Santiago, Chile

We concluded our South America cruise in Valparaiso, Chile. We booked a wine tour through Liz Caskey Wine Tours, which would take us from the Chilean coast to Santiago in one day. We decided on the tour that would introduce us to Chilean coastal white wines, with which we had no experience (we had drunk plenty of carmenere, merlot and other Chilean reds, but didn't know anything about white wines of the region). Our favorite winery of the trip was Casa Marin, which had an amazing Sauvignon Gris and Sauvignon Blanc (Laurel Vineyard). Sauvignon Gris is a mutation of Sauvignon Blanc, but it has a relatively low-yield of fruit, so it's not a particularly popular varietal. In coastal Chile, it appears to be thriving. The 2009 vintage has a smoky, citrusy flavor, which paired amazingly well with my roast chicken with tomatoes and olives - I think it was the fennel and other provencal flavors that matched so beautifully with the notes of the wine. I sent an email to Felipe Marin and Jamie Verbraak letting them know how terrific the wine tasted with dinner. I hope they link to this blog, and I'm linking here to theirs. They only have a couple of US distributors (both in NYC), so if you're lucky enough to see one of their wines in a shop, buy one (or a few) and support this terrific family winery.

We ate lunch on the Chilean coast at a quaint little family-run seafood shack, where I had machas a la parmigiana, and my husband had scallops pil pil. The food was delicious (if a little heavy), and the scenery couldn't be beat - perched atop a craggy cliff overlooking a small patch of beachy sand and the gorgeous blue of the Pacific.

Later that night, we had dinner in Santiago at Akarana, a restaurant near our hotel. We ate barbecued calamari with sour mangoes and a crunchy vegetable slaw of carrots and scallions, flatbread pizza made with chorizo, sweet peppers and camembert, and, the next day for lunch, lamb chops with mint-flavored goat cheese and portobello mushrooms (buttery, tender and absolutely amazing) at Happening.

Santiago felt to us like any American city - bustling, commerce-centric, and well-developed, with wide roads in a grid pattern, crosswalks, and typical businesses and cafes lining the business district. This was opposed to Buenos Aires, which felt to us much more European than American.

Next stop: Easter Island.

Burgers without a grill

As you can see from the picture, the coleslaw from the lobster rolls did double duty this weekend!

Our second "summer in New England" dinner was grilled burgers with all the fixings, cole slaw (leftover) and a warm quinoa salad with grilled vegetables from the June 2009 Gourmet.

For the burger, I bought fatty hamburger meat (80-85% lean), and mixed it with minced garlic and onion, worcestershire sauce, salt and black pepper and formed it into 2 patties. I grilled the patties on a cast iron grill pan, and toasted the buns (English muffins) on the same grill. The burgers turned out big and juicy, and I served them on the shmuffins with blue cheese.

For some reason, the quinoa recipe is not posted online. I have never cooked quinoa before, despite the fact that I've had it in my pantry. The recipe I used called for steaming the quinoa (quite different from the box instructions, which just said to boil the quinoa like rice), but I didn't have a colander with small enough holes to use as a steamer, so I just boiled it according to the box. I tossed the warm quinoa with a sautee of garlic, onion, jalapenos and cumin with olive oil, sliced kalamata olives, roasted asparagus and eggplant (no outside grill), and cubes of queso blanco (you can substitute any mild, creamy cheese, such as fresh mozzarella). Finished with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper, and hot smoked paprika, if you have it. It was delicious and even my husband thought it was great for "health food". I do think it would have been fluffier if I had steamed it, as it did seem a little water-logged and heavy, but the flavor was great.

We drank a very smoky, mineral-y $12 Cotes de Blaye from Chateau Valentin (a Bordeaux from the extremely hot and dry 2005 vintage), which went perfectly with the blue cheese burgers, and even with the quinoa, I think because of the smoky eggplant and paprika flavors.

"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody, Jaws

To make these amazing lobster rolls, I used a recipe for lobster salad from an old Gourmet magazine. I don't normally like the flavor of black licorice (like in anise, fennel or tarragon), but I have found that fennel (both bulbs and seeds) and tarragon work really well with seafood without lending too "licorice-y" a flavor for me.

To make it easier on us (since we don't have outdoor space or a good enough hood on our stove to keep our apartment from stinking like cooked lobsters), I purchased steamed lobsters from James Hook in downtown Boston. You can call ahead and ask for your preferred size lobster, to buy uncooked or pre-steamed. They'll even chill them for you after steaming, so you can take them home and put them right into your fridge until you're ready to use them. My husband and I put down brown paper bags across our dining table and then went to work. They were really hard-shelled lobsters, but after a good half an hour or so, we had the meat ready for the salad (and I got to eat the meat out of all of the legs afterwards!).

We buttered squishy hoagie rolls and toasted them so that they'd hold up to the salad. I followed the recipe for the salad exactly as written (but halved), steamed some corn on the cob (unfortunately from Florida this time of year, but hey) and sprinkled it with Old Bay, and made some creamy coleslaw. I halved the coleslaw recipe, and salted the shredded cabbage in a colander for about half an hour first to get the liquid out so we wouldn't end up with watery coleslaw. Otherwise, I made the recipe as written (substituted creme fraiche for sour cream because that's what we had in the fridge), but we didn't end up liking the flavor. It was too mayo-heavy, probably because the creme fraiche didn't have nearly as much tang as sour cream, so my husband suggested some dijon mustard to kick up the flavor (and the vinegar) a bit. I put in about 2 heaping tablespoons of dijon, and that did the trick, but it still wasn't great. Next time I'll try a non-mayo coleslaw, but this menu called for a less assertive coleslaw (it wasn't barbecue, after all).

We enjoyed our lobster dinner while watching Jaws and drinking an inexpensive 2009 Rhone rose to kick off summer in New England.

Special Weekly Menu - Memorial Day

This week starts with Memorial Day weekend. My good friends are all up in Maine hanging out, grilling, lobster-eating and enjoying a relaxing and beautiful New England weekend. I couldn't join them because of an enormous backlog at work, but I wanted to capture the feeling of the first summer weekend with our menu:

Saturday: Lobster rolls with coleslaw and corn on the cob

Sunday: Grilled vegetable quinoa salad, indoor grilled burgers with blue cheese

Monday: Shrimp remoulade with okra dirty rice

Tuesday: Grilled zucchini pasta with walnut pecorino crumble

Wednesday: Mussels with fennel and crusty bread

Thursday: Work event (dinner provided)

Normally, I try to identify recipes where I can use a lot of the same ingredients, or double up a recipe for leftovers. This week, however, we're not expecting a whole lot of leftovers, or using one ingredient for several things. I'm home for the long weekend, so I know I can cook whole meals for 3 nights. I like to try new things when I have extra days to experiment.

Anyway, when I write my grocery list, I don't group ingredients by recipe; instead, I group ingredients by where they are in the store. So, at my local grocery store, I start in the veggie/fruit section, move past the seafood and meats, then pantry and dairy. As we move through the aisles, it's easier to be sure that we got everything on the list.

Vegetables:

red onion

jalapenos

asparagus

tomato

asian eggplant

cilantro

zucchini

tarragon

lemon

parsley

scallions

carrots

green cabbage

red and green bell pepper

okra

Pantry:

frozen shrimp

burger buns (or English muffins)

hot dog buns

PB&J

fettuccine

mayo

eggs

milk

kalamatas

queso blanco

blue cheeses

pecorino

pickles

sriracha sauce

Butcher: hamburger meat, pate

Oh, and I forgot to note in my kitchen staples post that we also always have onions, garlic and shallots around, as well as lemons and limes in the fridge. We buy those pretty often too, but it's a strange week if we don't have them all in the house somewhere.

Kitchen Staples

On a recent outing with friends, I was asked to provide (i) tips on my blog for creating and sticking to weekly menus and (ii) ways to use leftovers. I was told people would be interested just in seeing my weekly menu items. I'm not so sure that's very interesting, but far be it from me to refuse a direct request (since no one reads this blog as it is).

First off: strategy. My husband and I generally grocery shop on Friday evening after work or Saturday afternoon if we have plans on Friday night. We shop once for the entire week, and in summer months, we can add vegetables during the week from local farmers markets (I will be posting shortly about local community supported agriculture shares and farmers markets). We also make a lot of use of our freezer and pantry, which house a ton of staples. Each week, we think of ways to use fresh seasonal ingredients to punch up our staples, but we eat a lot of the same things from week to week.

What's in our freezer today? Whole Foods mini baguettes and dinner rolls; Trader Joe's Thai shrimp dumplings, chicken gyoza and pork gyoza (these are amazing - you have to try them); Trader Joe's Brittany Blend; green beans; bacon slices; chorizo; chicken sausage; Whole Foods shell-on raw shrimp; Whole Foods sea scallops; salmon fillets; petite peas; sweet corn; chicken breasts; various leftover homemade frozen soups; pearl onions; whole leaf spinach; brown rice; calamari; store-bought ravioli; hot dogs; my husband's homemade pasta sauce (minus the meatballs, which we already ate); pine nuts; walnuts; peanuts; summer tomatoes (frozen last fall when they were gorgeous and cheap); blueberries; various whole spices. Note I have no chicken or beef stock right now, because I haven't had time to make them, and we're doing fewer roasts now that it's gotten warm out. We usually have ice cream too, but we overlooked it this week. Also frozen fruit bars in the summer.

What are our pantry staples? Polenta, various pasta shapes, red and green lentils, split peas, quinoa, bulgur, brown rice, arborio, couscous, rice noodles, soba noodles, barley, fire roasted no salt added canned tomatoes, coconut milk, anchovies, Cento tuna in olive oil, chipotle chiles in adobo, sliced jalapenos, jarred salsa, truffle oils, various vinegars, olive oil (regular and flavored with lemon) and honey. Every week we also have an assortment of kettle chips and popcorn for snacking. I am not going to go into our spice collection yet.

Finally, what's usually in our fridge? Parmesan, Pecorino Romano, eggs, milk, butter, sour cream or creme fraiche, pb & j, bread, olives (various), anchovy paste, jarred red peppers, tabasco sauce, soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, mirin, red bean paste, sriracha and chile garlic sauce, capers, horseradish, various mustards, red and green Thai curry pastes, hoisin, tamarind sauce, maple syrup, store-bought chicken stock and ketchup. Oh, and right now, tons of white and rose wines!

From these staples (which we obviously don't buy every week and which last for weeks on end), we build our grocery list each week, depending on what's fresh, seasonal and (if we can swing it) local. Next up: our Memorial Day week menu.

Rounding Cape Horn and Puerto Montt Excursion

After Montevideo, we missed the Falklands due to severe weather, had a wonderfully calm trip around Cape Horn, hiked in Tierra del Fuego and in Patagonian Chile and finished out the cruise with a stop in Puerto Montt in the Chilean lake district. My girlfriend and I took a culinary tour with a local chef, while our husbands went kayaking. We went shopping with our chef/guide at the local fish market and vegetable market, where we were able to see all sorts of wondrous sea creatures (many of which I had never even imagined, much less imagined eating!). Chile is lucky to have miles and miles of coastline, and takes full advantage of the different kinds of life teeming in the Pacific Ocean.

We were introduced to "sea squirts", which looked like barnacles from the outside but were bright red inside and full of iodine and brine, too strong to enjoy on their own, but mashed into a ceviche, they lent a seawater flavor that added a lot of depth. The gentleman at the top of the post was breaking open the "shells" of the sea squirts to get the meat out. The picture just above is of smoked sea squirts (the red things), mussels and barnacles - Chileans apparently like to smoke some of their seafood and then use the smoked items in their cooking. We also learned about "green" eggs laid by the Araucana hen, which are indigenous to South America, and got to smell and purchase a wonderful spicy chili blend, known as merken, and derived from the Mapuche indians.

The picture below on the left is of the finished ceviche. Sea kelp, octopus, whitefish, bell peppers, onion and cilantro rounded out the flavors. We also enjoyed a soup of plump mussels, which were cooked in a toasted merken spice blend and finished with milk and cream (see picture on bottom right). We saw several mussels at the fish market that were bigger than an adult shoe (appropriately referred to as "zapatos" mussels), but were told they had quite tough meat. Unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot to say on how the chef made the delicious dishes we sampled, since we were generally plied with pisco sours and not allowed to assist in the kitchen. But we did watch the ceviche being made, and tasted each of the ingredients that went into it (including the chopped up sea squirts, which are (to say the very least) an acquired taste).

Montevideo, Uruguay

After spending one night in Buenos Aires, we boarded our cruise boat, and set sail for Montevideo, Uruguay. After dinner on the ship, we went on deck with our friends and a glow-in-the-dark star map and tried to find familiar constellations. We found Orion's belt, but it took us a minute to realize that Orion was upside down in the southern hemisphere. We didn't sample any local cuisine in Montevideo-just spent a couple of hours on the beach and headed back to the boat. It was a gorgeous day - 75 degrees and sunny. The beach was relaxed, full of locals who had spent the last night partying and were working through their hangovers while snoozing on the beach. I even took a swim in the water, which was very warm, but full of silt, which got everywhere and stained everything.

An interesting thing about Uruguay is its beef production. According to a NYT article, it appears that Uruguayan farmers are claiming the "grass-fed" cattle market, as Argentina moves toward a feedlot cattle-raising culture to respond to increased worldwide (and domestic) demand.