Saturday, April 30, 2011

Cow Eating Status

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BEFORE AND AFTER….

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(1) Brad persevering (2) blood sausage (3) kidneys (4) chimichurri sauce

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Brad and I FINALLY went to eat an Argentina parrilla, or steakhouse. Parilla is actually more what you order, which is a roundup of meat cuts grilled slowly with little seasoning other than salt. And instead of A1, they use freshly prepared chimichurri sauce, that’s a mixture of garlic, olive oil, vinegar, peppers and salt.

Brad always researches restaurants thoroughly when we’re going somewhere new and exciting, and our trip to La Florencia around the corner was no different. We were VERY surprised that it had a review in the New York Times. We actually think it was only written 5 days ago, so perhaps we have a critic in our midst.

Anyhow, we were very impressed when a waiter, now our friend Patricio, whisked us into the restaurant and gave us incredible service (he managed to include a lesson on world politics with the meal). Funny enough, Brad and I came in determined to order a parilla for two, and Patricio tried to talk us OUT of it, saying we wouldn’t like it. After conferring briefly, we stuck to our guns. For better or worse…

To explain, a parilla generally includes not only traditional cuts such as asado de tira (ribs), vacio, chorizo (beef sausage) and chicken, but also morcilla (blood sausage), molleja (throat), chiculines (intestines), rinones (kidneys) and teta de vaca (cow teat).

We tried it all. Can’t say we’d do it all again, but we tried it all. We couldn’t determine if we didn’t care for sweetbreads (the inner parts) because we knew what they were or because of the taste and texture.

SO, I will probably not be following through on my plan of eating all of the parts of the cow, inspired by a great blog: http://soundsgoodonpaper.com/.

But I do have plans to eat lamb (cordero) and goat (chivo) here.

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