Argentine pot-au-feu where beef, marrow bones, sweet potato, squash, cabbage and corn cook together; the broth is served first with small pasta, then the meats and vegetables.

Why this dish? Puchero is the everyday meal of modest Argentine families like Eva's in Junín: a single pot where meat, marrow bones and seasonal vegetables simmer, from which you first draw a broth, then the dish. Economical and nourishing, it is exactly the simple, criollo cooking that the file describes as her own.

When I was little, in Junín, puchero was the whole meal—there was only one pot, but it fed the whole table. You put in what you had: a cheap piece of meat, a bone for flavor, the squash, the cabbage from the garden. First you drink the broth with little pasta, and only then do you share the meat. Nothing is wasted, my dear ones, nothing is thrown away: that's the cooking of working people, and it's the one I've never disowned.

How it was made : Puchero, descendant of the Spanish cocido, was the Sunday and daily dish of Argentine households; two meals were drawn from it—the broth (caldo) and the boiled meats—making it the archetype of waste-free cooking among the working classes before the war.

The contemporary twist : Reserve the strained broth for a risotto the next day, and turn leftover shredded meat into empanada filling.

Eva Perón · Charactorium