Argentinean Parilla- or-Overcoming Food Prejudices

I have a pretty intense addiction to both traveling and learning languages, so I spend a lot of time thinking about the places where cultures intersect and diverge and what happens they do. There are some places I expect to find strong cultural differences- clothing, etiquette, worldviews etc. I am usually pretty good at taking these in stride and adapting. It takes a lot to make me disgruntled. I recently discovered, however, that I am perhaps a little less flexible in my ideas than I had always assumed. Specifically when it comes to food.

It all began when I decided to cook a Christmas Feast in Buenos Aires. I knew my friend and I might get a little homesick on Christmas Eve (what’s Christmas without family?) and wanted to make the evening special. I went to the supermarket during the afternoon and indulged in “shopping therapy” by buying enough food to feed several persons- never mind that there were only two of us to eat all of this.

Usually when I went shopping, Maria came with me and, since her Spanish is much better than mine, she would translate any food labels I couldn’t read. I was by myself this time and realized, once again, that my Spanish textbook was a little inadequate. Where was the long list of all the different cuts of meat?

I tried to ask the butcher about a little package of chops. “What kind of meat was this?” He went behind the counter and came back with an entire baby pig. Yay it was pork! I asked for 200grams of that.

When he asked whether I wanted anything else, I remembered that my mom always prepared lamb on church holidays. Unfortunately, I couldn’t for the life of me remember the word for lamb. I tried to describe to him a mid-sized animal with curly white hair but apparently failed because he met my descriptions with a blank expression. Exasperated, I resorted to charades. “you know, the animal that does this sound “bahhhhhhhhhh.” “Bahhh?” he said. “Yes” I replied, “bahhhhh.”

Well, thank God, I thought, sheep apparently make the same sound in Argentina as they do in the USA for he disappeared behind the counter laughing and came back with a large cut of meat.

The hostel we were staying in looked more like a hippy commune than a hostel and on Christmas Eve it turned into a crazy dance party as all us travelers who were missing our families took some kind of comfort in at least all being together. Everyone gathered on the rooftop terrace for beer, Choriban (grilled sausage), techno music and an incessantly flashing light show.

I asked the guy running the Parilla whether I could add my meat to his grill. He graciously assented and scooted over a few coals. For those unfamiliar with Argentinean Parilla, it involves the slow cooking of meat over a few glowing embers. I had neglected to take this into account when planning the timing of my Christmas meal. After twenty minutes in the kitchen attached to the terrace, the raviolis were cooked, the salad tossed and my stomach growling. I went over to check on the meat. It was barely browning. This was clearly going to be different from the high heat, high flames barbeque I was used to.

(Yes, this is the barbeque. Yes, it has eyes.)

I had also completely forgotten to marinate before adding it to the grill and asked whether I could now add some spices to the meat. I had dug out some oregano, thyme and garlic. “Oh no” he said “in Argentina we just add some salt and pepper.”

Because my mother is French and I had learned to cook with those tastes in mind, the thought of eating un-spiced meat always strikes me as very strange. French people tend to fuss over cuts of meat. “B-b-b-but… seriously?” The Parilla guy, who knew where I was from and had spent significant time in France, knew what was going through my mind and insisted that I trust him.  

He had to insist again that I trust him when I wanted to yank the meat off the grill about ten minutes later. Another French tendency- liking meat to be on the rare side. But he made me wait. Until it was all the way cooked. It spent about 45 minutes on the grill all together. I was dying. As was my empty growing stomach.

I have to admit he was right though. It was some of the tenderest, juiciest meat I had ever eaten. Score 1 Argentina!

Patagonian Chocolate Plum Cake

It’s winter break from school and I was lucky enough to be able to go to Argentina. We spent a week down in Southern Patagonia checking out icebergs, glaciers and penguins. 

We saw some of the most beautiful nature I had ever seen in my life. We also saw some of the worst weather. I guess it’s what I should’ve expected given how close we were to Antarctica.

On one particular day, when the wind howled down the streets and drove clouds down around the mountains, all but hiding them from sight, we decided to call it a “resting day” and stay in the hostel. Maria, the friend with whom I was traveling, wanted to fight off cabin fever by baking. It had been two weeks since I’d baked anything so I was all over that plan. I asked what she wanted to bake specifically and got the following response: “something complicated with a lot of steps. ” Hmm. Ok.

With no Internet and no cookbooks, it was going to have to be a made-up cake recipe. Which, when I saw the random collection of groceries to be had in the local grocery story, would have been the case anyways.

Does this town look likes it has a supermarket? Nope.

What flavor cake do you want? “Chocolate.” Nestle cocoa drink mix would have to do the trick. (Yes they keep the chocolate by the toilet paper. I don't know what that's supposed to mean.)

The only milk to be bought came in enormous sacks. Yogurt would have to be the moistening ingredient. There weren’t enough plain yogurts left so we had to go with strawberry yogurt.

Oh and we would probably need a leavening ingredient. Why oh why did I never bother learning how to say “baking powder” while I was in Spanish class?? Some digging through a spices bin brought out a bag of whitish powder that looked appropriate. I wondered secretly whether we would be baking a chocolate wafer instead of a chocolate cake.

We brought our ingredients back to the hostel where we mixed them all together in a bowl, poured them in tins (throwing some sliced plums on top to pretty things up) and then realized to our dismay that there was no oven. Luckily, the nice front-desk lady offered to let us use the barbecue grill to cook/bake/grill our cake.

Thus was born the Grilled Chocolate Strawberry Cake with Plum Topping.

If you think that sounds a little strange, so did we... 
However, our worries about the cake being a failure faded away as the smell of warm, dark chocolate filled the entire hostel.

We shared with everyone in the hostel and, judging by the speed with which the (surprisingly) delicious cake disappeared, we should never have worried in the first place!

 Patagonian Chocolate (Strawberry) Plum Cake

2 individual sized cream yogurts (ok 1.5 because we ate half of the first one)

2 individual sized strawberry yogurts

3 eggs (Separated with the whites beaten until frothy in a separate bowl)

1 package chocolate drink mix

a few handfuls of flour

6 tablespoons melted butter

1 tablespoon baking powder

Mix yogurts and egg yolks and melted butter in one bowl.

Mix flour, chocolate powder and baking powder in another bowl.

Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients being careful not to over mix.

Gently fold in the egg whites.

Pour into tins.

Add the plum slices.

Sprinkle top with some extra sugar to make it crackly.

Place on a nearby grill at the lowest temperature for about an hour.