Argentina Week!

This week we headed to South America to explore Argentina. Once again, this was a terrific food week, and one that Zahara had been looking forward to for a while. She's a huge steak lover, so she was pumped to learn that beef plays such an important role in Argentina's past and present.

Culture

One of the coolest things we learned about this week is La Cueva de las Manos (the Cave of Hands). This cave art from 10,000 years ago is as beautiful as it is mysterious. The art's purpose, artist, and method are all unknown, though there are some strong hypotheses about the last point. Since all the paintings are of outlines of left hands, archaeologists believe that the artists held a pipe or blow dart filled with paint in their right hands and made impressions of their left hands. I really wanted to try this with the kids, but we didn't get to it this week. Maybe another time.

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We also watched a few videos to learn more about Argentina. We watched this one on Argentinian music, this one on geography, and this one had a few interesting facts, like the national sport of Argentina. What do you think it is? I would have guessed football (soccer), but it's not. It's pato! It's like a mix of polo and basketball. Crazy!

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Food

As I said, we ate well this week. Here was our menu: empanadas with chimichurri, steak, fungazetta, and alfajores.

I was intimidated to make empanadas from scratch, but actually, these were really easy. I used non-dairy milk and margarine to make it kosher. These will absolutely go into our normal rotation. The kids couldn't get enough. Just as a note, I made half the dough and filling and it only made 8 empanadas. I might even double the recipe next time and freeze some.

Yum. Steak. What else is there to say? So good. 

Fungazetta was another dish that sounded weird, but I can't wait to have again. It's more like a focaccia or flatbread than pizza, but it is SO tasty. We went for a more traditional style and used raw onions rather than caramelized. I highly recommend doing that too. It cooks in the oven so it doesn't have a raw taste, but it provides a great counterbalance to all the cheese.

We searched high and low for alfajores, a traditional Argentinian sweet. We finally found some at a local restaurant (La Limena). I personally didn't care for these much. They are made with dulce de leche, which I don't love. I think it also has a slight fennel taste--again, not a fan of licorice. But Dan and the kids liked them.

I'm already dreaming about making the empanadas and fungazetta again, but there's no time to waste. On to Spain!

Read about our other country weeks here.