He Cooks, She Cooks

My three months in Buenos Aires are up, sadly. I loved getting to know the city by walking everywhere and sitting in parks peoplewatching. The weekends were my favorite because everyone spent the day outside. I would walk to Puerto Madero’s Costanera Sur, where I’d be surrounded by local people and food.

No, Buenos Aires doesn’t have as strong of a street food culture as some countries you see Anthony Bourdain travel to, but I found the area along the ecological reserve to be the best place to fill up for a buck or two. Although I’ve written some about this before, I have a few more street treats to add.

Bondiola — This grilled pork shoulder can be a little tough, so it wasn’t typically my first choice, but it’s a common order for others. Porteños tend to keep their food simple. Bondiola al limon (with lemon) is standard. I liked to load up on the vegetables. My sandwiches always looked like a salad bar compared to those of locals. In fact, that’s how I decided which parilla to visit, by the topping options.

The stand where I got these choripans (chorizo sandwiches) had great salads and marinated vegetables to add. Oh yeah, and it still costs a dollar no matter how much you load on top.

I also loved the caramelized onions and spicy salsa at the stand where I got this morcilla (blood sausage).

And if you read my ode to dough, you know how hard it was for me to ever pass up the grilled bread. Some stands only offer plain, but others will slice it and add cheese, ham or other filling in the middle. My favorite stand was a mother-daughter operation in the Puerto Madero park. They would mix spiced ground meat into the dough before cooking. Fantastic results.

And then, there’s dessert. People would make cakes and other sweets to sell in the parks on weekends. I usually went with a churro or an alfajor, which involves two soft cookies surrounding dulce de leche, then rolled in shredded coconut or dipped in chocolate.

Yep, I’ll miss this.

More about Buenos Aires street food here.

My tastebuds were dancing. They were truly ecstatic after eating this sandwich.

Now, we all know tastebuds enjoy cheap thrills from time to time. They get worked up over the easy highs of fat and sugar. This sandwich isn’t a brownie or a french fry. But it’s got layers of flavor that remind your tastebuds that despite many seemingly satisfying meals, they are rarely stimulated like this.

With the one-year anniversary of the publication of The Flavor Bible upon us, I thought carefully about arranging this sandwich as such. Cheese and apples are a classic combination. (Cherry Street Artisan in Columbia had a nice brie and apple panini.) The port salut cheese I had in the fridge is slightly milder than brie, but it would do. Prosciutto was a logical addition, providing some salt and that cured flavor I can’t describe. Back to the apples, I’d been wanting to make apple fennel slaw with lemon juice as a side dish for a while, but I decided the sweet and sour flavors would be perfect for the sandwich.

Think about this with me for a minute: Fresh French bread with a firm crust and pillowy inside. Warm soft cheese and extra thin slices of salty cured ham. The crisp bite of green apple with a lemon tang that gives way to the faint anise sweetness. And I don’t know much of anything about pairing wine with a dish, but I will say that a few sips of chardonnay put this whole thing over the edge for me.

Dancing tastebuds. That’s all I can say.

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When I think fast food in Argentina, I think empanadas. Baked or fried dough filled with various combinations of meat, cheese and vegetables. What’s not to like?

There are endless options for buying traditional empanadas in Buenos Aires, and each one costs less than a dollar. I’d be silly to make my own at home. Instead, I wanted to create a version you can’t find on the streets here.

For some reason I couldn’t get the idea of eggs out of my head. Then when my friend Marissa told me about a frittata recipe with bacon and caramelized onions, I had a burst of inspiration. I would make a filling with similar flavors, and encase it in the wonder that is empanada dough.

I added caramelized onions, pancetta and reggianito (an Argentine cheese similar to Parmigiano) to scrambled eggs, which I cooked until just set, but softer than I normally eat them, knowing they’d keep cooking when I fried the empanadas.

It wasn’t until after I made them that I realized these were a glamourized version of American Hot Pockets. But fresh, no preservatives and a lot more flavor. I don’t even know the last time I ate a Hot Pocket, but I’ll tell you, I’d eat these again anytime.

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When I was home for spring break, I got a few free issues of Edible Los Angeles, a small magazine I believe in its second year. If you’re not in LA, there are several other Edible cities magazines worth checking out.

I found an amazing-sounding recipe for shrimp and bacon skewers with apricot-ancho barbecue sauce that, you can ask Michael or Kat, I mentioned roughly every time someone said bbq for the next four months.

Though I still haven’t made the skewers, I made a variation of the sauce to marinate and serve with a barbecued pork loin. The spicy apricot glaze was meant to match the flavors of the spice-rubbed spare ribs that were routinely doused in an apricot ale. (I had early trouble with the grill so they came out much too charred, at no fault of the recipe. We’ve had previous success with it, but cooking three big racks of ribs on one temperamental grill was just too much for me.)

The pork loin, though, was able to cook with indirect heat once the ribs were off, so it came out much more succulent. The barbecue sauce was a hit, but of course, there was bacon in it, and let’s be honest, pork on pork is a winning combination.

Although, I imagine it would also be magical on shrimp and chicken, too.

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I have finally had a banh mi! I first learned of the Vietnamese sandwich from the LA Times in November. Then it seemed everyone was talking about them. The NY Times, LAist and multiple foodbloggers. My sister said even my high school newspaper had an article about them. I loved the idea of so many flavors coming together, so I couldn’t wait to try it.

Since I hadn’t gotten a chance to seek one out when I was last in LA, I had to make my own. When the Mizzou Meat Market had fresh Braunschweiger on sale, I knew it was time. And what better time than National Picnic Day?

If my first banh mi wasn’t going to be from a Vietnamese expert, I wanted to do what I could to make mine as best as possible. The pork tenderloin and braunschweiger were from the university, which raises and butchers meat down the street from me. I bought an egg from the Root Cellar market, which sells products from local farms, and I made my own mayonnaise. I picked up a daikon from the Asian market downtown and pickled it with shredded carrots. I made the bread from scratch. I grew the cilantro in my front yard.

I wasn’t messing around with this sandwich.

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Missouri is very capricious when it comes to weather, so we relish every warm, sunny day we get. For us, that means barbecuing.

Well, when Missouri graced us with nearly a week of sunshine we grew tired of burgers, brats and Italian sausage. To mix things up one evening, we had a Thai-inspired barbecue.

As seen on the plate, we had ground pork kebabs with a soy/chili/cilantro sauce, rice, crab wontons and cole slaw with a sesame-ginger dressing.

The wontons and cole slaw were the product of our own experimentation, as most of our recipes are, but this time we didn’t keep track of what we did. The kabobs came from a Thai cookbook, so you can absolutely recreate those.

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