Argentinian Lunch – Recipes.

For Mothers Day yesterday our Argentinian guest made lunch. It was just wonderful. So tasty and I learnt a few very good tricks. So as a practice for his  English studies, last night Federico wrote the recipes down for me and described to me out loud how he made yesterdays lunch. This made him search for a number of words he had not used before.  The lunch was wonderful and the rain held off long enough for us to be able to eat out in the garden and he improved his English. 

Empanadas,

1 lb Mama’s ground beef, in bowl, add finely chopped onion, plus handful of chopped green onions.  Cook with butter and olive oil for about 10 – 15 minutes.  Add 2 chopped boiled eggs and a small handful raisins and 1/2 cup chopped olives with 2 tsp sugar.

While this is resting make the pastry. He said the important part of this is to let the pastry sit in the freezer twice during its rolling out period.  

Pastry –  500 gram flour, 350 gram butter cubed, 100 mls water, mix together with your hands.   Roll to 1/2 inch thickness, then put whole thing still on the board into the freezer 10 minutes. Fold and roll thick again, then back into the freezer.  Then roll thin, cut out circles and  make your empanadas.

Chimichurri

• 1 cup oregano
• 1 cup parsley
• 1 whole garlic
• 3/4 cup of olive oil
• 1/3 cup white wine vinegar
• 2 tsp paprika (or  in Argentina: Aji molido)
• 1 tsp salt

Chop all ingredients very finely by hand. This takes a long time. Make 24 hours before serving so the flavour grows.

Steak on the grill. Mix scant  1/4 cup of salt in a bottle of water.  Put your finger over the top of the bottle and dribble onto meat as it cooks – maybe every 5 minutes I think.

This makes a wonderful crusty layer on the meat.  Not too much though or it will get too salty.

I hope you have a lovely day. 

Your friend on the farm.

Oh almost forgot to tell you. Our border of sweetcorn and sunflowers running down the east and half way down the South side of the field, right next to my garden, has popped up. Four rows of sunflowers, closest to the house and four rows of sweetcorn behind. Now, as long as this last bout of rain does not drown it I will finally get my collar of sunflowers around the garden.

celi