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.

Almost seven years ago I journeyed from Santillana del Mar to Santa Maria de Lebaña via San Vicente de la Barquera. So many saints, so much devotion, that it was little surprise to learn that beyond the monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana and through the Picos de Europe lies the hallowed ground of Covadonga.

It was at the battle of Covadonga in 718 that Christian Spain under Pelayo, King of Asturias, began the reclamation of Iberia from the Muslim Moors. Nestled deep within the Asturian mountains, Covadonga is as important to the Spanish national myth as Hastings is to the British or Lexington to Americans. However, history defies such over-simplification – the linear narrative of one thing followed by another – and it is too easy to say that simply because certain events turned out the way they did there were no other possibilities. Indeed, a sentence stating that the defeat of a Moorish army by a Spanish king at Covadonga began the reconquest of Spain – which culminated in Ferdinand and Isabella vanquishing Boabdil, Emir of Granada, in 1492 – encompasses more than 700 years and glosses over seven whole centuries of war, shifting borders, switching alliances, inter-marriage, suffering and grief.

It is with this in mind that I wonder if it’s an exaggeration to suggest that had the battle at Covadonga ended differently the whole course of western history, and therefore of the world, would have been affected. Spanish historian Claudio Sanchez-Albornoz does not believe so. “Si los musulmanos no hubiesen conquistado el España en el siglo VIII, los españoles no habrian conquistado America en el XVI.”* For him it follows that what began there in the 8th Century resulted in a militarized and battle-hardened Spain conquering much of the New World.

For me, and my own personal sense of history those seven years ago, a dinner of beans, pork belly, chorizo and morcilla suggested just as plausible a theorem: that had not the Asturian armies under Pelayo feasted on fabada in preparation for the fight the next day, there may have been another outcome. And while personal experience suggests that after a hearty meal of this kind one is utterly disinclined to remaining awake, let alone to feeling lively enough to bum rush a horde of scimitar-brandishing Berbers, I still feel that this notion has validity. After all, how could one’s sense of local patriotism and desire to defend one’s homeland fail to be stirred by such a dish? That the culinary use of saffron arrived in the far north of Spain via these same Moorish invaders and the integral ingredient smoked pimentón wasn’t to be discovered for another eight centuries following the conquest of Mexico doesn’t disprove this hypothesis, rather it merely serves to highlight, once again, the non-linear path of history.

(If the Muslims had not conquered Spain in the 8th century, the Americas wouldn’t have been conquered by the Spaniards in the 16th.”)

It’s one of the ironies of being a new parent that even though we are spending more time than at any other point in our adult lives at home, we are finding it virtually impossible to do any cooking. Even when we do steal a few moments of quiet to get behind the burners, by the time the food is done, so is the nap our baby was taking. Of course, eating your dinner cold is nothing new to a food blogger – teasing the plating and getting just the right lighting usually takes a while – but at least we used to be able to eat our tepid meat and congealed sauce without the throaty vocal stylings of a five-week-old as an accompaniment.

Another delightful aspect of being a home-bound parent is that, when leaving the house involves assembling ten things, a stroller and an acquiescent child, one is motivated to make use of what is close at hand. In a moment of hunger-inspired desperation this past weekend, we took that maxim to its logical conclusion.

Literally lying beside our front door was a pair of pumpkins we had originally intended to carve for Halloween had our sculptural ambitions not been thwarted by the arrival of said infant. Still edible, they were quickly hacked, seeded and roasted in a hot oven with salt and pepper while the baby slumbered peacefully in his swing. In a “waste not, want not” moment, also into the oven went the pumpkin seeds seasoned with chipotle powder and brown sugar, emerging a scant twenty minutes later, crispy and snack-tastic. The baby, now stirring, its nostrils a-quiver.

From all of this, plus the contents of a still well-stocked spice rack and half a Mexican chorizo I rescued from a sad end in the depths of our refrigerator, came a pimentón-scented pumpkin velouté topped with sweet chipotle pepitas, crumbled chorizo and a sprinkle of black Hawaiian sea salt that I forgot we’d bought, somewhat curiously, in a supermarket in France last Christmas.

Even the abundant use of the stick blender failed to completely rouse our newborn, though, in his now-customary fashion, by the time we were seated at the table, spoons-at-the-ready, our charming little nipper was once again in full voice, sharing his anguish at his meager milk-based diet. Happily, this soup is just as good, if not better, when reheated the next day. A quality we might not have fully appreciated before now.

When our readers actually read our posts, it feels really good. Because we often write a lot in our post, it is understandable why some may choose not to actually read our words. We understand how many blogs exist, and many only have time to do the “blog drive-by” (you know what I’m talking about – the “I’m going to just look at the pictures quickly then comment something like damn! that-looks-deeelissssh!” drive by? We’ve all done it). But the thing we love the most about writing a blog about food from all over the world, trying to infuse history, cultural anecdotes and as much authenticity as possible, is when we get schooled. It’s almost like a sick, food-centered type of masochism. It’s almost as if we are bent over some Argentinian, Spanish, French or Italians knee as they spank us very hard telling us how wrong we were about _______________ (insert ethnic dish of choice here). Knowing we have people actually reading what we write (and telling us how we can do things better) makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It shows us that people are actually reading our words and are interested in enlightening people about their culture. When we get something wrong on the blog, getting schooled helps us learn and grow and we love it.

One may think that one of the best perks of having a food blog is getting free truffle products (ok, that friggin rocked), free yogurt (didn’t rock as much as the truffle) or free seasoning packets (that basically sucked) but my favorite “freebie” actually came in the form of a scanned in family recipe. A bit ago, we received an email from a reader that asked us when we were going to take a stab at featuring “Arroz con Gandules” on the blog. He read the blog and understood the research we do in regards to authenticity and asked us to please try his “Puerto Rican Lady Friend’s” recipe. It happened to be a dish we had on that lovely “list of things to make for the blog” so, once we received this, we figured to look no further. We tried the recipe (even having to email the reader back to make sure I could understand his handwriting correctly) and didn’t even bother with any more research. It was that good and that easy to make and a perfect weeknight meal. If you want to mix it up a bit, do as our reader Christine does and serve it along with Puerto Rican slow roasted pork shoulder, Pernil, instead of the bits of pork.

Arroz con Gandules is often thought of as Puerto Rico’s national dish. It is the dish that will most often be made for the Christmas dinner table and after one taste, you will see why. What could be better than a one-pot meal with layers and layers of flavor?  What could be better than looking around at your kitchen thinking you have opened up a Goya shop (that is if you don’t make your own sofrito, sazon or use canned peas)  What could be better than being able to create a delicious crust of crunchy rice and spices goodness that can form at the bottom of the rice called “pegao“?(**We aren’t talented enough yet to get the pegao right, but I’ll be working on it as soon as we pony up and buy a real caldero). So, here’s to Robert – the reader who so graciously supplied this recipe. We may never have met you, but we think of you every month we make Arroz con Gandules!

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).

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!