One of the questions I get from visitors when I take them to local markets comes down to a sort of “how do you make sense of this bewildering array of vegetables and fruits?” I stand there, looking at peaches and plums, carrots and cauliflower, and wonder just exactly what bewildering array they’re seeing that I’m not. Is it the sheer quantity of different things piled up in artful arrangements? (Did you know there’s actually a whole profession here in Buenos Aires of people who are hired to come in to the verdulerías at night and create artistic arrangements?) Or are there actually items stacked about that my guests are simply not familiar with?

I think it’s a bit of both, because I find myself remembering that I had much the similar reaction thirty years ago when I first moved to New York City from the Midwest. I grew up in a small city surrounded by farms and we went to the farmer’s market on a weekly basis during nice weather. But generally it was just a tables and baskets piled with whatever happened to be fresh that week – sometimes there might have been no more than half a dozen different items available, and there was certainly no artful arranging going on. And, there in New York, and here in Buenos Aires, there are indeed a few fruits and vegetables that were new to me when I moved here as well.

This week, I thought I’d tackle one of the most common ones I get asked about, those small spheres of dark green that locals call zapallitos or redondos or the two combined. They’re a summer squash, within the zucchini (marrow, courgette) branch of things, and in the English speaking world they’re variously referred to as round, globe, eight-ball or cannonball zucchini. And they’re completely usable in just the same way when it comes to cooking, they just look cooler. Admittedly, my first culinary experience with zucchini was at summer camp where we grew them to massive sizes and then ate them sliced, on white bread, with mayonnaise, but that’s a story for another time.

While my personal favorite thing to do with these beauties is simply slice them, dip them in seasoned flour, then beaten egg, and then panko crumbs (a Japanese bread crumb that gives a very crunchy and delicate crust) and fry them, that wouldn’t be much of an interesting recipe to present, though I still recommend doing it. Locally one of the culinary faves is the zapallito relleno a la criolla, or country style stuffed eight-ball (if I may use that term in polite company), which unsurprisingly tends to be stuffed with crumbled sausage and bacon, egg, and a lot of cheese… you know the drill. Let’s lighten that up a bit.

Stuffed Globe Zucchini

4 globe zucchini
1 chicken breast, diced small
1-2 stale (leftover) dinner rolls or bread slices
100 ml milk
100 gm grated cheese
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2-3 stalks each fresh parsley and oregano, chopped
1 green onion, chopped
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
breadcrumbs
olive oil

Trim the top and bottom of the zucchini by just cutting off a thin slice, and then cut them in half across, so that you can stand both the top and bottom up on their trimmed ends. With a spoon, scoop out a cavity, leaving about a ½ cm wall of zucchini flesh all the way around. Chop up the zucchini innards you scooped out.

Soak the bread rolls or slices in the milk until soft, then drain off extra milk. Then in a bowl mix together the chopped zucchini and chicken, and smush it all together with the softened bread, cheese, eggs, herbs, salt and nutmeg. You should end up with a mixture that’s easy to scoop into the zucchini shells, mounding them up a bit to they’re nice and pretty. Sprinkle the tops generously with breadcrumbs, drizzle a little oil over the top, and bake in a moderate oven (160-180°C) for 45 minutes until browned.

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.

You all of course remember Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman statesman and philosopher from the 1st century B.C.E. – famed orator and enemy of the emperor and empire. What you likely don’t know is that his name, Cicero, was an insult – his family was in the business of growing and selling chickpeas, cicer, in Latin (and still the genus of the plant). When he entered politics numerous advisors pleaded with him to change his name, but he declared that he would make the name Chickpea, umm, Cicero, one of glory.

Locally, and through most of the Spanish speaking world, chickpeas are called garbanzos, a name that traces back to calavance in 17th century Spanish, simply meaning bean, though some have suggested it came from the Basque, garau-antzu, meaning dry seed. Regardless, these days it is one of the most widely grown beans in the world, and popular in cuisines from the Mediterranean to the Middle East to the Indian subcontinent, to pretty much all of Latin America. What’s interesting is that it is virtually never eaten fresh, but dried and then rehydrated, a practice that seems to stretch back most of the last millenium – with only a few exceptions, such as Mexico, where under-ripe, green chickpeas, guasana, are eaten much like edamame, quickly roasted and popped straight from the pod with a little salt.

Here in Argentina the most common places we see them used are in Middle Eastern restaurants, either as hummus or falafel, or as part of the traditional mondongo, or tripe stew. Though I’ve not encountered them while dining out in a restaurant in other guises, that’s not to say that they don’t have a tradition here. Older Argentine cookbooks list recipes for both cazuela de garbanzos and cocido de garbanzos, the former a stew of chickpeas, chard, tomatoes, chilies and onions, while the latter is a fascinatingly over-the-top sounding stew of chickpeas with stewing beef, chorizos, morcillas, bacon, ham and chicken with some pasta, peas and cabbage thrown in for good measure.

I’ve tackled the latter, which is very reminiscent of the traditional Catalán dish cigrons amb tomáquet, or, chickpeas with tomato. The dish is already a healthy one – chickpeas are great for helping lower cholesterol and a great source of both fiber and near fat-free carbohydrates – it’s an easy one for my mission, I’ve just spiced it up a bit. You might also remember I promised you this as a great side dish to last week’s merluza recipe.

Cazuela de Garbanzos

500 gm dried chickpeas, soaked in cold water overnight
2 liters of vegetable stock
2 large onions, chopped
6 garlic cloves, sliced
1-2 fresh chilies of your choice, chopped (optional)
1 handful (roughly 30 gm/½ bunch) of parsley, chopped (stems and leaves)
150 gm hazelnuts (optional)
4 plum tomatoes, chopped
1 tablespoon sugar
large pinch of saffron threads
2 tablespoons olive oil
juice of 2 lemons
salt and black pepper to taste

Drain the chickpeas and place in a pot with the stock. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 45 minutes, until al dente. (Note: If you want to use canned chickpeas reduce the simmering time to 15 minutes, just to absorb the stock flavor and 1 liter is probably enough.)

In a frying pan saute the onions in the oil until lightly browned. Add the garlic, chilies, parsley and hazelnuts, turn up the heat and cook, stirring regularly, for 3 minutes. Add tomatoes, sugar and saffron and continue cooking and stirring until the liquid has been absorbed and the sofreito, as this is called, is a paste like consistency.

Drain most of the stock off of the chickpeas, leaving just enough to create a sauce when mixing in the sofreito, which you should do at this point. (Better to drain off extra and keep it aside, you can always add some back in.) Add the lemon juice and season to taste. Serves 4 as a main course or 6-8 as a side dish.

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.

Sea beets are a wild vegetable that grow along the coasts of Europe, northern Africa and Asia. Though often referred to as wild spinach, it isn’t related. It is, however, related to this column as is the ancestor of two vegetables that while wildly unpopular in general in my country of birth, are just as wildly popular here in Argentina. Perhaps this is the “root” of our differences? Those vegetables are the beet and the silverbeet, or chard, or as seed catalog hucksters call it, Swiss chard.

Today I’m going to tackle the chard, here called acelga or acelgas, the singular and plural seemingly used interchangeably. Either way, it’s a leafy green vegetable that looks kind of like very, very large spinach leaves on thick stalks, and for the most part they can be and are used in place of each other in many recipes, though they do have distinctive flavors. Chard leaves are typically separated from their stems, and here, most of the time, the stems are simply tossed, a shame, as they’re highly nutritious and in their own way, just as flavorful as the leaves.

And while perhaps I should be telling you how to use those stems (sauteed in olive oil with garlic, onion and pinenuts, then wrapped in phyllo with brandy soaked raisins, dusted with sugar and cinnamon and baked until golden brown), I’m not going to, as my focus is lightening up some of our commonly found Argentine favorites. Today’s recipe, found in every bodegón out there, is acelga a la crema, creamed chard, generally ordered as a side dish to be shared by the table. If you’ve never tried it, you should, it’s as good or better than creamed spinach (which is found on many a steakhouse menu back home though no one ever really orders it except to pretend they’re eating vegetables).

The traditional approach here, and probably almost everywhere, is to quickly boil chopped chard leaves in salted water, drain them, toss them in butter, cream and salt, and then cook them over a low flame until they meld into a limp mess, top with mounds of cheese, stick under the broiler, and, ya está! And truthfully, I love this version, fat laden as it is, and often indulge my inner Paula Deen, mixing grated cheese and crispy bacon or prosciutto into the hot chard as well. But, alas, this is not a column on how to create a heart attack.

Acelga a la “crema”

3 tablespoons/45 ml olive oil
3 tablespoons/15 gm flour
500 ml cold lowfat or skim milk
1 shallot or small onion, chopped
250 gm chard leaves and stems, chopped
100 gm grated hard cheese of your choice
½ teaspoon ground pepper
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
salt

Fill a pot big enough to hold the chard with water and add a couple of spoonfuls of salt and bring to a boil. Add the chard, bring back to a boil, and cook for 5 minutes. Drain and set aside. You can also “shock” the chard if you want in very cold or ice water to help set the bright green color, just for aesthetics. In a skillet over low heat, cook the onions in the olive oil until they’re soft. Add the flour, and cook, stirring steadily, for about five minutes to lightly toast it. Add the milk and turn the heat up slightly to a low-medium and bring to a simmer, stirring regularly. Once it reaches a simmer continue cooking for 7-8 minutes until it gets a thicker, velvety consistency. Remove from heat and season with nutmeg and pepper. Add the precooked chard and about a third of the grated cheese and then add salt to taste. At this point, you can serve it as is, adding in more of the cheese if you wish, or, you can put the mixture in a baking dish, cover with the remaining cheese and stick it under the broiler to brown. Serves 4 as a side dish.

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.

If you read the modern food press, you couldn’t be faulted for coming away with the impression that corn is the root of all evil. Movies have been made, books have been written – it makes us fat, it ruins our lives, it steals our money, it kisses babies, causes polygamy. I don’t know, I grew up with fields of corn surrounding us, stalks waving in the breeze, and we ate the stuff all the time, fresh from the field, packaged from the grocery store, and in a wide variety of forms. I’ll give you that there may be some evidence for the evils of high fructose corn syrup. Some. There’s debatable evidence on both sides of the argument.

But in its natural state there’s little more glorious in the grain world than corn. Despite being a grain, or cereal, it tends to be treated as a vegetable (except in dried form where we have polenta, grits, and porridges), and is more often cooked in ways that a vegetable would be. It’s reasonably nutritious, by no means the most, though it is one of the few grains or vegetables out there that supplies any quantity of the amino acid lutein, a necessary nutrient. Oh, and it tastes delicious, right?

An indigenous grain to southeastern Mexico, it was domesticated by the Taino people and due to its relative ease to grow, spread throughout the Americas, where it is the principal grain grown. Not all of it is grown for food, a large percentage (in the U.S. alone some 40%) these days goes to the making of biofuel. Here in Argentina, while not the largest crop grown (although until the introduction of massive soy farms, it pretty much was), some 13 million tons of corn is produced annually, making it the sixth largest producer of corn in the world.

And, Argentine cuisine makes good use of corn. Whether it’s rounds of choclo in a stew, dried white corn in locro, toasted corn kernels as snacks and garnishes, ground, dried corn in tamales, or, ground fresh corn in the local favorite, humitas, it’s all around us.

Now, many of us have tried empanadas filled with either whole or fresh corn, and also the steamed, corn husk wrapped humita version, one of the most common things I hear about them is “they’re too sweet”. Look, we all know that Argentines, particularly here in Buenos Aires, have a bit of a sweet tooth. It’s just built into the culture, and, we get used to it – it’s not that hard of an adaptation. But not all versions of these dishes are sweet, and one of my favorites is the humitas en olla, a classic of Salta that’s even got a bit of spice. I’ve spiked it up a notch or two and replaced the traditional beef fat with olive oil and the cheeses with lower fat versions, but I guarantee it’ll put humitas in a whole new light.

Humitas en Olla

6 ears corn on the cob
4 green onions, finely chopped
1 wedge or slice of yellow squash, in small dice (about 200 gms)
1-2 jalapeños, minced
100 grams olive oil
120 ml of low fat or skim milk
150 grams light port salut, cut in cubes
basil, chopped or shredded
salt, pepper to taste

Scrape the kernels from the cobs – it’s best to actually use a grater to do this, if you don’t have one, cut them off and give them a quick whirl in a food processor or blender, or even chop by hand.

In a pot (“en olla”), cook the onions , squash and chili in the oil with a little salt and pepper and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the grated corn, and just enough of the milk to keep it a wet mixture. Cook, stirring regularly, as it absorbs the liquid – add more milk as needed. When the corn is cooked through, add the cheese, and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture pulls away from the sides. Season to taste and garnish with basil.

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.