Meatless Monday with Tannat - Wine & Spirits Magazine

Meatless Monday with Tannat

Chef Lucia Soria, of Montevideo’s Jacinto, creates a plant-based menu for Uruguay’s Atlantic wines.


photos by Alavaro Gargiulo Cor

Lucía Soria

“For me, it’s a little fight,” says Lucia Soria, the chef and owner of Jacinto, a plant-forward restaurant in Uruguay’s capital, in a country known for its beef. On the corner of a pedestrian street in Montevideo’s Old City, Jacinto held on through the pandemic serving a creative menu to government workers in the office buildings nearby.

It was not an easy task to keep her small restaurant alive—for a time, she was only open for lunch. But that gave her an opportunity to do more teaching, a role she loves, and one she pursues through her books, as well as her television show, as the host and a judge on Fuego Sagrado—now in its second season as a competition for the most talented amateur asador, or grill master, in Uruguay. There were 12 shows in the first season and only two focused on grilling meat. “Everyone said, ‘Where’s the meat?” Soria recalls. “I said, ‘We already know how to cook meat.”

Chef Francis Mallmann says Lucia Soria has found her own distinctive language that characterizes her food, “un cocina fresca y alegre.”

Soria’s career started with Francis Mallmann, the Argentina-based chef who currently runs nine restaurants in various countries, including the US and Uruguay. While still at cooking school in Buenos Aires, she interned at a restaurant Mallmann managed in the Patagonian town of Bariloche. He invited her to work at Los Negros, the restaurant Mallmann was running in José Ignacio, on Uruguay’s northeastern coast. After that summer season, she ended up working with Mallmann for nine years, both in restaurants and traveling with him for his television show.

Reached by email, Mallmann recalled that, when they first met, he was impressed by Soria’s “instinct for taste.” He appreciated her dedication and hard work, and her cooking, which was about simplicity, good ingredients and her care in bringing them to the right degree of doneness. As Soria’s career has evolved, Mallmann says she has found her own distinctive language that characterizes her food, “un cocina fresca y alegre.”

Eventually, after helping with Mallmann’s book, Seven Fires, much of the work based in Pueblo Garzón, Soria was done with travel. She decided to settle in that remote village on Uruguay’s coast, where she could afford to buy a house—that was before it became a destination for wealthy second-homers. She recalls telling Mallmann that she was going to take a sabbatical year, and he said, “Why don’t you open a restaurant?” He lent her the equipment to get started, and she opened Lucifer with 20 seats on the patio in her back yard.

It took three years before she began to miss her cosmopolitan life. Soria approached her parents about helping her open a restaurant in Montevideo—she was determined to break with the set menus, the branded condiments on the tables and the plastic chairs, which were, at the time, standard in the city. And she also decided to break with the local expectations when it comes to food.

Lucia Soria (right) with her sister, Pilar, her partner in Jacinto. Pilar manages the kitchen and also helps with Soria’s cookbooks.

Mallmann had introduced her to the writing of Alice Waters, of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, and she responded to Waters’ philosophy of focusing on the provenance of her ingredients and their inherent beauty. Today, that beauty is apparent on the plates at Jacinto, without much meat in sight.

Beef is, by far, Uruguay’s largest export, and Soria is a devoted nationalista in her adopted country. “In Uruguay, we raise cattle in a nice way,” she tells me. “So people don’t see the impact of the environment. The cattle have a lot of space; you see the cows, they are happy.”

As a visitor, you can’t help but see the cows—often in a family’s yard, or grazing in a ravine off the highway—as you might see deer grazing along the Taconic Parkway in New York…except, the cows are tethered. Uruguay has the most cattle per capita of any country in the world: At 3.45 cows per person, they are far ahead of the next in line, New Zealand, with 2.1; Argentina and Brazil are tied for third place with 1.2, according to Rob Cook at beef2live.com.

The dining room at Jacinto is bright and informal, welcoming guests to engage with Chef Soria’s equally bright plates.

A lot of tourists come to the restaurant and say, “I’m in Uruguay, I want a ribeye.” Rather than redirecting the newcomers, Soria focuses on converting her Uruguayan guests. “I try to change their minds about vegetables and let them think that they can be fun. For ages, we have known how to cook meat. For us, it’s very simple: We barbecue. Vegetables, maybe they need a little more love.

“The soil is very rich and that is something very powerful,” providing exceptional produce, Soria says, recalling the fruit dessert she presented when I visited the restaurant in March. “The peaches are incredible. We have to try to show everything.”

In Uruguay, that includes wine, and wine in Uruguay means tannat. Pascual Harriague, a Basque, planted Uruguay’s first tannat vines in 1870 near Salto, a city in the northwest where he had made his fortune in salt. The vine arrived in Canelones, near Montevideo and the sea, in the 1880s. There were European families bringing other varieties with them, but they found that the grape called “harriague” consistently performed best. Since the 1970s, the vine has been recognized as tannat. It is the country’s most widely planted variety, today representing 27 percent of all the wine grapes planted in Uruguay. And, as if its name were a synonym for tannins, you might expect that it would be most at home with beef.

Soria might change your mind, as she managed to change mine. “I’m a person who enjoys teaching,” she says, “this goes with this…you learn with each bite. In a way, I’m the most Uruguayan person, I’m very proud of what this small country has achieved. I like wine, I think it’s a beautiful product. So, we changed all the wine menu: Before, we had wine from Argentina; now everything is from Uruguay.”

That means albariño, a favorite of the descendants of immigrants from Galicia and a variety that performs particularly well in the hills close to the Atlantic. Soria pours it with her salad of asparagus and pears over avocado cream. And it means tannat aged in cement or amphora, new styles of wine from young winemakers experimenting with infusion rather than extraction in their tannat. She serves these light, savory reds with cauliflower steaks over a spicy romesco sauce. She chose two fuller, oak-aged tannats to accompany her comfort food—polenta with a wild mushroom ragout. They may be rich and round, but they hold to the elegance of wines from Uruguay’s Atlantic vineyards.

Having been taken aback by her brilliant tannat and vegetable pairings at Jacinto, I asked Soria to create amenu for a range of Uruguayan wines. While Soria’s recipes require some advance planning, they are relatively easy to pull off, especially if you make some of the sauces and dressings a day before. Her combinations of fresh ingredients bridged by these sauces and dressings take on an intriguing logic with the addition of wine.


ESPÁRRAGOS, PERAS, PALTA, HINOJOS, LIMÓN Y PISTACHOS

ASPARAGUS AND PEARS WITH AVOCADO CREAM, LEMON, FENNEL AND PISTACHIOS

Serves 4

Paired with: Cerro del Toro 2022 Piriápolis Maldonado Sobre Lías Albariño and Familia Deicas 2022 Juanicó Atlántico Sur Albariño.

“You could almost say that the whole population of Uruguay is from Galicia,” Soria tells me, “and they are still attached. They say ‘Spain,’ they don’t say ‘Galicia,’ but for many years most all of the immigrants were from Galicia. So for them, albariño, it’s fun.”

Soria appreciates wine in parallel to the way she thinks about food, starting with simplicity and building on it. “I always think about food in contrasting flavors,” she says. “The albariño is fresh and fruity; you need something to lower that—something that is bitter. I would not pair it with asparagus and mustard; I do it with asparagus, avocado and pear. Maybe one ingredient is bitter—the crunchiness and freshness of asparagus being blanched to the perfect point. I’m about contradictions.”

Ingredients
  

ESPÁRRAGOS, PERAS, PALTA, HINOJOS, LIMÓN Y PISTACHOS

    Asparagus and Pears with Avocado Cream, Lemon, Fennel and Pistachios

      Serves 4

      • 1 pound asparagus
      • 2 pears
      • 1 fennel bulb
      • 2 lemons (juice and rind for making lemon confit)
      • 1 bay leaf
      • a few peppercorns
      • 4 ounces shelled pistachios
      • a splash of olive oil
      • salt and black pepper
      • 1 bunch of basil
      • 1 bunch of mint

      For the Avocado Cream:

      • 2 avocados, ripe but not mushy
      • juice of a lemon
      • salt and pepper

      For the Lemon Vinaigrette:

      • 1/4 cup of lemon juice
      • 1/2 cup of olive oil

      Instructions
       

      • Prepare the lemon confit: Cut the lemons in half and squeeze the juice (reserve it for the vinaigrette). Boil enough water to cover the lemon halves; add them to the pot with bay leaves, peppercorns and olive oil; cook at a moderate boil until they are tender. Let cool and remove all the remaining pulp. Scrape the white pith with a knife until it is all removed and you have clean lemon peel. Shred it into irregular pieces with your hands and store in an airtight container covered with olive oil. (To make a 9-ounce ball of confit, use 6 medium lemons.) It lasts for months in the refrigerator when well covered with olive oil.
      • While the lemons are cooking, wash the asparagus, pears and fennel. Break off the bases of the asparagus spears and then cut them into short pieces, length-wise, about three per stem. Place a pot of salted water on the stove and blanch the asparagus for a few seconds. Then transfer them to a bowl of cold water to stop the cooking process, remove them, and pat dry with paper towels.
      • Shave the fennel into thin slices and reserve in a bowl of cold water to prevent it from oxidizing.
      • Toast the pistachios in a low-temperature oven until crunchy and dry. Let them cool, then break them into pieces. Reserve.
      • Remove the leaves from the basil and mint and reserve for plating later.
      • Make the avocado cream: Juice the lemon into a bowl. Cut open one avocado at a time, remove the pit and spoon out the flesh immediately into the lemon juice. Add salt and pepper to taste, then purée in a blender and reserve.
      • Make the lemon vinaigretteand reserve.
      • To assemble the dish: In a bowl, place the fennel, basil and mint leaves, add salt, pepper, vinaigrette and reserve. Spread some avocado cream on a plate as the base. Arrange thin slices of pear in a flower pattern over the avocado cream and arrange the asparagus on top of them. Add the fennel salad on top, and, finally, the toasted pistachios.

      BIFE DE COLIFLOR CON ROMESCO, HOJAS AMARGAS Y SALSA FRESCA DE PASAS

      CAULIFLOWER STEAK WITH ROMESCO, HERBS, SALSA FRESCA WITH RAISINS

      Serves 4

      Paired with: Viña Progreso 2020 Progreso Canelones Barrel-less Tannat and Bizarra Extravaganza 2019 Canelones Amphora Tannat.

      “I am very happy that we are starting this era of lighter wines in Uruguay,” Soria says. “For many years, tannat was heavy, so we always went to malbec in Argentina. I like to think lighter wines can be paired with spices, with bitter leaves, with a smoky situation in the dish. The smoky situation gives you the oak you don’t have in the wine, but it’s more subtle, and you get this light thing to clean your palate. I don’t think our future is with oaky and heavy reds. I really like the light styles of wine in Uruguay.”

      Soria suggests that you prepare the romesco, the salsa fresca and the lemon dressing one or two days ahead. Then, while you are cooking the cauliflower steaks, you can assemble the salad.

      Ingredients
        

      BIFE DE COLIFLOR CON ROMESCO, HOJAS AMARGAS Y SALSA FRESCA DE PASAS

        Cauliflower Steak with Romesco, Herbs, Salsa Fresca with Raisins

          Serves 4

          • 1 large cauliflower
          • Mixed oil (70% vegetable or seed, 30% olive oil)
          • salt
          • pepper
          • 1/2 bunch of arugula
          • 1 small red onion, cut feather-thin
          • Lemon vinaigrette (2 tablespoons lemon juice and 6 tablespoons olive oil)
          • Romesco (recipe below)
          • Fried Capers (recipe below)
          • oil with scallions and parsley

          Instructions
           

          • Make the romesco, fry the capers and prepare the green oil. Reserve them all for finishing the dish. (See ingredients and instructions, below.)
          • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
          • Cut the cauliflower in half. Starting from the middle, cut 1/2-inch thick slices. Keep the flowers attached to the stem, to create a kind of whole steak. (Keep the flowers that separate from the stem and use them for some other dish.) You should get four one-inch (or 2.5-centimeter) steaks out of one head of cauliflower.
          • Heat a frying pan large enough to fit two cauliflower steaks; add the mixed oil and the steaks. Let the cauliflower brown over low heat, cooking slowly so the outside turns golden and the steak is very soft at the center. When the cauliflower begins to gain color, add salt and pepper, then turn it and continue cooking for a few more minutes. If it is browned or close to burning, finish cooking it in the oven.
          • While the cauliflower is cooking, prepare the rest of the ingredients: Peel and slice the red onion feather-thin. Wash the arugula and dry well.
          • When the cauliflower steaks are cooked, assemble the dish. Spread the romesco as a base on the plate, place the cauliflower steaks on top, then sprinkle with a spoonful of the green oil with parsley.
          • In a separate bowl, mix the red onion slices and the arugula with the lemon vinaigrette, then spread the mixture over the cauliflower. Finish with the fried capers.

          Ingredients
            

          ROMESCO

          • 3 red bell peppers
          • 1/4 cup whole almonds
          • 4 thick slices of baguette, toasted
          • 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar
          • 1 head of garlic, roasted and puréed
          • 1/2 cup olive oil
          • 1 teaspoon of tomato paste
          • 1 tablespoon of smoked paprika
          • salt

          Instructions
           

          • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
          • Char the peppers over an open flame. Once they are blackened, place them in a bag or in a covered container so they steam, which will make it easier to peel off the skins. When they are cool, remove all the skin and the seeds.
          • In the oven, toast the almonds until dry and crunchy and roast the whole garlic until soft and tender (about 20 minutes). Let the garlic cool, then cut the tip of the head and squeeze until all the pulp comes out.
          • Place all the ingredients other than the olive oil into a food processor. Blend the mixture while slowly adding the olive oil, until you achieve a consistency like mayonnaise or a heavy sauce (it should not be soupy). Reserve in the refrigerator in an airtight container.

          Alcaparra Fritas (Fried Capers)

          • Gently wash some brined capers in cold water and be careful to maintain their shape. Dry them on paper towels. Fry them little by little so they open like flowers; when they are open and crunchy, remove them, dry on paper towels and let cool well before storing in an airtight container.

          Aceite de Verdeo y Perejil (Scallion & Parsley Oil)

          • When we buy a bunch of green onions or parsley, it is difficult to use the entire bunch before it gets musty or begins to rot. But the white part of scallions lasts a long time in the refrigerator, even if the green part gets ugly quickly. So,I like to separate the white part from the green, to wash the green stalks and let them dry on paper towels. Once they are dry, I slice them fine on the bias, put them in a jar and cover them with olive oil. They remain fresh, refrigerated, for a month, as long as they remain covered in oil.
          • Parsley works the same way. Pull the leaves off the entire bunch, chop it into a chiffonade, place it in a jar and cover with olive oil to use in salsas, to finish a dish. You can also combine herbs—I make an oil of scallions and parsley that I love, using it to finish soups, or to add to these cauliflower steaks. It’s great to have it close at hand to add flavor to your meals.

          This recipe is adapted from Lucía Soria en Tu Casa, by Lucía Soria (2022, Grijalbo–Penguin Random House, Montevideo, Uruguay).


          POLENTA CREMOSA CON RAGOUT DE HONGOS Y HUEVO JUGOSO

          CREAMY POLENTA WITH MUSHROOM RAGOUT, SOFT-BOILED EGG AND GARLIC CHIPS

          Serves 4

          Paired with: Bouza 2020 Montevideo Monte Vide Eu and Cerro Chapeu 2018 Rivera Batovi T1 Tannat

          “When I thought about the menu,” Soria explains, “it went from something fresh and cold, to a dish in between with spices, and then to something more like your mom would make—polenta, mushroom ragout and an egg. I imagine Bolognese pasta for a family’s Sunday dinner in Uruguay. Let’s take that to the 21st century and we have polenta with mushrooms. It’s creamy and mouth filling. Bouza’s Monte Vide Eu is not a heavy wine but it’s full; it goes perfectly with tomato sauce and mushrooms—it goes together as if you were eating a Bolognese. The Cerro Chapeu Batovi works the same way. The wines are not so light as the two before, but they are good to clean the richness of the polenta and the ragout.”

          Soria suggests that you prepare the ragout first. Then, the polenta, because she likes to cook it for a long time. She fries the garlic chips, then fries the capers in the same oil. And finally, she soft-boils the eggs.

          Ingredients
            

          POLENTA CREMOSA CON RAGOUT DE HONGOS Y HUEVO JUGOSO

            Creamy Polenta with Mushroom Ragout, Soft-boiled Egg and Garlic Chips

              Serves 4

                For the Ragout:

                • 4 ounces dried mushrooms
                • 4 ounces fresh mushrooms
                • 1 large white onion, finely diced
                • 2 28-ounce cans of whole plum tomatoes
                • 1 bay leaf
                • 2 cloves of garlic
                • Sprigs of parsley
                • Salt, pepper
                • Olive Oil

                For the Creamy Polenta:

                • 9 ounces polenta (not instant)
                • 1 liter of water
                • 1 liter of milk
                • 2 bay leaves
                • Salt, freshly ground black pepper
                • 1 cup heavy cream
                • 2 ounces grated Parmesan cheese

                For the Garnish:

                • 2 eggs
                • 1/2 bunch of chives
                • 4 sprigs of parsley
                • 3 ounces of capers in brine
                • Oil for frying

                Instructions
                 

                For the Ragout:

                • Peel the onion and dice it finely. Clean the fresh mushrooms. Hydrate the dried mushrooms with just enough warm water to cover them.
                • Heat a large pot, and add a base of olive oil, the onion and bay leaf. Cook until the onion is caramelized.
                • While cooking, remove the hydrated dried mushrooms from the water. If the water is not too dirty, strain though a fine sieve and reserve it to add later to the pot. Crush the canned tomatoes by hand, “grandma style,” and when the onion is ready, add the mushrooms, crushed tomatoes, the hydration water of the mushrooms, salt, and pepper. Cook for about 40 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.
                • Cut the fresh mushrooms into large pieces, sauté them in a pan with garlic and parsley, and reserve.

                Polenta

                • In a large pot, add the water, milk, bay leaves, a splash of olive oil, salt and pepper, and bring to a boil. When boiling, add the polenta in a gentle, slow rain while stirring the water with a whisk. Cook slowly, stirring regularly with a wooden spoon, until the polenta grain is tender (about 30 to 40 minutes). When the polenta is well-cooked, add the grated cheese and cream, and adjust the seasoning.

                Fried Capers

                • Wash the capers with cold water and carefully keep their shape. Dry them well with paper towels. Fry them in small batches to open up like a flower. When they are crispy and fully opened, remove them, dry them with paper towels, and let them cool down before storing them in an airtight container.

                Soft-boiled Egg

                • Bring eggs to room temperature. Bring a pot of water to a boil. With a slotted spoon, carefully place the eggs in the boiling water and cook for 6 minutes. Remove the eggs with the slotted spoon and stop the cooking process by placing them in cold water. Peel the eggs carefully while they are still warm, as the yolk will be runny.

                To Assemble the Dish:

                • Chop the parsley and chives. Place the creamy polenta in a deep dish, cut the soft boiled eggs in half and place one half egg in the middle, and add the mushroom ragout on top. Finish with parsley, chives and fried capers. Serve immediately, with tannat.

                Joshua Greene is the editor and publisher of Wine & Spirits magazine.


                This story appears in the print issue of Summer 2023.
                Like what you read? Subscribe today.