Chimichuri Sauce

I had several wonderful culinary experiences on my recent trip to Argentina and Uruguay. Two of the most emotional experiences centered around childhood memories of foods that no longer taste the way they did when I was a kid but still do in these two countries.

First was the Bife Chorizo I ordered in El Establo in Buenos Aires our first evening there. As we left the hotel to venture out for dinner one of the Western Washington University choir members came out of El Establo and absolutely gushed about the steak they had just eaten saying it was the best meat they had "ever" eaten in their entire life. I glanced up at the facade of the restaurant and made some dubious look. "No, REALLY! THEE best I have EVER eaten" was their reply. Well, it was just across the street from the hotel. It would save us walking in no particular direction to find dinner and from the look of the place it couldn't be too expensive. So we decided to give it a try.

We walked in and half the tour group was sitting in various states of euphoria, moaning, eyes rolling back in their heads. "You gotta try this, here take a bite!" One bite and I was sold. We sat down and I ordered a Bife Chorizo which is really just a cut of steak and nothing to do with the latin spicy sausage. In fact the Argentinians don't generally care for spicy hot foods at all. This charbroiled steak absolutely melted in my mouth. With that first bite a memory flooded back of the steak we ate in my home when I was a kid (a rarity). My parents bought sides of beef and rented a locker to store it in. The butcher would age the beef for a period of time and then cut it up into steaks and roast and hamburger, etc. But the taste which I hadn't had in probably 35 years or more exploded in my brain and I remembered! The strong flavor of the beef, the tenderness of the meat were something I haven't tasted in beef since that long ago time. Why? Well, back in the 1950's the food industry made a critical decision and started feeding our beef cattle with corn instead of grass. Feedlots where cattle were fattened up in 12 months instead of the 5-6 years required of grass-fed beef became the way of doing business. Of course, the method thrived when the cost of beef plummeted due to this much more cost effective process. And for most American consumers, the bottom line was far more important than the quality of the beef, the health risks involved and torturous life the cattle lived. Read the Omnivore's Dilemma if you want to know what I'm talking about.

The second food memory came flooding back when I drank a Coca-Cola. A simple thing Coke, yet in the U.S. we long ago changed the flavor of the drink when we stopped making it with cane sugar and started using high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). The taste is in no way the same. It is a totally different drink and FAR better with the cane sugar believe me. I heard recently that Costco and Walmart (though I will never set foot in a Walmart) are selling a cane sugar variety of Coke made in Mexico. A recent blind taste test showed 100% of those trying both the HFCS version and the cane sugar variety vastly preferred the cane sugar option. The corporate response from Coca-Cola is that there is no perceptible difference in the taste. Of course that is the corporate line but you'd have to have had your taste buds ripped out not to taste the difference immediately.

The third food discovery was Chimichuri Sauce which was available everywhere we went and I plied liberally on just about everything I ate. It is a condiment spooned onto the plate next to your meat. With each bite a bit of chimichuri is piled up onto the meat and popped into the mouth. The freshness of the ingredients--parsley, garlic and olive oil and vinegar and citrus explodes in your mouth along and perfectly complimented the flavor of the beef.

While visiting a bed and breakfast out in the Rio de la Plata delta region of Argentina, I raved about this sauce to our hosts so much that my request for their recipe was granted after I promised never to make it anywhere near their establishment. Or rather, I should say I was given the list of ingredients. I made a batch for company yesterday and was disappointed by how it turned out initially. As the evening went along however, the sauce improved and this morning at breakfast--Wow! It would seem that it is important to give it several hours of time for the flavors to meld and then . . amazing stuff!

So here is the basic recipe:

Chimichuri Sauce

Curly leaf parsley leaves and stems, minced
Fresh garlic, minced
Red pepper flakes
Fresh or dried oregano
Red wine vinegar
Lemon juice
Olive Oil
Salt and pepper

I used a whole head of parsley, 6-8 cloves of garlic, about a 1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes, about 1 teaspoon of dried oregano, a splash of the vinegar, a squeeze of half a lemon, salt and pepper to taste and enough olive oil to make the whole mixture sort of float in the oil. Play with the recipe and make it your own. My host's recipe was actually made with corn oil. . .hmmmmm! Use the olive oil.

Give it all a few hours to meld the flavors. The longer the better. Pour into a bowl and set it out to put on the meat your serving, on bread or crostini, eggs, or whatever!

I stumbled onto a jar of commercially made chimichuri in the store and it is to be avoided. Make the fresh!
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Tango

Many of us went to a tango lesson this afternoon and ¨learned¨ to tango. We had a wonderful dance teacher and his partner showing us the basic moves. After an hour and a half lesson we went upstairs to a dance party called a Milongas. It was like stepping into a movie. Marble pillars, fine architecture including an elaborate filligreed ceiling and gold scroll accents here and there. A few dozen old folks dressed to the nines danced slow tangos around the room. Some of the older men invited our girls out on the floor to dance. It was quite touching. After a while students got out on the floor in couples and practiced what they had learned. It was quite a sight. After about and hour we left to go out to dinner. We went back to El Establo, the place on the corner from the hotel and had an equally excellent meal. I ordered the same thing I had the first night, a steak that just melted in the mouth

We attended the Señor Tango show which began a about 10 pm and ran until nearly 1 am. This show was a tango extravaganza for lack of a better word. All the best and worst about tango was on display. Two horses were even on stage rearing up on hind legs. Lots of special effects, a volume level so loud that in places it hurt the ears. Much of the performances were pre-recorded which became embarrassingly obvious at one point when a singer's song began but her mic was dead. Cheesy! I'd describe it as an Argentinian Lawrence Welk show. It even had a "big star" Fernando Soler who sang, kidded with audience members and introduced a special guest, a kid who had apparently won the Argentina's Got Talent competition and sang a couple of songs. Horrible!

The show had a big band and orchestra that sort of played and sort of accompanied the pre-recorded music. It was really quite amazing though way over the top. Near the end of the show the "big star" walked over to the edge of the circular stage and took a note from someone and then walked over in the direction of our tables. He announced that the WWU choir was in the house and even named Leslie as the director. He pleaded with the choir to sing one song for the crowd. Though completely embarrassed by the idea, Leslie nevertheless had the choir sing one of their show stopping spirituals. The crowd went nuts! The entire choir wasn't even there and they were in no way prepared to sing but on they went and as I said the crowd loved it.

It was a long day but lots of fun! I guess I surprised Leslie by actually participating in the Tango lesson and myself by how well I did considering my two left feet.

Back in Buenos Aires

After an emotional concert last night at a very live church downtown Montevideo, we were invited to a reception where our choir met the other choir, a local community group who were very good. Before the concert we noted that they planned to sing one of the pieces on our program. So Leslie spoke with the director and it was arranged for her to conduct both groups in a combined performance of the piece. What a tremendous experience. The Western choir took the stage following the other group and performed the best they have done so far. They were fantastic receiving three standing ovations and performing three encores. The crowd also appreciated that Leslie was able to speak all her comments about each piece in almost perfect Spanish. Gifts were exchanged by the directors which is a tradition here, then we went into another room which had been prepared for a reception. The two groups mingled and got to know each other. Some of their singers arranged to go out clubbing with some of our singers later in the evening. That meant meeting about midnight and some were out until nearly dawn before coming home (apparently not an unusual thing to do here).

This morning we left the hotel for the ferry to Buenos Aires at about 11 am and arrived back here in Buenos Aires about 3 pm. Our hotel from before, The Dazzler, was ready for us. And now we are preparing to head off for our next concert this evening at a church about 8 blocks from here. A reception is to follow and we should be back to the hotel about 11 pm. Tomorrow it promises to rain, our first bad weather the entire trip so far. We are supposed to go to a tango lesson and then to a Señor Tango performance in the evening about 9. We also visit Eva Peron´s grave and have another concert. Another full day ahead.

We are also enjoying the Uraguayan cheeses we have purchased.

Montevideo, Uruguay

Took a bus tour of Montevideo this morning. Drove through the beautiful parts of the city, along the shoreline stopping for a photo op at a beautiful memorial park above the Rio de la Plata and then walked the downtown pedestrian street shopping along the way.

Montevideo, unlike Buenos Aires, has miles of pristine beaches and wide sidewalks allow the casual stroller to walk for miles. It being winter there swimming and or playing on the beach was not in the cards. But shopping, that's another story!

We were dropped off at the pedestrian street and walked the several blocks to the Port Market where we sat and ate in the same place Anthony Bourdain did when he filmed his show on Uruguay. Fantastic meal of, what else, MEAT! Had a great steak, chorizo, papas, a wonderful bibidas called media y media which is half white wine and half champagne. It comes in a champagne bottle and we had to purchase a some to bring home and share with friends. Everything was delicious including the items we shared off other´s plates--chicken, pork, beef innards. Yes, innards! Intestines, kidneys, liver, even sweetbreads. Not bad. Being adventurous is the key down here. Try it out. What does it taste like. Well, first of all, the beef here is far more flavorful than American beef. We have lost much of the real beef flavor in our cattle due to corn feeding, raising the animals in feedlots and especially due to the speed with which we raise our cattle. Here cattle are fed on grass and are allowed to live longer lives helping to give the meat a much richer meatier flavor. The intestines and other innards tasted like liver to me only, in the case of the intestines, chewier. As I love liver having grown up in a home that regularly served it with carmelized onions, I enjoyed these unusual cuts of meat. The sweetbreads, which is actually a part of the brain, the thymus and pancreas to be precise, was a first for me. It was creamy, mild and delicious. I'd eat it again anytime. Here in the states we rarely see this on a menu due to the scare of mad cow disease--an issue unheard of there as again, they don't raise there cattle in disease ridden feedlots, but rather in pristine pastures out on the pampas.

Walked back up the street sticking our heads in the shops along the way back towards the bus. I sat on a bench for a while and Leslie went into some of the stores to do some more serious shopping. As I sat there, the world walked by and I took some of my favorite photos of locals--a little old lady bent over with age, groups of school children on a field trip.

Back to the hotel for a while and to prepare to leave for that evening's concert. This was, like most of our concerts, an exchange concert meaning our choir sang and a local choir also sang. The WWU Choir sang secondly. The audience's response was overwhelming with three standing ovations and encores. Following the concert a reception was held in the social hall of the church This gave us the opportunity to meet the locals but with music being the immediate commonality, language issues melted away as everyone found fun ways to communicate, our students trying out their basic Spanish and the locals using the gathering as an opportunity to practice their English. Leslie, who spent a lot of time practicing Spanish before the trip, made good use of it getting progressively better a the trip went along. She found herself getting better and better at being able to communicate with the choir directors and other locals. We ate, sang, laughed and got to know each other until nearly midnight.

Back to the hotel and good night's sleep before we leave in the morning at 10 am to take the Buquebus ferry back to Buenos Aires.

We´ve Arrived in Buenos Aires

Our long ordeal of a flight to Buenos Aires ended with our on-time arrival here this morning at 9:30 am local time. It was an uneventful flight aside from just being too long in too confined a space with too little ventilation. Customs was slow and stuffy but after only a couple of glitches we all found the courier, Susana, the bus and were on our way into town.

Our hotel, The Dazzler Tower Hotel on San Martin Street is a great place, strategically located. As prices are much cheaper here we were able to upgrade to 4-star hotels at no additional cost. Thanks Mosaic Tours!

We got a bus tour of the city which gave us a terrific overview with a stop in La Boca, a fun district of the city with brightly colored wooden buildings and tango dancers in front of restaurants. Street artists also lined the streets. Sadly, none of use had had anytime to get any Argentine pesos out of an ATM yet so no one had any cash to buy anything and there were a few artists whose work we loved! A fun place to walk through in a group but apparently not advisable on your own or especially after dark.

We also stopped in the Puerto Madero district and walked through this area and across the beautiful Puente de la Mujer pedestrian bridge. This area was filled with lovely restaurants and shops--very posh. In stark contrast was our experience a few blocks away. The bus suddenly got very quiet. We were driving through a street in an industrialized area near the freeway lined with shanties built of anything its occupants could find--cardboard and scraps of wood and metal fit together in jigsaw style and with open fires where families were eeking out an existence. The students sat in shocked silence as we drove past probably the worst poverty any of them had ever seen.

After checking into the hotel everyone went off in various directions. We along with small pack of students and groupies walked over to a giant outdoor market place in the Recoleta district that sold the wares of local artisans. I thought most of it was cheap and showed little real artisitic value. We did manage to find one artist who impressed us near the end of the market stroll and we bought one of his paintings before grabbing a taxi and heading back to the room for a rest.

This artisan market surrounded a beautiful church which would later be the site of a Sunday Mass and concert for the choir. There were also vendors selling various street foods. We tried our first empanadas here that cost only 4 pesos (about a dollar) and were huge and tasty!

Taxis are apparently a part of the adventure here. We were warned to pay in small bills as your change back from paying with a larger note is sometimes conterfeit. We never had any problems and the drivers were very nice.

The locals don't eat dinner traditionally until after 10 pm. Not being much of a night owl we headed out for a short walk before settling on a restaurant across the street from the hotel which many other students were raving about called El Establo. Read more about our experiences there in other blog entires. We tried it and what a meal. I had tongue as an appetizer and ordered an incredibly tasty loin steak called Bife Chorizo that just melted in my mouth and the flavors were so intense. I also sampled the sweetbreads ordered by another person in our party. This was my first taste of sweetbreads and I was a little apprehensive. I needn´t have been. They were so tasty, creamy, full of beef flavor. We drink a couple of bottles of Malbec, a famous Argentinian red wine. El Establo became a regular dinner and or lunch place with so many of the group that it was nicknamed Cheers!

Then back to the hotel to retire early before a 6 am wake up call. Tomorrow we take the ferry across the Rio de la Plata to Colonia del Sacramento on the Uraguay side of the river. We stay in Uraguay for several days before returning to our base here at this hotel for the remainder of our trip.

South America

We are only a week away from our concert tour of Argentina and Uruguay. The WWU Concert Choir and friends will depart Bellingham on Sunday, June 14th for Buenos Aires. I will go along as a friend and supporter of the choir, listen in on their concerts and tag along on all the other activities.

I am most looking forward to being able to rack up my sixth continent and to explore the foodie world of these two countries. I'll report back on my findings--the best (and worst if any) of the cuisines and take lots of photos. My initial research says to enjoy the beef.

The beef is grass fed as opposed to our corn fed beef. It is actually supposed to be better for you and have much better flavor. Apparently they grill all parts of the beef so there will be opportunities to sample much of the anatomy!

The weather should be interesting as it will be winter there as opposed to our summer. So the temps will probably be more enjoyable for me, a lover of cooler weather.

We also travel across the Rio de la Plata to Colonia del Sacramento, a beautiful colonial city, for a couple of days as well as another city or two before returning to Argentina.

As our trips overseas go this is a fairly short one but we are still excited about it since it takes us to a culture we have never experienced.

Upon our return to the U.S. we immediately pick up Ray and Liz Abbott, the parents of our son-in-law, Nick who will visit for a couple of weeks.

What a busy summer line up we have and that only gets us through the first week of July!

The rest of the summer will be filled with re-landscaping the front garden, summer classes, short road trips around the region, my annual salmon fishing trip to Canada and end with a visit by Kate and Nick at the end of August.

Bellevue Jazz Festival

We attended two shows at the Bellevue Jazz Festival last night. First was Kurt Elling in the small (about 400 seat theater) in the Meydenbauer Center in the heart of Bellevue. This festival was a Bellevue tradition for many years before it fell apart and was brought back from the dead two years ago. Our first show was Kurt Elling and a trio of instrumentlists including new drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr., a bassist and his long time collaborator, pianist Laurence Hobgood. Sadly, I was disappointed in Elling from the outset and my mind was not changed as the evening went along. If first impressions count, and they do with me, Elling's appearance on stage reminded me of a bad Joe Piscopo immitation of Sinatra on Saturday Night Live. His hair was slicked back, his smarmy speaking style and his swaggering around the stage left me flat. Then he began singing. He may be considered the male jazz singer of our time as quoted in a lot of his news releases, but that label may owe itself more to the fact that there is so little competition out there right now. His voice had an edge to it that seemed to display vocal damage. He also had great difficulty in maintaining pitch. Jazzers are known to stretch and play all around the notes in a tune, but too often he never quite returned to where he needed to go. I came home and listened to some of his recordings (I don't own any) on-line and discovered the same problem. He announced that he is about to release a recording of standards along the lines of Coltrane and Hartman and then sang one of my favorite Coltrane/Hartman collaborations, Dedicated to You. This ballad could not be sung better than Hartman does it and Elling only served to prove it with his over the top high speed performance. The band took off like a jackrabbit with the drummer laying down a beat that Elling followed rendering this beautiful ballad little more than a sprint to the finish. No finesse, no dedication to anybody and especially no romance.

So I have to ask what it is people see in this artist. I hope someone can explain it to me because I just don't see it. I think Elling was actually the weakest link in this performance. I loved pianist Laurence Hobgood's playing as well as that of drummer Owens. The bassist was a solid player despite being buried in the charts all evening (he is not the regular bassist). I could have listened to this trio all evening and did during the interludes when Elling slinked off to one side and let them play.


At nine we walked across the lobby to the cavernous convention hall to hear Dianne Reeves. This enormous hall is the place where conventions are held and is no place for concerts so I was horribly disappointed in the venue. But thankfully my disappointment in the evening ended there. Guitarists Russell Malone and Romero Lubambo were introduced first and they took the stage playing a duet that brought the house down. Marvelous playing. Lubambo played the acoustic guitar while Malone was on electric. They intertwined their sound beautifully, playing off each others riffs, toying with each other, teasing, smiling at each other as if they were just playing a friendly game and the audience was delighted at the opportunity to surreptitiously listen in on the game. Dianne Reeves appearance on stage was magical. She of course already arrived with the reputation for having performed the magical music on the George Clooney film Good Night and Good Luck. She sat on an elevated stool between the two guitarists and launched right into her set. I had not heard anything by Dianne Reeves other than her performance in the Clooney film and was anxious to hear what she sounded like performing other styles. From the first notes out of her mouth I was in love! The warmth and richness of her vocals overwhelmed me. The range, the effortless way she flipped into her upper register and back, dancing and playing with the notes like they were weightless clouds. I am smitten. The interplay between her and the guitarists was magical as well. I am a solid fan of this lady and look forward to the next time our paths cross.