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Chimichurri--the Basics

Chimichurri, the Argentine sauce that goes with grilled meats, is a free-for-all. 

Aside from the requisite basics, you can put in what you like, so no two chimichurris may taste quite the same.

The recipe below is from Ana Rodriguez Armisén, sous-chef at Santa Julia's Casa del Visitantes (guest house) in Mendoza, Argentina. Santa Julia is a line of wines produced by the Familia Zuccardi and named for Julia Zuccardi, who runs the winery's hospitality program.

Julia and Ana (Julia is at left in the photo) joined forces for a promotional tour that included a stop in Los Angeles.

At a lunch and wine tasting at Rivera restaurant, Julia talked about the wines and Ana prepared such Argentine appetizers as grilled beef, sliced and served with chimichurri, and empanadas accompanied by chimichurri (at top).

Later, for lunch, she made a Malbec reduction to go with grilled lamb, crisped mashed potatoes and salsa criolla

While guests tasted the appetizer wines, a Santa Julia Brut Rosé made from Pinot Noir grapes, an Organica Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon and a Malbec, Ana set out dishes of ingredients for chimichurri.

The basics, she said, are fresh garlic and parsley, oregano and paprika, mixed with some hot chile, oil and white vinegar.

She added thyme and a dash of Santa Julia Torrontés--this was a wine tasting after all--and used one of the Familia Zuccardi's estate-produced varietal olive oils. Vintage dated, they are not exported.

In some provinces of Argentina, brine is added to keep the chimichurri fresh, she said. This is not done in Buenos Aires. But you can prepare chimichurri in advance, if you cover it with a layer of oil and store it in the refrigerator. It will keep for up to a month.

Different types of oil are used in Argentina, where olive oil is a new taste. The vinegar should be white, and the paprika should be Spanish. "It is the best," Ana said.

Chimichurri is good with grilled meats, sausages, roast turkey, pork loin, even grilled vegetables and as a dip for bread, she said. 

The Torrontés that she added was from a new line of Santa Julia wines with a plus symbol attached to the varietal name. The plus indicates that the wine was made from estate-grown grapes following sustainable practices.

The Santa Julia wines served at the lunch included a reserve Malbec and Cabernet (they're in the photo at right with the grilled lamb) and a late harvest Torrontés.

They sell for $10 to $13, and, unlike the olive oils, they are available in the United States.

ANA'S CHIMICHURRI
From Santa Julia's Casa del Visitante

1/4 cup chopped garlic
2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
Generous dash dried thyme
Dash dried rosemary
Dash dried oregano
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon dried red chile flakes 
Dash freshly ground black pepper
2 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
2 1/2 tablespoons white vinegar 
1 teaspoon Torrontés, optional

Combine the garlic, parsley, thyme, rosemary, oregano, paprika, chile flakes and black pepper in a small bowl.  

Add the olive oil, vinegar and the wine, if available. Mix well. The sauce will be fluid. 

Makes about 2/3 cup.

 

Chocolate Cookies You'll Love

A cookie book I spotted in a thrift shop contained so many great sounding recipes that I bought it.

I've only tried one, for Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies, but it alone was worth much more than the little I paid.

The book is "Cookies! a Cookie Lovers Collection" by The Kitchens of Cy DeCosse Inc., published in 1995 by Tormont Publications of Montreal, Canada. 

Doubly chocolate because they contain cocoa as well as chips, these cookies have been a hit wherever I've taken them, which means I'm always handing out the recipe.

I've made some slight adjustments, not to the ingredients but to the method. The recipe makes really big cookies (nothing wrong with that), but I like them smaller.  And I roll each spoonful of dough into a ball with the palms of my hands. The result is nice, evenly shaped cookies that look as good as they taste.

CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
From "Cookies! A Cookie Lover's Collection" 

1/2 cup granulatd sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

In large mixing bowl, combine sugars, butter, eggs and vanilla. Beat at medium speed of electric mixer until well blended (I do this by hand).

Add flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Beat at low speed (or by hand) until soft dough forms. Stir in chips and walnuts.

Drop by heaping tablespoons (I don't heap mine, and I roll each smaller portion of dough into a ball). Place 3 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. 

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until set.  Let cool for 1 minute before removing from cookie sheets. Cool completely before storing.

Makes 2 1/2 dozen large cookies or about 3 1/2 dozen smaller cookies. 

 

Crab Stars at Seafood Village

What people go to Seafood Village for is crab, sweet, succulent deep-fried crab, so freshly cooked that the meat is hot and burns your fingers.

Golden crumbs of fried garlic scattered over the shells are the only seasoning. It's a greasy job, pulling the shells apart to get at the meat. And the table grows silent because all attention is on the work.

A Dungeness for three runs close to $18. That's about $6 a pound, most of which is shell. More costly than it used to be, my crab-eating friends observed, but worth the small splurge.

Chinese restaurants usually put everything on the table at once, but Seafood Village allowed time to eat most of the crab before bringing out the other dishes we had ordered. 

Perhaps the delay was by chance, or perhaps it was out of respect for the supreme moment we were enjoying.

The other food was fine too, especially sweet pea shoots with garlic (above), which you can only get in season.

Honey walnut cream shrimp (I can't resist that gooey, sweet dish) was well presented, with the walnuts on the side in case anyone couldn't eat nuts.

We also managed  a platter of crispy rock cod fillet with house special sauce (red and sweet).

Well why not?This is a seafood place after all, and we had come a long way to eat there. 

Seafood Village, 684 W. Garvey Ave., Monterey Park, CA 91754. Tel: (626) 289-0088. Also at 9669 Las Tunas Drive, Temple City, CA 91780. Tel: (626) 286-2299.

 

A Taste of Spain at Playa

The food at Playa took a strikingly Spanish turn the other night. Owner/chef John Sedlar had gone to Spain to learn about such prime ingredients as Ibérico ham and olive oil and to take a look at restaurants there.
 

So he offered Playa as a venue for an olive oil tasting, followed by Spanish-inflected  tapas accompanied by wines from Spain. 

While Sedlar (right) was in the kitchen, Alfonso J. Fernandez, an olive oil spokesman, grower and producer from Cordoba, led the tasting.

The oils had been poured into wine glasses, which made them look elegant and showed off their color. But that wasn't the point.

Color has nothing to do with olive oil quality, Fernandez said. Professionals taste not from wine glasses but from small rounded tumblers tinted dark blue or brown to hide the color of the oil. 

There wasn't a shred of bread in sight, as serious tasting is done straight. You hold the bowl of the glass in your hand to warm the oil and swirl it to release  the aromas. Then you take a sniff, detecting if the oil is "green" or "ripe" and looking for such components as banana, apple or tomato.  

A taste reveals such attributes as astringency, bitterness and piquancy and still more flavors, perhaps leafiness, freshly mowed grass, nuances of basil or tomato plant.

The four oils tasted came from arbequina, hojiblanca, cornicabra and picual olives.

Widely grown, sweet and mild, arbequina is popular for cooking. Picual, the most intense of the four, had lots of astringency and piquancy. Sedlar trickles it onto dishes as a finishing oil.

As for Spain, it's "ground zero of all the food ideas that are happening in the world," Sedlar enthused. Known for imaginative plating, he used photos from his trip as liners under clear glass platters.

Some of the dishes were adaptations of his Mexican specialties, such as deep-fried guero chiles stuffed with crab, maize cakes topped with burrata and arugula salad (above) and mussels with a spicy tomatillo salsa.

Papas (potatoes) with a serrano chile salsa verde were large puffy chips, not boiled potatoes, and strips of New York steak came with a chile verde pesto.

Azul, a blue corn cake that is new on Playa's menu, was one of the desserts. Sedlar made it with hojiblanca olive oil and topped it with almond-flavored ice cream.

Other dishes were typically Spanish, including carpaccio of Ibérico ham cut so fine you could almost see through the slices to the photo under the dish.

Sea bass with five salsas latinas (above) blended right into the tones of its underlying photo. That photo shows El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, a Michelin-starred restaurant that Sedlar raved about--high praise coming from a top chef.

He sent out so much food that the dinner went on until midnight, as if Playa were in Spain, where people eat very late. Not so in Los Angeles. Playa had emptied out long before the olive oil tasters left.

Playa, 7360 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036. Tel: (323) 933-5300.