SouthAroundTheWorld

Food speaks directly to the senses, just like a new culture does when you are diving into it. It is a tale that speaks the language of the topography.
I’ve savored the wide and intense landscape of the Indian spices, there is nothing that tastes more tropical than the taste of Colombia’s refreshing lulo juice and I have fallen in love with the sweet subtlety of German Chocolate. But nothing comes closer to a familiar feeling than the sacred of the Argentinian Asado.

My friend Alejandro, whose way of conquering an outlandish woman is through food, explained to me that who cooks a perfect “Asado” usually learned this execution in a common household and it was passed on by generations. The extended greenery at the doors of Buenos Aires, the perfect lines of the Pampa fed the Angus to make its meat tender and juicy. That is why to cook it, all you need is kosher salt. Indeed, the complexity between a medium and a rare steak is not only the distance between the meat and the charcoal or the time it stays on the grill. In the end, the classic taste is defined in the Asador’s hands, it is never up to the dinner guest's preference.

As I heard him ramble on about his life and the importance of the meat cuts, suddenly I was immersed in the most familiar environment. He continued to nurture this experience by adding a classic European touch, a glass of Mendocinian Malbec with a side dish of roasted eggplant and bell pepper. Like in Cortazar’s work, tradition goes back and forth from Europe to South America. Argentinas Barbeque’s history it’s not only in the daily activities of local restaurants or in my friends culinary celebrations. You can trace it on every aspect of their culture. Borges was able to tell the Gauchos story submerging the reader in those nostalgic rural plains that gave birth to its food. The same ones that are present in their National Rock’s iconography. Like Almafuerte’s Toro and Pampa lyrics “On a Sunday far away from the city, under the sun sharing with friends. Roasted meat, bread, water, wine, bulls and Pampa.”

The Asado is the perfect analogy of an immigrant’s story, my story. It’s a canvas for flavor play that will combine venerable tradition and mix it with the richness of a new territory. Much like the spirit of a traveler, all this, is what creates a unique experience. I might mix and drag other places to the table, but that I can never be reproduced without the novelty of the elements found in a newly discovered land.