Vatican City

A tiny country in the middle of a city that has the power to influence people all around the world.  With a population of around 800 in total this tiny countries is really Italian based.  However I found a twist while researching the Vatican.  The current pope would generally eat their countries cuisine while at the Vatican.   The current pope is from Argentina and enjoys Argentine food writes a Swiss Guard who wrote a cook book of the Vaticans food.   The current Pope enjoys his Tri tip steak and dolce de latte true to his Argentinian roots.  Thus this menu in honour of the Pope.

I had a hard time finding a decent piece of tri-tip at any of the local stores.  One butcher even tried to convince me that a round roast was a tri-tip with most stores never even hearing of a tri-tip.  The ones I did find though were rather ersatz and hence decided to do a brisket instead.

The Menu

Smoked Brisket with Chimichurri Sauce

I wanted to do a little twist to the brisket so I did a dry spice marinate and sous vide the brisket for 24 hours.   However 24 hours was not really the recommended time as most recipes called for 48-72 hours in the water bath.  However after 24 hours I pulled the brisket from the sous vide and smoked it with red oak wood chips for an additional 3 hours.  After a 30 minute rest it was ready to slice and I must say the sous vide made a huge difference in texture and flavour.  Tender and flavourful with a just the right amount of earthy red oak undertones to the meat.  Very impressed and will do this again with a much longer sous vide time.  I forgot to take pictures of the chimichurri sauce which matched the meat superbly.

Tomato and Onion Salad


This very complex recipe of thinly sliced onions, tomatoes, olive oil, white wine vinegar and salt and pepper.  This recipe was great for one simple reason and that was simplicity and quality of the ingredients was all that was need to shine through.  It reminded me of some fancy restaurant with a menu item that would read...  Heirloom Market Fresh Yellow Tomatoes with Mayan Sweet Onions drizzled with a House White Wine dressing.
Contrasted with the smokiness of the beef this was a perfect contrast.

Alfajores

This pope guy has good cookie taste was Victorias comment while she helped make the cookies.   She also took her role as quality control with serious determination and next.  These were good cookies,  Mr. Christie move over...   I have however discovered that we have angels living among us in this house as all the cookies have disappeared in less than 18 hours.

 

This really nice bottle of Argentinean wine accompanied our dinner.  If there is anything I can say about this meal is that everything matched and complimented each other perfectly.  We really enjoyed this meal.  

Next week we are off to Rwanda which is a stark contrast on what is available to be eaten compared to the luxuries of the Vatican.