Recetas argentinas de Sibaritas Academia Culinaria

Empanadas de carne Criollas (24 unidades)

Ingredientes:
1 Kilo de Cebolla Blanca
1 Kilo Cebolla de verdeo
1 Kilo Carne molida
Condimientos - pimentón, orégano, ají molido, sal y pimienta
Perejil fresco picado
Discos de masa para empanadas 12
Huevos hervidos 15 minutos (2)
Grasa vacuna 200 Gr.
Pasas de uva 50 gr.

Preparación:
Cortar las cebollas en brunoise (pequeños cubos) y reservar, luego colocar una olla a temperatura media, agregar grasa vacuna una vez derretida, colocar la carne molida, cuado comienza a adquirir color agregar la cebolla, blanca, verdeo y condimientos, dejar cocinar unos 20 minutos y luego rectificar la sazón y agregar una pizca de azúcar (para evitar acides de cebolla).

Luego cuando la preparación este incorporada y de buen gusto se calcula unos 20 minutos más de cocción, se apaga el fuego y se agrega 2 cucharadas de perejil picado fresco, los huevos picados y las pasas de uvas, se mezcla todo y se deja enfriar.

Una ves frió el relleno se extienden las masas de empanadas y se incorpora una cucharada picadillo sobre cada una y se cierran bien para evitar que se salga cuando se cocinan, se pintan con huevo crudo y un pincel para lograr un buen color doradito, colocan luego a horno moderados unos 200 grados hasta que estén doradas y se sirven.


Papas rústicas son perfume de romero (para 4 porciones)
Ingredientes:
2 Papas grandes limpias y sin pelar
Romero fresco
Condimientos - sal, pimienta, aceite de olivas y perejil fresco

Preparación:
Cocinar las papas bien lavadas y limpias sin quitar la piel unos 20 minutos a partir de agua fría.

Luego dejar enfriar y cortar en gajos en cuartos a lo largo.

Se ponen en una fuente para horno se condimentan con los ingredientes sal, pimienta, aceite de olivas y se agrega el romero fresco sobre las papas, se coloca al horno unos 30 minutos hasta que comienzan a tomar color.


Pan Casero
Ingredientes:
1 kg de harina 0000
50 gr. Levadura
100 gr. Grasa vacuna
Agua tibia cantidad necesaria

Preparación:
Colocar en un Vol. la harina, agregar al sal, una pizca de azúcar, luego hacer un hueco en el centro y agregar la levadura y la grasa tibia.

Mezcla hasta lograr una masa homogénea, amasar fuertemente con las manos. Dejar reposar unos 30 min. para que la masa luede.

Una vez estacionada la masa, cortar pequeñas porciones y formar bollitos con las manos, colocar en una placa en mantecada y llevar a fuego medio durante aprox 40 min.


Tortas fritas con Jamón Crudo
Ingredientes:
Masa de pan (ver masa de pan)
Jamón crudo

Preparación:
Estirar la masa que elaboramos para el pan casero con us palo hasta obtener ena masa fina.

Cortar en triángulos y reservar. Colocar en una olla aceite y calentar a altas temperaturas, una vez que esté bien caliente.

Llevar los triángulos al aceite y cocinar durante 3 min, retirar del fuego y adornar con jamón crudo.


Tomaticán Cuyano
Ingredientes:
2 Tomates maduros
1/4 de Pimiento verde
1/4 Pimiento rojo
2 unidades de Cebollas de verdeo
Condimientos - orégano, sal, pimienta y perejil fresco
Aceite de oliva
2 huevos

Preparación:
Pelar los tomates, cortar en cubos y reservar.

Cortar en concasse (cubos muy chiquitos) los pimientos y las cebollas y reservar.

Colocar a fuego medio un sartén, agregar aceite de oliva, los pimientos y las cebollas cortadas y luego los cubos de tomates, una vez obtenido el punto de cocción deseado, agregar los huevos batidos sin dejar de revolver y para terminar agregar perejil fresco picado y servir sobre de campo tostado.

Argentine Cooking Lessons

My program organized an excursion to a culinary school, where we could participate in a cooking class creating various flavors of Argentina. The chefs of Sibaritas Academia Culinaria y Agro Negocios were our hosts.

We arrived late morning ready to start preparing a refined Argentine lunch. We began by splitting up into three groups. My group was lead by the head chef. The other two groups were lead by two promising students. My group prepared the main courses of the meal. We began with the filling for the empanadas. Later we learned how to fold the dough around the empanadas.

LEFT: Head chef adding to empanada filling
RIGHT: Empanada team.
They were beautiful!...most of them :/

My group also prepared the baked potato wedges, and flambeed salsa served over the grilled steak later. 

Group two prepared all the side salads: potato salad with homemade mayonaise and a beautiful green salad. 

Group 3 prepared the bread sides and dessert: homemade bread rolls and salsa on top, and crepes filled with dulce de leche. 

 While most of the food was baking, Group three leader and culinary student lead us through the school's garden. Home grown vegetables, edible flowers, small vineyard, olive trees and chicken coop. They also walked us through the process they use to make their Extra Virgin Olive Oil which they package and sell.

Some of us could not resist when we were invited to eat the grapes right off the vine. They were delicious. 

After the garden tour, the chefs called for two volunteers to be the planchadores (aka masters of the grill). 

The steaks they had us grill were impressive. Some were way too thick to grill. Some were left practically raw afterwards, but most of them were juicy and delicious.

This was the finished products of my group: empanadas, baked potatos, rice and steak and salsa. 

This was the finished product of all the groups (minus dessert). It was amazing. I dream about lunches such as this...especially the steak!

The school awarded each participant with a certificate of participation and completion of the course.

Upon my return the same afternoon, the culinary marvels continued. The next cooking lesson took place in Marcos' (Maddie's boyfriend) family's house. Marcos' mother was happy to host Maddie and I as she taught us her ways around making homemade candy filled chocolate eggs for Pascua (Easter), which she later elaborately decorated. Unfortunately I was not in town during the decorating party. 

Our first creations were egg sheep! And yes they are filling with candies as well. Marcos' mother was determined to recreate an entire scene she saw online with sheep on chocolate egg hills. It was adorable. We only got this far. 

The next products were the basic eggs which were later decorated for gifts and decorations for Easter. The whole process was spectacularly clever and it is definitely a tradition I am bringing home. We have evolved from coloring hard boiled eggs...chocolate eggs taste better! 

Alfajores

Walked in on my host family baking this afternoon. 

Left: host sister Luciana aka Luchi

Center: Luciana's friend Evalena

Right: host mom Gabriela aka Gabby

They were making Alfajores de maicena. They were like cookie sandwiches with dulce de leche and coco inside. 

Luchi was quick to tell her friend that I spoke English. Evalena was of course excited and her first question was, "Do you know Justin Bieber?!" O boy, all 8 year girls think alike. 

Alfajores are a popular snack. You can find them on every corner. At the kiosks, you can buy a prepackaged one for around $6AR pesos. However, that is still high. The best ones are found fresh at bakeries or baked fresh at home. 

Here is the product of Luchi and Evalena's hard work.

They were delicious! 

On the streets

Mendoza is actually in a desert, but no one would ever know with the abundance of trees in the city. Every tree in Mendoza was planted and cared for by someone. Let the love grow! 

The irrigation system that we can thank for the water and life in the city are the Acequias! 

acequia: (uh-sey-kyuh)  irrigation ditch; technology adopted from the Spaniards 

I remember the name because if someone fell in one of these highly dangerous ditches running along every street, they would have a large @$$-ache-ia!

Another characteristic of the streets in Mendoza are the trash cans. In the US, we take our trash out once a week. Here they collect trash everyday except Sunday. The trash cans are tiny and sit on top of the counters! It threw me off just a little bit. I thought perhaps they use less trash than we do in the US. The congestion of the city makes sense to demand more trash pick up. Baskets for trash pickup outside are raised above the ground and attached to trees. 

I think one benefit of elevated trash bins are to keep trash out of the grips of stray dogs. 

There are stray dogs EVERYWHERE here in Mendoza! It is not uncommon to see one sleeping half in the street on the busiest streets downtown. Or to find one one drinking out of the acequias and then follow you at least a few blocks. They are like beggers; never look them in the eyes or they will follow you all the way home. And you are the one left with a guilty conscious! They don't neuter dogs here, nor do they have a pound to pick up stray dogs. The product: lots of stray dogs without homes who still reproduce. 

The stray dog conundrum reminds me of a similar problem my Spanish professor was venting about the other day. The President Cristina Kirchner has created some social programs, one in which she gives a stipend per child to parents. This, according to my professor, encourages young girls to have more and more children, because they will receive more stipends. However, in somewhat the same light as not neutering dogs, abortions are illegal in Mendoza. So... the problem: too many dogs and too many babies; and solution: take away control over number of births...? My teacher proposed the problem lay in Cristina's stipend for head counts in a family. However, the root of the problem may very well be that these young girls have had control of their bodies taken away from them when they lost the right to choose to carry through with a birth or choose abortion. Would the government not save money if they paid for a girl's one time abortion instead of a stipend for that child every month? I am not saying what I would do with my baby either way, if I found myself pregnant and in a bad situation. However, I am saying that that every girl/woman deserves the right to choose what to do with her body and the rest of her life. And many other people would benefit from giving the individual control over themselves instead of a few trying to control many.

Anyway back to dogs, my host aunt's dog disappeared yesterday. Her name was Frida, and she was only a couple months old. If you leave the second door open to our yard, Frida could crawl through the bars of the door that actually locks. We close both doors every time. However, some how Frida slipped out and we have been leaving the second door open for her every day now. 

Pobrecita! 

Missing puppy!

She was the most playful pup I have ever seen. So cute! I lived with her for less than 3 weeks and I already miss her. Come back to us Frida! 

Getting to know Mendoza, Argentina

After the first two weeks in Mendoza, I've started to get to know the city where I'll be living for the next 6 months a little bit better. I didn't feel the "culture shock" that I expected when I first arrived. Argentina is more Westernized than I expected, especially considering the city is highly conservative and more traditional than Buenos Aires. Mendocinos still practice "la siesta," where almost the entire city closes for a few hours somewhere between noon and 5pm. A concrete siesta time does not exist. It is dictated by the store owner's whim, as goes for any timed engagements in this city and the country for that matter. 

The hardest thing to get used to here, was the Mendocinos' sense of time. Nobody here is in a hurry and you should never expect anything to get done in a reasonable amount of time. Mendocinos like to take their time, relax and talk. Understand that dances, who's flyers said 21:00 actually start at 23:00. At home I was the type to arrive 5-15 minutes late to every thing and stress out the whole way there; here I just remember that I am never late, because they are later and never arrive early unless I want to waist a lot of time. 

The most frustrating part after first arriving was having to rely on other people, mostly on my host family. If I was trying to meet up with other Americans in my program at a previously agreed upon time and place, my ride was always at least an hour later. This problem was compounded by the fact that I didn't have a working cell phone for Argentina yet. Now if I need to get somewhere at a specific time, I quickly learned to fly solo, because I am the most reliable person to fulfill my own needs. Everybody else is preoccupied with their own. 

Another thing to get used to, that I would not have experienced if I had not elected a program with host family stay, was the difference in meal times. Breakfast happens whenever you get up. No one really eats breakfast together unless mom is preparing food for the children. Breakfast is not a large meal either. Coffee and bread is a common Argentinian breakfast. Since I've been here my breakfast every morning has been corn flakes and yogurt, instead of milk. Everything here you buy in bags; milk, yogurt, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, salsa golf (a very popular condiment, a mixture of mayonnaise and ketchup), etc. The yogurt is a liquid consistency. The first time my host mom asked me if I wanted to drink milk or yogurt, it threw me off a little bit. Lunch occurs during the siesta. My host family eats around 14:00 normally. Lunch is a family event. The first day I was here my host family and the mother's sister's family, who are also housing a student from my program next door, ate together and the grand parents came over. Lunch consists of a lot of meat. I have had more good steak for lunch than I ever ate for dinner at home! There is usually more than one type of meat, ham and cheese being a favorite and cooked on everything. Steak and chorizo (sausage) are the other most popular. Hamburgers are not very common here. Hamburgers are made almost exclusively for children's birthdays because they are quick and easy. There is always some sort of "salad" present, however they are not what North American's visualize as a salad, which has mostly lettuce, romaine, or spinach and then dressed with other vegetables and dressing. Salads among my host family are any mixture of vegetables drowning in olive oil. Almost every meal we have some sort of tomato salad; tomato and cucumber, tomato and pepper, tomato and lettuce, or just tomato, but always dowsed in oil. Dinner is not a spectacular event. Its a lot smaller and not everyone is present. There is a lot of the same food that you see at lunch time, just smaller. I have eaten homemade pizza with melted brie a couple times already. Most of the time I eat lunch left overs. There is rarely dessert at home and there are few sweet things in the house. What does exist is usually eaten very slowly. Since I've been here, there has been a small  individual size cup of dulce de leche in the frig that slowly disappears. My host mom made a lemon cake yesterday and that, on the other hand, has been disappearing faster. I won't deny it is absolutely delicious! 

If you were in search of desserts here, there are Heladerías (ice cream parlors) on every corner! I am in heaven! At first it was a guessing game, having no knowledge of what the flavors were. They do let you sample ice cream and there are a few English titled flavors, such as lemon pie, and banana split. However, banana split is made with dulce do leche and it is way better than banana split in the US! There is a wide selection of flavors and cone shapes and sizes and they are all cheap, especially considering you almost always get two scoops! I have also heard tell about an ice cream marathon here in Mendoza, where people go to all 300 or so ice cream parlors in the city and sample the ice cream and then leave for the next parlor. Something that made it onto my bucket list immediately! 

These were the first few good and bad surprises in Mendoza and there are more to come!