Argentinian Carne

You can't go wrong with beef in Argentina - whether you go to the best restaurants or eat at the roadside.  The beef is tasty and tender. There is no reason to eat a hamburger in Argentina because the real meat is so tender there is no need to grind it or chop it up.  In the two weeks we spent in the country, whether we paid 160 pesos ($10US) for a lunch beef sandwich by the roadside or 700 pesos ($45US) for the most tender cut in a high end restaurant, we know we would get tender beef. It is the safest choice when in doubt. Chicken could be tasteless or even tough, pork could be chewy (we had to send one order back to the kitchen at a German beer place in Bariloche) - but not the beef. It's quite amazing!  It is also interesting that while "carne" translates as "meat", when the Argentine referred to "carne", they invariably were talking about beef.

Bife de lomo or tenderloin is generally the priciest and most tender cut although I've been told different restaurants translate it differently. We tried it our first night in Iguazu Falls in Aqua, where it was actually called filet mignon on the menu; in Buenos Aires at a parilla (grill), they called it bife de lomo - both were tasty and tender; huge too, big enough for two of us.  We have also tried the rib steak - it too was very tender with higher fat content. 

There were parillas and asados - parilla is where the meat was grilled and asado is like a barbeque where the whole side was cooked over an open fire. I tried cordero (lamb), where they give you different cuts on the same order - it was tender and flavorful. The short ribs asado was not as tender but still flavorful.  There were various cuts and organ parts of the beef in the asado but dinner is usually so late, one can only eat so much. After gorging ourselves on meat for a few meals, we switched to seafood, which I will talk about in the next post.

Aqua called it "filet mignon" possibly because it's considered a fine dining restaurant but it looked the same as the Bife de lomo below from the Buenos Aires Grill in Recoleta.  May be too big, really for filet mignon, but certainly tenderloin.

And this is rib eye steak - with an egg on top! (homestyle cooking at Esquina Varela Restaurant, El Calafate)

Short rib asado - I think I was too keen on my lamb asado, forgot to take a picture of it!

All asado restaurants have this for show either outside or inside the restaurant.  This one was in La Tablita, El Calafate. Locals came here too and the place was packed on a week night at 10pm

And of course we had a most delicious beef sandwich (also big enough to share) at this roadside place "El Titanic de Homero" in Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires

Next post: Seafood!

Hearts of palm and chimichurri

Hearts of palm was the first thing that caught my eye on the menu when we ate at Aqua in Puerto Iguazu (the Argentinian side of Iguassu Falls). It was the most delicious I've tasted because I've only had canned hearts of palm in Canada.  We had it again the following night at another restaurant, La Rueda, and it was just as good. I ordered it a third time at our last dinner in Buenos Aires, and it was not as good.  The reason - hearts of palm is produced in Brazil, not Argentina.  The ones in Iguassu Falls were good because of its proximity to Brazil.  Once we're in Buenos Aires, we were farther away from the source and the result was obvious.  Should have done my homework!

Fellow travellers reported to me that when they were in Rio, they had an entire plate of hearts of palm for the price of what we paid for the appetizer in Buenos Aires.  An obvious example of why we should eat local food!

Aqua: Note the tiny pieces of hearts of palm tucked in between the bread - precious! This is part of an antipasti of local specialties offered on the menu: hearts of palm, local fish tart, avocado, fried manioc (yuca) and corn pie - all in tiny pieces for "fine dining", which Aqua can be recommended for.

La Rueda: hearts of palm as the centrepiece of a Tropical salad with mango and papaya.

We were introduced to three Argentinian sauce dips by our guide in Buenos Aires; Chimichurri, which comes in two versions - hot and spicy (the red one at the bottom), or the green one with parsley and garlic dip very similar to pesto; and a Salsa criolla with pepper.   The red chimichurri was a bit hot but it could vary depending on how much hot sauce and chili is in it.  Ingredients include parsley, garlic, vinegar, pepper, oregano, onion, olive oil in addition to the hot sauce and chili.  The green chimichurri is minus the hot sauce and chili.  Salsa criolla has tomatoes as its main ingredient, onion, garlic, bell pepper, black pepper, scallions, olive oil and vinegar.  These can be put on bread, on steak and anything else you eat!

Tarsin I Jane Seattle

We finally made it to Tarsan I Jane, billed as "Modern Valencian cuisine influenced by the Pacific Northwest", for their Sunday specialty paella. This is only served on Sunday lunch, requiring prepayment when making the reservations. Their menu:

As I don't drink coffee, I ordered tea instead,

The beet gazpacho, with citrus and yogurt foam, totally smooth, topped with smoked sea salt:

Next is seafood ceviche, with yellow tail tuna, a mussel, small potato chips (!,and you can see the chips on both sides of the front leaf), with avocado sauce, topped with some leaves (she told me what the leaves were, but I forgot; the menu says bay leaf, but I don't think so).

Then it sausage with egg and arugula. The sausage is fresh (as opposed to cured) chorizo, on a bed of chickpeas and quinoa, and an andoni egg. She explained that Andoni is the name of the chef who invented this egg technique, where the egg is cooked such as the white and yolk are the same consistency (sounds like sous vide).

Here is the chef, Mr Tarsin - real name is Perfecte Rocher - in front of the paella. The left and right pans are for 2 people, the center one is for 4.

I ordered an additional specialty item, the carabinero. which is according to there description:

"A large, deep-sea scarlet prawn. More distinct and robust in flavor than other shrimps or langoustine. They are also coveted for their large size. None of this prawn should go to waste as their heads are a delicacy"

I was told the way to eat it was to pull the head off, and suck the inside out. As soon as DH heard it, it became all mine. 😀 It was very messy, I had to wash my hands afterwards.

Here's the main attraction. The way to eat it is to use a spoon to scrape the bottom, holding on to the napkin covered handle while doing that, and eating off the pan itself. According to the write up in the Seattle times, the paella you get in Spain are usually sourced from the same kitchen(s), frozen and distributed to the different restaurants, hence they all taste similar, but theirs is made from scratch. Here is the write-up from the restaurant:

The combination of ingredients and cooking method determine the authenticity of the paella. Never will you see paella with shrimp, chorizo, piquillo peppers, and peas in Valencia, for those are not authentic paella ingredients. Authentic paella is a very thin layer of rice with very few "toppings" because the most important part is the rice itself. .. The favorite part is the umami crunch of the socarrat, the black crust that sticks to the bottom of the pan, also known as Valencian caviar. 

We couldn't finish all the paella, and had to doggie bag the remainder.

For desert we had 2 (actually 3 since it was my Bday) - a chocolate based one, a citrus based one, and the last one has a touch of truffle oil in the rosemary vanilla sauce, which again made it all mine as DH cannot stand truffle.

Finally 2 chocolate truffles with house made gummy bears, served on a rock.

It was certainly a new concept and experience for us; the food was obviously made with love and care. Although I can't say fantastic - a large part of it was when we got to the paella I was kind of full - it was certainly good, albeit a little pricey. The left-over paella that I had for dinner tasted better than the fresh one - which meant that either it had time for the flavor to mellow, or that I was really too full to enjoy it at lunch. I do still have my eye on their dinner tasting menu,which we may attempt in the future.

Fabulous Basque cuisine in Barcelona

We have never tried Basque food before even though we were briefly in Basque country visiting Bilbao.  We were surprised to stumble upon a Basque restaurant our first night in Barcelona.  This was the Irati Taverna Basca in a small street just a few minutes' walk from the Ramblas.  

It was a place known for its tapas but it had been a long day and we really wanted to sit down for dinner even though it was really too early for the locals - the place was empty, even too early for tapas! We overruled our own practice of avoiding empty restaurants and sat down. We ordered the grilled duck magret with bittersweet summer fruit and the surprising crispy suckling pig with pisto.

To our pleasant surprise, both dishes were superbly done, in fact, the suckling pig tasted better than any we have ever tasted anywhere and we have tasted plenty of these. The suckling pig meat was super tender and the skin super thin and crispy. The duck was very tasty although slightly too rare for me; the accompanying bittersweet summer fruit was delicious as well and "bittersweet" was the perfect description for it. 

The suckling pig was a rare find and totally unexpected - which made it even more memorable. I wished we had gone back a second night but our schedule the rest of our stay did not allow for it.  Next time...

Amuse bouche - Txistorra - Basque pork sausages

Roast pork suckling pig - melt in your mouth delicious!

Duck Magret with bittersweet summer fruit

Tapas section starting up as we were leaving