Argentina

We put off Argentina for months because of the recipe. Not because it was particularly difficult, but because the recipe we found was for several people and we weren’t sure we wanted to subject friends to our experiment. Finally we decided that we had to do it or we’d never move onto to the cuisine of Armenia.

I’m not going to talk about Argentine politics, although I could talk a lot about the Dirty War from 1976-1983 where the military dictatorship used right-wing death-squads to torture, kill, and “disappear” thousands of people – mainly trade-unionists, students, and activists who disagreed with the policies of the dictatorship. In 2006 an Argentinian court condemned the 1970s government’s actions as genocide and crimes against humanity. Close to my heart is the case of Christian von Wernich, a Roman Catholic priest who on October 9, 2007 was found guilty of complicity in 7 homicides, 42 kidnappings, and 32 instances of torture and sentenced him to life imprisonment. As of February1, 2010 he has not been penalised by the Church and is allowed to officiate as a priest at prison Masses. You have to love that Catholic Church.

But as I said, I’m not going to talk about Argentine politics. So, what is Argentina famous for? In my mind, it’s Patagonia, polo, and steak.

Patagonia is a spectacularly beautiful area with incredible vistas and stunning vertical rocky heights. Even though I used to be a climber, I never visited Patagonia because I liked my rock climbing to be short and warm. Here are some great photos by Tom Dempsey.

Next is polo, the Sport of Kings, and Argentina is the undisputed capital center of the sport. Here are a few quotes:

“Polo is probably the fastest, most exhilarating and certainly the oldest team sport on earth; once the preserve of royalty, today it is played by millionaire playboys, princes and ordinary people – like rock stars, Hollywood actors and top models. You don’t have to have a double-barrelled surname or the right accent to play anymore; you just need lots of money.”

“Argentina is considered to be the undisputed centre of great polo today – 85% of the highest goal players in the world hail from here.”

And finally steak. Steak is big in Argentina. Not just big as in important, but also big as in large. Here’s a great article about steaks, and a sample paragraph.

“The classic beginner’s mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon. That first steak has to get you through the afternoon and half the night, until the restaurants begin to open at ten; the first steak is what primes your system to digest large quantities of animal protein, and it’s the first steak that buffers the sudden sugar rush of your afternoon ice cream cone. The midnight second steak might be more the glamorous one, standing as it does a good three inches off the plate, but all it has to do is get you up and out of the restaurant and into bed.”

Obviously the national dish of Argentina must be steak. Or must it? In fact, there really doesn’t seem to be a national dish of Argentina. The closest we could find is a overwhelming mixed grill of steak, chorizo, kidneys, intestines, blood sausage, sweetbreads, etc., cooked on a special grill called a parilla. Well, we don’t have a parilla, and the mixed grill really didn’t appeal to our delicate sensibilities.

With some further searching, we decided that matambre is the closest we could get to a national dish that we were willing to make, so that’s what we went with. Matambre is a flank steak butterflied then spread out, covered with colorful foods such as spinach, carrots, hard-boiled eggs, then rolled up and tied with string. Here is a before picture and an after picture. Note that the butterflying wasn’t super successful

We used a combination of two recipes – rather than list the recipe here, I’ll provide links to Recipe One and Recipe Two. Nothing was particularly difficult except butterflying the flank steak. Never having done this before I wasn’t too good at it and left some parts too thick and others too thin. Some people recommend having your butcher butterfly the steak for you, but we got ours pre-packed at Costco. Perhaps next time….

We decided to subject my boss and our Product Manager and their wives to this meal. Fortunately, Luis brought over two very nice Argentine wines, which worked out well because the matambre wasn’t actually that tasty. But our other secret weapon was chimichurri, a wonderful sauce that is widely used to add flavor to meats. The chimichurri turned out to be the best thing about the meal, other than the company, the wine, and T’s chocolate dessert.

Ingredients (for 6)

• 1 bunch of flat leaf parsely
• 8 cloves of garlic
• 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• Juice of 1 lemon wedge
• 1 tbsp of diced red onion
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt

Blend all the ingredients in a food processor.

Now we can move onto Armenia!

Advertisement