Argentina: Córdoba (holiday food)

Holiday food in Minnesota includes frosted sugar cookies, peanut butter blossoms, gingerbread cookies, cookies with Andes mints hidden inside, chocolate-covered date balls, and pretzels dipped in almond bark. Basically, holiday food in Minnesota is sugar. After my second holiday season spent in Argentina, I have concluded that if it doesn't include mayonnaise, it's not a real Argentine Christmas/New Year's celebration. 

Through the course of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day meals shared, I ate torre de fiambre, pionono, ensalada rusa, and lots of other salads dressed in mayonnaise. What the heck are these foods, you wonder? Here's the breakdown: 

Torre de fiambre: a 4-6 inch tower consisting of layers of crepe-like tortillas held together with mayonnaise and decorated with alternating layers of hard-boiled eggs, sliced tomatoes, avocados, lettuce, and cheese. The original recipe has layers of ham, salami, and other slices of meat. 

Pionono: a non-chocolate swiss-cake-roll-like pre-made dough that you unroll, lather with mayonnaise, dust with your choice of sliced hard-boiled eggs/tomatoes/avocado/red peppers/tuna/cheese/sliced meat, re-roll back into the tube shape in which you bought it, and cut into little rolls like sushi. 

I knew there would be no lack of piononos at our holiday dinners when I opened the cupboard one day and found 8 rolls of pionono dough.

Ensalada rusa: good old potato salad, but dressed only with mayonnaise. 

Other salads that were shared included a carrot and corn salad dressed with salsa golf (a mixture of ketchup and mayonnaise), a waldorf salad sans lettuce (as tradition states, it was dressed in mayonnaise), and a beet/potato/carrot mixture also dressed in mayonnaise. I prepared a salad which consisted of quinoa, garbanzo, cucumber, red pepper, and onion with an oil/vinegar/lemon juice dressing for New Year's Eve. In my opinion, it was the perfect heat-beating mixture of crispy, cool and protein-packed nutrients. Not many of the other guests shared my opinion, seeing that the mayonnaise-lathered salads were the first to go. 

I also made Grandma's traditional date balls, which turned out a little funky due to some non-cooperating chocolate but still tasted divine, and some Russian tea cakes/Mexican wedding cakes/whatever you want to call those buttery little cookies covered in powdered sugar. The general consensus of those who tried my holiday desserts is that they were way too sweet. Ironic, as I find many Argentine desserts too sweet for my palate. I guess Minnesota-sweet is a different from Argentine-sweet. However, it was not surprising when two or three other people at our holiday meals who tried their first date ball instantly fell in love.

If you over-indulged in sweets during the holidays and now feel the need to take a step back, I share the feeling. I never imagined a New Year's resolution of "eat less mayonnaise," but there's always a first time for everything.