Round of 16, Day 1 - Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay - World Cup Eating Challenge

This is how all the magic happens

...also known as the day I almost had a heart attack. My system for choosing countries isn't perfect, I'm not going to lie. I really want to get as many of the remaining countries as possible while still being able to do Brazil again in the future. I had already had a plan to do the other 3 South American countries on Saturday... watching the Brazil game was torture. Not only am I a huge Brazil fan, but this was going to really throw off my cooking plans for the day. There's no way I could do any of the other countries if Brazil lost - I'd want to focus on only them. I sat in front of my TV with my shopping list ready, holding my breath, and hoping for the best. I'm sooo happy for so many reasons that Brazil pulled it out and can advance! Columbia was looking really good in their game though, Friday is going to be tough.

Originally, I was just going to do one of the three countries I was deciding between. I turned to Facebook and instead of getting a vote, everyone had different opinions on how to do all three. My friend Steve gave me some Colombian ideas and I also got the suggestion for "bite"-size Uruguayan items.

In the end, I came up with one item for each country. A lot of South and Central American countries have similar cuisine so I wanted to do something that felt unique to each without using something that I wanted to do for another country. This had some difficulties but Chile ended up working out really well for me. As soon as I looked up Chilean recipes, I got one for Chilean Sea Bass. Done! This seemed so obvious after the fact, but also perfect.

The first step was obviously to find some sea bass. I thought Safeway would have some at the seafood counter but they didn't have it there or with the frozen fish. I'd heard that some of the Latin markets in the Mission had great seafood so I checked there next. I ended up getting a giant piece of sea bass for about $20. While that seems kind of pricey - what is pictured above is only about 1/3 of it. I thought that was pretty good for a fresh, hard to find fish. 

I used the recipe above to make up my own marinade. I obviously wasn't starting the day before (oops..) so I wouldn't have time to cook and reduce the citrus. I also got fresh ginger instead of garlic-ginger paste, and didn't even see the chipotle peppers. I hate capers so I skipped those all together. I basically just ended up blending lemon, grapefruit, garlic, ginger, chipotle seasoning, and olive oil to make a marinade that the fish then sat in for several hours. Actually, it was pretty much a completely different marinade than what's in the recipe. 

For Uruguay, I found some "bite"-size fritters made of swiss chard. Now, it wouldn't be a challenge if there wasn't a substitution error so this time I replaced the flour with tapioca flour as it's the most similar to regular flour. The recipe said to keep adding flour until there was a good consistency. I didn't know what that would be so basically just kept adding it. In the end there was more dough than greens. I think I would have been better off adding more cheese instead. It felt like there was barely any in them. 

For frying, I used avocado oil instead of vegetable oil. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Avocado oil is a "high heat" oil meaning it won't burn in the pan the way butter and other oils might. This makes it great for frying and you can get a giant bottle of it for $10 at Costco.

Columbia was the country I was the most excited about. My friend Steve gave me a few suggestions that I brought together as one. The first part of it were arepas. Arepas are kind of like thick corn tortillas that can be used as a type of gluten free bread for South American sandwiches. I was a little nervous about this because I once again had to get a particular corn flour and last time that didn't turn out so well.  My recipe for arepas suggested white masarepa. This was dehydrated corn meal. Corn meal is what I used last time so this time I went for white corn flour. I could tell immediately that the texture was easier to work with and I had made a better choice. 

A different arepa recipe that I found suggested using carnitas as the filling for it. Slow cooked carnitas is one of my favorite things to make at home. It's probably the easiest thing in the world to cook if you have a crock pot. I just coat mine in salt, garlic powder, paprika, and a little pepper then stick it in the slow cooker fat side down (don't trim the fat) for 6-8 hours on high or 8-10 on low (this is preferred but I was getting a late start). The fat will basically liquefy and become the cooking liquid for your pork. Just be sure to drain it before you pull it apart or it will end up being really salty. 

Steve also suggested a salsa called Aji. I used this recipe for it. My proportions were a little off and I think I put in too much vinegar, but otherwise it was a really tasty sauce. I'm pretty vigilant about washing my hands when I'm cooking. I always wash them after touching any sort of meat (even if I know I'm going to go right back to touching it in a couple of minutes) and after most other things too. I hate cross contamination and also just don't like my hands to be dirty or sweaty or anything. It's pretty safe to say, I probably washed my hands dozens of times before I went to bed but when it came time to take out my contacts, my eyes were burning. This stuff gets INTO your skin. If you feel like you're going to be touching your eyes anytime after eating this, be super careful that you don't get any on your fingers! 

In the end, it came together into this wonderful arepa sandwich! I also ended up putting some Monterey Jack cheese on it because as we've discussed, cheese makes everything better. I was really happy that I had some leftover arepas and pork for lunch the next day too. However, I made a lot less pork than usually. Generally I make about 5-8 lbs of pork, but this time I only did 3 lbs knowing that I'd be making another dinner the next day. This was a huge mistake, Dan and I were both wanting the last of the pork and it would have been great for us to have for lunches and snacks. The moral of the story - you can never have too much pork. Ever. 

For the fish - in the middle of making the arepas and fritters, I put it in the oven at 350 for about 15-20 minutes. After that I broiled it for another 5 minutes. I made two notable mistakes with the fish. First, since I used fresh ginger instead of the ginger-garlic paste - I had no idea how much to put. I ended up putting wayyy too much and it's didn't really get cut up small enough when I processed the marinade. I ended up eating a big chunk of ginger which was really unpleasant.  Second, I should have drained the marinade before cooking the fish. It was a strong marinade and the flavor got in well enough that it didn't need to cook with it. It also kept the fish from getting that nice brown color I love in cooked animals. The broiling helped with that but more would have been nice. Otherwise, it was really tasty and I think my alternate marinade turned out really good.

All in all, this was a great meal. I will definitely be making the Columbian portion of the meal again. The fritters ended up having a weird texture (probably due to all the tapioca flour). The fish was ok. I'm sure I could fix my mistakes and it would be awesome next time but I feel like for the effort, there are other things I'd rather attempt instead.... like more arepas.