The Mind of Dan Perlman

Shimmy the Chimi

Dan P.Sunday, May 20, 20120

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

There’s no question that there is more than one “national” sauce in Argentina. For some it’s salsa golf, the ubiquitous blend of mayonnaise and ketchup – yes, yes, I know, everyone likes to pretend it’s really something else, but it’s not – is it any wonder that we love it on things like fries? Some might claim salsa criolla, a vinegary mix of onions, tomatoes and bell peppers, sometimes with a little parsley or cilantro, but it’s not unique to Argentina – think pico de gallo. And I have more than one friend who would probably claim dulce de leche…. But to me, the sauce that defines the national character in Argentina is the chimichurri.

Green or red. That’s the question when it comes to chimichurri. If you were to review the overseas’ press you’d think that the sauce was little more than parsley or cilantro, garlic, and some oil and vinegar. From there chefs from Bangkok to Boston seem enamored of Argentina’s national condiment. But do they have any idea what they’re talking about?

There’s also the strange misperception that it’s the “national hot sauce”, a view that anyone who’s sampled the sauce from Ushuaia to Salta knows only counts as hot if you think paprika burns on the tongue. Neither viewpoint is correct.

First off, those of us here in the land of chimi know that there are two completely different kinds of the sauce – the first is, indeed, green, though tends to have a bit more going on than just being an herbal vinaigrette. It tends to be served with bread, fish and chicken, though there’s certainly no requirement that it be limited to that. The second is red. Well, sort of rust. And this one gets a whole lot more intricate – it’s our version of steak sauce, and it knocks A1 or HP right off the shelf.

The name of the sauce is a mystery, lost to history. More authorities than I’d care to name have speculated on everything from pidgin English to Basque to one or another indigenous languages. There’s no translation for it, it’s just what it is, and it’s delicious on just about anything. Give this version a try – you’ll never go back to the bottled stuff.

Chimichurri

60 ml extra virgin olive oil
60 ml dry red wine
60 ml red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped
1 green onion or scallion, chopped
1 small tomato, broiled, seeded and chopped
1 red bell pepper, broiled, peeled, finely chopped
1 teaspoon sweet paprika (you can use hot if you like, though it’s not traditional)
½ teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted
¼ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon marjoram (or oregano) leaves
2 fresh bay leaves

Mix all the ingredients together and shake well in a closed container. Then let the whole thing steep for at least a couple of hours to meld the flavors – shake it up or stir it every now and again. Use within a few days to preserve the freshness. Not that that will be a problem once you taste this!

If you’re not into the whole chopping thing, stick it all in the blender except the bay leaves and process it to either a coarse or smooth texture, as you prefer, then add the bay leaves and leave to steep.

You can scale this up in direct proportions – for example just double all the quantities and it will work just fine if you need a bigger quantity. This recipe makes around 300 ml of sauce though, so it’s generally enough to last for a short time.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

Buenos Aires Herald, Newspaper articles

Sauces

Batter up for pizza!

Dan P.Sunday, May 13, 20120

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

This column started a few months back with a look at one of Argentina’s contributions to the world of pizza, the pizza a la parrilla, or grilled pizza. Now, as we all know, pizza is nature’s most perfect food, encompassing the fabled food pyramid in just the right proportions, or, when paired appropriately with pitchers of soft drinks and beers, the four basic food groups of salt, fat sugar, alcohol/caffeine. All the things we love to eat and love to hate because we know, somewhere in the dark recesses of our brains, that they’re just not good for us. It doesn’t stop us from diving in, but we know about it.

With the success of two recent columns heading into gluten-free territory, I decided to throw in one more, especially because after mentioning that I’ve come up with a good gluten-free pizza crust, I got hit with a whole bunch of e-mails asking for the recipe. Likely this will be the last GF write-up for awhile, although you never know. These things have a way of working themselves out.

Now, the first part of this is coming up with a decent gluten free flour mixture. Anyone who’s ever been subjected to most of the pre-mixes out there on the market knows that they have a tendency to come out with the color and texture of a dry-cleaner’s shirt cardboard. The flavor hovers somewhere between yuck and god-awful. And that’s surprising, because there are plenty of folk out there who’ve written blogs and books and actually come up with excellent alternatives to wheat flour when it comes to baked goods. Yet, the corporate giants of “food” production seem to think that if they makes something that tastes, looks, and feels good, no one will believe it’s good for them.

So, the crust. Tried and true by both us and numerous friends – those who weren’t on gluten free diets who we didn’t tell, didn’t spot the difference. That’s as good as you can want!

240 grams rice flour
80 grams potato starch
80 grams mandioca/tapioca starch
2½ tablespoons powdered milk
1¼ tablespoons honey
1¼ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 packet instant yeast or ½ cube of fresh
300 ml warm water
2½ tablespoons olive oil

Combine the last three ingredients together and set aside for 30 minutes until bubbly and yeasty smelling. Beat together with dry ingredients in a mixer (doing this by hand takes a lot of work to get it really completely lump-free). Let it rise for 30 minutes, covered, it should be bubbly and have risen a bit, though not as much as traditional wheat dough.

The dough will be like a very thick batter, it’s not something you can knead like a traditional pizza dough. Oil a pizza pan well. Pour the dough in the pan and press/spread it out evenly. Let sit for 15 minutes somewhere warm. Bake in hottest possible oven for 7-8 minutes on the bottom rack, until the top is just set and it’s starting to turn golden underneath. Top with your favorite toppings and return to oven to finish baking – about another 10 minutes.

Here’s my quick and easy pizza sauce for when you don’t have time to slow cook one:

1 can whole, peeled plum tomatoes
2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
2 teaspoons each of dried parsley and oregano
1 teaspoon chili flakes
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

Cook garlic in oil until turning golden. Add other ingredients and cook for 20 minutes over low heat. Feel free to adjust it spicier if you like with more chili flakes, or fresh chilies.

After the dough is just set, as described above, spread as much of this sauce as you like on top of the dough, scatter the other ingredients, and top with cheese.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

Buenos Aires Herald, Newspaper articles

Baking, Gluten-free, Pizza

Through the culinary lens

Dan P.Sunday, May 6, 20120

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

Brown, green, yellow, red, Turkish, French, Puy, small, large… the world of the Lens culinaris, the lentil, is wide and varied. Delicious and nutritious, lentils pack in the third largest amount of protein of any pea, bean or nut (following soy and hemp). And, following in a long Italian tradition, particularly from the Umbrian area, Argentina has sallied forth with one of its quartet of famed stews, lentejas (which really just means lentils, come on, couldn’t you have been more creative?), joining in with mondongo (tripe), locro and carbonada. I’ve already covered a locro redux in a past column, and with cold weather coming on, we may just see the other two coming down the pike.

Now, if I were to make this stew the traditional Umbrian way, it’d be packed with the flavors of smoked and salted pancetta, the classic bacon of the region, fresh sweet and spicy Italian sausages, with a touch of fennel seed, and maybe even some other pork bits of one sort or another floating about. Here in Argentina it’s more likely that I’ll find much of that translated to beef – oh, the bacon part may still be present, but there will be ground or diced beef stewed along. There will also be lots of carrots. I appreciate the carrot in many ways, but for me, it sits there alongside cream cheese in sushi, it’s just in the wrong place. Put your carrots in your split pea soup and be done with it.

The hard part about lightening up a hearty stew like the lentejas is that so much of its flavor comes from those bits of meat and curing spices and all that sort of good stuff. And far be it for me to tell you can’t add a bit of one or another to this dish, but give it a try for your “meatless Monday” and you may just find that it’s not necessary. Oh, and this recipe is way too easy – and, of course, if you’re preference is vegan, leave the eggs out of the dish – some sauteed portobello caps would be great on top of the stew.

500 gr lentils soaked in water for 1-2 hours
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1-2 chili peppers, finely chopped
500 grams tomato purée (canned is just fine here)
1 liter vegetable stock
1 teaspoon liquid smoke
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 bunch of arugula, cleaned and stemmed
8 eggs
4 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Saute onion, celery, garlic and chili in olive oil with a little salt and pepper over medium heat until softened and just starting to color. Add the lentils, the tomato purée, liquid smoke, stock and balsamic vinegar. Cover and cook over low heat for approximately 1 hour until the lentils are tender. Adjust the seasoning to your tastes with salt and pepper. Off the heat add the arugula and mix in well, cover and let sit.

In the remaining olive oil in a good sized frying pan fry up the eggs (you can also poach them if you prefer). You may need to do it in batches depending on the size of pan you have. In a large bowl serve a couple of scoops of the lentil mixture and top with two eggs per person. Put a little grind of pepper and perhaps some good sea salt on top of each egg. Serves 4.

Just a note – why soak the lentils for 1-2 hours beforehand? After all, they cook up fairly quickly anyway – instead of an hour in the pot they might need only about two hours. While that’s true, what will happen is that the texture and flavor of the other vegetables in the dish will get lost – they’ll turn to mush by the time the lentils cook through. And while you’re saving an hour overall, it’s an hour during which you don’t need to be attending to the lentils, and isn’t it worth it to enhance the flavor and texture of the dish? I think so.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

Buenos Aires Herald, Newspaper articles

Vegetables

Spiced fish pie

Dan P.Sunday, April 29, 20120

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

We’re back to the world of empanadas this week, but something a bit different. When it comes down to it, “empanada” really just means “in bread”, a sort of misnomer since it’s usually pastry, not bread, but the point is made. We all know there are numerous varieties, from little teeny cocktail versions that are sometimes served at steakhouses as a nibbling appetizer or passed around at social gatherings, on up to big, fist sized sorts that are more ubiquitous. But it goes past that point – when in Santiago I was told about a local restaurant that places an entire boneless chicken inside of a giant pizza sized dough and bakes it that way, and even here in Argentina, there’s the empanada gallega, originating in Galicia.

Like many such recipes there are more versions of this dish than can be counted – but basically, it’s a pie. The Galician tradition tends towards pork – a mix of sausages and stewed meat, or, cod, often cooked similarly, and generally served up for Lenten, or in the past, Friday suppers. Here in Argentina it’s not surprising that when it’s a meat pie in the making, beef (often accompanied by pork chorizos) is the core ingredient, and when it comes to the fishy variety, the unfortunate use of canned tuna, which for me should be relegated to being mixed with mayo, celery, eggs and slapped on a sandwich (and never again used as a sushi topping, but I digress). I’ve also seen versions using tinned sardines, which delightful as they are on a pizza, are just wrong in a pie. There, I’ve said it.

I make this in one of two versions – I tend to buy the pastry crust – not that it’s hard to make, but they’re so readily available here that there’s little reason to. I either make individual sized ones using standard sized empanada doughs, or I make a pie sized one using the mid-sized doughs for pascualinas. The really big ones are great if you’re having a lot of friends over, but usually a bit much for dinner for the family.

Spiced Fish Pie

1 package of mid-sized pastry crusts or 8 individual empanada tapas
500 gm firm white fish (bass, grouper, cod are good choices), cubed
2-3 slices of serrano ham, chopped
2 white onions, sliced
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1-2 chilies, chopped
1 large zucchini, sliced
leaves from several sprigs each of oregano and thyme
1 teaspoon each sweet and hot paprika
100 ml dry white wine
salt and black pepper
olive oil

Sauté the onion, garlic, pepper and chili in olive oil with a little salt and pepper until softened, roughly 5 minutes. Add in the zucchini, paprikas and herb leaves and continue cooking, stirring regularly until the zucchini are just softened, another 3-4 minutes. Add the wine and continue to cook until the liquid is mostly absorbed. Remove from heat and combine with the cubed fish (don’t precook it with the mixture or it will be overcooked after baking). Set aside to cool while you prepare the shell.

Oil a pie tin or tart pan and stretch one of the doughs to not only cover the base but also come up the sides with a slight overhang. Or, in the case of individual sized ones, just lay out four of the rounds on an oiled baking sheet. Spoon the fish and vegetable mixture into the shell – use a slotted spoon as we don’t need all the liquid that remains, there will be plenty from cooking the fish and vegetables to perfect done-ness. Pack it in well so that it forms a nice solid filling. Lay the other crust on top and fold in the overhanging edges of the first dough, pinching them together to seal nicely. Cut little vent holes in the top to let steam escape so your pie doesn’t explode in the oven. Bake in a medium hot oven (180°C) for 35-40 minutes until golden brown and bubbling. Remove, cut in wedges and serve. Dinner for 4.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

Buenos Aires Herald, Newspaper articles

Baking, Fish

False friends

Dan P.Sunday, April 22, 20120

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

What’s in a word, you might ask? I’m thinking at the moment of false friends, a.k.a. false cognates – words that seem similar or the same in two languages, but have different meanings. Those of us who spend time learning the local language have discovered a whole world of them. But there’s one in particular that comes to mind today, the pancake. When we look at the local panqueque, we’re not talking about the kind of difference that there is between being embarrassed and being embarazada, an embarrassing mistake indeed.. We’re looking at, to flip the terms around, the difference between an esponjoso and a crepe.

But once you get past the disappointment that your plate isn’t going to be loaded down with a short stack of flapjacks, that puffed cake-y breakfast favorite of North Americans, and realize that you’re dealing with the European derived thin version, you’ll do just fine. What’s particularly interesting is the choice of a name here in Argentina – one might expect derivation from Spanish or Italian culture, but neither the frixuelos or filoas of the former or the crespelle of the latter seem to have made it into the local vernacular.

But, crepes they are, and they’re popular here in two particular forms. First, cooked up as a simple wrap to be used around a savory filling, often bizarre combinations featuring artichoke hearts or hearts of palm or salsa golf or blue cheese or walnuts or any of a variety of options – these are the midday staple of the “ladies who lunch” set, and there are whole restaurants dedicated to serving nothing but these. The second, and more widely seen and sampled, are two favored local desserts, the panqueque de dulce de leche and de manzana – the former generally a crepe wrapped around a whopping scoop of caramelized milk, the latter laid out flat and studded with apples, coated in sugar, and then quickly torched or flamed with rum. They’re also sometimes offered up as canneloni, that’s incorrect – those are made from pasta tubes or rolled lasagna noodles, while the crepe wrapped Italian specialty is called manicotti.

Staying with my false friend assertion, I’m going back to my recent and popular gluten free column – in fact, the only column for which I’ve gotten a flood of e-mailed thanks so far. So how about one of those classic desserts for the gluten free set? With my own take on the dulce filling, though these same crepes are used for savory fillings as well.

Milk Caramel Crepes

160 grams rice flour
4 large eggs
240 ml water or milk

Whisk all three ingredients together and let sit for about 20 minutes before using – this will allow the starch in the flour to rehydrate fully. You want a consistency that’s more or less like warm honey – if you need to, add a little more liquid or flour to achieve that. When ready give it another quick whisk to make sure it’s well mixed, heat a small skillet, omelette or crepe pan over low heat. Drizzle a little cooking oil to coat the bottom and scoop in 60ml of the mixture, swirling or spreading it around the pan evenly. Cook until the upper surface is no longer wet, and if you look, the bottom is lightly golden. Flip out onto the counter to cool. Continue until you’ve used up the batter, 10-12 crepes.

For my take on the dulce de leche filling I put a large scoop of everyone’s favorite milk caramel off-centered on the non-browned side of the crepe, add some toasted pecans and fresh blueberries (or dried ones rehydrated) that have been macerated in liqueur. Then I fold up the closest side to the caramel, fold in the ends, and roll it, like a blintz or a burrito. Line them up on a baking sheet and warm them in the oven for about 10 minutes. Spoon more blueberries over the top and eat with gusto!

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

Buenos Aires Herald, Newspaper articles

Desserts

Yo Yo, Yotam

Dan P.Monday, April 16, 20120

Ottolenghi: Plenty For those of you who like your vegetables, if you haven’t discovered London’s star chef Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipes floating around the ‘net, it’s about time you do. For awhile, from December of 2008 on, he wrote a column for The Guardian, called “The New Vegetarian“, and some of the recipes that appeared each week were pretty spectacular. The column hasn’t been updated since September of last year, and even that was seven months post the previous recipe, so it looks to be a defunct source of weekly inspiration. [Edit: Contacted by tweet from the restaurant, the column still exists just under the chef’s name, and is no longer just vegetarian but a mix of his recipes.] But not to worry – Ottolenghi’s just published his new book Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London’s Ottolenghi (he’s got two other recently released books, Ottolenghi: The Cookbook and Jerusalem: A Cookbook, that don’t focus on his vegetarian cuisine) that collects together in a convenient hardcover or, yes, ebook, not only all or most of the recipes from his column, but many more to boot.

One of the things I particularly like about the book is that it’s not preachy. First off, Ottolenghi is an unapologetic omnivore. Actually, who knows, that may be part of what ended the column, he makes a point that he and the newspaper received a lot of what amounts to hate mail from the hardcore vegetarian set, decrying everything from his lack of commitment to his unabashed use of dairy, eggs, and flavorful ingredients – you know, making things taste good. I suppose that particular subset of humanity will never get that they’re not going to attract more people to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle by being, well, dicks. I just had a similar experience – I was trying to setup some classes with a noted raw food vegan chef while I’m going to be in NYC in May, wanting to increase my knowledge of the subject and add some variety to our diet – after finding out I wasn’t committed to an all out conversion of my eating and cooking habits he got pretty abrasive on the phone and I haven’t heard from him since even though I followed up. Yeah, that just gets me all excited to learn more.

So back to the book – I have the ebook version, and it’s laid out beautifully, with great color photographs of the majority of the dishes. The recipes are easy to follow, and pretty enticing. I’d already tried a few of them in the past from reading his column and finding recipes online in other spots, and jumped right in.

I spotted this one, Soba noodles with aubergine and mango, almost immediately flipping through the pages. I had a packet of buckwheat soba noodles out already, planning to use them for something the other evening, so this looked perfect. I even had most of the ingredients, though two quick substitutions – I had a papaya in the fridge instead of a mango, and oddly, no cilantro in house, but some fresh dill, which sounded like it would work just fine. It did, the dish is a wonderful blend of eggplant, the fruit, a medium spicy dressing, and fresh herbs. He doesn’t mention what kind of soba noodles, though most of the folk out there posting about the recipe seem to be using the white wheat ones, I liked the nuttiness of the buckwheat version.

Grilled anchovy with ottolenghi soba salad

And, probably in keeping with his omnivorous philosophy with a vegetable rather than vegetarian focus, I already had fresh anchovy fillets lined up for the griddle (I wasn’t going to fire up the parrilla for two fish fillets). I loved the whole thing and had plenty of the salad left for me since Henry decided he couldn’t eat a savory salad that had fruit in it. Sometimes….

Overall a great book, I love that it’s organized by vegetable rather than by cooking technique or type of dish – it’s a delightful way to look at one particular ingredient and then have several ways to prepare it featured right in a row.

If you’re into vegetables, pick this one up.

Books (Reviews)

cookbooks

Vice forgiven

Dan P.Sunday, April 15, 20120

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

I’ve heard it said that the difference between French and Italian cooking is that for the former, it’s all about sauces, and the latter, it’s all about the main ingredient. While there’s ostensibly some truth to that, when it comes down to it, both cuisines have sauces – albeit that France’s are codified into vast tomes that detail “correct” methods and Italy’s are passed around by word of mouth or carried to the grave without ever having been spoken aloud or written down. And both cuisines rely on the best of ingredients – as does any culinary tradition out there – otherwise we may as well toss a TV dinner into the toaster oven and call it quits.

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, noted American author and satirist, is quite possibly best remembered in the latter category for his tongue-in-cheek The Devil’s Dictionary, which basically makes fun of everything sacred to politicians, self-important people, and, well, pretty much the rest of humanity. I like to keep his definition of sauces handy, just to remind myself how important they can be to a cuisine:

“SAUCE, n. The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment. A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.”

Within the Italian canon, beyond the ubiquitous marinera, the tomato sauce often referred to by descendants of Italian expats as either red sauce or gravy, neither of which truly captures it – there are a vast number of others, particularly for pasta. One of my all time favorites is the classic roast pork sugo, an amazingly delicious combination of roast pork, white beans, aromatic vegetables, herbs and wine that, rustic or not, tends to bring tears of joy to the eyes of those dipping into it.

Recently I was asked to come up with a version of the same for a vegetarian dinner, and while I could have played around with something as off-putting, but commonly used, as seitan, or cooked wheat gluten, or perhaps tofu, I decided against it. Instead, I went for a combination of mushrooms that could be cooked in different ways to emphasize their depth of flavor. My favorite pairing for this being Roman semolina gnocchi – completely different from potato gnocchi. It’s also delicious over ricotta filled manicotti, canelloni, or ravioli.

Mushroom Sugo

1 can of white beans (roughly 210gm drained weight), rinsed
2 ribs of celery, leaves included, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of dried oregano (or 2 tablespoons of fresh leaves)
1½ tablespoons tomato paste
220 ml of dry white wine
500 gm of white button mushrooms, sliced in half
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
440 ml of mushroom or vegetable stock
200 gm small portobello mushrooms, sliced
100 ml olive oil
salt and pepper

In a saucepan cook the onion, celery and garlic in 2 tablespoons of the olive oil over medium heat until the onion is soft and translucent. In a separate frying pan, over high heat, bring the other 2 tablespoons of olive oil to just the point where it’s starting to smoke, add the mushroom halves, a little salt and pepper, and cook, stirring regularly, until they’re nicely browned on the outside.

Add the tomato paste, wine, vinegar, and oregano to the vegetable mixture and cook until about half the liquid is absorbed. Add the beans and the browned mushrooms to the pot along with the stock. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to very low and let simmer for 45 minutes, occasionally stirring it.

Back in the frying pan, heat up the 100ml of olive oil, again to just the point where it’s starting to smoke, and add the portobello slices to it. Here you’re going to cook them until they’re golden brown and a just getting crisp – more or less deep-frying them. When they’re all brown, scoop them out with a slotted spoon and let them drain on some paper towel. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper.

Ladle the sauce over pasta or gnocchi and then top with a scattering of the crispy portobello “chips”. Dig in!

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

Buenos Aires Herald, Newspaper articles

Sauces, Vegetables

The G Spot

Dan P.Sunday, April 8, 20120

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

“Come on, throw us a bone.” Finally, proof that someone besides the editor has read my columns over the last few months. I was sitting in a restaurant, minding my own business, and someone walked up to me and asked if I was the guy from SaltShaker who also writes the weekly recipe for the Buenos Aires Herald. Seeing no escape, and anyway being pleased that someone actually knew about this column, I said yes. And he said, “You’re doing all these recipes to lighten things up, how about something for those of us who have to eat gluten-free?”

The G word. The latest fad to strike the diet world. Which is not to say that there is not Celiac’s disease, there is. There are also wheat allergies, which is a whole different thing unrelated to gluten. There are also, dare one suggest it, camp followers. Let’s get all scientific for a moment. Gluten is a composite of two proteins that are found in the seeds of certain grasses, particularly wheat, rye and barley. It is a protein that a good number of people have trouble digesting – symptomatically, around 1 in 1700 people have active Celiac’s disease – and the only treatment is a gluten-free diet.

But, there are all these newfangled screening tests out there, and a whopping 1 in 105 people can show a predisposition, i.e., the genetic markers to develop it. And a whole lot of those folk have decided better safe than sorry, sometimes with, and sometimes without medical recommendation. Add to that the whole group of people who jump on bandwagons, with food gurus out there telling them to cleanse their lives of everything they ever enjoyed on a plate, and you get predictable results – every other person you meet seems to be “just a bit gluten intolerant”. For these folk, the only treatment is rolling your eyes, because you remember when last month they were doing a lemon juice detox.

I’ve talked with enough people who live on a gluten free diet to have gotten a good sense of what they miss – breads, pizza, pasta and pastries. That pretty much sums up most of what we’d make from the grains of gluten, and I’ve spent some time with several of them coming up with recipes that work. Tying all this in with this column’s Argentine bent, and pizza and pastries came right out on top. Since I’ve recently written up a column on pizza, we’ll hold that for a bit and hit that latter. What’s the snack treat that every visitor to Argentina gets told they must try? An alfajór, the sandwich cookie that oreos only dream of being.

Maicenas – Cornstarch Alfajores

Traditional cornstarch alfajores still contain a good amount of flour, usually 2:1 cornstarch to flour. In order to stabilize the structure you need a good flour substitute, in this case, part rice flour and part potato starch works, with a little extra baking powder for lift.

150 grams butter or margarine
100 grams confectioners sugar
2 extra large eggs
Vanilla extract
a few drops yellow food coloring (optional)
80 grams rice flour
50 grams potato starch
250 grams cornstarch
1½ teaspoons baking powder
dulce de leche or marmalade, and grated coconut

Cream butter and sugar together. Add in the eggs and combine well. Mix in the vanilla and food coloring and sift in the four dry ingredients. Mix well to make a smooth dough. Refrigerate for 20 minutes (particularly important if you use butter rather than margarine).

Roll out with a rolling pin to a 3mm (⅛”) thickness and cut into 3cm (1¼”) circles. Place on a buttered baking sheet (or non-stick). Cook 15-20 minutes in 190°C/400°F oven. Put a spoonful of dulce de leche (make sure it’s one not stabilized with flour) or marmalade on the underside of one and sandwich with a second cookie, press down lightly so that the filling very slightly bulges out, clean up edges to make it even and pretty and then roll the sides in grated coconut.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

Buenos Aires Herald, Newspaper articles

Baking

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