I think it’s time I confessed it: I am an addict. Not booze, not drugs… my current vice is SPICE.

I’m not talking about dunes and sandworms here, it’s a scorched palate and breath of fire that I crave. And it’s in shockingly low supply here in Mendoza, Argentina.

Most North Americans, when they think of South American food, associate it with lots of spice. The truth of the matter (sad, for us food obsessed expats) is that THIS far south…. not so much.

I have a theory that it’s latitudinal, with heat decreasing in reverse correlation with distance from the equator;  there is as little heat in typical Argentine cuisine as there is in… German schnitzel. (Which there also happens to be a hell of a lot of here, under the pseudonym ‘milanesa.’)

(Brief geeky tangent: Mendoza’s latitude is 33S. For comparison: New York City is 40N, Paris - 48N. At 40S, you’re almost in Patagonia. Major points go to whoever can tell me which major North American city is at 33N… just don’t publicly disprove my theory. And it doesn’t count if you use Google Earth.)

Now, food wise, what the Argentines do well, they do VERY well. The meat here is incomparable, as are the empanadas (especially when you find really good ones). There is yummy fresh pasta, and I’ve never known anybody to put as much love into a sandwhich as Mendocinos (except for possibly Uruguayans). Furthermore, as a life-long salt fiend I love to watch the asador (grill master) coat each cut of beef with salt before throwing it on the parilla (grill). My friends (and my doctor) can all vouch for this.

However, the seasoning options just about end there. Call me what you will - ‘food snob’ is one I’ve heard more than a couple of times, as is ’spoiled brat’ - but I’ve been overindulged by culinary variety for far too long. I grew up in one of the most diverse parts of the American “melting pot”, spent a year living in Northern Italy’s culinary capital, and then to top it all off spent years working in the New York City restaurant scene.

What can I say - I’m a product of my experience. For better or worse, my experience contains a lot of ‘ese’ - Chinese, Japanese… also Mexican, Thai, and Indian. I never knew how much I loved all of these things until I was faced with their absence. Now that there’s no Thai delivery and take-out sushi in my life, I cook with chili peppers every chance I get. When I go to Buenos Aires for the weekend, I take the opportunity to torture my taste buds as much as possible.

Not really the best policy for somebody who makes a living from tasting wine, but I already admitted to having a problem. In this case, rather than recovery, acceptance is the first step towards gratification.

To best profit from the more varied culinary scene in Argentina’s capital, I stuff as much ethnic food into my mouth as possible. (I even made my parents meet me for Moroccan food on their very first night in Buenos Aires!) Recently my top choice has been Vietnamese - not actually something I had much exposure to before coming here. Thank you to Sudestada, a spectacular southeast Asian fusion restaurant in Palermo (blending primarily Vietnamese and Thai) I learned what I’ve been missing. I will honestly say that Sudestada is currently my favorite restaurant in the world.

Here on the home front I stick with the aforementioned Argentine classics: more meat than is good for me, and empanadas from the one place in town with ‘carne picante’ that actually burns. I’ve started frequenting Mendoza’s central market which has not only an impressive selection of meats and cheeses, but also vegetable stands that carry technicolored chili peppers. Despite the limited resources I have at my disposal, I manage to stoke the flames of my addiction.

June 18th, 2008 | gastronomia, vita | 6 comments

For many wine lovers out there, something just doesn’t sound right about this statement.

Screw caps, or ‘Stelvin enclosures’ to us industry folk (and the Alcan Packaging Company responsible for their creation) have recently been revolutionizing the wine business. Consumer, vendor, critic - everybody has something to say about them. Now, thanks to a question from my sister Gillian, so do I.

Over the past five years or so we’ve been seeing more and more screw caps on wine bottles. Starting with whites on the low end and slowly working their way up the pricing ladder and across the color divide as they break through their stigma, now they are found on wines from many parts of the world, at many different price points. Some people love them, others are filled with loathing. Many wonder what the hell the controversy is all about.

While there are many ways of addressing the issue, in terms of cost, marketing, and micro-oxygenation, for me it’s mostly about tradition. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m somewhat of a wine purist; I was attracted to to the world of wine because of its long history and rich traditions. It’s often easy to mistake custom for necessity, and sometimes difficult to draw a line between the two - cork has so long been the closure of choice for winemakers the world over that many don’t realize there are alternatives. And, due to the screw cap’s long association with cheap wine, there are more who would never consider changing.

Cork is a natural material, easy to produce and completely biodegradable. It allows for minuscule amounts of oxygen to pass through, permitting a wine to breathe and settle over time, which screw caps do not. However, cork is also susceptible to what’s now generally referred to as ‘corking,’ or ‘cork taint,’ which has become so common that the terms are now used to describe any defect in wine. Flawed cork can allow too much oxygen through, leading to oxidized wine, but in reality ‘corked’ refers specifically to the the presence of trichloroanisole (TCA), which is naturally occurring in many cork trees. When TCA is released into the wine, it imparts the smell (and sometimes the flavor) of, well, wet cardboard. While sometimes subtle, other times it’s not - putting your nose in a glass of seriously corked wine smells like walking into a basement shortly after a flood. It’s not exactly bad for you, but can definitely detract from wine’s hedonistic pleasure .

Obviously, lower quality cork carries with it a the higher risk of defects, and as the wine market has grown exponentially the supply of quality cork has diminished correspondingly. As well as justifying alternate enclosures for wine bottles, this snowball effect is also creating a greater need for them, and we will only see more and more cork alternatives in the coming years.

Now let’s be honest here - I’m a romantic. Aesthetically, I will always prefer the presentation of cork in a bottle of wine, especially expensive wine with a history behind it. For me the inherent risk of corking is one of the things that makes wine special; it’s alive inside the bottle, and things can go wrong. Financial matters aside I think there is something beautiful about buying wine while knowing that there is always a chance of defect… loving it enough that one is willing to keep making sacrifices in the effort to enjoy that which is truly extraordinary.

However, I don’t expect everybody to share this belief, and frankly, I wouldn’t really want them to. I was attracted to wine not only because of it’s history but also because of its future - as the world changes, so does the world of wine. It can be appreciated on many different levels, consumed in innumerable situations, and purchased at wildly variant prices. I’ve become completely used to screw caps on fresh white wines and inexpensive reds; they make a great deal of sense from the perspective of both consumer and producer. Why take a risk with a wine that will be sold for $10 and consumed immediately? The winery would rather not lose any of their production, and the buyer wants to get their money’s worth.

So, don’t criticize the screw cap. Just don’t put one on my Châteauneuf.

March 22nd, 2008 | vino | 6 comments