Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Parrilla

While my castellano (the type of spanish Argentine speaks) is improving at a turtle-speed and still very far away from being fluent, I figured that I need to do something else to add onto my Argentinism. I had the pleasure of being invited to someone's house and they have a built-in parrilla there! And of course, we had bbq meat. yummmm... Anyway, even it was only by observation, now I know how to prepare a parrilla for asado and how to clean it. Here are what need to be done...

To start, you put big pieces of coals on the wire shelf on the side and put newspapers, woods or what not underneath to get a fire going. Once the coals started to burn, they'd break down into smaller pieces and you'd spread them evenly at the bottom of the grill. That would take some time and patience so that you can warm up the grill real good for the main event.

When the coals are all white and hot, nicely mattressed underneath the wire grill, it's time to bring in the meat! I don't think they really marinated the meat other than sprinkled them with some salt; which I think it's because the natural taste of the Argentine meat is flavorful enough. So that day, we had chorizo (pork sausage), asado de tira (beef ribs) and chuleta de cerdo (porkchop), as seen in pic.

To serve them, we put them in a little grill which is called parrillada. We actually put burning hot coals on bottom layer to keep the food fresh and hot. It was reeeallly hot to handle, gotta watch it. You can actually order parrillada in the steak house too, that's definitely something one should try since they put all kinds of meat on it and you'll get to try different cut of meat and parts of the cow, and yes, that include organs.

I did learn how to clean the parrilla but cleaning is never fun to talk about so I'm just gonna skip that. Buen provecho! (Bon appétit!)

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Ready for the jungle

I am planning to go to Iguazu Falls next month when a dear friend of mine comes to town. I was told that it's not absolutely necessary to get a Yellow Fever shot if I'm only going to stay on the Argentine side but of course it's recommended given Iguazu Falls is located at the border of Argentina and Brazil, and I doubt there is an air border control screening problematic mosquitos like how we human beings scan for flu-like SARS symptoms at the airport. (You do want to get a Yellow Fever shot if you are heading to Brazil though, I think it's even required for people from certain countries.) Especially mosquitos love me for some reason, so I have decided to be safe than sorry.

After some inquiring, I've found out that I can actually get it for free at the Public Health of Borders office! I was delightfully surprised and impressed at the same time and then my usual inquisitve nature was to ask 'why?'. Argentina has public healthcare and it is available to everyone, not just local. In fact, I was told that it is in its constitution that whoever sets foot on Argentine soil, he/she will be treated equally as any Argentine. That's why a lot of people from nearby countries, which don't offer affordable healthcare, come to Argentina just to get medical attention. This public service is, of course, funded by tax payers' money and not surprisingly, I have heard quite some disgruntled complaints from the locals about this issue.

Rather than getting all political about this right now, I just want to say I am very thankful for the generosity and hospitality of this country for making my life much easier. The process was super fast and easy. All I needed to do was headed to the public health office, passport in hand, waited for ~10mins to have my name called, clean individually packaged needle skilfully and swiftly inserted into my arm, passport returned to me with a signed and stamped certificate, and off I went vaccinated! I may feel pain or fever in 3-4 days but still Swwweeeett!

Thursday, October 16, 2008

My Favorite Dish

Not sure why it took me so long to talk about this, anyway, here we go! Argentina is famous for their cow products and that includes eating them. The most popular way of cooking the meat here is the method called 'asado', using a 'parrilla', the grill. When we say we go to a parrilla, that means we're going to a BBQ steak house.

I, of course, have a couple favorite parrillas but my ultimate one has to be this place called Manolo in San Telmo. I love Desnivel like everyone else but Manolo has this fabulous dish which is just absolutely absolutely amazing!! Get this, it's not only a sirloin steak but they fold this big steak with ham and cheese in between, in other words, it's like a ham and cheese sandwich but the steak is the bread!!! How rad is that?! I have to say, however, may be it's the inflation or they got smart, the size of this dish has significantly shrunk since a year and a half ago. They even skimmed on the garnish! Anyway, you be the judge...upper right is this year's, on the left is last year's. Same dish.

I think I have to go back again to investigate, what do you think? eheh

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Hay Un Problema Grande!

I have been delaying my visit to MickyD here because I know I shouldn't. However when every morning comes, I always think about Egg McMuffin. I usually save this treat for those 'special' mornings after a late night of whatever you fancy to imagine but this morning, totally out of laziness and burning curiosity, I decided to make my trip there. I pass by the Golden Arches everyday on my way to work and it´s only a block away. You see now how good I´ve been for not having been there yet?! Me so proud of me and you should too.

Anyway, hugely anticipating my first MickyD yummy breakfast with a growling stomach, I walked into the oh-so-familiar set up of everyday McDonald…but not so soon, don't let that fool you because the MickyD here does NOT have Egg McMuffin!!!! OMG!! [insert extreme thunder sound effect here, then cue in sad sad sad violin music] After a few deep breaths, I collected myself and reinvestigated the menu. Argentines aren't big in eating eggs for breakfast, as a matter of fact, not at all, so there is only one choice with egg. It is like the Egg McMuffin but with the bagel and we all know how their bagels are. Since my stomach was screaming at me, it wasn't the time to be picky, so I ordered the only alternative: 'Bagel con huevo (egg), lomito (ham) y queso (cheese)' with my tea.

While I was walking to the office, I kept thinking how can they not have McMuffin, it's such a simple thing... and then it suddenly dawned on me that I don't think I've ever seen English Muffin here! May be you could find them in the very N. American-like Palermo but I wonder how much they'd cost. Anyhow, sat down at my desk and couldn't wait to chow down this bagel thingy but guess what, the girl gave me the wrong one! It had no egg! Urgh! I could have gone back to exchange for it because the receipt did say so, but it felt so not meant to be so I stuck with the no-egg breakfast. It was quite a disappointment to say the least but on the bright side, they did give me warm milk for my tea.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Discovery Walk

Buenos Aires is a super walkable city and I absolutely love that about it. Traffic jam is no longer my concern, finding parking is none of my business and even when I'm tired of being a sardine in the subte, I could just walk that few more blocks, which I suspect sometimes that it could very likely be faster than trying to squeeze onto a jam-packed subte. There are also always so much to see on the streets. You never know what you'd discover when you walk around the city.

This past weekend I walked into something really cool. My friend and I, out of the ordinary, decided to go grab lunch in Microcentro (downtown downtown), which is a very busy area during the weekdays but on the weekends, it was surprisingly empty. We took the 'quiet' opportunity to scroll around. When we got to the famous Plaza de Mayo, which is another very busy area during the weekdays and it is also a favorite protesting spot, we unexpectedly saw that there was a little art exhibition going on. It wasn't only a display of art but the artists were actually painting en vivo (live). It was a little art event promoting Bolivian culture, super cool!

Since there was no people traffic to avoid or force you to move, we could actually stand there and take in the view. Not only there was this beautiful creative energy around us but also with all the gorgeous architecture, including Casa Rosa, around the plaza serenely standing under a nice blue sky and a warm afternoon sun, there was this very majestic peaceful feeling in the air. Also with the view of where the 3 main streets, including the famous Avenido de Mayo, meet, this uninterrupted scenery was absolutely stunning. I have to say that not until that moment that I was able to really FEEL the city. It was like you looking into someone's eyes and they are looking back at you.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Chinatown

While chinese food has never been my favorite food, I do need my noodle soup once in a while. Woke up to a gorgeous sunny Sunday, I decided to take the bus and venture out to Chinatown. The Chinatown here is actually quite out of the way, in the barrio called Belgrano, and it barely makes it on my BsAs map. Nonetheless, the bus took way less than I thought and pretty direct. Looks like future noodle soup cravings won't be a huge problem to solve.

BsAs' Chinatown is quite small, it's only 2 blocks and 1 across of chinese stores, restaurants and supermarkets. After my más o menos (so so) bowl of noodle soup (wasn't the kind of noodle I was hoping for), it was time to do some shopping. Within this tiny Chinatown, there are 3 very good sized supermarkets. That's a lot for this tiny town but from the traffic I saw today, no wonder they have 3. Everyone of them was jammed with mypeople, non-mypeople and tourists, and they all were buying LOTS. Bags of raw meat, crabs, big fish (big as in the length of your whole arm) and huge amount of vegetables. Looked like everyone there runs a restaurant and it was time to stock up.

The shopping experience was quite chaotic. With only a basket in hand, you couldn't believe how hard it was to go from one end of an aisle to another, not to mention to get to another one: people with loaded carts in every 3 steps just wouldn't budge, kids were RUNNING around, many were taking their time to examine every piece of products while being totally oblivious to making space for others to pass, and for some, they basically decided to knock you out of the way to get to what they wanted...sound familiar? If so, you've definitely shopped at a chinese supermarket before! Don't I miss that! I guess something never change no matter where in the world you are.

That being said, however, I have to say I was quite impressed with the products they have there. Despite of not carrying the red vinegar for dumplings and a particular type of noodle, they can definitely live up to the expectations of being the real chinese supermarket. From many different kinds of chinese sauces to spices and from very asian-specific beverages to snacks like Pocky, they have them all. They even carry some Japanese, Korean and Thai food as well. Last but not least, they have bubble tea! I haven't been a crazy fan of bubbletea for years but today, after a very tiring shopping episode, the bubble tea being sold right at the exit looked extaordinary yummy, and it was exactly the sugary fix that I needed.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Shop n Learn

The other day I suddenly realized that my spanish has actually improved quite a bit, or at least in the vocabularios (vocabularies) department, in comparison to a few weeks ago. You know how I knew? It was because my grocery shopping time has significantly shortened! I remember when I went grocery shopping for the first time, it literally took me 30 mins to buy a hand soap, shampoo and conditioner. It took me 15 minutes to buy milk. It took me another 10 minutes to buy empanada wraps. You can of course figure out from the pictures or packaging of what they are but the problem is there are many different kinds of them in front of you and you want to pick the one you want exactly; and sometimes you think you know but you don't know...

Like this one time, I really wanted apple and orange juice, so I ran into a store to the fridge, saw the packaging with fruit pictures all over them, and picked out one with apple and one with orange on them. The design had this kid riding a bike or running with a kite..I don't remember exactly but I thought cool, that looked 'healthy', I'd get them. Got home, couldn't wait to have some apple/orange juice (yes I like to mix them up, I don't think that's weird, or is it?!). Expected to see a stream of sparkly golden stream of sweet apple juice coming out from the box but noo, it's creamy white! Opened the orange one, same creamy white liquid with a tint of pale orange. I was like what's going on?! Is it bad? but I've never seen bad apple juice turned white...so then I asked my Argentine landlord and he said that wasn't juice, it's soy milk with fruit flavor (seriously?!). I did have some of it, it tasted alright but not my cup of tea really, but apparently they love it here. Okay....

So with that experience, I took extra caution when buying things. This one time I bailed out buying milk because I just wasn't sure which one to get. When there were at least 4 different kinds in front of you, all of them sorta looked the same and with all these writings on them, while I know I could be dumb dumb sometimes, but it could really get quite confusing! After some learning, I now can buy milk with confident but there's still a long way to go...I still have to figure out spices, cheese (the only name I can recognize is mozzarella, that's it!), different part of meat, types of salsa (sauce) by names, cooking methods, cleaning products...and then there's the pharmacy....loong way to go my friend, looong way to go...