Yes, another week has passed. What did I get up to?

Those of you who’ve been around since the beginning, or on and off through the years, might remember my annual attendance at Limud, a day of presentations and lectures on various topics related to Judaism. I’ve been going since 2008, and have only missed a couple of years here and there. This year, AI, Artificial Intelligence, and related topics were big on the roster, though there was plenty of the usual philosophy, politics, and literature to be consumed. I focused on the former – it’s certainly a topic that’s on my mind often enough. A couple of fascinating presentations – I would have been interested in something that explored more of the implications for “Jewish life” and practices, something Mosaic magazine has taken up recently that’s been quite interesting.

I was over on the far edge of San Telmo, had a couple of hours free, and decided to drop in on both the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, two side by side curated galleries of art at, respectively, 350 and 328 Av. San Juan. At the former, I don’t often find a lot that’s interesting. There’s something about the whole modern art movement (which is no longer modern, but now a sort of style in the art world) that has rarely grabbed me. I will admit, that I found this selection of paintings, all made by local artists this year to be intriguing. Each was their personal interpretation of a series of dinners called The Peralta Ramos Dinners. I was unfamiliar with Federico Peralta Ramos – it turns out he was an Argentine artist, particularly famous in the 1960s and 1970s, who was more than a bit eccentric. The dinners, I gather, refer to what started out as a single incident. In 1968 he won a Guggenheim Fellowship award, with a cash prize that was intended to fund a grand work of art. He took the money, invited a bunch of friends out to dinner at a local, grand hotel, and spent it all on a lavish banquet. When the Guggenheim demanded he return the prize, he responded in a now infamous letter that the dinner was his recreation of The Last Supper, and was therefore his work of art. I sense that there were more dinners beyond that, though perhaps not. Either way, I guess these are contemporary artists’ recreation of his recreation.

And then I run into things like this, where all I can think of is that the artist needs some serious therapy, and prescribed drugs rather than whatever ones he’s on currently.

Or this, a large cube of metal bars. That’s it. There’s no sides to it, no content, it’s just a welded together metal cube, painted black, and somehow merits an entire salon in the museum more or less to itself.

Sometimes I find interesting exhibits more at the Contemporary. This time, not so much. I mean, it’s not that I can’t appreciate this style of art for its geometric forms and colors, it just isn’t stuff I want hanging on my walls. The four floors of the museum are currently taken up by two exhibits, each taking up two of those floors. The first are works of Natalia Cacchiarelli, the second Gilda Picabea. The former is a local art professor, and artist, at the National Arts University here in town, the latter, a former student of the school, who now has her own workshop.

On to food for the week.

A lunch out at ABRA Cultural, a combo art gallery and restaurant, at Av. Hipólito Yrigoyen 840, in Monserrat, near to the Plaza de Mayo. It’s a huge space and the walls are covered with artwork. I highly recommend taking a table in the center of the room rather than along the walls, as at the latter, you have to contend with people looking at art who seem to feel it their right to lean over your table or interrupt your conversation in order to get a better view of one or another pieces.

Chef Luigi Iavarone is from Naples, or thereabouts, so it was a bit surprising to find not much of anything napolitana on the menu. You know I love the four classic pastas of nearby Rome, so I couldn’t resist trying his penne all’amatriciana. Decent dish, good guanciale, but the tomato sauce didn’t really strike me as an amatriciana, more just a basic marinera. It was missing that richness and concentration. And it was desperately missing the pepper. Amatriciana is a variation on cacio e pepe/gricia, with tomato added, and as such should be packed with pepper, or some say, chili flakes. This had basically none, and I added a whole lot of it to the dish. I’m guessing it’s a nod to local tastes to not have used much, if any, pepper, but then, it’s not really amatriciana.

Had I read the description carefully for their cannolo siciliano, I’d have seen that one had the option of ordering it with the classic ricotta filling, pastry cream, or ice cream. I didn’t. And they brought me pastry cream, which I don’t like, and this was sickly sweet. I tried one bite, flagged the waitress down, and asked about the ricotta – she responded with, “well, you didn’t specify, so I brought you this”. Well, you should have asked. Regardless, I wasn’t going to eat it, but asked if it could be replaced. She opined that no, since I’d taken a bite, it couldn’t, because, you know, they couldn’t use it again. Even if I hadn’t taken a bite you couldn’t, not once it’s been served to a table. I was going to just leave it at that, but she sighed and went and talked with a manager, who said they could replace it. Only they couldn’t, because they don’t have ricotta filling available. You’d think that would be something the manager and waitstaff would know. They took it away and took it off the check. The latter was presented by the manager, who also simply plopped down in the chair across from me while he processed the payment, “I’m tired of walking around, hope you don’t mind if I just sit here while I do this…”.

Overall, I like the space. Service, a tad odd. Food… good, but maybe too altered for local tastes instead of traditionally Italian, for my personal tastes.

A revisit to Mercado de Liniers, Gorriti 6012, in Palermo. On my first visit a couple of years ago, I’d done the whole tasting menu. Recently, an Instagram post popped up with the new lunch menu. At some point over the last year or so, in addition to the whole tasting menu, at lunchtime they’ve begun to offer a short, three course prix-fixe option, currently priced at a mere 25,000 pesos, or $16 and change. These days, it costs us almost that much to order a large pizza. Our of three options, we both selected the onion pannacotta topped with a caramel, and accompanied by a spicy tomato and cow brain ragú. Yum.

My lunch companion went for the duck breast cured in anchovy salt, with a perigord sauce, stewed peas and capers, and mushroom caps. Excellent.

I went pasta, with rigatoni stuffed with a chicken liver, chocolate, and truffle pate, thyme oil, pesto spheres, soy cured egg yolk spheres, and a provolone foam. Fantastic, though five rigatoni felt a bit meager. I wouldn’t have minded, say, seven or eight.

Dessert is preset, no options, is an odd flavor combination of some sort of tomato, strawberry, and lemon (so the menu says, though I could have sworn our waitress said grapefruit) parfait. It had some weird bitter component to it that didn’t quite work for either of us, though, we both finished it.

We did have the fun, sitting at the kitchen counter, of watching Dante and crew prepare a menu of various pastas and side dishes for a group of eight young guys at a nearby table. It turns out, he’s opening a pasta restaurant in Madrid, and these guys were the team from there, sampling through some potential menu items. I’ve gotta admit, some of those pastas looked really good. And they had more than five rigatoni on the plate.

Overall, a great option here if you’re not up for the whole tasting menu, albeit I do recommend that. And it’s an easy on the wallet price for food of this quality.

At home, the only standout of the week were a batch of baked Sichuan style ribs – marinated for hours in a mix of chili-bean paste, miso, soy sauce, rice wine, sugar, salt, five-spice, and garlic, and then into the oven at a medium temperature, 20 minutes, then flipped and another 20. Plus spice rubbed (salt, pepper, cumin, hot paprika) zucchini baked alongside the ribs, the same way, with a flip.

Another week awaits us!