Chimichurri

This morning I met with Maddy and my Argentine friends for our first Spanish “class” in five weeks. It felt very satisfying to me to be able to carry on a reasonable conversation en español, albeit Sandra did much of the talking. Maddy had a harder re-entry than I did when we started and I think my nightly telenovela watching is the reason I could pick up again fairly quickly. On the other hand Maddy lasted longer than I did as I began tiring after a couple of hours. Maybe all the sugar (I brought cupcakes and there was liberal sugar in the mate) just crashed on me.

I told Sandra about going to Solea after the movie last Friday night and having tapas, including beef tenderloin with chimichurri sauce. (Turns out they know one of the owners, who is Argentine.) We had a long discussion of what chimichurri sauce consists of, and what they described was very different from any chimichurri sauce I’ve had, including the one at Solea. They described a red sauce and I’ve only seen it bright green; I assumed it had parsley if not cilantro in it as well.

I just looked up recipes on epicurious.com and also googled it. This recipe for chimichurri rojo sounds similar to the one Sandra read to us from her Argentine cookbook, except with bay leaves instead of cumin and they use salmuera (salt water or brine) and less vinegar. She also described specific instructions to mix the ingredients and then leave it open in the sun and/or air for 24 hours before putting it in the refrigerator (heladera – new vocab). They make a huge batch and use it for weeks – there’s no fresh greens in it – and it gets stronger flavored as it ages. Epicurious.com also has another chimichurri recipe that sounds like the ones I’ve had – with fresh parsley and cilantro – and virtually all the recipes I found online were similar except that sometimes they use bay leaves instead of cumin.

Next week we’ve decided to cook together and the plan is to make empanadas. I’m looking forward to it.

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