La Cupertina, at the corner of Cabrera and Godoy Cruz in the charming Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo Viejo, is reputed to have the best traditional Tucuman empanadas in the city. And, certainly, they are rather good. So tasty, in fact, that we bought a dozen for carry-out the day we left Argentina and nursed them carefully all the way back to our freezer in Brooklyn to enjoy nostalgically a month or so ago.

Replete with savory pastry and chicken, cheese and beef humita (a stew of grated corn kernels, beef, hardboiled eggs, raisins and olives, but more about that in a later post) fillings, we were strolling arm-in-arm along the streets of our own neighborhood when we came across one of the glories of Brooklyn life: a selection of books put out for free on someone’s stoop. Among them was Así Cocinan Los Argentinos (How Argentina Cooks) by Alberto Vázquez Prego — a more timely find would be hard to imagine — and, of course, we immediately grabbed it.

La Cupertina is also famous for other dishes from the province of Tucuman and, in general, its serious approach to the regional specialties from Argentina’s north and north-west — the areas bordering Paraguay and Bolivia — where stews of meats, potatoes, beans and other native ingredients are common. These hearty, one-pot dishes have much more in common with the endemic foods of the peoples of the altiplano (high plains) of Bolivia and Peru due to historic imperial ties to the Inca Empire which once extended south into modern-day Argentina than with the more Europeanized cuisine of the larger cities to the south and east.

Nonetheless, many of them have been universally adopted as Argentine national dishes, emblematic of both the country’s aboriginal inhabitants and the creole (criollo) culture of the first Spanish settlers and gauchos. And, like other national dishes of South American countries, they aren’t the kind of meals that you can, or should, eat every day due to the lengthy preparation requirement and risks to long-term cardiac health. Similarly, there is rarely a single, unified recipe used by all cooks, only certain ingredients which must be included and others which are optional depending on how your mother used to make it and what is available. So it is with locro.

Deriving its name from the Quechua word ruqru, the origins of Argentine locro can be traced to the Andean region of Cuyo in western Argentina from where it spread across the country. Predominantly a winter dish (indeed at La Cupertina they only serve it April through November), locro is most commonly eaten on May 25 in celebration of the May Revolution of 1810 which kicked off the Argentine War of Independence.

In basic terms, locro is a thick soup made by boiling the dry kernels of white hulled corn (hominy/posole) until tender and adding various meats and other vegetables to it. Indeed, what makes locro locro and not puchero or humita, or something else, is the hominy that, by the end of the lengthy cooking process, creates a thick and slightly sweet base. Locro can also be identified by what it does not contain, i.e. anything green. Leafy vegetables are shunned entirely by locro recipes — another reason, perhaps, that one shouldn’t eat it often.

Aficionados of locro usually identify which of the many varieties it is they’re eating by the perceived emphasis on additional ingredients like pig’s trotters (patitas), squash (zapallo), bone marrow (huesos de caracú), chorizo, dry beans (porotos) or beef tripes (mondongo). However, this, of itself, can cause confusion, since some locro recipes call for several of these things. Any uncertainty in this regard, though, should not result in panic. After all, locro is a dish with broad shoulders, a reliable, sturdy presence, that once you get to know it — in all its forms — provides the kind of assurance that is so rare in this flimsy and transient world.

This should not suggest that locro is a one-paced repast, steadfast yet insipid, dependable but dull — quite the contrary, in fact. For not only does it have many faces, but these are given a supplemental spark of personality by the addition of sofrito or quiquirimichi, a spicy, fried lard sauce that is used as a condiment, providing further reasons why Argentines might only eat it on special occasions.

The recipe below, found in Así Cocinan Los Argentinos, and followed reasonably closely in terms of quantities, yields enough locro for a week of lunches of the kind that preclude productive afternoons. If you have a large family or are cooking for a block party, locro is probably the ultimate scalable dish as you can simply add more hominy, beans, broth and pig’s feet as necessary. It’s also great for those type of occasions because all the ingredients are inexpensive, relatively easy to obtain and create a wildly satisfying meal that your guests will be working off until you make it again next year. But, if you’re cooking for fewer people or simply don’t have a large enough pot for all this, you can halve it and still easily feed four adults.

This was definitely the longest hiatus in We Are Never Full history (bear in mind our history is only a measly 27 months) but, finally, we’re back! (exactly a month to the day since we went away) You may not be as excited as we are to be slowly getting back to normal, but if you visited us right now in our new apartment you’d notice how far from normal our living conditions are.

After almost 3 weeks of eating take-out and restaurant meals, we spent our Labor Day doing hard labor. A day in a North Korean Labor Camp would’ve felt better to my legs and feet than a day trying to set up shop in our new place. Oh, and a tip to anyone moving after accumulating five years of crap (along with a fear of throwing things away), PAY PEOPLE TO PACK FOR YOU or at the least pay people to move everything you own for you. Maybe it was our youth, maybe our naïvete, maybe our pride, but we really thought it was a great idea to pay movers to move only our furniture because we could “get the rest ourselves”. Let’s put it this way, my thighs look like this after walking box after box (after box) up to our new 3rd floor walk-up over the past few weeks.  Oh, and did I mention my three-days of shredding a 30-gallon garbage bag  full of “I’ll get to shredding it next weekend” bills/credit card statements/etc.  Guess what, Amy? 2004 was five years ago – you didn’t shred it “next” weekend.

But, the craziness is almost over now. In a few weeks, we’ll be more settled after we buy a few more pieces of furniture and put those last few clothes away. The kitchen, of course, was the first thing we worked on. Our new kitchen has a bit less cabinet space than our last one and a smaller refrigerator, which isn’t great given the many, many dry goods and countless bottles of condiments we own, but we’ve just about found a home for everything, and we’ll be okay going forward if we make sure to limit our worst excesses at the grocery store.

So,the first meal we made in our new apartment was a simple, seasonal farewell-to-summer cream of corn and crab soup with a chile emulsion using much of what is readily available in our neck of the woods. Corn is coming out of our wazoo and is about 15 cents an ear;  the bay at my parents’ shore house is full of crabs; our pepper plants are almost ready to die, but have given us many, many spicy cayennes, cowhorns and red hots. And the yucca, well, it’s not exactly local and may not be as easy to get depending on where you live, but substitute a potato and you’re good to go. Strangely, a soup was actually very satisfying since the weather, coinciding uncannily the start of the school-year, has actually turned kind of cool.

Thanks for sticking with us through our hiatus. We hope you really enjoyed your summer and we can’t wait to start cooking some cool-weather meals for you. Until then, crack open a cold one and enjoy the last few days of summer.

Virtually everywhere they make sausages, and in a lot of places they don’t, some form of sausage in bread combination is sold by street vendors, often to the inebriated, and, in many cases, the consumer is best advised to be under the influence before taking their life in their hands with one of these mystery bag sandwiches. The night I met my wife, for example, I remember being horrified that her sister (who had introduced us earlier in the evening) was reckless enough — even after 50 drinks — to buy an insanitary-looking sausage in a roll from a street vendor in London’s Piccadilly Circus.

Where sanitation isn’t the biggest issue, a sense of disappointment often is, with the boring and insipid offerings available at any of the myriad hot dog stands lining almost every Manhattan street exemplifying this. Do not get me wrong, a New York hot dog — pulled from the disquietingly opaque water, slapped into a curiously spongy potato roll, and painted with mustard and an unidentifiable relish – is certainly a real taste of NYC street life, and when you’ve been pounding the city streets for an afternoon, almost enjoyable, but it is not great street food, regardless of what Adam Platt at NYMag says. (feel free to post your own disagreements with me below)

However, the more I travel, the more I realize that these sausage and bread combos can actually be both safe for human consumption and, in some cases, a delicacy. You may remember our merguez frites sandwich of last year, which was not just the best street food we’d ever had, but right up there with the finest sandwiches too. Even the overtly filthy nature of that vendor in Carcassonne failed to put us off. Indeed, it’s probably true that we would risk a searing bout of intestinal drainage on a weekly basis if only merguez frites were readily available.

So, during our recent trip to Argentina we were intrigued by rusty little cabins that we passed throughout Buenos Aires, either parked-up or slumping shack-ily on the sidewalk, emitting wonderfully aromatic smoke and advertizing choripán and morcipán on gaily painted signs. After one particularly lengthy trek across the city from Palermo to Recoleta to the edge of Balvanera, we were ravenous and mentally-prepared for something of questionable hygiene wrapped in a roll and doused with condiments.

Following a tip we had picked up online, we headed to the corner of Avenida Juan B. Justo and Avenida Santa Fe in Palermo [right next to the Palermo Subte stop (D line)], to a very sweaty looking snack bar for a pre-dinner choripán — a chori(zo) on bread (pan). Smaller than our pitifully-sized Brooklyn apartment and decorated with aging posters of scantily-clad beer models, our senses immediately told us that this cafe was exactly the kind of place that would deliver the equal measures of delicious, greasy victuals and stinging doses of the raging squitters we were looking for. [Happily, only the former arrived.]

Your typical sausage and roll combination features a roll that follows the dimensions of the sausage: long and narrow. However, one of the many things I immediately liked about choripáns and morcipáns is that they invert this absolutist relationship on its head. The sausage is split down the center, seared on both “faces” a la plancha and, dripping with bright orange fat, is placed inside a rectangular hunk of French-style bread. Not only is it texturally superior to its flimsy American counterpart, but its increased surface area and the greater density of the bread, make it a far better designed sandwich than the hot dog. As, enclosed in a larger roll, your choice of condiments — in this case, mayonnaise, “golf sauce” (not unlike Russian/Thousand Island dressing), ketchup, mustard, and chimichurri — are less able to escape and damage shirt or shoes, as frequently happens when biting down on the open-topped frankfurter.

Unfortunately, once you go choripán, you can never go back, and their absence from my everyday street food scene has become a source of extreme frustration now that I’m back in New York. Passing-by vendors of the humble hot dog several times a day, I can’t help sneer a little at their meagre offerings of limp weiner and rubbery potato roll, and I mutter to myself that the magnificent, spicy, chewy choripán is a shining light compared to their ghostly reflections.

Happily, choripáns and morcipáns are easy and fun to make in the comfort of your own home and make a great alternative to the unimaginative backyard barbecue staples of weiners and burgers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we couldn’t find Argentine-style chorizo in Brooklyn, but the easy to find, and similarly fresh and soft Colombian and Mexican varieties make worthy replacements, even if they are longer and slimmer than their Argentina counterparts. This past weekend, humming “the choripán man, the choripán man’s really got it going on…” inanely to ourselves, we mixed-up a tangy chimichurri, grilled ourselves some chorizo, and enjoyed a taste of Buenos Aires with a cold beer, even if we had to imagine the warm weather and palm trees.

I remember the night in Madrid Jonny and I thought it would be a good idea to do a tapas crawl after having many, many drinks. We weren’t yet at that “I’m so drunk I must shovel food in my mouth now” place, but were maybe a few bottles of Mahou away. It was a great idea at first, but as the drinks piled on, the tapas were looking smaller and smaller and smaller to me. This girl was getting hungry!  But we had to soldier through. We had to follow the pact we had made after that bottle of rioja that we would have a drink and a tapa, then move to the next bar and have another drink then a tapa.  We would never surrender to buying dinner that night.  Tapas and drinks. Tapas and drinks only.

After the fourth “drink and tapa” run I began to have that feeling in my stomach. You know how it goes. The feeling that if a whole pizza was put in front of you you’d eat it all in one sitting. Or that you could die for some double crispy fries with a vat of blue cheese dressing (as a dipping sauce, of course… come on, it’s good!). Or maybe, just maybe, you’ll get to that next tapas joint only to find that the raciones are four times as large as they usually are?

Well, we stumbled upon the next bar and my prayers were answered. There on the tapas menu was everything I was searching for – a bit greasy, a bit spicy and a bit crunchy with a bit of starch and plenty of protein. Soon a rather large cazuela was placed in front of my salivating mouth containing Picadillo de Carne con Huevos y Patatas. Happy happy joy joy, happy joy joy.

Like two rabid dogs attacking a carcass, we dug in. It was amazing. A flavor sensation. But as quickly as it was put on the table it was just as quickly  lapped up and in our bellies. I still remember that day well and we love to make our own version of that tapa at home. Of course, we eat it as a Saturday brunch dish instead of a drunken bar snack. We substitute the beef picadillo for minced chorizo and use the rendered fat to cook the potatoes in. Yes, not the lightest meal to start a Saturday, but you’ll definitely smile while you’re eating it (and then crawl back into bed to sleep it off).

Many of European countries have a one-pot dish into which odds and ends of the beast and various cheap vegetables are thrown, and cooked until all components sit fall-apart tender in a rich broth. Examples include Lancashire hot-pot in the UK, the famed French pot-au-feu, and the various cocidos of Spain.

Depending on where you’re eating one of these stews, you may find it all served together – the pot placed in the middle of the table for diners to dip a ladle into and fish for the tastiest morsels – or in a series of courses beginning with a soup course of the broth (caldo), followed by a vegetable course, and finally the meat.

With the long-awaited advent of spring, we realized that our opportunities for making such a dish were melting away with the last rimes of dirty snow. So, armed with a foot of fresh morcilla found at the (ultimately rather disappointing) Essex Street Market, a pound of dried chickpeas, and several large slabs of pork belly (courtesy of the very magnificent Mitsuwa Japanese supermarket in Edgewater, NJ), we decided it was now or not until the fall.

Everything we’d read suggested making cocido took both a long time and wasn’t easy. Happily, neither of these proved to be entirely true, and if you’ve got a couple of hours to spare one weekend, you can, with minimal preparation, make yourself a wonderfully flavorful three-course meal for 6 people without even breaking a sweat.

Though research suggests it doesn’t conform exactly to a typical Cocido Madrileño, this preparation closely resembles the cocido we ate in Madrid last year, and, ingredient-wise, is very similar to an Asturian-style Cocido Montañes with the exception of using chickpeas (garbanzos) instead of white beans.

For us, in spite all the porky deliciousness of the meats, the broth was the best part of this dish. It was incredibly delicious and was so infused with the flavors of all the ingredients that it was impossible, even in taking a small bit of each meat and vegetable in a mouthful, to get the same flavor.

Ultimately, the best thing about this cocido was not just the great satisfaction derived from a simple, peasant dish, but that it made us feel oddly wistful about the departure of winter. A feeling we did not anticipate at all.

Cocido Madrileño/Montañes (serves 4-6)
Ingredients

• 2 pints (1liter) good chicken stock
• 2 pints (1liter)cold water
• 1lb (1/2kilo) pork belly, cut into 4 large pieces
• 2 pigs feet (trotters) cut into pieces
• 1lb dry chickpeas
• 2 large chorizo
• 8inches (20cm) or 2 large links morcilla (blood sausage)
• 4oz (250g) smoked bacon
• 1 large onion, studded liberally with cloves
• 1 head garlic, sliced in half
• 2 large carrots, peeled and cut into 2inch lumps
• 1/2 head of savoy cabbage
• 2 potatoes, peeled and cut into quarters
• 5 large sprigs flat leaf parsley bound with twine
• 3 bay leaves
• 8 black peppercorns
• 1/2lb vermicelli (fideos)

Recipe

1. Soak chickpeas (garbanzos) in plenty of cold water for at least 8 hours, preferably overnight
2. Drain and reserve
3. Brown meat on all sides, using a tbsp of olive oil if necessary
4. Remove chorizo to a plate and add stock, water, bay, peppercorns, bacon, parsley, onion & garlic to other meats in a pot large enough to accommodate all your ingredients
5. Bring to a boil and then simmer, covered, for 1 1/2 hours.
6. Wrap chickpeas in cheesecloth, secure with kitchen twine and add to pot.
7. Introduce chorizo to pot at this time, bring back to a boil, and simmer for another hour.
8. Add potatoes, carrots and cabbage to pot and simmer for another 1/2 hour.
9. Cocido is basically done at this point. Check for seasoning and correct if necessary.
10. With a slotted spoon, remove everything from pot and place in a dish in a warm oven.
11. Skim fat off broth before bringing it to a boil
12. Break vermicelli into 1-2inch (2-4cm) pieces and add to broth.
13. Boil for 4-6 minutes or until al dente
14. Serve noodle broth as first course.
15. Plate other components (after removing chickpeas from cheesecloth bag) and enjoy with a large glass of spicy Ribero del Duero.
16. Rub extended belly and take well-earned nap (optional).

Juan Camilo took us to the place he feels is the most authentic and best Colombian restaurant in the Colombian section of the incredible ethnic diversity that is the Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Cositas Ricas. In order not to make the podcast redundant, I will not write a lengthy description of our experience that day - only a few important details - but suffice it to say that Amy and I learned a great deal about Colombian food over the course of our meal and now understand that we have barely scratched the surface of an exciting and delicious food-culture.

Naturally, I tried their bandeja paisa, the “super bandeja”, and Amy had the similar, but different, palomilla a la parilla (it comes without chorizo or chicharron), after starting with caldo de castillo or short-rib soup (said to be the perfect cure for a hangover), and several Colombian meat empanadas with aji (a spicy, vinegary condiment) as appetizers. Juan Camilo ordered tiritas de lomo (grilled pork ribs), and one of our companions, Don, in a bid to be different, had an enormous plate of the restaurant’s version of surf & turf: chicken and spicy shrimp.

We must take this opportunity to thank Juan Camilo for generously taking the time to share his country’s food and culture with us that afternoon in Jackson Heights, and for his good humor and forebearance in agreeing to the interview that made this podcast.

Sadly, Cositas Ricas has no website of its own, but you can check out their menu here. If you are ever in the vicinity of Jackson Heights and have a serious hunger (and I mean serious otherwise you probably shouldn’t bother), we strongly encourage you to check this place out, or indeed any of the hundreds of restaurants and food outlets in this neighborhood. The sheer diversity is staggering and the myriad aromas are enough to make anyone salivate.

Note on Colombian Juices
I’m still working on figuring out the English names for some of the fruit we drank as juice at Cositas Ricas, but here are some links that might help you visualize what we are talking about: Coruba; Lulo; Maracuya

Anyone who takes even the briefest glance at our body of work on this blog cannot fail to notice that we have a definite proclivity towards the porcine, and so it is that this top five is perhaps the most hotly contested monthly selection thus far.

The pig is, in our humble opinion, the greatest animal on earth, and picking only five products made from its wondrous bounty was a difficult thing. Beatific smiles spread across our faces as we considered our porky love and suggested different products and cuts of the beast, but, after much debate, a surprising consensus form between us, with only two points of disagreement.

Let us know what your favorite pork products are and win a package of pork-related kitchen goodies.

Amy & Jonny’s Top Five Pork Products:
1. guanciale (cured pig’s jowls) - Jonny: switch out for Spanish cured lomo
2. chorizo (pimenton flavored cured sausage)
3. jamon iberico (special Spanish ham)
4. chicharrones (fried pork rinds)
5. scrapple (a Philadelphia tradition made with lots of bits of pig and cornmeal) - Jonny: switch out for unsmoked English back bacon rashers

What’s originally from India, can be green or yellow, starchy or sweet, is consumed throughout West Africa, the Caribbean, and Central & South America, and (best of all) can be used to mimic a phallus in hilarious kitchen antics? Yes, that’s right, it’s the plantain – aka banana plantain, cooking plantain, beer banana, bocadillo plantain, tostones, maduro, patacon, chifle, dodo, etc. – and like almost all the best kinds of foods (to us at least) it is most deliciously prepared deep-fried.

Throughout the Caribbean, Central America and the northern half of South America, starchy green plantains, aka patacones or tostones, are one of the principal components of almost every meal, and, depending on where you are and who is doing the cooking, you’ll find them sliced into rounds (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic), cut on the bias to make wedges (Honduras, Cuba), or sliced length-wise into, well, long, um, sausages (Venezuela, Colombia, Jamaica, Trinidad)…Typically, the plantain is fried once before being lightly flattened (in some places this is done with a special tool, but we used a meat mallet or rolling pin to good effect) which gives more surface area, exposing more of the starch to oil, and hence creating crispier patacones/tostones. Then, it’s tipped back into the fryer and cooked until crispy and golden on all sides.

In many places, nothing more is done to it and it’s eaten just like that, maybe with some salt or sliced avocado. In Haiti, Dominican Republic and Cuba they are often dipped in criole/creole/criollo sauce and eaten with chicken or shrimp, whereas in Venezuela and Colombia they often go into sandwiches with meat and vegetables. Let’s face it though, they’re good anyway you like them. They’re like potato chips on steroids and will fill even the hungriest belly in double-time.

After eating them prepared in a similar way at a restaurant near us in Brooklyn, we spread our patacones with mashed avocado, but then gilded that lily adding sauteed onions, our world (ie: home) famous black beans, crumbled morcilla (blood sausage) and chunks of chorizo. A little squeeze of sour cream and hot sauce finished things off. If you can’t find, or won’t eat morcilla, it would still be delicious with just chorizo, but we can imagine topping patacones with shredded chicken, roast pork, shrimp, fish, or anything you like really. Half a green plantain each made a decent “light” dinner, but these would make fantastic finger-food at a party if you cut them into bite-sized pieces. Viva el patacon!

In honor or one of our commenters (Elra), we thought it would be helpful to actually post a recipe instead of posting an idea of how to make this. So, here ya go:

PATACONES (serves 2 as a meal and 4 as an appetizer)

Ingredients:

• 2 green plantains 
• enough peanut or veggie oil to fry
• lime
• salt

Optional toppings:

• Our “famous” black beans
• Smashed avocado with a bit of lime or homemade guacamole (avocado, lime juice, cilantro, bit of garlic)
• Sauteed onions and green peppers (saute some sliced onions and green peppers in some olive oil w/ a bit of lime juice and salt for about 8 minutes until semi-soft)
• Sauteed chorizo and/or morcilla sausage (again, slice chorizo into small pieces and crumble morcilla into similar small pieces, then saute in until warm and a bit charred – about 6-8 minutes)

What to do:

1. With a sharp knife, slice the plantain skin lengthways downwards about 1/2 inch deep.  Do not puncture the plantains, you only want to make it easier to remove the skin.  Remove skin.
2. Slice the plantian in half lengthways (from top to bottom).  Heat up oil. Fry each half of plantian for about 1-2 minutes then remove to drain on a paper towel.  Let cool for a moment.
3. Grab your mallet or tostonera, flatten the plantain as best you can until it is about 1/4 of an inch thick.  We basically just smashed ours with a mallet, but be kind of careful not to hit too hard because you don’t want it to split. Once they are all flattened, fry again until golden brown, the time will be determined by how hot your oil is.
4. Remove from oil and allow to drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with some salt and a squeeze of lime juice and top with your favorite toppings!

It’s nearly a year now since we were in Madrid, and while during that time we’ve managed to shed some of the excess poundage we gained there, we’ve lost none of our longing to be back there. And, it’s a strange thing about longing that all your memories become more vivid, and you remember even the smallest details.

So, on Sunday morning, we sought to recreate what, while in Madrid, seemed like a comparatively minor facet of our stay – breakfast. In Spain, as in other parts of southern Europe, a typical breakfast is characterized by three things: sugar, caffeine and nicotine, but it would unfair to suggest there is no greater variety than the, admittedly delicious, combo of pastries, coffee and strong cigarettes.

Roommate Mario (our hotel, not an actual person), in the Opera district of the city (not far from the magnificent Palacio Real – see above), was a small, boutiquey-type place and not, by any means, the type of hotel we’d commonly stay in. And, apart from the unusually reasonably-priced room, what convinced us to pick this hotel was its renowned “free” breakfast.

Research suggested that not only was it sumptious and delicious, but that it was served until noon, which, given that we like to sleep on vacation and would be eating and drinking later than normal to fit in with the insomniacal Madrileño lifestyle, was another bonus. I’ve always found it despicable and somehow mean that most hotels only serve breakfast until 10am, so that people who actually on vacation nearly always miss it.

Our typical breakfast at Roommate Mario was, of course, a tongue-tinglingly powerful cup of café solo or “capuchino”, a tiny glass of freshly-squeezed and enjoyably sour orange juice, and several triangles of the most perfect tortilla española layered on fresh, crusty bread with slices of manchego and lomo – cured loin of pork delicately flavored with pimenton – and topped with a drizzle of golden Andalucian olive oil and, our new favorite condiment, grated tomato. I know it doesn’t sound like a wildly exotic or even a very exciting breakfast (especially to our Spanish readers), but to us, who usually only shove down a slice of toast before hurrying out of the door of an average morning, it was out of this world.

So, this past weekend, as you can see from the pictures, in a flood of nostalgia, and flush with many of the requisite ingredients, we recreated our Madrid breakfasts in our Brooklyn apartment – courtesy of a very kind deli counter worker at Union Market (69cents for six slices of jamon iberico!) and through the good graces of our friend Nuría Farregut at Spanish Recipes and the miracle of vacuum-packing. In fact, so thoughtful and kind is Nuría that yesterday, just as we were mourning the last of the chorizo de bellota she sent us from La Boquería over the summer, another package arrived with some magnificent-looking dry salami/salchichon! It’s as if we managed to telepathically transmit our longing for Spain to Nuría in Barcelona. I mean, we’re still desperate to return, but at least our stomachs are temporarily satisfied! Thank you so, so much, Nuría! Una amiga en jamón, es una amiga por la vida!

We are fortunate enough to live in a city with a ridiculous amount of diversity when it comes to restaurants, and one place we frequent often is a ‘hip’ Colombian restaurant (what the hell, it is Brooklyn). When we go there it’s because of two things: 1) We’re friggin starving and are ready to eat till we drop and 2) we want to get drunk. They have very strong drinks, and the food, shall we say, ain’t exactly light either. Maybe the strong drinks are to help your appetite and enable you to eat more?

One of the favorite menu items is the very popular and typical Colombian dish Bandeja Paisa. Yes, I wasn’t lying when I called it a “gut buster”. There is no way in hell I’m not unbuttoning my jeans when I decide to order this one. Originating from northwestern Colombia (the province of Antioquia), this dish’s name stems from bandeja, meaning tray or platter, and what the people of the region are known as, paisas, or country-folk. The idea is that this mixed platter would be eaten at lunchtime after a hard morning working in the fields and would be followed (like there would be a choice!) by a lengthy siesta before anything resembling work could resume.

In 2005 the Colombian government planned to make bandeja paisa the national dish, but instead with the name of bandeja montañera (mountain tray). This move was actually faced with widespread opposition, citing that only a small percentage of the population actually eats bandeja (perhaps unsurprisingly, or they’d all be in cardiac arrest and/or 500lbs). However, the government persisted and now you can find all sorts of Colombian tourism paraphernalia advertising bandeja as the national dish – perhaps in a daring bid to encourage obese gringos to head on down for a feast…?

Anyway, like many traditional dishes the exact combination of ingredients/items often differs depending on who you ask, but, again, like many traditional dishes, there are a number of ingredients that all versions contain. Arepa (a thin shallow-fried corn cake), grilled marinated skirt steak, pork chicharron (crispy, deep-fried pork belly cracklins), a fried egg, chorizo, red beans (stewed red beans) and rice. [Note: some versions contain other foods including morcilla (blood sausage), sweet fried plantains, avocado, vinegary shredded red cabbage salad, fried potatoes, tomato sauce, and hogao (aka criollo sauce made with onions, tomatoes, pepper, oregano, cumin, and salt).] We combined our beans with the chorizo, substituted the rice with yucca fries, and cut the richness of the meal with the traditional Colombian condiment, aji.

Estimates vary, but it’s a meal of between 1,500-1,800 calories (that’s most of your daily intake), and yes, that’s right, and it’s all eaten for lunch. I, who can hardly sit up straight at my desk after a sandwich and an apple for my midday repast, find it almost impossible to imagine engaging in manual labor even after only half a plate of this magnitude. Combine this with the nearly year-round equatorial heat that part of Colombia enjoys, and I’d be retiring to my hammock for forty (or more) winks, which is why we tend to save up our bandeja eating for the colder months, and happily for us (but not our cardiologist) those months are on the way. So, get out the largest plate you own, starve yourself for a couple of days ahead of time, consider cancelling your plans for the afternoon, and get stuck into a bandeja paisa - it’s only your waistline at risk!

Bandeja Paisa

So, because this is a meal made up of many constituent parts, and because, with our version, we tinkered with the traditional ingredients a bit, what follows is basically a run-down of recipes starting with the most time-consuming preparations.

Stewed Pinto/Red Beans with Chorizo
See this recipe here we made a while back.

Yucca Fries

• 1 medium sized yucca (cassava), peeled and cut into 1/4inch (1cm) rings or half-moons
• 2 cups vegetable oil, heated to 350-375F
• 1tsp kosher salt
• Fry yucca rings until golden and crispy. Remove to plate covered with paper towels to drain, and sprinkle with salt.
• Keep warm in oven if not eating immediately as they get chewy and tough if left to cool

Skirt Steak

• Sprinkle steak lightly with salt, pepper and rub generously with sliced garlic.
• Marinate in olive oil until ready to grill.
• Heat skillet or grill to screaming hot. Brush marinade off steaks and grill on each side for about 2-3 minutes (depending on thickness – use poke test regularly) for a nice medium-rare.
• Cover with foil and allow to rest for 5-10minutes.

Shredded Red Cabbage Salad

• Shred or finely slice 5-6oz red cabbage after removing tough outer leaves
• Put cabbage in a bowl and mix with 3tbsp granulated sugar, 1tsp kosher salt and 1/2cup white vinegar
• Allow to marinate and grow together for as long as a couple of days.

Colombian Arepas

• 1 cup masa harina (fine cornmeal flour)
• 1/4tsp salt
• 1/2 cup hot water
• 4oz vegetable oil
• combine corn flour, water and salt into a sticky dough
• make a ball out of some of the dough and roll into a circle about 4-5inches across and 1/4 thick
• heat 1tbsp oil at a time, and fry dough circles until golden and crispy
• drain on paper towels, then dress with butter/margarine and serve immediately while still warm

Spicy Colombian Aji

• 1 sweet pepper, finely diced
• 2 jalapenos, finely diced and de-seeded
• 3 small cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1/4 onion, finely diced
• 10-15 stems cilantro, finely diced
• 1/2 cup white vinegar
• 1/2 cup water
• juice of 1/2 lime
• 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
• Combine all these ingredients together and let sit for at least an hour or as long as 2 days for the flavors to improve

Pork Chicharrones
We used the great recipe we found at Nikas Culinaria, and encourage you to do likewise.

Then, combine all this goodness on a plate (we suggest you share it with at least one other person unless you want to drift into a food coma you may never come out of) and enjoy with the latin cocktail of your choice (avoid beer, it makes everything swell up), or perhaps, as the Colombians would, accompany it with a few shots of aguardiente!

Thank you to about.com for featuring this post in their Colombian food section.