EricMBloggie

Brunch is mostly yesterday’s dinner with some new parts and pieces. And then the ice cream shows up again. I ate too much again.

Juan and I taxi to the Buquebus, a ferry, where we meet up with the family. It’s a big boat with Amtrak style seating and parking for the cars underneath. It’s a three hour ride to Uruguay, and then two more in the car until we get to Punta del Este. El Don’s driving is erratic, like everyone else’s in the country. I try to sleep to pass the time, but that doesn’t work. I wish I had taken more of the sleeping pills. They’ve made the six hour journey to Punta del Este multiple times a year for as long as they can remember, so it’s perfectly normal. Not for us. “Hey, guy’s let jet out to the beach…in London.”They use the word ‘apartment’ to explain our accommodations, but it’s a mistranslation. Two-thirds of a floor of a high rise overlooking the beach, with five bedrooms, multiple bathrooms, and balconies is more than just an apartment. Juan and I share a little side room with enough space for the two little beds, one of which rolls out from under the other, and our bags.

Time to go out to dinner! The Yacht Club Restaurant is empty save for a couple at a nearby table. It isn’t long before appetizers start rolling out: fried fish nuggets, fried calamari, octopus sauteed in butter, amazingly fresh langoustines, bread & butter, red wine, another calamari dish all precede the Fish with Brown Butter and Capers. The fish is a fresh and haddock-like, and the capers are bigger than the ones we’re used to and mild. The dinner is filled with laughter and a mix of languages. I gain a nickname: Challenger. I can eat and eat until I explode. Get it? Juan is Columbia. We must be bothering the couple at the table next to us, because we’re a loud bunch. I can’t understand the story Roberto is telling about Juan’s uncle Pablo, but watching him crack up trying to tell it is enough to make me burst out laughing. There is plenty of red wine and a ridiculous amount of food. I feel at home with Juan’s family, and we’re really starting to get to know each other. Sandra, Roberto’s wife, helps me decode the menu. Their youngest kids, Delfina and Marlena are too young for English, but I’m counting on funny faces and smiles to win them over. It’s slowly working. Their oldest daughter, Orianna, is 12. She knows a little bit of English, but she’s shy, and content to talk with Sofia. I don’t expect a twelve year old girl to have much to say to me anyways. I don’t keep up on ‘Hannah Montana.’ Is that what they watch? I’m not sure.

After the meal, we go out to the bars with Juan’s eighteen year old cousin, Sophia. She has studied English for about nine years, so I can switch back to my native tongue. It’s relaxing. Or maybe it’s the glass of whiskey that’s relaxing. Both the Irish pub and the place with the jazz players are pretty dead. The bartender tells me things get busy around three in the morning. We turn in at about 2:45am. The party hasn’t even started yet, but we’re beat from a day of traveling. Tomorrow, we say, we’re not coming home until it’s light out.

It takes a day of travel from Philly to Baltimore, then DC, before finally arriving to the airport in Buenos Aires, where we meet Juan´s grandparents on his mother´s side, El Don and Pili. I was half conscious through most of the eleven hour plane ride thanks to a couple of sleeping pills, but I can´t say that the twenty four hours of travel was enjoyable.

The Argentinian countryside on the way to Buenos Aires is familiar. It´s a mix of New Hampshire and Europe.I´m stirred awake as the car pulls into the garage. Anna Maria, the maid– yeah, there’s a maid–, helps us with our bags. The street could be one of the nicer blocks in West Philadelphia, except the houses are more European and better kept.

Juan´s grandparents live in a gated compound of sorts. Well, compound makes it sound bigger than it is, I suppose. There´s a well manicured lawn leading to the main house, a pool, a patio and grill, and a guest apartment where Juan and I will be staying. It´s well furnished, without being stilted; comfortable and welcoming.

In the kitchen there are pastries. Buttery half moon croissants and the one with fresh dulce de leche are my favorite. There are a variety of meats on the counter. Beef ribs, pork belly, little and big sausages, and Morcilla (more’see’sha) the famed Blood Sausage. It´s Juan´s favorite food, and I´m ready to eat it– coagulated blood and fat shoved in intestines. That´s good? Okay.

We shower off the day of travel and change in anticipation for the family´s arrival. Juan´s aunt Adrianna and uncle Roberto show up with their spouses and children. There’s no way to remember all of these people and their names. Hours and hours of feasting commence.

First come appetizers of cheese, ham, salami, olives, and bread. Then, some drink called G? Americano. I can´t remember, I´ll have to ask Juan. It´s very casual, everyone´s meeting, talking, and catching up with each other. They light the traditional Argentinian grill, the parilla (pa-ree-sha), for an asado or barbecue. A natural charcoal called ‘carbon vegetal’ and wood are lit in a metal basket, fall to the brick underneath, and are spread out under the grill. The grill can be raised or lowered with a crank. It´s slowly cooked and simply seasoned, and served alongside salads, wine, soda, and breads. The food is great, the company is better. You can hear that Juan´s laugh has been passed down through the generations. I wonder if his great grandfather had the same one. The meal goes on and on, and is informal, social, and familial. They are astounded at the amount I can eat, but I just don´t want to miss anything new. Speaking of new things, the first thing I go for is the blood sausage. It´s not firm, which is unexpected compared to other sausages. I like the way it tastes, but it´s hard to push away the fact that it´s coagulated blood. I mean, it feels like coagulated blood. But when I spread it on bread, it´s pretty good. This one´s going to take a few tries.

The Ice Cream!

Juan´s uncle Roberto owns Saverio, an ice cream factory and a few shops in Buenos Aires. He brings out two big Styrofoam containers each with eight-or-so flavors of ice cream. It´s like gelato, but icier, and it’s fresh. Each flavor is distinct and perfectly strong. There is raspberry, blueberry, and lemon, dulce de leche, chocolate with orange peel, chocolate with a liqueur, mascarpone, and more more more. It´s amazing in the way that I stop paying attention to anything else just pay attention to how crazy-good the ice cream tastes. I have way too much, but they insist on refilling the bowl. I make half-assed attempts to say no, but I really want to overindulge.

After the meal, I lay on the grass like a big, fat beached whale, soaking up the rest of the sun. Later on, we kick around the soccer ball, pass around the mate and wine, and I decipher what I can of the stories everyone´s telling. The remnants of my Spanish education is getting a workout, but Juan and his mom are translating, and the family knows enough English to make it work.

It feels like 2am when the family leaves. It´s actually 9:30. What a long day. We turn in early.

But not before eating again. And then the ice cream comes out. I over-overindulge once again.

There´s another day of travel ahead.

I went skiing in Colorado.

If you’re close enough to go to Jose Pistolas for a bite, avoid it and head to Monk’s instead. Last night was my second time going to Johnny Gun’s for some grub, and will probably be my last. I really wanted this place to be good. The draft beer is pretty great, and the food is cheap enough, but it just doesn’t taste that good.

A great way to test a Mexican joint is by their carnitas. Jose failed. Twice I ordered the $5 (not $3.50 like it says in their online menu) tacos which come with two corn tortillas hugging raw onion, cilantro, and your choice of chicken, beef or carnitas. Both times the shredded meat was dry, lacking porky punch. The first time they came with rice and beans, the second time, no such luck. Or maybe it was better that they skipped the R&B since both my own and the side dish were bone dry. The rice was actually crunchy. I suspect that it wasn’t undercooked, it had just been sitting out far too long.

The carnitas did work well in burrito form, but it’s pretty easy to mask boring meat in all of that other stuff they shove in there. The pork empanadas were good because they are deep fried Hot Pockets. You could have stuffed paper in the shell and it would have tasted fine. The filling lacked character. The grouper tacos had so much spicy mayo slathered on that one of my eating companions could barely finish. I also watched other friends suffer through over-jalapeno’ed quesadillas. Maybe they just have low tolerances for spicy food, but it got in the way of enjoying their meals. I’m not done with those grouper tacos yet– the fish is battered and fried to death so it’s barely recognizable as fish. They might as well use tofu instead.

We also ordered the chips and guacamole. The guac was a good mix of creamy and chunky; the chips were salt licks.

Alvy Singer: [addressing the camera] There’s an old joke - um… two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of ‘em says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.” [Annie Hall, imdb]

I ate the chips.

Service was friendly and helpful both times.

This food would be good if more care was taken in the preparation. But it’s not. Yet I wonder if the food was better before chef Issac McCrimmon left to pursue his arcade themed restaurant, “Heroes.”

Go to Taqueria La Veracruzana for your Mexican food, and bring your own ‘B.’

Jose Pistolas
213 S. 15th St. (b/t Locust & Spruce)
Philadelphia, PA 19146

But you don’t have to take my word for it!
[Philadelphia Weekly Review] [Beer Advocate Review]

Penne pasta with homemade pancetta, grated parmigiano-reggiano, a grassy olive oil, thyme, sea salt & pepper. When everything is made from great, fresh ingredients, you don’t need much to make it great.

I bought a four and a half pound, skin-on pork belly from some place in the Italian market in Philadelphia, cured it, rolled it, and hung it to dry in my basement. When it was all said and done, I had some moldy, delicious, homemade pancetta.

If you’re completely unfamiliar with cured meats, Wikipedia will come to your rescue:

Pancetta is an Italian cured meat similar to American bacon. It is pork that has been salt cured, salted and spiced (nutmeg, pepper, fennel, dried ground hot peppers and garlic are often featured), and dried for about three months (but usually not smoked). There are many varieties, and each part of Italy produces its own type. In Corsica, it is considered a regional flavour.

Pancetta can be rolled (the most common type available outside of Italy, see photograph), or straight (with all the fat on one side). The straight variety is more common in Italy than elsewhere, especially where home-made pancetta is still produced. [Pancetta on Wikipedia]

I made mine using the detailed instructions from Chow, where they have a traditional recipe and a step-by-step illustrated guide. You’ll see in the slide show, a bowl full of the cure, which filled the kitchen with an amazing smell. I kept sticking my face near the bowl just to suck in the goodness. Nearly everything went according to plan, except near the end of the drying phase, when my pancetta got attacked by MOLD. I think it might have happened right as I left for my skiing trip. The weather got warmer and the basement partially flooded when the hose became disconnected from the washing machine. I’m no scientist, but a muggy, warm, floody basement doesn’t sound like ideal conditions in which to hang pork. My first instinct was, “it’s only mold, who cares. I didn’t spend three weeks of curing and drying just to throw this thing away. I’ll just cut it off.” The internet supported my cause:

L. Mold growth - As with aged cheese, mold growth is common among cured meats that are aged. Molds may be removed with a mixture of 10% acetic acid and 90% water or other equivalent rinses. After the mold is trimmed or removed by scrubbing and rinsing, the product is satisfactory for consumption.

Molds are common in the air and will thrive if proper temperature and moisture conditions (as during curing and aging) exist. An effective way to prevent molds on cured and smoked meats is to store them in a dry, well ventilated room with a temperature range of 45 - 55°F and a relative humidity of less than 68%. Unwrapped meat should not touch other meat. This method of holding increases dehydration, but weight loss is less expensive than loss from trimming mold. [Some Solutions To Difficulties Of Home-Curing Pork]

Chow addresses the mold as well:

However, some chefs choose to break the rules. Mold flavors the meat, and to grow mold you need certain temperature and humidity levels—levels that the law might not always permit. “If you take [mold] . . . away, it’s just not gonna happen,” says Mullen. “You’re not gonna get the ‘wow’ factor.”

Here’s our recipe for homemade pancetta. It’ll make you feel powerful. Or at the very least, it will add bacony, fatty goodness to whatever it touches. Just don’t be scared of a little mold. [Pancetta on Chow]

Some people even had mold in the comments section. It didn’t seem like too big a deal. So I washed the mold off with a vinegar and water solution, dried with with paper towels and left it to dry another day (new James Bond movie) to see if more mold developed. I also cut off a small portion and fried it up.

Was it good? Are you ready for it? Here it comes!

AMAZING! A lot of food writing used the word ‘revelation.’ I don’t want to be just like them, so I’ll thesaurus.com a synonym. Okay. It was an eye-opening realization of what pancetta can be. Prior to this moment I had eaten ‘Pretty Good’ and ‘Much Better’ versions of pancetta from Di Bruno’s. Now I really get it: Deeply flavorful and complex, great texture, and MINE. When I get back from Argentina, I’m getting some jowls to make guanciale.