Every chef across the world, pays close attention to what goes into their food but here at Los Potreros we are also concerned about what our food is doing to the environment. Our chefs have always had a “no waste mentality” and now more than ever they are minimizing what they throw out and developing a menu to ensure they can continue to cut down what little waste we still have, throughout the last few months we have begun to test out new ideas with great success.
A huge part of the estancia is our food and all this comes back to where we source our produce, with farm-reared beef and pigs, our kitchen garden is the expanse of the estancia and every season provides us with something new.
Spring on the estancia takes us high into the sierras with wild asparagus growing on the ridges to watercress growing in our streams and the fruit trees in the garden beginning to have the first fruits of the year (usually the plumbs and apricots), the long summer brings us a harvest of apples, peaches, cherries and so much more.
Many of our guests enjoy picking the “Mirabelle’s” (a sweet yellow plum) down at the waterfall and gorge on them as a mid-morning snack before riding back to the estancia for lunch.
Anyone who has visited the estancia in December will have seen the abundance of soft fruits in every corner of the farm which we pick in vast quantity everyday – these fruits become the focus for cakes, desserts, jams, chutneys, flavor ice-creams, infused gins and fill our fruit bowl for weeks on end.
As the summer draws to a close we look closer to home and our vegetable patch - our root vegetables are coming into their own, roasting a mixture of freshly picked vegetables to serve alongside osobuco is the perfect dinner on an autumnal day. Then come the quinces which are found in copious amounts across the farm at Potrero de Niz – the chefs begin the laborious task of making the pinkest quince jelly and finally the quince paste which the Begg family fondly remember their grandmother making every year.
As the estancia begins to slow down for the winter we get the final harvest of figs from the trees at our cattle station and from the secret bushes by the swimming pool. We can truly turn to every area of the estancia to find hidden delicacies, all which add to our extensive homemade jam and chutney collection, sometimes it is just knowing where to look. Simply ask Kevin where the best places to forage for walnuts, gather chestnuts, or if you fancy picking and re-planting Jerusalem artichokes.
With an ethos of from ‘farm to table’, which is becoming ever more important we have a commitment to the land we live on. With a large supply of home-reared beef, free-range eggs, home grown fruit and vegetables, and a wine-cellar with some of the finest malbec’s and torrontes from our local vineyards, we aim to keep everything local if it cannot be produced directly by us.
As we look back on the history of the estancia we realize the gaucho’s live a very simple life and are known for their resourcefulness, from creating their own bridles out of raw hide, to preserving their meat to last their families for extended periods of time without the use of fridge’s and freezers. We have taken inspiration from our roots and begun to reintroduce methods of preserving our beef – both to develop our menu but also to reduce our impact on the environment. Currently, we are trialing a process of smoking our beef, a method which cures the meat through prolonged exposure to wood smoke. Whilst this is a hugely successful in preserving our food it also has created some fabulous flavors and by experimenting with fragrant woods, we are beginning to have some incredible results that we can’t wait to share with everyone when we reopen in the spring.
The kitchen at Los Potreros is definitely the heart of the estancia, from guests joining the chefs to learn the art of Argentine cooking, to our staff sharing a mate (tea) during the day. It is the place which embodies the estancia in its entirety cooking everything from scratch including freshly baked bread, cakes, alongside all the meals for our guests and staff – there is always something to see, all you have to is pop your head in and take a look. As we look to the future we are going to continue to develop and change, with an emphasis on what more we can do with our home-reared and grown produce to maximize the strengths in our local area to providing a closer to home impact on our community.
We look forward to welcoming back guests as soon as we can, and showing you, all our new ideas which will ensure that we are able to protect our environment and welcome you for years to come.
