Back in El Jardín del Mundo

El Jardín del Mundo feels more like el Horno del Mundo right now. I got back to Paraguay on monday night and was immediately greeted by the perfume of coconut flowers in the heavy, humid air that very quickly become associated with this place for anyone who has lived here here. I haven't been here very often in winter, so it was strange to arrive in July last time. The feeling coming off the plane was much more familiar and comforting, and it was so nice to escape Boston just as the crisp clear days and beautiful fall colors were ending and the miserly days of late autumn were about to begin. The nights here have been amazing. I love nights that are warm and humid enough to feel tropical and breezy but still not sticky or uncomfortable. The days, however, have already become unbearable, reaching an unimaginable 117F degrees in certain parts of the city, yesterday, and summer is still ahead of us. In January the city empties as anyone with the means goes to the beach in Argentina, or Brazil, or at least to the nearby lake town of San Bernardino.

To my great chagrin, none of the aforementioned heirloom seeds sprouted in our backyard garden, allegedly because the ground has been too hot, though I suspect poor agronomic technique. I think there may be time to take a second shot at it, and perhaps the seeds I gave to my cousins fared better. I will have my heirloom tomatoes!

I booked the cheapest itinerary I could find back to Paraguay for the dates that I needed. Unfortunately, this involved flying into La Guardia on Saturday afternoon from Boston and leaving JFK for Sao Paulo early on Sunday morning. Heavy luggage, despite its name, is not really made for lugging all around New York and surrounding burroughs. This all turned out very well for me, however, and would have been glad to have done it even if it hadn't saved me any money at all, because I got to stay the night at my friend Pat's house. Pat and I met what now seems like many years ago when we both did a semester of study abroad in Argentina, and we have been pretty admirable about staying in touch since, at least about seeing each other a couple times a year, if not at actually talking or writing often. Pat and his roommate Sasha checked out Dinner Bell on occasion, and I've promised them many meals that have never materialized. This quick visit, dictated by the market for international travel, seemed a perfect opportunity to make good on my offer.

Pat and I stepped outside of his Brooklyn apartment about 20 minutes before closing time for the variety of food shops and specialty grocers that populate the storefronts, a bit concerned that we'd missed the boat. Before those 20 minutes had elapsed, we were able to visit a first-rate fish shop, patisserie/boulangerie, wineshop, meat market, and produce stand, assembling all of the necessary ingredients for an awesome seafood stew. Here are the assorted vegetables along with a slice of pancetta.


Having assembled said ingredients in less than 20 minutes, I was left with something less than what is required for a classic bouillabaisse. Furthermore, after consulting a recipe, it seemed to me that the steps required for bouillabaisse were entirely excessive, particularly considering that I didn't even have the pages of ingredients required. Surely something more delicious could be made with less voulez-vous. So I hesitated for a while, deciding what other brand of seafood stew should form the basis of my creation. I was thinking of the Cioppino recipes I've seen on the food network and the amazing Mexican sopa de mariscos that I had eaten in Puerto Vallarta/approximated with Rick Bayless's recipes. The main dilemma was what to do with the whole octopus we had purchased from the fish market.

There are two ways to cook octopus, the fast but difficult way and the slow but easy way. The former involves dropping in the octopus last after the other ingredients are done and cooking it only very briefly. Any longer than a minute and it gets tough as leather. The problem is that octopus is also tough when it is still raw as well, so it's hard to know if you have undershot or overshot the very narrow window. The latter method involves cooking the octopus for 1-2 hours in the oven, allowing the extended exposure to the high temperature to soften the proteins and the braising liquid to penetrate the octopus resulting in a very agreeable texture and lots of flavor. You could always try option 1 and opt for method 2 in the case that you overcook it, except that we were making mussels and clams and shrimp in addition to octopus and they would be awful after cooking for so long. The other problem with octopus is that it lets out a tremendous amount of water as it cooks, and this could have thrown all the proportions off if I'd used method number 1. Of course, I could have blanched the octopus in a different pot until it was done, and chopped and added it to the rest of the ingredients, but then I would not have taken advantage of all of the flavorful octopus juice (seriously, it was good).

So . . . after what probably seemed like too long to my hosts/diners I decided that I would puree the vegetables and tomatoes and fry them into a paste, as to form the base for any variety of Mexican soups, and after deglazing with a bit of white wine, I would add the uncooked octopus and put it into the 450 oven for and hour and a half. In the meantime I made a roasted red bell pepper rouille, and threw the sliced potatoes in with the octopus after an hour. When it came out, the octopus was nearly done and a nice broth had formed from the cooking liquid and the paste. In went the clams, shrimp, and mussels on top of the stove. Topped off with a crouton and some of the red bell pepper rouille, it was ready to go.




I've made many a seafood soup in my day, but this was exceptionally good. In large part due to the ingredients we had, but the slow braise gave the octopus a perfect texture, and most of all, made a broth more flavorful than any other seafood stew I've made (or perhaps even tasted).



Desert was an assortment of offerings, including butterscotch pudding, pumpkin cheesecake, a sour cherry tart (it had some ridiculous French name that I can't recall now, but something like floucantie) and a chocolate soufflé. The tart and the soufflé were my favorite, but the cheesecake was not bad considering my aversion to pumpkin pie spices.


We had quite a bit of wine and even headed out briefly down the street to one of my friends' favorite beer bars. I at least got a taste of Halloween before leaving the country for a place that knows very little of jack-o-lanterns. It was the perfect way to spend the night before I left the U.S.


I arrived in Paraguay just in time for David's birthday. He has been bugging me for months that he wanted a strawberry cake. We had a slice of one at the expoferia where the producers of Paraguay's agricultural and manufactured goods come together to promote their products each year, and where a small-farmers' association was selling cake made from their strawberries. Admittedly, it was delicious, but David wanted me to buy one for my little niece's birthday even though the lady behind the counter clearly said that kids prefer dulce de leche cakes. At any rate, I knew I'd be in trouble if I didn't produce a strawberry cake for his birthday. Unfortunately, the bakery shop we always go to said they weren't making them anymore because strawberries were out of season (not entirely true, but perhaps they are too expensive in late season to make a cake without a prior order). Rather than losing an entire afternoon running around the entire city in 100-plus degree heat and potentially still coming up short, I decided that I would just make the cake myself. I went to the supermarket and very quickly found all of the ingredients necessary, including two cake pans that I was told I could not return if I found that I already had cake pans at home.

While not the most beautiful cake I've ever seen or made (and much less attractive than the ones you get a bake shops in Asunción), it was very tasty and a close enough approximation to David's dream cake that he was happy. It had mashed strawberries in the cake batter and was filled with strawberries and whipped cream inside and out.


We didn't actually get to eating the cake until the day after his birthday, because the night of his birthday I took him out for Japanese food. It was not bad considering that these particular sushi chefs and cooks were working so far from home, and, while it was hard to appreciate after having been in Japan so recently, it was a nice birthday dinner for David who after four months here was probably ready for something a little different. I'm curious to go back and try the meat dishes--beef being something also highly appreciated and well prepared by the Japanese but much more abundant in Paraguay than tuna or snapper (or than in Japan). So the next night we gathered my family for cake and a bilingual version of happy birthday.


Here is David blowing out the candle: