Argentinian Entree
CHORIPÁN
(Sausage Sandwich)
INGREDIENTS
1 small red or green chile
4 garlic cloves
1 bay leaf
½ tablespoon oregano
½ teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon minced red onion
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
⅓ cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons water
½ cup olive oil (2 more tablespoons later)
3 Argentinian chorizo sausages or Italian sausages*
¾ cup fresh parsley or ¼ cup dried parsley
1 teaspoon salt
1 crispy baguette
2 tablespoons olive oil
* = Italian sausages are more like Argentinian chorizo sausages than Mexican chorizos.
SPECIAL UTENSIL
outdoor or indoor grill
Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 10 minutes.
PREPARATION
Seed chile. Mince chile and garlic cloves. Add garlic, chile, bay leaf, oregano, pepper, red onion, red pepper flakes, red wine vinegar, and water to mixing bowl. Blend together with fork or whisk. Slowly add in ½ cup olive oil, blending as you do so. Mince parsley. Gradually add in parsley and salt, blending as you do so. Let sit for 30 minutes. This is the chimichurri sauce.
Preheat grill to medium-high heat. Grill sausages for 12 minutes on medium-high heat or until the sausage skins, or casings, are becoming crispy and starting to split open. Turn every 2 minutes to ensure even grilling. Remove sausages from grill and place on a plate. Cut sausages lengthwise ⅔ of the way through. Place sausages back on grill, cut-side down. Grill on medium-high heat for 6 minutes or until cut-side starts to char. Remove sausages to plate. Cover.
Cut baguette into 4 pieces Cut baguette pieces open along their length. Place cut-sides down on grill. Grill for 3 minutes or until cut-sides starts to char. Remove baguette pieces to plate. Drizzle 2 tablespoons olive oil equally on open baguette pieces. Add 1 sausage to each baguette piece. Spoon chimichurri sauce equally over sausages. Close baguette pieces.
TIDBITS
1) Choripan is an anagram for Chopin, R.A.
2) R.A. is an abbreviation for Resident Assistant. A resident assistant is someone lives in the college dorms and makes sure the students living there don’t get out of control.
3) RAs get their tuition waived in exchange for this duty. This fact alone makes the RA position a highly desirable one, especially for poor students.
4) And so it was for Frédéric Chopin, who while not quite a poor as a church mouse, was still poorer than a manor mouse. In fact, many culinary historians put Chopin as being a poor as an ale house mouse, although this remains a contentious issue. Indeed, if you want to cause a riot a chefs’ convention just shout “Chopin.”
5) Anyway, Chopin The Mouse, left Poland for Argentina in 1830. Political historians believe he emigrated to avoid the Polish Revolution of 1830 against the Russians.
6) However, culinary historians insist that he immigrated to Argentina to get a free RA scholarship from Argentina National University. Dormitory historians believe the same. There your have it, two out of three historian types agree on this.
7) The Mouse’s life had been drifting along slowly and erratically because the author of these tidbits gets sidetracked so frequently.
8) Ahem, Chopin studied music in college, after a brief and disastrous fling with differential calculus.
9) The Mouse wrote many exciting etudes. Etude Seven, proved especially popular with Argentina’s gamblers. This is why so many fans of chance yell, “C’mon, seven.” Go to a casino; you’ll see I’m right.
10) Chopin made oodles of money selling his first eleven etudes to the local music halls.
11) Then he lost it all playing dice, coming out with a roll of twelve. Etude 12, “Craps,” remains to this day Chopin’s most melancholy work. And it’s likely to stay that way, him being dead and all.
12) But Number 12, earned him enough money to open his own little restaurant in the tenderloin district of Buenos Aires. “Screw it,” said The Mouse , “the real money is in sausage sandwiches.” He named it “Ra” after his college days.
13) The critics loved his restaurant. “Ra is Chopping Ra, the Pharoah of all restaurants.” The name soon shortened to Chopin’ Ra and finally, to Chopin Ra. This and many other rave reviews naturally drew in the rough-and-tumble anagramists of Buenos Aires who renamed it “Choripan,” after the King of Argentina.
14) His fortune made, The Mouse turned once again to music and wrote a tremendous number of etudes and polonaises. These made him so famous that we’ve forgotten his culinary achievements. Now you know.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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