‘Vegan cooking’ and ‘Buenos Aires’ are not words that you often hear in the same sentence. Persuading yourself to give up all the joy of a juicy asado in favour of vegetables might sound difficult, but if there ever comes a point when you have eaten yourself sick of steak and dulce de leche and want to try something completely different, then Cocina Verde, a vegan home delivery service based in San Telmo, is one option.
Cocina Verde aims to provide Buenos Aires with healthy meals, with an emphasis on ‘raw live’ vegan food. The company was launched at the beginning of this month by Kara Bauer, who moved from the United States to Buenos Aires in 2006. It is literally a one-woman business, with Kara buying the ingredients, preparing the food in her home and delivering it herself.
Kara tells me that the company was partly inspired by a similar vegetarian delivery service called The Lucky Palate, which was available in her native Seattle. However, unlike the US company on which it is based, Cocina Verde is not just vegetarian service but a vegan one. Kara says that making her company strictly vegan was a very personal decision. She explains that when she arrived in Buenos Aires, she was eating meat but suffered some minor health problems and it was only after becoming a vegan that she began to feel better. Now it is an experience that she wants to share with others. Kara says that she’d like to deliver the kind of food that she wants to eat herself: “I think it’s important to do what you’re passionate about”, she explains.
Kara’s service places special emphasis on ‘raw live food’, a style of cooking in which nothing is heated above 44ºC. The idea is that in regular cookery, excessive heat damages the vitamins and enzymes in vegetables, and reduces their nutritional value. The Cocina Verde website gives a long list of all the supposed benefits attached to eating this food, saying that it can lead to increased energy, better skin, improved digestion, and a reduced rate of heart disease. It also claims that raw food is good for those looking to lose weight, as uncooked ingredients contain more nutrients, which help the body to feel full more quickly, and thus allow you to eat less.
Whether or not the philosophy of veganism and raw food is your cup of tea – or glass of wheatgrass and carrot juice! – some of the food available with Cocina Verde is refreshing and tasty. To test out the service I ordered a butternut squash soup ($16 for half a kilo), a kale hiziki salad ($24 for half a kilo) and a daikon noodle pad thai ($28 for half a kilo).
The soup was creamy and surprisingly sweet, with a soft, spicy flavour from the added nutmeg. I had ordered the kale hiziki salad mainly out of curiosity to find out what ‘hiziki’ was (it is described on the website as a ‘sea vegetable’ but I had never heard of it before). In the end it wasn’t quite what I expected, tasting nothing like the kind of seaweed you might get in a Chinese restaurant, but was nevertheless extremely tasty. It had a strange, almost fishy flavour that worked very well with the kale and the added sesame seeds gave the salad a bit of bite.
For a main meal I had the daikon noodle pad thai. Fans of traditional pad thai should be warned that this is quite different. For starters it is meant to be eaten cold (one of the ingredients is lettuce) and it has a lot of crunchy raw ingredients, which make it more like a noodle salad than a stir-fry. Instead of crushed peanuts it contains almonds, and it has a sharp, almost bitter taste from the added radish and cilantro. Although I’m not truly convinced that I’d give up a real hearty, hot pad thai for the raw vegan option, it was certainly a lighter alternative.
I also tried some of Kara’s almond butter and milk, both of which are promoted on the website as healthier alternatives to dairy. The milk smelled delicious, and tasted good too (although, maybe a little like herbal tea, the flavour didn’t quite live up to the smell) The almond butter on the other hand was really wonderful. Crunchy, crumbly and a little bit sweet it worked very well on crackers. I have to confess I demolished a whole jar in a day and a half.
Cocina Verde is fairly good value for money, with most dishes coming in half-kilo containers, and costing between $16 and $30. However, be warned that there is a $100 minimum on all orders, so it’s not normally possible just to buy a couple items. The reason for this is that the company is envisioned as a weekly dietary supplement, rather than an ordinary take-out service. The idea is that you order enough meals to last you all week, enabling you to add a few vegan options into your normal diet. Orders must be placed by Friday, and deliveries are made every Tuesday.
In the end, whether or not you’re interested in a full-scale conversion to veganism, or just feel like you could do with eating a couple more vegetables, Cocina Verde is certainly an appealing and hassle-free option.
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