Thinking of Christmas in July: Grilled Meats in Buenos Aires

My birthday always happens near Christmas. It’s not that I’m complaining. People are in a full celebratory mode at that time. Wine and liquor flow freely. It’s just that it’s never warm that warm around this the holidays plus taking a tropical vacation at that time is incredibly expensive since it’s traditionally high season for the airlines and hotels. So, on my 40th birthday, an auspicious occassion indeed, I wanted warmth, pools along with great food and drink. I also wanted to cook…like I did in Paris. We went to Buenos Aires. Tango. Wine. Food. South America. Yep.

We choose an apartment to stay in the Palermo for it’s comfort, shopping location, huge balcony and it’s Argentinean parrilla, a large wood grill which is pretty common in most outdoor spaces and sometimes, for the wealthy, it can be indoors. (Think of a small park hibaci on steriods.)

For my birthday dinner, I don’t remember the place but I do remember what I ate. We went to a large cavernous restaurant, loud and painted blue where I had a Pork Sirloin with Chimichurri. The wine we drank was a bottle of Spanish red, a tinto del toro, which I recognized from the States. (Why I didn’t want wine from Mendoza, I don’t remember. Probably because its what I was drinking mostly while we were there.)

We had planned to spend Christmas in Buenos Aires as well so I planned out the Christmas dinner. It was definitely the parrilla that I wanted to play with.  I went to one of the local butchers to create an Argentinean dinner which is essentially just grilling everything except for the empanadas which were bought from a store front that only made empanadas. I purchased around 20lbs of meat (including chicken and pork) at a ridiculous cost of about $20 dollars. It was so inexpensive that I went a little hog wild. (Sorry, couldn’t resist). I also made the chimmichurri which was a little difficult without a food processor or a mortar and pestle. Everything was chopped with a steak knife. (Hey, we rented an apartment with a lovely kitchen not a restaurant.). We even had guests! We had met this lovely family from Chicago and invited them to eat with us and also the apartment’s caretaker came to celebrate. This time, we had copious amounts of Argentinean wine.

So, when I grill, sometimes I think back to that trip. It’s July and I grilled steaks. It made me think of Christmas in Buenos Aires.

Grilled Blade Steaks with Cucumber Tomato Salsa

You Will Need The Following
4 Blade Steaks
Soy Sauce
Olive Oil
Chili Flakes
1 large cucumber
3 lbs tomatoes
2 clovea of garlic
1 half a chopped red onion
1 small jalapeno.

Let’s Finish This Puppy Up! (I eyeball this so just go with it…if not…at least you had a little fun.)
1) Put the steaks in a zip lock bag and put four or five glugs of soy sauce, five glugs of olive oil, chili flakes (that’s me…joking), and a minced clove of garlic. Do this the night before or before you head out the door for work after the meat has defrosted. Essentially, this will tenderize the meat.
2) Chop all the other ingredients and put into a bowl or container. Toss and shake the container up to mix the flavors. A good rumba works well.
3) Grill the meat to your liking. (Argentineans love well-done meat. Funny, isn’t it? I wasn’t going to tell them how to cook it. I was in their country.)
4) Place on platter and spoon out the salsa on top of the meat.
5) Voila!