By now you've probablly realized that we love to come up with new sandwich ideas. We'd like to say that these ideas are the result of some mystic revelation...but that would only be true for 98 percent of our menu. Part of the remainder falls into the "necessity is the mother of invention" category.
In the case of our Gaucho Beef Salad Sandwich, both revelation and neceesity played their parts. On the "revelation" side of the equation, it occurred to us that you just don't find too many beef salad sandwiches out in the culinary universe -- and our San Francicso Beef Salad Sandwich was such a success that we wanted to come up with another recipe in that vein. On the "necessity" side, we found ourselves with an abundance of Double R Ranch beef that we needed to work into the menu board. What to do? As is often the case in such situations, we poured ourselves a generous glass of Sabes d'Azur rose (see our previous blog on Summer Whites), pulled out a bunch of cookbooks, and started "concepting'.
A few glasses (but who's counting) later, we came up with the Gaucho Beef Salad Sandwich. What makes this a "one of a kind" sandwich, besides the quality of the beef? It's the chimichurri sauce: a condiment that you'll find gracing steaks served in Argentina. According to Wikipedia, the origin of chimichurri is as follows:
"The Argentinian gourmet Miguel Brasco claims that the word chimichurri originated when British were taken prisoner after England tried to invade the Spanish colony of Argentina. The prisoners asked for condiment for their food mixing english, aboriginal and Spanish (castilian) words. Che-mi-curry stands for "che mi salsa" (dame condimento) or "give me curry". Later "che-mi-curry" corrupted to chimichurri."
Chimichurri is made from finely chopped parsley, minced garlic, vegetable oil or olive oil, white or red vinegar, and red pepper flakes. Additional flavorings such as paprika (pimenton dulce), oregano, cumin, thyme, cilantro (coriander leaf), lemon, and bay leaf (laurel), and in the red version, tomato and red bell pepper may also be added. It is the only seasoning for grilled meats, organ meats and chorizo sausages in Argentine and Uruguayan asados. It can also be used as a marinade for grilled meat; as seen in Nicaragua.
To give our Gaucho Beef Salad Sandwich its distinctive picante bite, we add green olives to our chmichurri sauce -- which proves that "spicy" doesn't have to mean "hot". Much as we'd like to find some apt culinary analogy for this sandwich, comparisons fail us. You'll just have to come on by and experience it for yourself the next time it's on the menu.
Ole!