SALT
“I have two lovers in life that I have never slept with. The city of Paris and potatoes.”
– Francis Mallmann
Argentinian food is unique in a very specific way. If you live in Argentina and you go to a Chinese restaurant, or a Mexican restaurant, or a Japanese restaurant, the food will still find a way to taste distinctly Argentinian. So what does Argentinian food taste like?, you ask.
I’ll tell you. Or, at least, I’ll try.
Perfectly salty. And not much else. One thing is for certain: it is virtually impossible to replicate in the States.
Argentinians don’t use many condiments except for ketchup on McDonald’s french fries and chimichurri on special occasions (ketchup doesn’t go on regular french fries… the condiment for regular french fries is a scrambled egg, and no, I am not kidding). Nothing is spicy, even if you order it spicy. You can’t get a side of black beans and rice anywhere. It’s not Latin America – it might as well be Europe. People cook more with lard than with butter, the meat is spectacular, the wine is heavy, and the primary culinary ornamentation is salt.
I should back up a bit…
I heard once that people are whole little worlds – little kaleidoscopes; equal parts fiction and experience.
So many faces and facets to the prisms that people become at 20… at 30… at 40… at 50. Writer, musician, chef, thinker, theologian, gamer, surfer, professional, lover, sister, misanthrope, creative, thalassophyle, a fundamentally sentimental human… all in one small body, all from one diligent mind, distilled riotously within the human heart from vapors of the human experience.
When I was about 17, I would sleep until noon – sometimes longer. I was in college studying linguistics, staying up late playing the keyboard (with headphones), dancing tango, and drinking Argentinian wine. I spent considerable time in Argentina in a large house architected by a very special mind that had wood floors and pink Italian marble bathrooms. What woke me every morning was the lilting sound of a violin, played haphazardly over morning coffee, wafting up the spiral staircase to my bedroom along with the smell of espresso and fresh criollitos.
The sound was my brother-in-law – Argentinian musician-turned-heart-surgeon – practicing Por Una Cabeza with my sister accompanying him on the piano as she accompanied him in life. La Cumparsita and El Choclo would follow, but not before I dragged myself out of bed, poured myself a cup of coffee, and picked up the violin that I played under duress in those years. As my brother-in-law explained, there could only be so many pianists in an orchestra, and there were already two in my extended family when I arrived on the scene, a seasoned teenager waiting to fling herself full tilt into the Argentinian world of boliches and tango music.
We would play all morning as a family. Triplet boys, age 8; a pianist, a violinist, and a cellist. My sister, a pianist. My brother-in-law, a violinist. And me, whatever I needed to be that day. Criollitos, medialunas, and coffee until 11 when we would all part ways for our respective days.
I had the rarified privilege of experiencing many facets of Argentinian life in my first twenty years – from the symphony to the bus system. I was looking for myself in foreign places and, in the process, building an unmatched repertoire of personal experience. Not much compares to those chaotic moments spent with a violin in my hand or a piano beneath my fingers, and the experience of connection, flavor, and culture that filled that house along with the music.
Argentinian asado – assorted meat grilled diligently for hours over open flame – is unmatched both in flavor and in experience. My brother-in-law Nestor makes the best parrillada I have ever tasted. He cooks it slowly and salts it heavily, and serves it with plenty of empanadas. I began this New Year – 2023 – at Nestor’s house grilling meat, playing the world’s most elegant piano (a 1959 Steinway baby grand), and drinking Achaval Ferrer’s Quimera, inundated in gratitude for every moment of my childhood and every ounce of experience he shared with my very young and impressionable mind.
The taste of empanadas, parrillada, and red wine came to flavor my adolescence, calibrating my tastes – both for food and experience – for something deeper.
The something deeper was comprised of sound, flavor, place, and an inescapable depth of being. The curation of these components into a prismatic interpretation of how to spend an evening is what I am after in 2023 with both Merigold and OneandahalfSlices. For me, it all started with people. People immersed in sound, flavor, culture, and place drives connection. It is a formidable thing, a strong thing, a simple thing. This experiential living is not the type of thing that can be perfectly curated. It is organic, not contrived; fresh, not canned; and served a little sloppy, not manicured and tweezed onto a plate.
It’s an agent-based model.
(stick with me…)
Agent-Based Model. A stochastic computer simulation comprised of autonomous agents used to study the presence, emergence, and evolution of complex social phenomena.
The beauty (artistry / elegance) in an agent-based model is that neither behavior nor interaction is prescribed. A successful simulation provides the environment for interaction to emerge organically without explicit logic or rules to specify outcomes.
When you are designing an ABM (something I did routinely during the three years of earning my PhD) you are designing an environment, not coding an outcome. You’re building a world or a scene… in a place, with flavors and sounds and things you feel. It’s sensory, it’s visceral, and it is much more fun in the real world than in the world of computation.
In 2023, Merigold and OneandahalfSlices together are going to make more empanadas. We’re going to measure less and live a little bit more. We’re going to be fundamentally more creative than corporate. We’re going to travel, be curious, and think deeply about the world and the people in it. Invite-only but every possible perspective welcome. I, for one, am looking forward to the year – the flavors, the music, the salt, the ocean waves crashing, and the company.
So what does Argentinian food taste like? I’m not sure how to describe it other than to say, to me, it tastes like experience. It tastes like my childhood, like my family, like music, and like deep connection to the world.
It is the dish OneandhalfSlices would most like to serve to its patrons and followers this year.
#yellow2023
#openflamecooking
#measurelesslivemore
#morecreativethancorporate
