Argentina: Matambre, Humita Empanadas and Alfajores
Argentinian steak “roll-up”, corn filled empanadas and shortbread dulce de leech cookies.
Guys (and gals and everything else!), this meal was a PROCESS! Between trying to find a flank steak during a meat shortage, working and ingredient prep, this meal took me about 3 days to prepare! But it was worth it in the end!
Matambre, which literally means “hunger killer” in Spanish, is basically a GIANT steak roll-up, stuffed with sweet peppers, chimichurri sauce AND boiled eggs!! Since it was SO big, I did have some trouble cooking it all the way through on the grill, but the flavor was really good, so next time I’d probably just finish it in the oven to get it more evenly cooked. Since there was only 2 of us eating, we had a toooon of meat left over, which I ended up repurposing for delicious steak tacos the next day!
I also made empanadas filled with a corn mixture called humita and this was probably my favorite part of the meal! As you’ll come to learn about me, I LOVE literally ANYTHING with corn in it, so I was obsessed with these empanadas!! I was once quoted as saying “Nothing will surpass my love for corn” so you get the picture. All that aside, I think anyone would love these- they’re sweet and savory, crispy and gooey, and slightly smokey from the smoked paprika and cumin! I would literally eat these every day if I could haha!
Lastly, I made alfajores, which are shortbread cookies with a dulce de leech filling and rolled in coconut flakes! I made the dough ahead of time so the most time consuming part of this recipe was making the dulce de leche- even though I followed the recipe exactly, I still had to double the cooking time to get the right consistency. The longer you cook it the darker and thicker it gets and I wanted mine pretty thick so it would stay on the cookie. I will say for all the effort that went into these cookies, they really were sooo yummy! The creamy, sweet dulce de leche was the perfect match for the dry and slightly bland shortbread cookie. And the coconut was such a nice fun touch!
I really enjoyed this meal even though parts of it were quite labor intensive and slightly frustrating. Everything tasted great and I learned a lot of new cooking techniques- for example, I did some research on cooking/grilling at altitude (living in Denver we’re 5,280 ft above sea level!), since 2 of my dishes needed longer cooking times, and apparently it’s common to have to cook things longer at higher altitudes! The more you know, right??