I feel home

After over 16 hours of flights and airports, I am home in good ol’ Colorado, back into the dry heat of mid-summer, the land of peanut butter and daytime television in English… and living under dad’s roof (again).  

And honestly, all I really have to say is… TAKE ME BACK!!  What a horrible, helpless feeling it is to be on an airplane taking off the runway, when all you want to do is scream to the pilot “wait! I change my mind! I want off!!!”

I have been trying to do everything and anything to take my mind off of Argentina, Julián, and the wonderful two months I just spent on vacation, but I can’t.  I feel like a brokenhearted thirteen-year-old, when every song on the radio or every movie on TV reminds you of that one special person.

Ugh.

You might have already guessed that I wasn’t in the mood to cook last night.  Besides being exhausted from flying (isn’t it funny how travelling wears you out?  You don’t really physically do anything but sit in an uncomfortable chair for hours, but it’s exhausting!) I just didn’t feel like being in the kitchen.  Thankfully, my dad took me out to dinner last night—Mexican food, my favorite!, and two mind-numbing margaritas.  

Ahhh.

I’ve decided that for today, I am hosting a “guest” chef to share a dinner recipe with you.  Julián only has about three recipes that he rotates through whenever it’s his turn to cook, but he’s a master at them all. 

The closest thing I can come to describing milanesa to the American chef is chicken fried steak.  It’s a prime cut of very thin meat, soaked in a mixture of garlic, eggs, and freshly chopped parsley, and covered in a thick bread crumb batter.

Then, it’s fried.

Eating a well-prepared milanesa is no time to think about your diet.  Milanesa is usually accompanied with a heaping pile of mashed potatoes—but the potatoes should be very mashed (almost runny), and covered in salt.

If you want to get a little crazy, you can even top it with a big slab of melty mozzarella cheese, a slice of fresh tomato, and a sprinkle of oregano.  Juli loves to use the leftovers for milanesa sandwiches the next day—just add a little mayonnaise (a staple Argentine condiment) and two slices of bread.

Milanesa a la Julián (serves 4)

4 thinly cut steaks

3 eggs

two tbsp. chopped garlic

1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley

2 cups bread crumbs

oil (for frying)

salt (to taste)

1.  Mix the eggs, garlic, salt, and parsley in a large bowl, and set aside.

2.  Even if your steaks are thinly cut, Julián likes to give them a good pounding to thin the meat out as much as possible. So, give them a few good punches, and let the meat soak in the egg mixture for 5-8 minutes.

3.  With the bread crumbs spread evenly across a plate, transfer the steaks one by one from the egg mixture and coat them heartily with bread crumbs.

4.  Cover the bottom of a frying dish with oil, and heat on high.  The oil will be ready once you can feel heat radiating off the surface of the oil, and the oil starts to "crack and spatter".  Fry each steak for about two minutes per side, adjusting heat as necessary.  Serve hot with a side of mashed potatoes.