Pip... unplugged

I´m back!!! Everything got fixed this morning... at 9 a.m., way too early for me since I had been out with friends till 2 a.m. and didn´t bother going to bed before 3 a.m., but this was definitely one of those cases when I don´t particularly mind sleeping less than usual.

If you had only seen me on Tuesday! I pretty much looked like a crackhead going cold turkey hahaha I do have an excuse though, I was already up to my neck with deadlines, and suddenly I had no means to upload and download stuff from the server. So what´s a girl to do? Go to one of the restaurants I have just outside of my apartment, thus solving two problems: what to have for lunch and how to upload stuff. What I wasn´t counting on was my computer not picking up their wi-fi signal correctly, but that´s another story.

A testament to how good the food is that I was able to enjoy the meal even though I was about to have a nervous breakdown hahaha AND, though it can be pricey at night, they have a very affordable lunch menu: starter, main course, drink and dessert for 20 pesos (less than 7 dollars).



I chose meat-mushroom empanadas for the starter, cheese-filled potato gnocchi with a gourgeous tomato sauce with arugula pesto... and I´m ashamed to say I chose to have coffee instead of dessert (which brought the price even lower to 18 pesos) because I knew my mind was not in a good place to allow me to fully enjoy the dessert.

Unfortunately, I don´t have any pictures of the whole deliciousness, but I do have their site (which has pictures under "fotos") and I promise to be a good blogger next time I go and take some pictures myself. I´d definitely recommend going there for lunch if you live here or come here for a visit.

In the meantime, I recommend you follow my footsteps and make arugula pesto (this recipe doesn´t use garlic though, pesto without garlic??? WTF!). I simply made mine with a bunch of arugula, 3 garlic cloves, 1 tablespoon of parmessan and olive oil. I have it safely tucked in my fridge and used it for lunch today to make a very simple, yet very tasty, tomato-egg salad.



Oh, and I got the cutest coffe mug the other day, to add to my already large, and VERY ecclectic, collection.







I´ll to be back soon with a more focused post... no actual promises, you know, but at least I´ll try not to unleash 100 things at the same time without actually elaborating on anything in particular! Until then, please bear with this rambling mind for a while.

Argentina 101: pizza and fainá

As with any country with such a strong culture of immigration, Argentina´s food is a mixture of different cuisines... though the one that clearly wins the race is Italian food, followed by Spanish food.
I know that for all of you, pizza is as common as burgers, but I also know that most of you probably never heard of something called "fainá" in Argentina (from the Genovese dialect) and "farinata" in the rest of Italy.
It´s like a "secondary pizza" used to go with the regular pizza which is made of chickpea flour and seasoned with pepper, sometimes dried onions, a bit of parmessan, etc.



It´s moist inside and crunchy outside and makes for a great complement to pizza. It can even be topped with pretty much anything and used as a pizza base (I have had it with dried tomatoes, garlic and some parmessan flakes and it is wonderful).

Since I cheated and bought a premixed base of garbanzo/chickpea flour and dried onions, I can´t abide by the recipe I´m about to give you, but it does come from an Italian site, so it should be good, right? ;)



This is what made me turn on the oven when it was 95°F/35°C outside, so if that doesn´t show this is a winning combination, I don´t know what will.

Besides, millions of Italians can go wrong when it comes to choosing a president, but not when it comes to food!!! lol



Fainá or Farinata (adapted from here)[See another interesting recipe at Recipe Zaar]

Ingredients:
• 3 3/4 cups water
• 2 1/3 cups Italian chick pea flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• rosemary (optional)
• 5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• ground pepper
• parmessan cheese (4 tablespoons)
• onion powder (around 2 tablespoons)

Preparation:
1. Mix the water and the flour with a wooden spoon or a whisk; make sure there are no lumps, add salt to taste, and mix again.
2. Add the rosemary, the parmessan cheese and the onion powder and let it sit for a while (one to three hours or even better overnight).
3. At this point add the olive oil. Remove the rosemary and pour in a baking pan.
It should be about an eighth of an inch thick, perhaps a little more. Put it in a preheated oven at 190-200° C (375-400° F). [I have found some recipes that say you should put the pan in your pizza stone or the hottest part of your oven for 15 minutes and then put it in a colder spot, usually the middle or the top, for 20 minutes more].
4. Remove from the oven when one of the corners (or the edge) starts to appear dark. Sprinkle plenty of pepper and serve.
It is of paramount importance that the pan is perfectly flat and level when in the oven, otherwise one of the corners will be thicker and will be undercooked when the opposite corner starts to darken.

la verdad de la milanesa

Ever since I´ve started blogging, I noticed I was more aware of the food I was cooking and wanted to try new things all the time. Somehow, the stuff I considered normal or everyday food didn´t cut it, it had to be something quite new and, if possible, adventurous.
Thing is, even though I love that aspect of blogging because it even made me revisit beets (more on that later), I still find much joy in what to me is comfort food at its best.
It´s those timeless classics that taste of childhood and just feel right every single time.
In Argentina, what we call "milanesa" would be at the top of the list of classics. Basically, it´s breaded meat, be it veal, the classic, vegetables or chicken.
La "milanesa a la napolitana" is THE classic, especially with French fries as a side dish.
Milanesas are sold in sandwhiches at our typical "kioskos", which is like a candy store-grocery store type of place found at pretty much every single street in Buenos Aires.
Yesterday, I was yet again struggling to meet a deadline at work and my stress level was quite high (for me at least, I´m usually quite calm about life and all that comes along with it, but sometimes it does get on my nerves). I recalled I had a nice piece of chicken in the fridge and that I had been meaning to repeat a bit of an invention I had done with the typical milanesa a few weeks ago.
Instead of using the typical breadcrumbs, I used my newly-discovered and much-loved panko and dried potato flakes (the stuff you use to make instant mashed potatoes). I got the idea of using the potato flakes from the Surreal Gourmet, but I figured using panko as well would be an interesting mix. Besides, here in Argentina, panko is only found at Asian markets and quite expensive, so mixing it up with the potato flakes also made sense for a stingy girl like myself lol
Ok,so, back to the "recipe", for the egg mix, I went along the Asian route again and added ground ginger, curry, red pepper flakes and rosemary (ok, that last bit was Italian... well, you know, I´m doing "fusion cooking" hahaha). I added a bit of milk to the eggs as usual (though some people advice using a bit of soda water as well, and I have to say, that also gives a nice crust). I did the egg mix-crumbs step twice to end up with a nice thick crust.
What is lovely about this crust, besides the crunchiness, is that it helps keep the moisture in the meat, so you get a terrific contrast of textures. I cooked my milanesas in a skillet with a bit of the curry-ginger oil I did a while back.
So there you have it, more of a tip or an idea than a recipe this time, but trust me on this one and try it out, your stomach will thank you!