Where's the beef? In Argentina!!!

Between my Rotary hosts, my adopted mendocinan family, my karate team, and university friends, I have had many opportunities to dive into the Argentine/Mendocina culture as well as give them a taste of mine.

All across the country, Argentinians love their asado (which literally means slow roast over a wood-fired BBQ) and I got to feast on this sumptuous carnage so many times that I am now carrying several pounds of it in my thighs! This is a very popular thing to do on Sunday afternoons, not unlike our northamerican Sunday BBQ tradition. But their version includes a lot more, and a lot better, beef.
Tipically they roast long, thick cuts of beef slowly over the wood coals for a long time and then at the end throw on a few sausages (chorizo) and maybe some other cuts of pork and even blood sauces (morcilla).

Acompanying the meat is a very basic salad of lettuce and tomato with olive oil and vinagre. Although they are amazing with their meats, Argentina is lagging behind when it comes to salad, which hardly ever has more than 2 vegetables included and they don't even have a word for salad dressing as they only ever use oil and vinagre. They have never even heard of "ranch" or "honey mustard" or "thousand island". So when I brought a favorite salad of mine to an asado, made of lettuce, tomatoes, onion, and pears in a balsamic honey mustard dressing, they went wild and from then on ever time I was invited to a dinner, I was asked to bring my exotic "Hawaiian Salad". Besides salad, they also normally have french bread and lots of desserts......AND lots of delicious Malbec.....