The hardworking folks behind this non-award winning blog are enjoying a deserved warm weather break on Florida’s Gulf Coast right now. No offense to the locals, but we did not pick this particular destination for its well-known and highly prized food culture. Instead, it was selected as a fitting location for our first post-baby trip that would be easy to get to, easy to negotiate in situ and with guaranteed good weather, something we’ve been craving after a hard winter made tougher by a sleepless infant.

However, we are happy to discover that we didn’t touch down in a food desert at all, and we could have posted about the delicious and moist blackened mahi-mahi sandwiches we had yesterday at Randy’s Fish Market, but after a preparatory month of near-total meat deprivation that helped us fit into our bathing suits with less embarrassment, we were feeling decidedly carnivorous. So, here are some grilled cross-cut beef short ribs, leftover from the tablita parrillada we gorged on during last night’s visit to Martin Fierro, an Argentine-run parrilla hidden away in a strip-mall on the other side of town. Named for the central character of Argentina’s famous epic poem by Jose Hernandez, it’s a faithful recreation of the parrillas we so enjoyed almost exactly two years ago during our visit to Argentina and Uruguay, in every respect but the strip-mall.

Joining them were a quick salsa criolla and some rounds of fried yucca. Sure, it’s not exactly beach food, and we stripped off at the pool with noticeably less enthusiasm today, but it was delicious and exactly the kind of indulgence we had been looking forward to for weeks. And, as every Englishman knows, a little of what you fancy does you good.

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.

There are few things that, when slapped between tortillas and christened with spicy condiments, fail to get me excited. Making it a shame that the vast majority of Mexican restaurants near us have such a limited spectrum of taco fillings. Not that I don’t enjoy carnitas, carne asada, fish or chicken tacos, I very definitely do, but that there is something of a tyranny inherent in this four-point agenda.

Recently, after our meaty dust-up with the Uruguyuan-style tablita parillada, we found ourselves with a surfeit of grilled sweetbreads (aka mollejas in Spanish, aka thymus glands in biology), and were looking for creative ways to use this most succulent of leftovers. Ever the slayers of convention, we sought to break this taco-based tyranny, and gently reheated our sweetbreads combining them with a crunchy, tangy salsa of radish, roasted corn and grape tomato, all wrapped in a blue corn tortilla for a dramatic finish.

In this process, we learned that throughout the South-West USA and northern Mexico, taco stands offering sweetbreads (as well as other tasty fillings including tongue and tripe) are so common you just about fall over them at every corner. All of which made us feel slightly less original in our preparation, but no less enthusiastic about its merits. Indeed, it was reassuring to know that places still exist in this condensed and standardized world where you can be openly and brazenly glandular should the feeling so move you.

On our first afternoon in the city – at the same tasca we had the sepia a la plancha discussed below, in fact – we ordered some orejas a la plancha. Anyone who’s taken Spanish 101 will know that this means we ordered ears. Pigs’ ears to be precise, grilled or griddled and accompanied with a spicy tomato sauce the same consistency as ketchup or barbecue sauce. We did this knowingly too. Neither of us had eaten the ears of any creature before (as far as we knew) but decided that most meat products dipped in ketchup tasted pretty good. How were they, you ask? Well, very porky – like pork crackling, so crunchy on the outside – but also crunchy on the inside too, on account of the cartilidge that keeps an ear flexible but stiff. Oddly enough, they weren’t that chewy, but they were quite rich tasting and we found that with a racione (or large tapa usually for between 3-4 people) we had ordered more than enough. To sum up, I think we’re both glad we tried them and quite enjoyed their taste and texture, and would certainly eat them again, but we’re not raving about them, you know?

Later in the week, after spending the morning in El Prado (perhaps the greatest art museum this side of La Louvre), we had a selection of tapas/pinchos as a late lunch. (Pinchos are tapas served on toothpicks and often on rounds of bread.) Amongst these was one I remembered having seen on TV once – fried anguilas (baby eels) with garlic and oil, (in this case served on a round of bread with a slather of garlic/lemon mayonnaise.) – on fatty chinless Andrew Zimmern’s show Bizarre Foods. Actually, unless you know they are eels, you’d probably think they were very thinly sliced calamari (calamares) or something, because they have a similar maritime taste and familiar chewiness. Zimmern made out that these were one of the most expensive treats to be found in Madrid, but we only paid Euro1.50 for it, which was kind of weird. Still, you should definitely try them if you get a chance (and are a lover of calamari). Don’t be put off by what they are or how they look. They’re a far cry from the British jellied eels that used to terrify me every time I entered a chip shop as a child.

On our final night in Madrid, filled with sadness, at having to leave with only about thirty different tapas under our belts, and horror at how we would feel without jamon iberico readily available, we sought out a new neighborhood’s tascas to check out. Entering the first one, which was filled with purple-nosed old men and a thick fug of cigarette smoke, we ordered callos a la Madrilena, or tripe in the local style. I’m a big fan of tripe (the lining of, usually, a cow’s stomach) – I really like it’s slightly gelatinousness and the peculiar cross-hatched texture of it’s underside – but I had no idea how this would be served. It came in a big clay bowl together with hunks of chorizo and pork fat in a spicy, reddish sauce. It was absolutely delicious, although no doubt not recommended by any cardiologists. Sure, it was porky and fatty, but the sauce was addictive and the chunks of chorizo added a spicyness to it that cut through the fat and made it too easy to a eat a lot of. Visitors to Madrid should by all means try this if you find it on a tapas menu, but understand that you’re going to have a devil of a time working it off in the gym when you get home!

How do you feel about eating pig’s ears, baby eel or tripe? Do you know of any other interesting Spanish preparations using off-cuts?

Check out the post that was written on some of the more tame tapas we ingested during our time in Madrid… you may be more inspired to eat them again after reading this post!

Also, if you are interested in making a few tapas, check these out:

• CLAMS WITH WHITE WINE AND CHORIZO
• SQUID WITH GOLDEN POTATOES
• TORTILLA ESPANOLA

Also, check out our other posts about Spain:

• Fabada: A Mortal and Corporal Sin – But Worth It!
• The REAL Cocido of Spain
• Jamon, Jamon
• Pictures of Madrid
• Tame Tapas We Ate in Madrid
• Cabrales Cheese: It’s a Bit of an Animal
• Vermut (Vermouth): Rediscovering an Old Classic
• CHORIZO, CHICKPEA AND POTATO SOUP

This review won’t be long, and I won’t make it fancy. It’s been almost 24 hours since I left A Voce, the upscale modern Italian eatery in a strange part of the Flatiron district of Manhattan run by a former chef at Cafe Boulud, Andrew Carmellini. My body may have left there at 11PM Saturday, but my mind is still there right now. A Voce actually took my voice away at moment. Only long enough to concentrate on each delicious bite of food.

We are not a couple who are able to afford many of the trendy/upscale restaurants in Manhattan. When my parent’s decided to come up for the weekend and treat us to dinner, we decided on to pick a place that we probably wouldn’t be able to afford alone. The reviews online of A Voce were mixed. So mixed that I was very close to canceling the reservations I made over a month ago. See, my father has a slight bit of a hearing problem (one he likes to think he doesn’t have) and about 85% of the review I read online talked more about the stupid chairs and the noise level of the restaurant instead of the food. Now, I know that city restaurants are loud, but the way some of these reviewers talked about the “insane noise” and (my favorite quote from a Chowhound.com user) how the “noise level is horrendous and conversing in normal tones becomes nearly impossible”, kind of scared me. Conversing in normal tones almost impossible!? Dem some strong words! I even read a review that talked about one of them losing their voice after a night eating there. If the food is excellent, how important is the conversation? To me, well, I’m Italian American. In my family, silence at the dinner table is worse than not going to Confession after you’ve talked back to your mother. Anyways, I am happy to report that even my partially deaf father conversed just fine with the three of us all throughout dinner. Maybe it was our table, maybe it’s cause we’re a loud family? Regardless, the noise level at A Voce was similar to any bustling NYC joint on a busy Saturday night.

Now, on to the food. I could cry thinking about it. I’m salivating thinking about it. It was excellent. Unfortunately, we only sampled a very small bit of the menu because both my mom and dad weren’t super hungry. It’s white truffle season and a few moments after we were seated, our waiter came around with a box containing three medium-sized ones to view, smell and ogle over. My mom told me she almost took one and put it in her mouth like an appetizer because she didn’t know what it was. Gotta love her (but I would’ve slinked under the table if she did that!). Supposedly, truffles are going for $3000/lb these days. HA! I’ll take 2 pounds, thank you very much.

There were some additions to the menu that were not listed on their website. One was the starter I had – Steak Tartare. I can not explain to you how beautiful and delicious this dish was. It was chopped meat, lightly seasoned and flavored with some white truffle and shaving of fresh Parmigiano laid on top. On the side was two toasted pieces of bread with a piece of lardo melting into it. I think I closed my eyes and moaned with each bite.

My husband started with the Coppa di Testa (or sliced headcheese). It was basically like a thinly sliced chunky pate cut in rounds. He enjoyed this thoroughly. My father had a side order of broccoli rabe sauteed in garlic. He’s basically a connoisseur of broccoli rabe and thought it was excellent. The antipasti sizes were pretty large, although prices aren’t low. Mine cost $17, the husband’s was $9 and my dad’s side dish was $8.

For our mains, my mother and I had the Pappardelle with Lamb Ragu. The ragu was sweet and chunky with some carrots and onions. The pasta was fresh and the portion size wasn’t too bad ($24). There was a dollop of homemade ricotta to round out the dish. My father had Crab Ravioli in a light tomato cream sauce. Fresh, homemade and excellent. Finally, my husband ordered the Country-Style Tuscan Tripe. This was presented in a beautiful copper pot with a fried duck egg on top. It was hearty and reminded us of the many tripe dishes we ate this summer in Tuscany. The egg was a really nice touch and the sauce was ‘chooped’ up with lots of the fresh bread they kept bringing to the table.

I can not wait to go back (after we save some money) to A Voce and try some of their other dishes like the octopus, tonno bianco and the duck. Their meatballs are supposedly top-notch as well. I highly recommend A Voce!

**Sorry these pictures are such crap, all we had was our camera phone.

Check out the rest of our restaurant reviews by clicking the tab above.