I used to bake a lot, and by baking I mean making foods that were easy to distribute and share like cookies, brownies, bars, pan cakes, bundt cakes. These days I make things that are difficult to share unless I’ve invited you to my house to eat. Stuff that gets plated, or cannot be easily transported or mailed. This struck me with some sadness, so I shook it off and made a quadruple batch of lemon bars (I can hear Heather squealing with delight right now).

**Jump for more butter**