The Big Blog Exchange 2014: My asado & achuras challenge

Buen dia, everyone, from San Carlos de Bariloche in northern Patagonia!  Before we embarked on our journeys in the Big Blog Exchange, all the 16 fellow winners were asked by the organiser, Hostelling International (HI) to prepare a "dare" challenge for our exchange partner to complete at our respective destinations of exchange.  In doing so, my partner, Belen Palacios from Buenos Aires, dared me to the asado challenge ("asado" basically being an Argentinian barbecue).  So it's a barbecue; easy, no?

Well, apparently that wasn't the end of the story.  You see, in Argentina, asado is oftentimes served with achuras.  In English, that means "entrails".  Yes, Belen challenged me to a feast of barbecued entrails.  But I was up for it.  I am, after all, Chinese; and you know what they say about the Chinese.

November 1, 2014.  I met up with Belen's mom and brother, Inaki, who took me to the lovely Las Cabras restaurant in Buenos Aires to complete my challenge.  Here I share with you some pictures from the occasion.  At the end of this post, you'll find out whether or not I completed the challenge.

With my exchange partner's mom and brother before I took on the challenge; still smiling

And this is where it all happened

The stuff at the top and on the left are the asado; meats, the "normal" stuff.
The sausages and the stuff on the right are the dreaded achuras.

Chicken intestines!

Blood sausage!

Okay, here's how it went.  Cold beer in hand, I started off with the achuras - namely, the intestines; both chicken as well as cow intestines.  Those went down pretty well as they really tasted quite good.  Honestly.  So, no problems there.

Next up was cow's kidney (or in Spanish, "riñón").  I was uncomfortable with this one; I was never of fan of any food remotely associated with kidneys.  But it was a dare, and I wasn't about to chicken out (no pun intended).  The minute I took the first bite, all hell broke loose.  Literally.  My eyes teared and try as I might to just swallow it whole, I found the task impossible.  That piece of kidney inside my mouth, barbecued or not, just had to come out; not doing so was never an option.  I took a break.

The last was the blood sausage.  Again, no problems there.  In fact, it was really quite delicious.

In the end, this is what that was left; chicken out I did not - I was just too full by then.  By the way, that "thing" on the extreme right is the riñón.

And that is the story of my asado and achuras dare.  I took on the challenge face on but fell just short of accomplishing the task.  As I write, Belen has yet to complete my dare to her, i.e. to try the durian cake in Penang.  I can only imagine that it's gonna be sweet, sweet revenge.

Very many thanks to Mrs Palacios and Inaki for hosting me.