Country Cuisine Confidential 2010, Part 1: Argentina

Welcome to Part 1 in a series examining each of the national cuisines on display at the 2010 Epcot Food & Wine Festival. Today's port of culinary call: Argentina.

Argentina made its first appearance at the Food & Wine Festival in 1996, the same year that the Festival itself began. This year, you'll find the Argentinian booth in Showcase Plaza, right next to the Brazilian booth, which will please geography mavens, and near the bridge leading to the Mexico Pavilion (and the Mexican booth).

Let's look at our menu:

Roasted Corn and Cheese Empanada

The empanada is a stuffed pastry (mostly savory, sometimes sweet) served as a snack or informal meal throughout Latin America. When you find an empanada in the States, it's usually filled with seasoned meat, but traditionally it can be filled with just about anything: meat, fish, vegetables, cheese, fruit, you name it. A proper empanada is baked, just like a pastry, but you can fry them, too. The roasted corn and cheese empanadas on Argentina's menu are not particularly adventurous but they ought to please even tame American palates.

Years ago, El Pirata y el Perico in the Magic Kingdom used to sell empanadas (stuffed with meat, naturally) and I remember them with a fondness they probably don't deserve.

Grilled Beef Skewer with Chimichurri Sauce and Boniato Puree

Beef is a no-brainer: Argentina has some of the best beef in the world, and they like to eat it hot from the asado, or grill, with chimichurri sauce, one of the best-known staples of Argentinian cuisine.

Chimichurri sauce is oil and vinegar spiced with garlic, cumin, cilantro, and/or oregano, plus some red or black pepper and a splash of lemon juice. If you're worried about it being hot, relax: it's mild.

The ringer in this dish is boniato puree. Depending upon how you pronounce it, boniato rhymes with sweet potato - and, in fact, it's a tropical sweet potato, white in color, more often found in Cuban and Caribbean cuisine as well as in Hispanic regions of the United States, especially southern Florida. I've never had it pureed with chimichurri sauce, but the flavors should complement one another perfectly. (If you like your meat skewered, by the way, be sure to check next door at the Brazilian booth for skewered pork.)

Beverages

The menu includes four local wines. The first two are from Bodega Norton, a large Argentinian winery established in the late 1800s: Reserva Malbec is a deep red, full-bodied wine, perfect with the beef skewers; Cosecha Tardia is a Chardonnay, lighter, and not so perfect with the beef skewers. The third wine is a rather common Cabernet: it won't hurt you. The fourth is a white wine (Torrontes) from Pascual Toso, another large Argentinian winery. Its lemony, fennel bouquet might be a good match for the empanadas.

I'm surprised the Argentinians didn't drop a wine and include in its place the country's traditional drink, mate, which is an infusion of the bitter leaves and twigs from the yerba mate plant sweetened with sugar. On second thought...

Taste It or Waste It?

Argentina is a safe bet for most folks. The food won't taste that dissimilar to American fare even if some of the ingredients sound exotic. Of the two dishes, I'd take the beef skewers over the empanadas. You don't want to pass up the chimichurri dipping sauce or the boniato puree. The empanadas, by comparison, seem plain, and it might be difficult to prepare freakishly flaky pastry crust in a booth. The crust and the spices will make or break the empanadas.

The Series So Far: Argentina | Australia | Belgium | Brazil | Canada | Chile

Contact the Author: Bob McLain