Merry Christmas from Brazil! I hope you had a most excellent day and enjoyed good food and company. Andrew and I enjoyed a day on the beach but my Christmas present was enjoyed a week earlier while we were still in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

As a surprise Andrew booked us in to do the ‘Argentine Experience’, an evening of cocktail making, fun and delicious food.

We arrived, were given a welcome cocktail and then invited to put our noses to the test. In front of us was a table of 20 unlabelled wine-related scents and it was our job to identify them. It turned out to be really difficult! While most of the scents were familiar, it seemed impossible to name them.

What’s that smell? The Game.

I ended up guessing a paltry 5 out of 20 scents correctly… Moving on!

We opted in for the added extra of making wine cocktails, which was totally worth it. And not just because they gave us bow ties to wear.

Supplies

First, two bartenders showed us how to make 3 wine cocktails that perfectly matched 3 canapes we were given.

The canapes; (L-R) beef brochette with a portobello mushroom and sun dried tomato, smoked salmon with cream cheese on a blini, orange and raspberry cake

Serious stuff.

After sampling each of the three cocktails we then chose one for our partner to make for us.

Andrew chose the ‘Torrontea’ cocktail, which was a mix of Torrontes wine, lime, ginger, simple sugar syrup, vodka and camomille tea. Very fresh and summery.

Adding the ginger, not sure about the look of fear on my face

Muddling

Adding the vodka

This was the end result:

The Torrontea went down a treat with the smoked salmon canape. Recipe here.

Happy customer

Then it was Andrew’s turn to make the ‘Malabeca’ cocktail for me.

SAMSUNG CSC

The Malabeca is a mix of lime, simple syrup, Malbec wine, Pisco and apple juice. It paired beautifully with the beef brochette. Recipe here.

A delightful pair.

After making our cocktails it was time to relocate upstairs for dinner.

Our first activity was to make our very own empanadas.

Explaining how to make an empanada

Empanada fillings

My empanada before the oven

It was surprisingly easy (when the pastry and fillings have been made and arranged for you!). We even got to make our own creative empanada for a competition. The ‘Yoda’ empanada won. Bloody Star Wars.

While our empanadas baked we were presented with some delicious tapas to keep us going. Did I mention there was never ending wine all night?

Chorizo, baked cheese and bread

Soon our empanadas returned from the oven:

Delicious

Cheers!

For main course we learnt how to properly order a steak in Spanish.

Jugoso or bust!

My steak

It was actually the most delicious steak I’ve ever had. So perfectly cooked:

Ughhh yeah

Paired with buttery mash and veggies. SO. Good.

Feeling pretty jolly at this point!

For dessert we constructed our own Aflahores, which is a delicious biscuit sandwich with dulce de leche as the filling.

Ingredients

Mmmm

These ones were particularly decadent after being dunked in melted chocolate and rolled in coconut.

We also tried Mate, a kind of Argentinian tea which frankly, I do not care for! It is extremely bitter. I accidentally spilt my Mate all over the table! Whoops.

The night wrapped up around 11:30pm with 20 or so very merry and full people heading out the door and into the night.

I highly recommend the Argentine Experience if you are headed to Buenos Aires, it was really fun and informative, a great way to dip your toes in the local culture!