This recipe has a familial connection for me. My dad is from Argentina so he loves his chimichurri sauce on steak. We actually went on a family trip to visit my extended family who live there back in 2008. We had traditional asado (bbq) with lots of meat and chimichurri. If you don’t know, chimichurri is a parsley and oregano based sauce with some oil, garlic and vinegar. In this recipe, there are some Mexican flavours added, but I definitely still got the essence of Argentina, and my dad enjoyed it too.

So like I mentioned, the sauce had the classic chimichurri ingredients (minus oregano), as well as avocado to give a creamy twist. It was super fresh and I loved the strong herb presence and hint of spice. I was pretty much eating the leftover sauce as guacamole, it was good.

While it’s still winter here in Canada, it’s a little too cold to barbecue. Because of that, I took the suggestion in the book and roasted the veggies instead. They got a little charred and caramelized which made them very tasty. Speaking of the veg, I switched the mushrooms for zucchini, as well as used yellow onion instead of red. It was a nice mix of colours.

The base of this meal is the rice and beans which is seasoned with lime and cilantro. It’s a very basic Mexican component but works with a variety of foods. It would be good with any cooked protein – chicken, beef, fish, tofu.

There was nothing complicated or necessarily fancy about this meal, it was just a yummy dinner. The toasted pepitas on top gave a little extra crunch too which I liked.

I wish I could go back to Argentina to see my family again, now that I’m older. But for now, I’ll just go ahead and eat all the chimichurri I can 😉