use real butter

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.

I felt like a new person (or rather, the old me) today! I got up, worked out on the rower and the bike, vacuumed, and then set to work in the kitchen. I had been feeling uninspired. We had a ton of fruits and vegetables threatening to go south if I didn’t cook or prep them right away, so that’s what I did – I attended to my produce. If you’re anything like me, you 1) love fresh food and 2) hate to waste it. Having our compost bucket in the kitchen takes some of the guilt away when I have to toss slimy green onions, molded strawberries, or shriveled lemons. But really, I just don’t want to throw my money (i.e. good produce) away.

* First I topped and washed 2 pounds of strawberries for freezing (to be puréed for buttercream frosting in winter).

* Then I simmered 6 organic chicken drums in a pot of water to begin making Brunswick Stew.

* Next I made soy sauce chicken by tossing 4 organic chicken drums in a medium saucepan with green onions, ginger root, star anise, soy sauce, sugar, and water. Simmer for 2 hours covered, then cool.

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Tomorrow’s the fourth of July and that means barbecue installment #4: pork ribs. These are the meaty St. Louis style cut of ribs. I know everyone is all agog about baby back ribs, but honestly, it’s a sack of bones with not so much meat. I don’t relish the idea of cooking something for 10+ hours that has such a low yield of consumable material.

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