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Put a ring on it

Spicy Calamari Rings

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

“I can’t eat anything that has a face.” A common refrain from vegetarian friends. And sometimes not so vegetarian. I’ve heard the same from someone chowing down on a perfectly grilled steak – the same person who won’t touch a grilled trout or oven roasted quail – because it “looks like it was alive”. It’s a disconnect from our food supply that’s about as common as it could possibly be – a byproduct of the era of supermarkets and prepackaging.

I have encountered many a person, including some I know quite well, who will assert vehemently that they won’t touch any kind of shellfish because of how close to lifelike they seem. Particularly those with tentacles – octopuses, squids, cuttlefish – I mean, all those wriggly little appendages are virtually reaching out from the great beyond, no? But even they have an exception, and it seems near universal – fried calamari rings, rabas fritas as they’re called here.

Of course that could simply be the old chef’s adage that if you deep-fry anything people will eat it. Which I’m fairly certain is actually true. The same person who wouldn’t slurp an oyster on the half shell or that whole fish with a face will happily consume a po’boy sandwich or toss back fried smelt like popcorn at the movies. Most men cringe at the mere concept of criadillas, testicles, served here off the grill, but back home there are contests to see who can eat the most Rocky Mountain/Prairie Oysters – the very same sensitive genital organ coated in batter and fried to a crackly crunch.

I’m guilty of the same pleasure seeking – there really is something about deep-fried calamari rings that near calls out from any menu they’re on. I know they’re bad for me – there’s more batter and oil than there is squid – and worse, probably 75% of the time they’re overcooked, rubbery, and not actually all that pleasant. Most places don’t even go to the trouble to batter them up themselves, they just buy bulk frozen ones from some food processing conglomerate, throw them in hot oil and hope for the best.

For this week’s column I’m throwing the batter out with the bath oil and giving you what I think is a pretty rocking good version that’s a whole lot better for you and still retains a lot of our favorite flavors in the mix. And we’ll use the Italian, calamari, which we all know and love because it sounds so much more exotic and so much less “ewww” than “squid” (a 17th century corruption of the word “squirt”, because of the whole ink squirting thing, the sailor’s term at the time for these critters).

Charred Lemon Calamari Rings

1 kg fresh squid rings
2 lemons, cut in quarters
2 hot chilies, cut in half lengthwise
2 bay leaves
salt and black pepper
100 ml olive oil
1 handful (roughly 30 gm/½ bunch) of parsley, chopped (stems and leaves)

200gm plain yogurt
½ teaspoon each salt, ground cumin and coriander seeds

In a wide frying pan put the olive oil and heat over a high flame until it just starts to smoke. Add the lemon quarters and chilies (you can make this more or less picante if you like, of course). Cook, turning the lemons and chilies until they’re browned and blistered on all sides.

Add the squid rings and bay leaves and cook, moving them continuously, for no more than a minute, until just cooked through and firmed up – don’t overcook or they’ll get rubbery. Remove from the heat, toss in a bowl or platter with parsley, salt, fresh cracked black pepper to taste. Serve hot with dipping sauce: mix yogurt, salt, cumin and coriander seed.

If you like a bit of tomato in the mix to echo the oft-time tomato dipping sauce, add a handful or two of halved cherry tomatoes to the skillet at the same time as the calamari rings.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

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Behind the Eight-Ball



Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

One of the questions I get from visitors when I take them to local markets comes down to a sort of “how do you make sense of this bewildering array of vegetables and fruits?” I stand there, looking at peaches and plums, carrots and cauliflower, and wonder just exactly what bewildering array they’re seeing that I’m not. Is it the sheer quantity of different things piled up in artful arrangements? (Did you know there’s actually a whole profession here in Buenos Aires of people who are hired to come in to the verdulerías at night and create artistic arrangements?) Or are there actually items stacked about that my guests are simply not familiar with?

I think it’s a bit of both, because I find myself remembering that I had much the similar reaction thirty years ago when I first moved to New York City from the Midwest. I grew up in a small city surrounded by farms and we went to the farmer’s market on a weekly basis during nice weather. But generally it was just a tables and baskets piled with whatever happened to be fresh that week – sometimes there might have been no more than half a dozen different items available, and there was certainly no artful arranging going on. And, there in New York, and here in Buenos Aires, there are indeed a few fruits and vegetables that were new to me when I moved here as well.

This week, I thought I’d tackle one of the most common ones I get asked about, those small spheres of dark green that locals call zapallitos or redondos or the two combined. They’re a summer squash, within the zucchini (marrow, courgette) branch of things, and in the English speaking world they’re variously referred to as round, globe, eight-ball or cannonball zucchini. And they’re completely usable in just the same way when it comes to cooking, they just look cooler. Admittedly, my first culinary experience with zucchini was at summer camp where we grew them to massive sizes and then ate them sliced, on white bread, with mayonnaise, but that’s a story for another time.

While my personal favorite thing to do with these beauties is simply slice them, dip them in seasoned flour, then beaten egg, and then panko crumbs (a Japanese bread crumb that gives a very crunchy and delicate crust) and fry them, that wouldn’t be much of an interesting recipe to present, though I still recommend doing it. Locally one of the culinary faves is the zapallito relleno a la criolla, or country style stuffed eight-ball (if I may use that term in polite company), which unsurprisingly tends to be stuffed with crumbled sausage and bacon, egg, and a lot of cheese… you know the drill. Let’s lighten that up a bit.

Stuffed Globe Zucchini

4 globe zucchini
1 chicken breast, diced small
1-2 stale (leftover) dinner rolls or bread slices
100 ml milk
100 gm grated cheese
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2-3 stalks each fresh parsley and oregano, chopped
1 green onion, chopped
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
breadcrumbs
olive oil

Trim the top and bottom of the zucchini by just cutting off a thin slice, and then cut them in half across, so that you can stand both the top and bottom up on their trimmed ends. With a spoon, scoop out a cavity, leaving about a ½ cm wall of zucchini flesh all the way around. Chop up the zucchini innards you scooped out.

Soak the bread rolls or slices in the milk until soft, then drain off extra milk. Then in a bowl mix together the chopped zucchini and chicken, and smush it all together with the softened bread, cheese, eggs, herbs, salt and nutmeg. You should end up with a mixture that’s easy to scoop into the zucchini shells, mounding them up a bit to they’re nice and pretty. Sprinkle the tops generously with breadcrumbs, drizzle a little oil over the top, and bake in a moderate oven (160-180°C) for 45 minutes until browned.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

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The glory of Cicero

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Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

You all of course remember Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman statesman and philosopher from the 1st century B.C.E. – famed orator and enemy of the emperor and empire. What you likely don’t know is that his name, Cicero, was an insult – his family was in the business of growing and selling chickpeas, cicer, in Latin (and still the genus of the plant). When he entered politics numerous advisors pleaded with him to change his name, but he declared that he would make the name Chickpea, umm, Cicero, one of glory.

Locally, and through most of the Spanish speaking world, chickpeas are called garbanzos, a name that traces back to calavance in 17th century Spanish, simply meaning bean, though some have suggested it came from the Basque, garau-antzu, meaning dry seed. Regardless, these days it is one of the most widely grown beans in the world, and popular in cuisines from the Mediterranean to the Middle East to the Indian subcontinent, to pretty much all of Latin America. What’s interesting is that it is virtually never eaten fresh, but dried and then rehydrated, a practice that seems to stretch back most of the last millenium – with only a few exceptions, such as Mexico, where under-ripe, green chickpeas, guasana, are eaten much like edamame, quickly roasted and popped straight from the pod with a little salt.

Here in Argentina the most common places we see them used are in Middle Eastern restaurants, either as hummus or falafel, or as part of the traditional mondongo, or tripe stew. Though I’ve not encountered them while dining out in a restaurant in other guises, that’s not to say that they don’t have a tradition here. Older Argentine cookbooks list recipes for both cazuela de garbanzos and cocido de garbanzos, the former a stew of chickpeas, chard, tomatoes, chilies and onions, while the latter is a fascinatingly over-the-top sounding stew of chickpeas with stewing beef, chorizos, morcillas, bacon, ham and chicken with some pasta, peas and cabbage thrown in for good measure.

I’ve tackled the latter, which is very reminiscent of the traditional Catalán dish cigrons amb tomáquet, or, chickpeas with tomato. The dish is already a healthy one – chickpeas are great for helping lower cholesterol and a great source of both fiber and near fat-free carbohydrates – it’s an easy one for my mission, I’ve just spiced it up a bit. You might also remember I promised you this as a great side dish to last week’s merluza recipe.

Cazuela de Garbanzos

500 gm dried chickpeas, soaked in cold water overnight
2 liters of vegetable stock
2 large onions, chopped
6 garlic cloves, sliced
1-2 fresh chilies of your choice, chopped (optional)
1 handful (roughly 30 gm/½ bunch) of parsley, chopped (stems and leaves)
150 gm hazelnuts (optional)
4 plum tomatoes, chopped
1 tablespoon sugar
large pinch of saffron threads
2 tablespoons olive oil
juice of 2 lemons
salt and black pepper to taste

Drain the chickpeas and place in a pot with the stock. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 45 minutes, until al dente. (Note: If you want to use canned chickpeas reduce the simmering time to 15 minutes, just to absorb the stock flavor and 1 liter is probably enough.)

In a frying pan saute the onions in the oil until lightly browned. Add the garlic, chilies, parsley and hazelnuts, turn up the heat and cook, stirring regularly, for 3 minutes. Add tomatoes, sugar and saffron and continue cooking and stirring until the liquid has been absorbed and the sofreito, as this is called, is a paste like consistency.

Drain most of the stock off of the chickpeas, leaving just enough to create a sauce when mixing in the sofreito, which you should do at this point. (Better to drain off extra and keep it aside, you can always add some back in.) Add the lemon juice and season to taste. Serves 4 as a main course or 6-8 as a side dish.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

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The painted fish

111014---merluzza-zucchini-chickpeas-sumac_6305467615_o

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

It’s by far the most common fish found in markets here in Buenos Aires, and often the only fish found in many supermarkets (invariably frozen and often breaded). In consequence, it’s also the most over-fished pescado in Argentine waters, with stocks of adult fish depleted over the last decade by roughly 80% (though experts say it’s a prolific enough fish it will never disappear). It’s the Merluccius hubbsi, the merluza, or, in English, the hake. Not to be confused with the completely unrelated merluza negra, the Patagonian toothfish, what we usually market as Chilean sea bass, it’s a member of the same family as cod, haddock and pollack, it’s also processed into fish sticks, fake crab, and probably airplane glue.

If you walk into any Argentine style restaurant, from a parrilla to a place specializing in one-plate specials, minutas, you’ll find this fish. Generally it’s fried, and often to a point where it approaches the texture of biscotti. Served up with a wedge or two of under-ripe lemon (why are they always under-ripe?), or perhaps covered in a dense white sauce, and sprinkled with a shred or two of chopped parsley. Here and there a marvel of a dish is produced, often calling to mind the Italian, Spanish and Portuguese roots of the majority population, and cuisines where the preparation of hake is raised to an art form.

The best thing about a simple, clean tasting white fish like hake is that it is a canvas for other flavors. As such, the overly simple treatments that one often finds leave the impression that it’s all oh so bland. This is the time for a bit of boldness, a moment to experiment with herbs and spices, letting the fish carry the flavors to your palate. Paint away on that canvas!

Merluza con Puré de Zapallitos

This dish was inspired by Chef David LeFevre of Los Angeles’ Water Grill, but adapted for local ingredients and flavors, and lightened up all around.

2 zapallitos redondos (globe zucchini), diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 shallot, chopped
½ teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon ground cumin
60 ml white wine
120 ml vegetable stock
100 ml plain yogurt
olive oil
1 teaspoon pink peppercorns, crushed
salt to taste
4 fillets of merluza

In a splash of olive oil saute the garlic and shallot until softened, 2-3 minutes. Add the coriander, cumin and zapallitos and cook over medium heat until the vegetable pieces are completely softened. (Note: regular zucchini (zapallito largo), or yellow summer squash are both perfectly good substitutes if you prefer.) Add the white wine and continue cooking until it’s absorbed. Put the whole mixture in a blender with the vegetable stock and about 3 tablespoons of the yogurt and puree it until smooth. Add salt to taste.

Mix the rest of the yogurt with the crushed pink peppercorns and again add salt to taste.

Lightly oil a baking dish and place the fish fillets on it. Drizzle a little more olive oil over the top and sprinkle with salt. Bake in a medium-hot oven (180°C) until cooked through, about 7-8 minutes. Serve each fillet over a generous portion of the puree, and then top with a scoop of the yogurt. This is also great accompanied by a saute of chickpeas, which gives me my topic for next week’s column. Stay tuned.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

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Behold the child of sea beet

acelga-a-la-crema-003_6908974308_o

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

Sea beets are a wild vegetable that grow along the coasts of Europe, northern Africa and Asia. Though often referred to as wild spinach, it isn’t related. It is, however, related to this column as is the ancestor of two vegetables that while wildly unpopular in general in my country of birth, are just as wildly popular here in Argentina. Perhaps this is the “root” of our differences? Those vegetables are the beet and the silverbeet, or chard, or as seed catalog hucksters call it, Swiss chard.

Today I’m going to tackle the chard, here called acelga or acelgas, the singular and plural seemingly used interchangeably. Either way, it’s a leafy green vegetable that looks kind of like very, very large spinach leaves on thick stalks, and for the most part they can be and are used in place of each other in many recipes, though they do have distinctive flavors. Chard leaves are typically separated from their stems, and here, most of the time, the stems are simply tossed, a shame, as they’re highly nutritious and in their own way, just as flavorful as the leaves.

And while perhaps I should be telling you how to use those stems (sauteed in olive oil with garlic, onion and pinenuts, then wrapped in phyllo with brandy soaked raisins, dusted with sugar and cinnamon and baked until golden brown), I’m not going to, as my focus is lightening up some of our commonly found Argentine favorites. Today’s recipe, found in every bodegón out there, is acelga a la crema, creamed chard, generally ordered as a side dish to be shared by the table. If you’ve never tried it, you should, it’s as good or better than creamed spinach (which is found on many a steakhouse menu back home though no one ever really orders it except to pretend they’re eating vegetables).

The traditional approach here, and probably almost everywhere, is to quickly boil chopped chard leaves in salted water, drain them, toss them in butter, cream and salt, and then cook them over a low flame until they meld into a limp mess, top with mounds of cheese, stick under the broiler, and, ya está! And truthfully, I love this version, fat laden as it is, and often indulge my inner Paula Deen, mixing grated cheese and crispy bacon or prosciutto into the hot chard as well. But, alas, this is not a column on how to create a heart attack.

Acelga a la “crema”

3 tablespoons/45 ml olive oil
3 tablespoons/15 gm flour
500 ml cold lowfat or skim milk
1 shallot or small onion, chopped
250 gm chard leaves and stems, chopped
100 gm grated hard cheese of your choice
½ teaspoon ground pepper
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
salt

Fill a pot big enough to hold the chard with water and add a couple of spoonfuls of salt and bring to a boil. Add the chard, bring back to a boil, and cook for 5 minutes. Drain and set aside. You can also “shock” the chard if you want in very cold or ice water to help set the bright green color, just for aesthetics. In a skillet over low heat, cook the onions in the olive oil until they’re soft. Add the flour, and cook, stirring steadily, for about five minutes to lightly toast it. Add the milk and turn the heat up slightly to a low-medium and bring to a simmer, stirring regularly. Once it reaches a simmer continue cooking for 7-8 minutes until it gets a thicker, velvety consistency. Remove from heat and season with nutmeg and pepper. Add the precooked chard and about a third of the grated cheese and then add salt to taste. At this point, you can serve it as is, adding in more of the cheese if you wish, or, you can put the mixture in a baking dish, cover with the remaining cheese and stick it under the broiler to brown. Serves 4 as a side dish.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

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Let them eat cake

Crab pionono

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

On a purely observational basis as an outsider, it’s pretty clear that Argentines have a sweet tooth, or is that sweet teeth? Some days it seems there is a confectionary on every block in the city, tempting us with pastries, cakes, tarts, cookies, and more. Kiosks and drugstores display rack after rack of candies, cookies and the ubiquitous alfajores.

So it’s not really a surprise to find that, while not topping the charts, Argentina racks up an impressive per capita consumption of sugar – pretty much only coming in behind Brazil and Australia, and more or less tying for third place with Thailand at a bit over a whopping 40 kilos per person annually. Brazil and Australia, just for the record, come in at just over 60 and 50, respectively.

One of the oddest concoctions here for those of us from abroad is the pionono. At its base it’s simply a jelly roll, or Swiss roll, and there’s nothing odd about it when it’s wrapped around pastry cream or chocolate or dulce de leche or… well I could go on. Where it goes off the rails at first blush is when it’s filled with savory ingredients. Common choices are chicken or tuna salad, ham and cheese, cream cheese and olives, and similar sorts of fillings. The striking contrast between the sweet cake and the savory filling is, at first jarring to many who didn’t grow up with the combination.

Now perhaps it shouldn’t be, after all, I grew up in the Midwest of the U.S. where a Monte Cristo sandwich is a popular lunch treat – ham and/or turkey and Swiss cheese layered in bread, dipped in beaten egg, fried, and then served up topped with a fruit compote, maple syrup (our favorite), or powdered sugar. McDonald’s McGriddle breakfast sandwich of egg, bacon, cheese and maple syrup pancakes is a worldwide hit. The French bake Brie “en croute” and top with figs and walnuts. Salted caramel. Candied bacon. It didn’t take long for the savory-sweet combo of a pionono to grow on me, nor on many of my expat friends.

Still, I tend to find the versions at my local casas de comida to be a bit overbearing, often too sweet on the cake and too heavy on the mayo in the filling (the quantitatively impressive use of mayo in South America, particularly at the tables of our neighbors to the west in Chile, is another whole mystery to be explored one day). So, I make my own. While you can buy a premade pionono cake layer in most grocery stores and bakeries these days, why not give a try at one yourself, which also allows you to flavor it as you like?

5 eggs
50 grams sugar
1 tablespoon honey
60 grams 0000 flour
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes (Japanese shichimi is great here too)

In a mixer begin beating the eggs at high speed until they are light and frothy. While the mixture continues to beat slowly pour in the sugar and honey. After about 6-7 minutes you’ll have a stiff, whipped mixture. With a spatula or large spoon, gently mix in the flour and seasoning (feel free to substitute dried herbs or other spices), making sure to get it nice and evenly mixed. One note for celiacs – gluten free flour mixtures, cornstarch, rice flour, and/or mandioca (yuca/tapioca) flour will work fine. The mixture will deflate some, not to worry. Butter or oil a baking sheet (roughly 28cm x 38cm), smooth out the mixture and pop it into a 170°C oven for 7-8 minutes until it’s lightly browned and firm to the touch. Remove, let cool for 2-3 minutes, and then loosen it all around with a spatula and flip out onto a clean kitchen towel. Immediately roll it up in the towel and leave to cool (just helps it hold its shape later on).

When cool, unroll and fill with your choice of savory fillings as mentioned above – one of our favorites is to spread it with softened goat cheese, then scatter thinly sliced endive, roasted red pepper strips, and fresh seafood (cooked) like crab or shrimp. Roll up, chill in the refrigerator, slice, and serve with everyone’s favorite here, salsa golf. Oh, there’s yet another topic for a column.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

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Ears of gold

Humitas en la olla

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

If you read the modern food press, you couldn’t be faulted for coming away with the impression that corn is the root of all evil. Movies have been made, books have been written – it makes us fat, it ruins our lives, it steals our money, it kisses babies, causes polygamy. I don’t know, I grew up with fields of corn surrounding us, stalks waving in the breeze, and we ate the stuff all the time, fresh from the field, packaged from the grocery store, and in a wide variety of forms. I’ll give you that there may be some evidence for the evils of high fructose corn syrup. Some. There’s debatable evidence on both sides of the argument.

But in its natural state there’s little more glorious in the grain world than corn. Despite being a grain, or cereal, it tends to be treated as a vegetable (except in dried form where we have polenta, grits, and porridges), and is more often cooked in ways that a vegetable would be. It’s reasonably nutritious, by no means the most, though it is one of the few grains or vegetables out there that supplies any quantity of the amino acid lutein, a necessary nutrient. Oh, and it tastes delicious, right?

An indigenous grain to southeastern Mexico, it was domesticated by the Taino people and due to its relative ease to grow, spread throughout the Americas, where it is the principal grain grown. Not all of it is grown for food, a large percentage (in the U.S. alone some 40%) these days goes to the making of biofuel. Here in Argentina, while not the largest crop grown (although until the introduction of massive soy farms, it pretty much was), some 13 million tons of corn is produced annually, making it the sixth largest producer of corn in the world.

And, Argentine cuisine makes good use of corn. Whether it’s rounds of choclo in a stew, dried white corn in locro, toasted corn kernels as snacks and garnishes, ground, dried corn in tamales, or, ground fresh corn in the local favorite, humitas, it’s all around us.

Now, many of us have tried empanadas filled with either whole or fresh corn, and also the steamed, corn husk wrapped humita version, one of the most common things I hear about them is “they’re too sweet”. Look, we all know that Argentines, particularly here in Buenos Aires, have a bit of a sweet tooth. It’s just built into the culture, and, we get used to it – it’s not that hard of an adaptation. But not all versions of these dishes are sweet, and one of my favorites is the humitas en olla, a classic of Salta that’s even got a bit of spice. I’ve spiked it up a notch or two and replaced the traditional beef fat with olive oil and the cheeses with lower fat versions, but I guarantee it’ll put humitas in a whole new light.

Humitas en Olla

6 ears corn on the cob
4 green onions, finely chopped
1 wedge or slice of yellow squash, in small dice (about 200 gms)
1-2 jalapeños, minced
100 grams olive oil
120 ml of low fat or skim milk
150 grams light port salut, cut in cubes
basil, chopped or shredded
salt, pepper to taste

Scrape the kernels from the cobs – it’s best to actually use a grater to do this, if you don’t have one, cut them off and give them a quick whirl in a food processor or blender, or even chop by hand.

In a pot (“en olla”), cook the onions , squash and chili in the oil with a little salt and pepper and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the grated corn, and just enough of the milk to keep it a wet mixture. Cook, stirring regularly, as it absorbs the liquid – add more milk as needed. When the corn is cooked through, add the cheese, and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture pulls away from the sides. Season to taste and garnish with basil.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

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A swamp cabbage by any other name

Salmon Palmito Gratin

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

Slender cylinders of gleaming ivory, firm on the outside, tender, moist and creamy on the inside. Sounds like perfection in a vegetable, and for some, the palmito, or heart of palm, is just that. But, just what is it? Does it really have anything to do with palm trees? Why do old British cookbooks refer to it as “burglar’s thigh” and Americans call it swamp cabbage? And just exactly what can you do with it?

First off, yes, it has everything to do with palm trees. Particular varieties that are harvested when young, generally when the trunk of the palm reaches about two meters in height and ten centimeters in diameter. Let it go past that point and the inner core of the tree starts to become fibrous and woody. But harvested at that point it’s one of the world’s great under-sung vegetables.

Traditionally harvested in Brazil from wild palms, closely related to the coconut palm, the trees were single stemmed – that meant that for roughly every two dozen hearts of palm stuck in a can a future tree was lost, and they took two years to reach that size. Ecuador, meanwhile, cultivated a “self-suckering”, “multi-stem” variety that often sends up as many as forty trunks, reaching the necessary size within a single growing season, and they regenerate themselves.

Here in Argentina, you see the cans in every supermarket and dietética. On restaurant menus they appear raw in salads, or mixed with shrimp and mayo and stuffed into an avocado half. They’re tossed on pizzas and milanesas, often drowned in swirls of salsa golf, the local mayo-ketchup blend. They make appearances in savory tarts, usually baked with the ubiquitous ham and cheese.

High in protein and low in fat, palm hearts can be cooked in the manner of many another vegetable. An old local recipe uses thin rounds cooked down in a white wine, heavy cream and butter sauce, ladled over slabs of pork loin, covered in cheese, and then baked in the oven until golden brown. It’s an amazing, savory dish that unfortunately is also packed with fat and salt. I’ve taken the classic as an inspiration to create a wonderful salmon dish. And “burglar’s thigh”, “swamp cabbage”? Not a clue. Searched through every historical text I could lay my hands on, print and online, and not one explanation.

Salmon and Palmito Gratin

4 fillets of salmon, 150 gm each, skin and bones removed
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 large clove garlic, finely chopped
1 large shallot, finely chopped
60 ml dry white wine
200 ml plain yogurt
120 ml low-sodium vegetable stock
100 gm palm hearts, rinsed, sliced in rounds (roughly 4 hearts)
50 gm grated cheese (I’m fond of local Romano or Grana Pampeana)
salt and pepper
chives, finely chopped

Sprinkle the salmon fillets with a little salt and several grinds of pepper, and then rub all over with the chopped garlic and olive oil. Let sit for 30 minutes at room temperature. Heat a skillet over high heat for about ten minutes, until it’s hot. Place the salmon fillets in the pan (no extra oil is needed) with the side that had the skin face down. Cook for 2 minutes until lightly golden and then flip them over. Cook for just 1 minute and remove to a baking dish.

Turn the heat down to medium and add the shallots, cook for a minute, then add the wine to deglaze the pan, scraping any stuck bits into the mix. Cook for a minute, then add the stock, yogurt, and palm heart slices. Continue stirring and cook for 10 minutes.. Adjust the seasoning to your taste with salt and pepper. Spoon over the fillets, piling up the palmitos atop. Cover with grated cheese and stick under the broiler for 5 minutes until golden brown. The salmon should just barely be cooked through. Serve, garnished with chives.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

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