Cochabamba Marvels

My second trip to Bolivia was a marvelous culinary experience. Unlike the Andean part of the country, central Cochabamba is famous for its cuisine. Hundreds of different potatoes to fish, corn in many forms and colors to duck, pork or even beef tasted so good and real, it took me back to my childhood. Each bite from a potato was a trip to what food tasted like before people decided to contaminate them with hormones and vaccines and fertilizers.  While working I probably ate at every street food vendor, and on my last day there spend hours at the local market and brought back some crucial ingredients to create a Cochabambinse dinner to my fellow comilones in BA! 

The menu consisted of majadito de pato (a paella with minced and spiced duck meat), corn (unfortunately could not find anything like theirs at my market), 3 types of potatoes in different colors and textures boiled with their skin and served with homemade mayo with owen roasted trout and olives mixed in as a dip with hot hot hot bolivian red pepper, and Colomi style tomato, red onion and goat cheese salad with lots of cilantro.  

The above picture is not from my dinner party, it's from the lunch Evo Morales invited us during the opening ceremony of a sports coliseum, as usual we forgot to take pictures of the food and table (but i swear I even had the same table cloth brought from there to decorate my humble party!)

My house smells like La Habana

Since our last meeting, Cosmo joined our planet, Fede and Louisa got engaged, and a whole month passed by.

We have not met up for so long, and there was a lot of pressure from Alexis on me, about cooking cuban food! I accepted the proposal happily, it has been a while since I soaked black beans, cleaned up yuca, rinsed rice and shredded beef. As soon as I was washing beans while the sweet smell of chopped onions, peppers and cilantro filled my house, I could not help but shed a tear--I rationalized it by blaming it on the onions---; while 2 kgs of tasty argentine meat was boiling next to the beans, slowly my entire apartment in downtown Buenos Aires felt much more familiar then ever, it felt like home, it felt like Habana, it brought back many memories, lots of love and joy.

I could not find yuca, so I opted for tostones as a side dish and bought some platanos. I feared the frying oil smell because last time I made something fried, I had to live with it for a while.

First came Alexis, I think, then Pancho and Sol, who brought with her more plantains and cream cheese, offering an ecuadorian take on tostones. I left her my kitchen and showered and changed, Sosa brought some wine and comilones quickly filled themselves with my favorite cuban delicacies: rice, beans and Ropa Vieja, with Sol's tostones and the house specialty flan de 8 huevos to finish the feast. :)

They left, and I stayed up washing dishes, freezing beans (I made enough for a cuban family, not argentine comilones), and thinking about how much I miss my life in the island. Aside from the hardships of living with very limited access to many things, I spent the happiest years of my life there. Sometimes I do wish I did not leave, but most of the time I try not to think about it.

Maybe it is the Malbec, maybe it is the mind blowing sofrito (no need to be modest about things we do really good, don't you think?) I perfected over the years, I do get nostalgic every once in a while. I am only a human!

Spring's first italian lunner B.C. (Before Cosmo)

My dearest italian friends Delfo and Roberta are expecting any day now. We are all very excited about the arrival of their son, Cosmo.

Meanwhile, after days (weeks & months) of grey skies and rain, sun finally showed her face in Buenos Aires. It was the perfect Sunday to celebrate spring and start the lunner (lunch+dinner) season. And we had to celebrate with italian food of course.

Delfo woke up very early that morning--we found out about this detail later-- and started to cook Ragù napoletano. 3 different cuts of meet and a lot of onions, Delfo's special touch and 6 hours of cooking later, we were eating penne with Ragu, accompanied with lots of wine.

Aside from the hosts and my self, the feast included my friend Nico, the uruguayan rapper and Pancho. Some of the members are still away from the patria, and hopefully will be joining us soon ;)

An Aegean Thursday

After 40 days of traveling, I am back in Buenos Aires. Even though I did not want to leave family and friends---and the beatiful heat of summertime--it is good to be back home, to a new apartment and a new era.

In order to celebrate my new apartment I decided to make a special dinner for the comilones: samples from Bozcaada cuisine! Bozcaada is the western most point (literally) of my homeland, an island famous for its vineyards, beaches and windmills. I could not bring wine with me to Argentina but my suitcases were packed with spices, hot pepper paste, olive oil, olive oil paste, and some other ingredients for my meze sampler.

I started with Sevgi Teyze's (a corky character whose house we stayed) breakfast special: triple tomato extract with walnuts, parsley, spices, olive oil and of course, garlic! With some help from Federico, I prepared the eggplant salad; then made stuffed grape leaves with seasoned rice; mum's favorite leek and parsley salad with dijon mustard dressing; beets salad with mayo and coriander dressing; carrots in garlic yogurt and the main course: Tutmac Soup from the Aegean region. It was my first time making almost everything, hoping I was true to what they really taste like. Comilones seemed satisfied, and my only turkish invitee gave me a thumb up!

Once again we forgot to take pictures of the food! We were busy filling ourselves with it and drinking a lot of wine ;)

Missing Delfo's Napolitana Feast

I missed Delfo's italian feast: from what I heard it was an incredible night for the comilones :(
Meanwhile on the other side of the ecuador, in Miami, I attended a couple of incredible dinner parties, great home cooked food by Nichole, a "lunner" and a birthday party where I ate the best cake I have ever tasted and will always stay in my paladar! Aleli's incredible honey&lavander cake! --see photo

Pancho's Feijoada

After an incredibly hectic day (I finished packing my house and moved to my new place, followed by workout and work), I was looking forward to have a nice dinner with my fellow comilones. It was Pancho's turn to cook and it was a total surprise what he was going to do!

We arrived and our chef du jour was in kitchen cutting limbs and washing beans, reading carefully instructions given to him by a brazilian friend: he has chosen Feijoada :)

For those who do not know what it is: Feijoada is a stew of beans with beef and pork meats, which is a typical Portuguese dish, also typical in Brazil, Angola and other former Portuguese colonies. In Brazil, feijoada is considered the national dish, which is served usually for lunch on wednesdays or saturdays, because it is pretty heavy to digest it, in tropical heat. Due to the fact that Buenos Aires was really cold that day, it was a great choice for dinner.

During my first trip to Rio de Janeiro, my carioca friends told me the story of Feijoada: it was a "luxury" dish of African slaves on Brazilian colonial farms (engenhos), as it was prepared with relatively cheap ingredients (beans, rice, collard greens, farofa and oranges) and leftovers from salted pork and meat production. Over time, it first became a popular dish among lower classes, and finally the "national dish" of Brazil, offered even by the finest restaurants.

While boys were in the kitchen helping Pancho; Delfo, Louisa, Pepu and I were chatting, and drinking wine, listening to music and an hour or so later, our host arrived with yummy comfort food, while Chico Buarque's famous song with the same name almost made me feel in Rio! Some had couple of servings, of course "gas" jokes were in order, our wine glasses were never empty and the cozy home of my dear friend (and a talented artist/architect)Pancho tingled with laughs all night long.

As I was leaving that night, a slight saudade sank in, I almost did not want to leave Buenos Aires this winter :(

A glimpse of Ottoman cuisine : Sultan's Delight with spicy tomato sauce and garlic yogurt

I volunteered to cook this week, even though I don't have a kitchen (or home for that matter) and picked a pretty ambitious dish, hoping I would not fail my fellow comilones.

Hünkar Beğendi (a.k.a. Sultan's Delight) is by far my favorite food from the Ottoman cuisine. My beloved greatgranma Menguc used to make it for important dinner parties, but never taught me how to make it properly. All I knew is that it took hours to make it (the recipe calls for at least one grilled mid-size eggplant per person) and minutes to devour it.

I have heard two different stories about the name of this dish, Hünkar Beğendi, which literately translates as "Sultan liked it"

The first one: the dish was created for Sultan Murad IV (1612-1640) and obviously he liked it--hence the name!



The second rumor is that the same dish was served for Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III, in Sultan Abdülaziz's Beylerbeyi Palace (Istanbul) in 1869, and she liked it so much that Abdülaziz promised her to ask his chef to give Eugenie's chef the recipe--but supposedly Abdülaziz's chef was reluctant to share the recipe and the ottoman empire ended up "todo mal" avec le francais! (could this be the reason?)

You may ask: what it is that a man who ruled 2/3s of Euro-asia liked so much? It may not sound too eccentric or sophisticated, it basically is a lamb stew (but I made it with meat balls, I suck at cooking lamb) served on a bed of creamy roasted eggplant puree with cheese. Sounds bland? Gotta try it before judging it, that is all I have to say.

Back to the dinner party: I arrived with the masa de meatballs (don't you love the spanglish?) and all the other ingredients (lots of eggplants) to the HQ of the club on Bolivar street. Thanks to my fellow sous-chefs, I was able to roast the eggplants and work on my story for the night and manage to serve the Begendi and turkish style rice (cooked with chicken broth and butter), with my last minute slant to the recipe (spicy tomato sauce and garlic yogurt to give it a kebap quality).

How was it you may ask: that I should not be answering, it would be conceded! Fellow comilones, please send your comments:) ---and photos?