When I travel I tend to miss uruguayan food, I think this happens more or less to everyone (your birthplace food, not uruguay's ;) Among the stuff I miss, there's...well, of course dulce de leche, but there's also Milanesa.
Milanesa is a typical dish in uruguayan's diet, it consists of a breaded filet, with beef or chicken meat, usually fried, but it can also be oven cooked. If you add on top of the milanesa, ham, cheese, and tomato sauce then it's a "Milanesa a la Napolitana".
It's usually served along with smashed potatoes, or french fries. You can have it on a dish, or between sliced bread, in which case is Milanesa al pan. It comes with tomato, lettuce, and sliced egg.
A typical, low budget, lunch, fast/junk food is Milanesa en dos panes, sold in lunch delivery places. This is a milanesa so big that needs two pieces of bread to eat it properly.
Every bar in uruguay, has milanesa, you can find it typically in the "minutas" section of the menu (minutas, used for stuff that can be served within few minutes, thus the name).
It's the type of food that's frequently homemade, and uruguayans tend to live under the impression that their mother's milanesas are unbeatable, well, mine are :p
It's actually Mr Bush's favorite uruguayan dish, or so they say, since he discovered it, in his visit to La Corte.
Is there something similar where you live?
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Sunday, April 01, 2007
Milanesa, a typical dish in uruguay
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Food, Torta Frita
Continuing with the typical food series, another heavy weight in Uruguay food tradition is what we call Torta Frita.
Torta Frita is a round shaped, fried biscuit, with a hole in the middle. Is a very simple biscuit to prepare. Torta Frita ingredients are: flour, self-rising and salt creating a mass which is fried in grease. Thus the name, torta frita, something like fried cake.
Torta Frita is the dish of rainy afternoons in Uruguay, by excellence, and is another typical partner of Mate.
It can be bought in stands for around five uruguayan pesos (one quarter usd), but is usually homemade.
Torta Fritas are usuarlly eaten with sugar or dulce de leche.
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Monday, February 05, 2007
Pizza & Faina in Uruguay
In Uruguay pizza is not round, and slices are not triangular, well now is getting more common, but when I was a kid, round pizzas could only be seen in movies.
I guess the reason lies in the traditional usage of a spade (pala, is spade the right word? is more like a paddle) in the cooking process. Pizza here is prepared a la pala, using a sort of spade to put the pizza into, and take it out from the oven, typically a firewood oven. The pizza is given a rectangular, long and thin shape, to be better handled with the spade. In some places pizza is sold by the meter.
Also in Uruguay, if you order a pizza, you'll get one without any mozzarella. If you want the portion with mozzarella, you have to order a mozzarella :D Informally called "muzza".
It is also usually ordered along with a traditional dish in Uruguay named Fainá (farinata in italian), which is a sort of thin bread mixed with cheese (depending on the receipe), and served with pepper. It's typical to order it from the border (faina de la orilla), which is kind of stupid, taking into account I've never met anyone that likes it from the middle (everybody orders it "de la orilla").
If you ask me among the best places to have Pizza in Uruguay is a bar called Costa Azul by the Rambla de Pocitos. One portion of pizza costs around 20 pesos, almost 1 usd, and one portion of muzza costs two times that amount.
Pizza is usually delivered wrapped in paper and nylon to separate the layers of pizza, muzza, faina, etc. The paper is typically used to get your hands cleaned.
The size of the portion also changes from bar to bar, and it depends heavily on the cookers mood when cutting the portion. One interesting experiment I like to make is to order one portion, and after a while order two portions. Usually two portions aren't two times one, but more like 1.5, and if you order three you'll get whatever, since it's eyed measured. When you are uruguayan, young, penniless, and starving this is the type of useless things that you pay attention to.
It is typical to have a slice of muzza, with a slice of faina on top, and this is called pizza a caballo (pizza on horseback?).
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Sunday, October 16, 2005
Food, bakery
As americans have donuts, and french have croissants, we have bizcochos. Lazy cops here dont eat donuts, no, they eat bizcochos. They are made mainly out of flour and grease. There are salad and sweet ones, the salad ones are filled with cheese, or bacon, and the sweet ones with...guess, yes, dulce de leche, or dulce de membrillo. It's typical to have them with breakfast or tea (mate actually). You buy them by the kilo, and you usually eat it with friends or family. I guess it's not very healthy but tasty ;)
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These ones are called "Alfajores de maizcena", like little cakes, with a thick layer of "dulce de leche" in the middle, and coconout in the borders, if you like really sweet stuff (which i do) you can't miss them. Enter into any baker's store (panaderia) and pronounce: "alphajores", then thank me.
These ones are called "ojitos" (little eyes), dont know how they make them, dont really care, I think it involves grease and some sweet red stuff that goes in the middle, im crazy'bout them, always been.
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Food, dulce de leche
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Dulce de leche is a creme, made with milk and sugar (hence the name), with kinda caramel flavor, but better ;) You can find it everywhere in Uruguay's sweet food, cakes, everything. I guess it's part of the uruguayan culture. As a kid I thought all the world had dulce de leche, and that all the world eated it as much as we do. To my surprise little is known of dulce de leche outside the river plate zone. I have concluded that for mysterious reasons the uruguayan population has developed an addiction to this stuff, I know I'm on it. It's one of the things uruguayan's living offshore miss the most. It's also one of the many things uruguayan's and argentinian's debate on who invented it, I say Uruguay :)
It's not a dish on itself, as it supposed to be eaten along with other things, bread, in cakes, you name it, but the chubby uruguayan won't doubt to grab a spoon full of dulce the leche lick it like there's no tomorrow, and when finnished, go get some more.
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Food, Asado
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Barbecue, or "asado" as we call it's the national dish, if there's such a thing. Uruguay's meat has very good fame, and for good reason. The conditions for cattle growing are ideal in this part of the world, or so they say. History goes that, a long time ago (in this galaxy;), one spanish guy, called Hernandarias, brought around 100 cattle heads to the land, that would later become Uruguay, and in a matter of years they had reproduced big time. Land and weather natural conditions turned out to be real good, as well as the lack of any kind of predators, including human populations. So we could say that Uruguay's territory was populated extensively first by cattle, then by humans.
Asados are social activities, instead of charcoal the meat is roasted by making a fire from wood, and using the embers (is that the word?) to cook the meat. It's a time consuming process, but all for the better, because while someone is preparing the fire (el asador) everyone else get's to eat snacks, and play cards ("truco" typically). It's typical to put some parmesano provolone cheese on the grill, and to serve hot cheese as entrance, along with the snacks. The meat is placed in a big, big grill, called "parrilla", expected to support considerable amounts of meat, and sausages ("chorizos").
Typically if the asado turns out to be good, the responsible cooker (el asador), get's an applause from everyone. Actually "el asador" always gets an applause, unless the asado is real bad, and you have a trust relationship with the person so you can tell him the awfull truth, that his asado sucks. Luckily this is not often.
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Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Mate
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Mate is the name of a typical beverage of the river plate zone, shared with south of brazil and argentinians. It's an infusion of a weed named "yerba" (wich actually in spanish means weed), like tea, but the weird thing is that it is drinked (sipped actually) in a special recipients made out of a dried, hollow "fruit" (it's kinda small pumpking) called mate, wich names the whole thing. You sip it with a metal thing called "bombilla". There I've said it. It's like coffe, some sort of stimulator, very popular among students to start the day, and to stay awake until late.
Half of the population or more are on it, people carry their own "mates" to work, and it's also a social drink, it's unpolite to have mate and not offer, and if someone requests "a mate", while you are having it's almost illegal to deny it.
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