Kate F____, Girl Reporter

I knew going into this trip that I would be quite focused on empanadas. I have an obsessive love of bread/pastry pockets, dumplings, stuffed buns, etc., stemming perhaps from the turnovers my mom used to make with leftover pie crust and her raspberry jam.

I sampled quite a few empanadas over the course of the trip, everywhere from a grungy corner lunchroom in Buenos Aires (where my answer of “hot” to the question “cold or hot?” produced a microwaved-but-still-tasty pocket filled with beef and hardboiled egg) to our bedroom at a fancy estancia in Le Pampa (where a staff member knocked on the door with a large white enamel pot full of freshly fried empanadas). I had ground and chopped beef (chopped is better) with and without green olives and hardboiled egg (I like both). I sampled cheese with ham, without ham, with onions and onions without cheese, baked and fried. The very best were the handcut beef, fried, from El Mirasol in Puerto Madero. I didn’t dislike any of them, but these meat ones weren’t top of the list:

They’re from a small restaurant in Chacra de Corria, outside Mendoza (in wine country, 1000 km west of Buenos Aires). These were takeout, and Ben’s hamburger from the same place will get its own post later. The crescents are meat, the rounds are ham and cheese. A tip re. empanadas: Some are wet, some are dry. This is a known quantity. The cheese and ham type tend to be wetter, and sometimes squirt, so your first bite must be very carefully taken.

Here are the famous empanadas from Familia Zuccardi, where we had a lunch that will also get written about. From the left, these are filled with onions, cheese, and meat. The center (cheese) one is notably drier-looking and flatter. You can also tell different fillings apart by the different folds.

At Le Bamba, the estancia in the grasslands where there is regular empanada delivery (note the deliciously fried crust):

And my last empanada, though not my favorite: straight onions in a baked shell, at a café near the capital building on our last day in Buenos Aires.

I’d like to find a good recipe for the chopped meat type, like the ones at El Mirasol. I like the olive and egg, but I think I’ll leave out the egg for Ben’s sake. Fried was definitely my favorite, as well, but baked will have to do for home production.

Well, here’s part one of our trip… I posted a ton of photos (divided in food and non-food) at a shutterfly site for easy viewing, and I’ll just include a few in these posts.

A little bit about the itinerary of this trip:

We left on March 12, arrived at about 2 a.m. on Tuesday, March 13 in Buenos Aires. We stayed there the 13th and 14th, and on the 15th we flew to Mendoza (wine country) for three nights. We returned and spent two more nights in BA, then one night in the Pampa (grasslands), and one more night in BA before flying to NY at 4 a.m. on 3/23. I’m going to go ahead and clump all the Buenos Aires stuff together, since we were in and out of the city so many times.

The visit

I loved the city. I love most cities, honestly, but Buenos Aires was really great, especially since we spent most of our time in the very cool but not-touristy Palermo Viejo and Soho neighborhoods. We sent much of our time wandering through the great boutiques in the area, though we did branch out and visit the Recoleta Cemetery one day, and on our last day we made a hurried trip to San Telmo (St. Elmo, according to Ben) for some last-minute gifts. (This fabulous store provided us with many great presents, all made in Argentina and none of them schlocky souvenirs!)

We weren’t in town over a weekend, so I didn’t get to go to the famous street fairs to search for antique goodies. But we did visit the Mercado de Pulgas, a permanent flea market open 6 days a week in the outer reaches of Palermo Hollywood. I loved this enormous bird cage (at least 5 feet tall):

and we saw tons of furniture that we would have loved to ship back, but we resisted since we have no idea what our apartment in Boston will be like. I picked up a handful of little things instead–a broken pocket watch from 1914, some old wooden dice, etc. Also a cabinet latch and a brass handle for my brother, who asked for antique hardware.

In BA we stayed in two B & Bs and one hotel, in a total of 4 rooms. My favorite was La Otra Orilla, which is in a stunning early 20th century mansion that looks like nothing from the outside but opens to reveal a huge entry hall that goes straight back to the courtyard.

Our room was one of two with a private bath, so it was at the back in a new addition. It was small but charming, and I’m sort of obsessed with the iron bed frames they joined together to make a headboard. I love the slightly art deco curves (they remind me of that metal and glass awning in the first photo!).

The Food

We had universally good food in BA. We were just walking into random places, but every meal was very good. There is a lot of Italian food—we ate a couple pizzas and quite a bit of pasta, and Ben had risotto two or three times. And, of course, the steak. The beef was as good as I’d heard, and we ate a lot of it. We loyally washed it down with Malbec, which I’m fairly sure would flow from our veins if anyone pricked us right now.

Very typical dinner (under $10):

A restaurant called Lele de Troya caught our eyes one day thanks to a lovely vine-shaded outdoor area on the sidewalk, and later in the trip we returned and ate dinner there (but inside). They have painted and decorated each room in one saturated color. The bar and lounge are deep red, and the small dining rooms are yellow (with the open kitchen), green or blue. We chose blue, and ate a winderful meal surrounded by one shade of deep turquoise.

It was a fancier meal than most of what we ate. We shared an appetizer of Paina (chickpea flatbread) with goat cheese and over roasted tomatoes to start (blurry because of the dark room, I’m sorry):

It’s delicious–soft inside and crispy and toasty along the edges. I ate something similar in Italy, and I’m dying to recreate it. Ben had risotto for his main course, and I had “Lomo Crostante,” a steak topped with mushroom and spinach puree and wrapped extravagantly in phyllo:

This sums up our favorite experiences eating in BA—outdoors on a peaceful roof deck, with a bottle of Malbec and a cold bottle of water to prep us for dinner!

That restaurant had a truly hilariously translated menu; I think they had run it through a bad online translator. There were several great examples, including “muffled chicken,” “embezzled asparagus,” and “…accompanied with grilled fungi added saffron to Popes stuffed with brownnose of vegetables.” I hate it when that happens; the poor Pope. My steak with mustard sauce came with stacked potatoes, and was very tender and tasty, but I’ll spare you the horrible blurred photo. I had coconut flan for dessert there—the only time I veered away from straight caramel flan, which is ubiquitous and delicious. Custards rate only a step below pastry treats and fried dough in my pantheon of adored sweets.

File under Pretty but Odd. At lunch one day I ordered crepes stuffed with ricotta, and chose a sauce randomly, since I didn’t really know what any of them were. It turned out to be a tomato-based sauce that may have had red pepper in it, but what I can’t figure out why it was SO tangy; almost sour. Quite strange, though a very pretty presentation:

Our last two nights in BA, sadly, are undocumented. We were joining an administrator from Ben’s school (who is a good friend) for some admissions events that were taking place in town. We met her at a fancy hotel for a reception the first night, then went out with a girl she’d met on the plane, a friend of that girl, and a guy who’d been at the reception. We went to El Mirasol in the Puerto Madero neighborhood, and had a fabulous meal of empanadas, interesting salads (ours had endive, radicchio, mâche or a similar green, tomatoes and cheese with a great dressing), a wide variety of steaks, from the fried Milanese to grilled brochettes (kebobs) with onions and bacon to a standard but REALLY good lomo. We drank two bottles of Malbec and one of Sauvignon Blanc, and I think we ordered dessert but I know it never came or we never ate it.

The next night there was a special dinner at La Bourgogne in the Alvear Palace Hotel. La Bourgogne in the Alvear Palace Hotel. After quite a lot of delicious champagne with even more delicious cheese straws, we had a mousse of red pepper and tomato, salmon wrapped around cucumber threads, veal chops, and a strawberry dessert. I’m sad that I didn’t get to take any photos, since the food looked really lovely. It was good, but not stunning, to eat—it’s said to be one of the best restaurants in Buenos Aires but I’d had better food at decidedly less upscale places in the city.

Finally, one of my favorite meals is always breakfast, and I liked the Argentine approach, which was the same at every B&B and café we ate at: small croissants called Medialunas, served with butter and jam or dulce de leche, along with fresh juice and coffee. Very simple, and a perfect start to the day.

Well, I’m back in the country but won’t be able to post about our amazing trip for another couple days. I just wanted to post and apologize to anyone who posted comments while I was gone–my spam filter went nuts and erased them all, though it kindly tells me how many are gone. Gee, thanks.

We off for twelve days in Argentina: Buenos Aires, the Pampas and Mendoza, to be exact. I expect to eat my bodyweight in steak over the next two weeks.

I won’t be posting while we’re gone, I don’t think, but I will be taking loads of pictures of food (and other things, I’m sure), and I’ll post a full travelogue when we get back. See you all in two weeks!

Once again I gave Chris Kimball’s quick chicken breasts a try. (They’re the ones coated in parmesan and breadcrumbs.) I am still struggling with chicken-pounding technique; I think my 8-inch frying pan isn’t an ideal tool. Ben, who usually flees the kitchen while the chicken is being attacked, volunteered to give it a try this time, and though the tips of the chicken breasts were a little shredded he was certainly efficient. They were much thinner than before, but still not perfect.

I baked potatoes, dressed some halved cherry tomatoes in sherry vinegar and olive oil, and wilted a little spinach in the pan I’d used to cook the chicken. I’d planned on a spinach salad, so the quantity was off and once wilted the spinach was more of an accent than a side dish! Tasty, though. I’ve also been throwing leftover washed spinach or arugula into a bowl of ramen noodles for lunch lately.

While we were eating (which we always do at the table, with candles lit, in the grand tradition of my family!), Ben looked at me and asked why we never eat like this anymore. He’s right; we’ve only sat down to a real dinner a couple times in the last few weeks. I blame his finals period and increased social activity—we’ve been eating out a lot. I hope once we’re back from spring break we settle back into the routine of cooking and eating at home at least three times a week, and giving a dinner party or two every two weeks. A lot of our friends will be coming back from a term of foreign exchange, which means lots of excuses for dinner parties.

Oh man, this involves a LOT of cauliflower. We were going to a potluck at the home of one of Ben’s professors, and the guest list looked like there would be 16 people there. I was to bring a “cooked vegetable,” so I bought four heads of cauliflower (8 pounds in all) and made Cauliflower with Lemon-Mustard Butter from epicurious.com.

This involved a much longer period spent slicing cauliflower than I expected. Cauliflower doesn’t want to be sliced, it wants to be florets. Slicing means you get some nice cross-sections and a LOT of crumbs. Oh well. I ended up doing four half sheet pans (regular cookie sheet size) and four quarter sheets, rotating them all in and out of the oven. Maybe more, it got a little hairy there at the end, and I was in some sort of Cauli-Trance.

You bake the slices (and crumbs) for about 15 minutes, then baste them with the sauce—a lot of butter, lemon juice and mustard, with some zest for good measure) and bake for another 10 minute. I’m a sucker for roasted cauliflower, so I’m not the best judge because I’m not picky, but Ben kept eating the finished batches off the serving tray, so I’m pretty sure it’s a hit for people who don’t LOVE cauliflower, as well. It’s very tangy and buttery, and the leftovers (only 12 people ended up being at the party) have been tasty straight out of the fridge.

The other day for lunch I used up the tail end of a bag of pasta, cooking it absorption-style, and at the end I threw in a bunch of the leftover cauliflower and heated it through. That was great: The sauce melted and coated the pasta and the textures were a good match. Yum.

Another Bon Appetit recipe—this was an easy Chicken Saltimbocca recipe, served with a lemon pan sauce. I was slightly more successful pounding out the chicken breasts this time, though still not quite aggressive enough. Once the chicken was pounded thin, I pressed on sage leaves and covered them with a couple slices of prosciutto, then dredged the whole package in flour. The breasts cooked pretty quickly (though not as fast as if I’d gotten them thinner), and I’ve got a system down for keeping the house from getting too smoky when I pan-fry things. I close the door to the kitchen, then open the window we’ve left without a storm window and crack the back door. It wouldn’t work this week, when it’s literally 5 degrees out, but on a more temperate night the heat of the stove (esp. if the oven is on) keeps the room from getting TOO freezing.

Then I made the pan sauce. That was a total disaster–the pan was too hot, the whole thing thickened up way too much, etc. It tasted good (nice and tangy to cut the rich prosciutto) but looked gross, so no picture!

We ate it with the carrot orzo from the same article, which was ok but not great. A bit bland, and orzo is always so slippery!

Well, I made molasses cookies yesterday afternoon, and they’re very tasty but not what I want. This recipe turned out to be for the cakey sort of cookie, instead of the flat, chewy kind. Maybe it’s spice cookies I’m thinking of? Molasses-spice? I don’t know what they are called, but my mom used to make chewy cookies, quite spicy and definitely made with molasses, rolled in sugar, that flattened out a lot while they baked and cracked open so there were sugared parts and un-sugared peeks of the inside, which was very dark brown. Mom, do you still have that recipe?

The mixer was great—I scraped the sides down once, and my only problem came from not having softened the butter quite enough, so it took a while to make it stop being little lumps. One of the big advantages to the Pro is that the bowl is wider and shallower than the Artisan’s, so it’s easier to scrape the bowl down and add ingredients.

The cookies puffed up into little mounds in the oven, and then settled down a bit, but they didn’t spread like the ones I’m thinking of:

They’re tasty, and I undercooked them a little so they’re nice and moist, and they have a good buttery flavor, but I want the other kind of recipe. Does anyone have one? I also want a good gingerbread recipe—I love not-too-sweet dark gingerbread cake. Mmmm, gingerbread.

Back in November I was, of course, intrigued by Bittman’s article about No-Knead Bread—the entire internet seemed to be obsessed, too, and everyone was trying it and writing about it. I was concerned about the plastic Le Creuset handle in the hot oven, though, and didn’t get around to trying it until around Valentine’s day. (Pictures of my first batch, along with the steak, orzo, broccoli and wilted spinach salad we had for dinner that night, followed by fallen chocolate cakes, were lost in a camera memory card disaster.) I was tipped off to the existence of stainless steel knobs for my dutch oven on Not Martha, and I ordered one right away. Before and after:

So handsome! Incidentally, you could just use a stainless cabinet knob from a hardware store, but I liked the idea of having the same broader handle to grab onto, since I’m a klutz. That’s also why I didn’t just plug the hole from the knob with tinfoil and slide the lid on and off; I would have gotten 3rd degree burns or a broken toe or both.

Anyway, I’ve made the bread several times since. The first batch I made using the directions Bittman gave in the printed recipe, which calls for 1 5/8 cups of water. In the video that accompanied it he said 1.5 cups. The waterier batch never rose and stayed VERY wet and sticky. I got a small loaf but it still tasted and looked good. Using 1.5 cups of water gave me much bigger and easier to handle loaves.

The dough after 18 hours of sitting, after the second rise, and after being uncovered in the oven (30 minutes into baking):

Everyone in the world has already commented on how good this bread is, considering how simple it is to make. All it takes is time, and a loaf costs about 55 cents, while looking and acting like good bread from a bakery. The first day it is particularly irresistible; I like it buttered (salted butter) and sprinkled with sugar. Ben is nuts about it for sandwiches. Considering that this was the second time I’d ever made bread, I was pretty damn impressed.

My friend Laura gave us a bunch of awesome cookbooks as a wedding present, including The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. Now that I have the mixer (and I also got a scale this weekend) I want to experiment with a ton of the recipes in that.

Ben has been experimenting with baking…here are the results of a joint scone effort a few weeks ago:

He has mastered the chocolate chip cookies he made before Christmas, and I expect an upswing in production now that we have…a mixer! Not just any mixer, either. After years of insisting I didn’t want a Kitchenaid, I did tons of research and realized that the KA Pro was probably my best bet. We went for the Professional instead of the Artisan because I want to experiment more with bread making, and I figure that in a couple years it would be annoying to have to upgrade to the bigger machine. We also both liked the design with the bowl that raises and lowers instead of the head of the machine lifting up. It also meant I didn’t have a color-picking dilemma, since the Pro comes in only a few finishes, including shiny dark green, matte pale green (too minty for me), matte copper, matte silver, and matte white. The black is gorgeous but would show every speck of flour, so I went with the silver:

Ben put it to the test as we got it home yesterday, and made banana bread according to Rachel’s mom’s recipe. It took forever to bake (at least an hour and a half, and we cranked the heat to 375 after the first hour or so) but was tasty even to my banana-loathing taste buds. It came out sort of dark, but soft and tender on the inside:

This afternoon I think I’ll make molasses cookies—I want to try the mixer for myself, and I have a stitch and bitch meeting tonight where cookies would be appreciated, I’m sure.