It’s spring fever…. You don’t quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”

– Mark Twain, author

Buenos Aires – No question, spring has sprung in these parts. And what better place to stop off for lunch on a beautiful spring day in Palermo than Spring, J.L. Borges 2284 Bulnes 2577 [new location], Guatemala 4452 [and moved again], a spot I’ve passed by many a times and noted the sign for comida vegetariana, and said to myself, “one of these days I have to get back here and check it out.” And, so I did. It’s a large space, very plain, and, upon entering, I realized it was a tenedor libre, an all you can eat buffet, with a Chinese, or at least Asian, bent. Of course, a buffet calls out to my deepest roots, right into the genetic material of my being, and given that I’m trying to shed a few pounds plus lower a bit of that cholesterol stuff, a vegetarian version seems the better option.  [Closed]

I think, other than perhaps the tempeh dish, I’d stick with the cold dishes, unless something in particular caught my eye one day – and I will be back, because for a mere 20 pesos at lunch, it’s a great deal in a city that’s starting to get expensive these days. And the dishes do change – or at least that’s the claim – 80 selections that change throughout the course of the day – and better quality than most of the Chinese all you can eat places I’ve checked out in town.

 A CARTOON in The New Yorker many years ago depicted a disgruntled little girl confronted with a mysterious substance on her dinner plate. Though assured by her mother that it was broccoli, she remained unconvinced. ”I say it’s spinach,” she insisted, ”and I say the hell with it.”

– Marian Burros, NY Times, 12/22/82

Buenos Aires – It’s my own fault. I told you all many months ago that I wouldn’t fall for this again. Yes, it’s the evil vegetarians. They’ve struck one more time. A series of requests over the last month or so from local and soon to be visiting folk of the vegetable-based lifestyle to please, please, please hold another of our vegetarian dinners. Promises all around to reserve, attend, enjoy… I scheduled the weekend six weeks in advance, let them all know… and waited, and waited… and not one, once again, not one of those folk who’d pleaded, made a reservation. Top that off with the three parties of vegetarian folk (not amongst the requesters), seven people in total, who did reserve, who all cancelled their reservations within the last 48 hours before the dinners, and here’s the thing. We’re not planning any more vegetarian dinners. Period (okay, unless of course I just feel like planning one). I’ve gone through this routine half a dozen times in the last 2½ years. I will still continue to provide vegetarian options when it works for the menu planned for the evening, I’m happy to do that, we will continue to have vegetarian dishes as part of the menus, but I’m not going to arrange the dinners, the public ones anyway, around the same group of people who don’t show up, time and again.

So what we did do, was a last minute change of theme. The dozen folk remaining who were split between the two nights of the planned dinners had all told me that if we were to change away from a completely vegetable based menu, they certainly wouldn’t object. I recontacted them, made sure that they were all fine with a seafood based menu, and put together a menu around a trio of personal favorites that I’m working on “perfecting”.

First up, our causa de langostinos is pretty much at the point where I want it. It’s not really a causa, it’s more just based on the idea. The base this time a mix of potato, zucchini, olive oil, lemon, and yellow pepper. The avocado layer of avocado, lime, cilantro, and banana. The shrimp sauteed in shallots and jalapeños. The latter two I think are at the point I like them – the jalapeños pair better with the banana guacamole than rocotos do. The base, I’m going to go back to the blend of potato, zucchini, milk, butter, lemon, and thyme. The olive oil, while great in a traditional causa, is too apparent in this version, and I like the addition of the zucchini and thyme for texture and flavor. Presentation-wise, I like the dish better with the guacamole atop the potato layer, but I also like the idea of something sandwiched in the potatoes, giving it some color. Maybe splitting the potatoes and half of them with yellow pepper and half with red…

Our soup was a vegetable one, with fresh, beautiful green beans in the market I couldn’t resist another stab at the Portuguese style green bean and mint soup from pretty much exactly a year ago.

On to the hot appetizer, and one of my true favorite dishes that I’ve put together over the last few years – peppered mussels with risotto cakes, made from risotto alla salernitana. More mussels this time, and a smaller risotto cake – just playing with the balance, and also the mussels were significantly smaller than the ones I found on previous renditions of this dish. I added a bit of piquillo pepper puree atop, an addition that works nicely, and flavored the dish with oregano instead of thyme, which I think works a little better. Fresh marjoram would be great…!

Our main course, baked hake with two sauces – a green bell pepper and herb sauce and a fried garlic oil – the photo from the first time around on this dish does the plate more justice, and details of the recipe are on the linked post.

I noticed that fresh Bosc pears have just come into the market – perfect little hard pears for poaching. I peeled them, cored them, and poached them in water with molasses and whiskey until just softened, and then left them in the liquid, kept warm, for several hours to marinate. The warm sauces – white chocolate, cream, and milk infused with green tea and dried pineapple; and semi-sweet chocolate, cream, and milk infused with hibiscus flower tea. A little messy to serve, but the flavors are there…

“My new pig out food is Indian food. I eat Indian food like three times a week. It’s so good.”

– Jennifer Love Hewitt, actress/singer

Buenos Aires – A few weeks back I’d been wandering around Las Cañitas looking at one thing or another, and I noticed a new restaurant done up with some sort of Taj Mahal-ish facade. I stopped for a glance and discovered it’s a new Indian vegetarian restaurant. On to the list it went for checking out soon, and this week I got back there for what turned out to be a completely delightful lunch. With our western Indian dinner coming up this weekend (and filled up, we may even open an extra day), it seemed a good moment for inspiration. Opened just four months ago, Namaskar, at Benjamin Matienzo 1616, 4772-0276, is turning out delicious north Indian vegetarian fare with a flare. Beyond just the comfortable, casual dining room, attended by the owner of the restaurant, I was won over completely when as I placed my order the first thing he asked was did I want the food spiced for local palates, medium, or Indian hot. I chose the latter, of course. [Unfortunately, this place didn’t even make it to its first birthday, a true shame as, for my tastes, it was the most authentic Indian spot in town.]

Namaskar isn’t cheap – this three course lunch, including a bottle of water and large glass of mildly sweet lassi, a favorite yogurt drink (and a perfect foil for spicy dishes), came out to 76 pesos. On the other hand, they serve up easily the best Indian vegetable dishes I’ve had since coming to Buenos Aires.

Etymology: Middle English whirlegigg, from whirlen to whirl + gigg top
Date: 15th century
…
3 a: one that continuously whirls, moves, or changes b: a whirling or circling course (as of events)

Buenos Aires – Yup, that’s been me this week. A little whirligig. Three Casa S dinners in a row, and all with completely different menus. I’m not complaining mind you, but think about what that takes to put together – 15 different dishes over three days, each for a dozen people. And, I’m going to sum up all the dinners in one single post rather than spreading them out over three.

First up, a group of students, mostly from the U.S., celebrating the 21st birthday of one of them. He organized it, his folks sprung for it (even though they didn’t get to attend), and it was one of the more interesting planning processes I’ve gone through. We started off with a list of ingredients or flavors that he particularly liked and wanted included, with a general latin and/or asian style requested, for all but the dessert, for which his favorite is carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. The menu evolved back and forth a bit and we settled on a sort of fusion theme for the evening. Then the curveball. A few days before the dinner, he upped the number of people from 10 to 12, one of the additions being a young woman who eats strictly vegan. The choices (because I won’t do a completely separate menu for just one person, it’s too much work), either she ate before coming and just sort of hangs out during dinner, or we change the menu completely. Now, I have to admit, he’s more chivalrous than I am – he opted for changing the evening to a vegan menu, other than one course, for which we agreed on a simple substitution for her. I’m pretty sure he left it as a surprise for pretty much everyone, based on reactions as we introduced the evening, but in the end, given the number of requests I’ve had already from guests for recipes, apparently they all enjoyed it quite a bit. Which is good, since vegan cooking is not my strong suit…

The first course, we stuck with a sashimi roll filled with a mix of crabmeat, and brunoised (finely diced) vegetables, which I would have bound together with a spicy mayo – in this case, since I was using the same vegetables in a tofu roll for the young lady, I made a vegan mayo – something I’ve never tried before, but it actually turned out quite well, and just added some shichimi spice powder to it for a little kick, and then served the rolls with a mix of pomegranate molasses and chili oil.

From there, we moved on to a causa – made the way we’ve made it many a time here for our Peruvian themed dinners, just without the tuna or other fish added, oh, and I used fresh dill instead of cilantro… just because. That was a hit with everyone. Then a yuca and plantain soup, made with vegetable stock.

For the main course, I thought a variation on Eggplant Yu-Xiang was in order, as the host wanted something with a good amount of ginger and spice. Instead of the pork I used some diced smoked tofu and some chickpeas, and it worked out really well.

And, the carrot cake. No claims to my own version of anything here – the cake came from The Vegan Forum, the recipe in post #12 from ScandinaVegan – using the mashed banana to replace the egg replacement (not available here as far as I know) as suggested – excellent! The frosting was a simple cashew cream – cashews, water, maple syrup – blended together to make a creamy topping. It’s not cream cheese, but it worked!

You know what – I just realized that this post is already fairly long – so I am going to separate the dinners into three posts…

 Treebeard marched on, signing with the others for a while. But after a time, his voice died to a murmur and fell silent again. Pippin could see that his old brow was wrinkled and knotted. At last he looked up, and Pippin could see a sad look in his eyes, sad but not unhappy. There was a light in them, as if the green flame had sunk deeper into the dark wells of his thoughts.”

– J.R.R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings trilogy

Buenos Aires – Over the last three years, the Green Flame has played a bit of a roll in my life here… not the one the either Treebeard or the Green Lantern carries within themselves, but that of Verdellama, the first in-home restaurant that I went to. That experience was a big part of the impetus to open Casa SaltShaker. Diego and Lola, the owners of Verdellama, went on to open a commercial restaurant. In fact, it’s been sufficient successful that they’ve now opened a small second location, more or less a lunch counter, on the lower level of the Bond Street Galería at Santa Fé 1670, where they’re open Monday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., serving up their tasty raw vegan dishes, including this delicious hindu chapati, packed with hummus, avocado, greens, along with an almond and spirulina shake. [This place has closed.]

Okay, now, before anyone panics, I’m not going raw, I’m not going vegan, I’m not going vegetarian. Tried the last of those three for about six months at one point – it wasn’t that it was difficult to do, I just like exploring the rest of the world of food too much. However, that doesn’t mean, that as part of that exploration, I can’t incorporate some interesting ideas from this niche in the world. As part of that, I noted in looking at Verdellama’s website one day that they’ve started offering classes – in particular, an introduction to the whole theory and practice of raw food vegetarian… or, as they put it, lifefood. That fit in well with my quest for interesting classes, and besides it was on the Tuesday following the end of my Middle Eastern classes. Perfect! So, off I went for a few hours of a fascinating look at the how and why of it all. All of it was interesting, some of it, in particular, more so. One of the things I particularly liked was rawmesan, a parmesan substitute that Diego makes by grinding together ½ cup sunflower, pumpkin or squash seeds with 1 teaspoon each of salt, turmeric, and nutritional yeast. The stuff is great, and how that particular combination of ingredients manages to do it I don’t know, but, if you close your eyes while nibbling on a bit, it really does taste alot like parmesan. Very strange.

I’ve been using it here and there as a garnish on various dishes over the last couple of weeks, but the place where it hit home was a simple dish that I often make for myself when I just want a quick “comfort food” plate. Spaghetti tossed with butter and parmesan – or in the case, with butter and rawmesan. The whole dairy thing within the lifefood community seems to be a bone of contention – not all lifefooders are vegans, many use honey, for example, or other animal byproducts that don’t harm the animal directly. The dairy seems to have more to do with digestibility and other problems associated with the products. So, use margarine if you like, I’ll stick with butter… and rawmesan. The dish is excellent, and look for some touches here and there in upcoming months as I explore some ideas that I got from the class. (And, if you’re in town and interested, contact them about the class – you’ll need to speak Spanish sufficiently to understand it, but it’ll definitely be a fascinating experience.)

“Vegetarian has long been used as the human equivalent of herbivore, which — along with carnivore — has traditionally been applied to nonhuman animals, for the good reason that vorare means not simply ‘eat’ but ‘eat like a wild animal’ (hence devour). The ending -arian generally denotes a conscious adherence, in contrast to the genetic programming implied by -vore. But then, who cares about tradition anymore…?

– Cory Lubliner

Buenos Aires – In my post the other day I talked a bit about the back and forth battle between the Argentine government and the ranch/farm owners that’s been going on. It continued yesterday with a major rally of support for Cristina Kirchner held in the Plaza de Mayo… and then it hit me – all the back and forth trading of insults and argument has been, for the most part, not just civil, but reasoned… no, better, measured… calculated. I don’t want to be labeled as a conspiracy theorist, but I’m going to be one for the moment. I’ve nearly convinced myself that this entire thing is a conspiracy. Bear with me… For the last several decades, president after president has declared the Argentine national diet of beef, beef, and more beef to be one of adherence to tradition in opposition to sensible eating – that the diet needs to be improved, to include other meats such as chicken and fish, and far more vegetable and grain products. Without fail, they’ve been resoundingly ignored if not booed. Cristina’s smart. Smarter, I think, than we’ve been giving her credit. Here’s the theory, and you can see it coming… she makes a deal with the ranchers to do a bunch of saber rattling, they get into all sorts of name calling and basically take the populace’s attention away from the fact that there’s no beef to be found in the markets and restaurants – or maybe she just provokes it all one-sided and they’re not in on it…. Everyone is so busy taking sides and arguing that they’re oblivious to the fact that they’re eating chicken, fish, and vegetables (though, I did, with amusement, witness a 70-something year old woman railing against the butcher in one of the local supermarkets, decrying how she and her family were going to starve to death because there was no meat – meanwhile the butcher trying to point out the chicken, fish, etc…. to her response of “that stuff isn’t fit for humans to eat!” – She was convinced he had beef hidden away in the back to help his family and friends survive, and by god, she was going to have some of it…).

It turned out purely coincidental that I’d scheduled this week to celebrate the centennial of the Lliga vegetariana de Catalunya – really, I wasn’t in on the conspiracy and had no idea that beef wouldn’t be around this week, as many of our guests accused me of – not that we serve much beef to begin with. I actually entered into the idea with a bit of trepidation – regular readers know that I’ve not been thrilled with the response to our vegetarian meals – not that people who come don’t enjoy them, but despite the regular e-mails I get asking for more vegetarian meals, the people who write me never actually show up. It was the same case this week – except, lots of other people came – non-vegetarians, voluntarily submitting themselves to an evening of non-meat eating. Shock of shocks – we filled two nights quickly and had enough demand to filll a third!

With only one exception no one seemed to have a problem with an evening of dining on Catalan vegetarian dishes – I did get a near last minute cancellation from a party of four, who had begged for a reservation just a week or so earlier, and then cancelled with “We didn’t read about the menu for your venue next Saturday 29th, but now we realize that is a vegetarian meal and we are so not vegetarians. I’m sorry, but if you could reschedule us will be nice, if not it’s O.k., but unfortunately we are not in the mood for wasting the opportunity of your cuisine with that particular menu”. Maybe I shouldn’t find that offensive, but I do, and guess what, you wasted your opportunity (like we only offer people one shot???) and no, we won’t be rescheduling you – this IS our cuisine. Not to mention they clearly hadn’t checked things out before reserving – despite having assured me in advance that they’d looked at the theme and menu for the evening – we only filled two of their four spots because of the lateness of their cancellation… that pisses me off, you know?

We opened up the evening with a Clover Club cocktail – I think I forgot to mention a few weeks back that we’ve started serving up a little welcome cocktail at the beginning of the evening while people are standing around getting to know each other. Now, why a completely obscure cocktail like this one? First, because I like obscure, you know? Second, I spotted several references to the cocktail experiencing a revival in the “finer bars” of Barcelona recently. Could be just nonsense, but that’s what called my attention to it. It’s a blend of gin with fresh lemon juice, raspberry liqueur (or syrup, but I had liqueur on hand), a dash of bitters, and an egg. Normally, the classic uses just a little bit of egg white, to give it a foamy texture, but then there’s a version called a Royal Clover Club that uses the yolk. I decided to try it with the whole egg – it works really well, making a very rich, creamy cocktail. And remember, I was whipping up a batch for a dozen people, so one whole extra large egg wasn’t overkill…

On to the food, which as best I can tell, everyone enjoyed thoroughly. We started off the evenings with an escalivada amb romescu (I’m going to use the Catalán names when I know them) – a simple appetizer of roasted vegetables – eggplant, green peppers, onions, and tomatoes – served up with my version of the area’s famed romesco sauce. For that, I char, in the oven, red bell peppers, medium hot poblano peppers, and tomatoes, roughly 2:1 in quantity, then blend those with garlic, toasted almonds, a little bread for thickening it, olive oil, red wine vinegar, and some anise liqueur – I had a bottle of ouzo on hand. Salt and pepper to taste. It’s a great sauce, and better the day or two after you make it, so best to whip it up a day early…

Next up, I think what turned out to be the majority of people’s favorite dish of the evening. I know we made extra and ate every chickpea that was to be had. The dish, cigrons amb tomiquet, or chickpeas with tomato – deceptively simple sounding, but wow, what flavors! I soaked the biggest chickpeas I could find in water overnight and then simmered them in vegetable stock for about half an hour until just al dente. Meanwhile I made a sofreito, sauteeing finely diced onions until lightly browned, then adding a paste made from several garlic cloves, a handful of parsley leaves, and some toasted hazelnuts. Cooked those together for a minute or two and then added chopped plum tomatoes, a spoonful of sugar, and a bunch of saffron threads. Cooked that all until the liquid had evaporated and it became almost pastelike. When ready to serve, I drained off most, but not all, of the stock from the chickpeas, mixed in the sofreito and the juice of a couple of lemons. Seasoned to taste with just salt. Really, if you like chickpeas, you have to try this one.

On to the soup (except the first night where I served the soup before the chickpeas, but we decided that since the main course had butter beans in it, serving two legume courses back to back felt a bit off), and a sopa de boléts, or Bolete Soup – boletes being a particular class of mushrooms. In particular, Catalunía is famous for its rovellón and pine mushrooms. The pine mushrooms were particularly beautiful, the rovellóns were a bit broken up – so what I did was made a base similar to a panade, since the classic Catalán soup used an onion base and a slice of bread in the bottom of the bowl – I slow cooked the onions, fried the bread in butter, and combined them, but instead of using milk as the soaking liquid, I simmered the rovellóns in water and then blended that right in with the onions and bread. Then I quartered or halved the pine mushrooms, depending on their size, and sauteed them in olive oil with lots of garlic and some saffron. I added those to the soup base, and just added enough water to make sure it wasn’t too thick. It had a great, earthy flavor that really captured our early fall weather…

The main course was, once again, deceptively simple, proving that sometimes what looks like a simple dish turns out better than all the complicated maneuvering that one can get wrapped up in. I made some polenta, seasoned with butter, tarragon, salt, and black pepper. I poured that into a baking pan that was lined with buttered parchment paper, smoothed out the polenta to about an inch thick, let it cool, and then refrigerated it for several hours until it was firm. Then I flipped that out onto a cookie sheet, peeled off the parchment paper, cut the polenta into squares and brushed it with some softened butter, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and broiled it – both to reheat and to form a top crust that was lightly crunchy. To serve, I sauteed garlic, red bell pepper, hot yellow lemon peppers, onions, and smoked paprika in plenty of olive oil until lightly golden. Then I added a large amount of fresh spinach leaves and cooked them down until they’d completely wilted, added in a good quantity of butter beans (only canned available here, so rinsed well and drained), covered the pan and let everything cook together for about ten minutes. To finish I added grated manchego (salty sheep’s milk cheese) and sherry vinegar, salt and pepper to taste. I ladled that, liquid and all, over the polenta squares. Interestingly, the smoked paprika, and I used a good amount of it, makes the dish taste almost like it’s got bacon or sausage in it.

We finished off with a crema catalán – more or less a very soft pudding with a broiled sugar top. Ideally, I need to get a small torch and do this more like a creme brulee, keeping the pudding reasonably firm, but I put them under the broiler and they got very soft, almost like a pourable custard – still, we all loved them, and who knows, maybe it’s better this way? For this, I simmered 6 cups of milk with the peel of three lemons for a few minutes, then let it sit for about ten minutes to infuse. Meanwhile, I whipped a dozen egg yolks with a teaspoon of cinnamon, two teaspoons of vanilla bean paste, three tablespoons of cornstarch, and two and a quarter cups of sugar, until it was light and fluffy. I strained the milk and then slowly poured it into the yolk mixture while continuing to beat it in the mixer. Then poured the resulting mix into a saucepan and over low heat, cooked it until it was nice and thick – though keep it just short of a boil or it will get lumpy. I ladled that into ramekins, cooled it, chilled it to set firmly, and then sprinkled with a teaspoon of sugar each, and put them under the broiler until the sugar was lightly browned.