Argentina: Favorite Things Part 2

So I want to talk more about yummy food. And yummy wine also. Seriously, the food and wine were so good that they merit multiple blog posts.

Argentina is known for its beef, and rightfully so. I took it upon myself to eat beef at least once a day (and sometimes twice!) while we were there, in search of the perfect steak. I discovered it, paired with a nice 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon, at the Ruca Malen vineyard in Mendoza.

This is a picture of me with the best steak I've ever had in my life. See how happy I look! While eating at the vineyard, I also got to experience a tower made of chopped beets and covered with a dusting of parmesan cheese (actually kind of gross, but paired with a really amazing 2004 Malbec--I brought a bottle back that's just begging to be opened) and some sort of flan made of dulce de leche. Now I don't like dulce de leche because it's too sweet. And I have the sweet tooth of champions, so I feel like that's really saying something. I also don't like flan (because the texture is yucky), but I would happily continue to eat this flan for every dessert for the rest of my life if they would let me. It was that good.

Sejal and the beet tower

Argentina: Favorite Things Part I

So now that I've gotten the ugly out of the way, I can focus on the fun, fantastic, hillarious, and yummy. Let's start with yummy. Argentines are big on the concept of afternoon tea (even though they don't actually drink tea at tea--mostly they drink coffee). I think this may be the best concept ever. Especially considering that they don't eat dinner until 10 or 11 at night--a late afternoon snack and some caffeine is definitely in order.

In our extensive study of afternoon tea, we came across several options that were always big winners: Medialunas and submarinos. Medialunas are little baby croissants, most often glazed ever-so-lightly with some sugary stuff, but I guess they can be savory with cheese and ham also. We liked the sweets ones. This is my friend Brianne, expressing her feelings about medialunas (with, coincidentally, a medialuna).

Now submarinos (yup--Spanish for submarine) are the perfect beverage pairing with sweet medialunas. The basic deal is that a submarino consists of steamed milk that comes with a small bar of chocolate, that you then dunk in the milk and stir up until it's melted, giving you a slightly less rich, less sweet (but still fantastic) version of do-it-yourself hot chocolate. And while that's already a pretty awesome beverage concept, what makes it even better is that normally, the little bars of chocolate are actually shaped like submarines. (Get it? You're submerging your submarine into the liquid, just like you would with a real one! So smart!) Below, Sejal and I demonstrate the appropriate submarino submerging/mixing technique.

The steamed milk and "submarine" chocolate

Submerging the "submarine"

Stirring up the submarino to prepare it for consumption