Live Blogging from Olavarría

(Originally published 25 May 2017)
Happy locro day everybody. Today finds us still on the cattle trail but about to head out for the big town. That means our 25 de Mayo will be feted tomorrow at la casa de mi cuñado... and guess who is making the locro... yo el yanqui.

We will probably be home by noon today. That will give me just about enough time to prepare this dish... for my first time... for 10 hungry Argentines waiting for the season´s specialty dish.

If you don´t know locro you should. It´s delicious and wonderfully warming and has one of the arsenal de cuisine's most overlooked ingredients: hominy.

My first... and favorite... locro I ever ate was in Mataderos back in 2000. It was really nothing like any other locro I´ve ever seen. It was really skimpy on all the different crazy pig-parts and sausages that make up a big-time, pull out all the stops, locro as pictured above.

But that was an excellent introduction for me. It pared back the dish to it´s foundation: a grain porridge of hominy, some beans, and little bit of some other things like squash and potatoes just to keep it nice and thick and complete the emulsion with the fat.

That locro way back when reminded me of my father´s version of senate bean soup... smoky and rich... except in place of beans there was hominy. It crosses the line a little from soup to stew. Locro crosses that line a bit more but is should not be gloppy.

Today´s (tomorrow´s actually) locro will begin with a couple of kilos of the dried, cracked corn that has been treated with calcium carbonate in the old aztec fashion. It will soak for hours then simmer carefully for hours until it becomes tender and releases its starch. Then the hominy will get some company: white beans, some squash, and tiny cubes of potato to dissolve into the proper consistency.

Meanwhile, all the meat parts will be slowly, slowly braising away until about 3 hours later when they are at the point of extreme tenderness and will also allow me to remove some of their rendered fat.

Those lovely meat things are at this point already purchased (yesterday because of the holiday) from a tremendous butcher that my lovely wife found for me in this tremendous cow-town of Olavarría and are sleeping in the refrigerators of the fine Savoy Hotel: Pigs feet, pig skin (cuerito de chancho), mondongo, tripa gorda de chancho, strips of pork ribs, and a goodly amount of well smoked bacon.

As the dish nears readiness to serve, some great red sausages from the great Spanish tradition will be plopped in.

Seasoning and spices will be mild, of course, a bit of paprika, some white pepper, garlic, and very little salt... strangely for Argentina, every locro receta I have seen mentions that locro should not come to the table salty.

Then I´ll have a little fun preparing a couple of topping sauces that are the traditional accompaniment. They are always red and and skirt actual picanteness! Just for fun, I´m also bringing a pint bottle of Pain is Good® garlic hot sauce just to blow everybody´s mind.

I´ll be cooking this low and slow all afternoon and evening... so if you have locro tips, send ém in LIVE as the dish progresses.

(One particularly tremendous tip would be... advice on any supermercados open for last minute ingredients!!!)

Mil gracias a La Majaluta for some personal advice regarding the hominy!!!

Update: 17:45 BsAs. 2.5 kilos of maíz pisado blanco sin cáscara are soaking/simmering in two giant pots... with just enough water to do the job. That is probably WAY too much hominy but there will be NO time to prepare more if the quantity pulls up short. Pig parts are doing their low 'n' slow thing in another pot in the oven. The Disco is open... for a few cans of white beans (no soaking!)

Update: 22:00. 2.5 kilos of dried hominy turns into an INCREDIBLE amount of hominy... two giant pots full. Way too much. I'm going to have to dump some.

I'm in a logistic crunch... I'm out of pots. I have one big Essen® in the oven chock full of pig parts. So full, in fact, that the ordinary 3 hour low and slow is probably going to have to take 6 hours due to sheer density...we're lookin' at midnight for the meat to be done.

This is going to leave me with my biggest pot full of hominy and zapallo, the Essen full of meat, a giant wok in which I am assembling the fine smoked panceta and onions... and one pot free for assembly after the hominy dump.

The idea is to take the free pot and fill it with the proper proportions of hominy/squash, pig-parts, bacon/onion, beans, and red sausage. That should leave the biggest pot not quite so full of hominy/squash and thus able to accept its share of the rest of the ingredients in the proper proportions.

Then sleep, wake-up, go get the car, load it up, drive for an hour, and get to lo de mi cuñado at noon or so. Stand-by for updates.

Update: 00:30. It's killer. All the pig-parts practically liquefied with the rendering of their fat leaving even things that are not normally tender... extraordinarily tender. I drained about a half liter of fat off the parts to the great benefit of everyone's digestion tomorrow. Screw the beans, it doesn't need it. Goin' to bed. Chau.

Big success. Gracias a Dios. Gold medal from my brother-in-law...my mother-in-law ate so much that it frightened me. Everybody chowed and called it the best. I actually got applause for the "locroador"! What a relief.