Food and drinks are some of the easiest ways — and the most fun— to vicariously experience another culture. When you add a great book to the mix, you've got the makings of a perfect evening. In Food+Fiction, we recommend a delicious read and a related recipe so you can try the taste of different destinations in your own kitchen.

This post is part of our Food+Fiction series.

You might not expect warm-hearted scenes of friends eating together, splashing in a pool, and forming unbreakable bonds of affection in a crime novel, but that’s what you get with the unputdownable Betty Boo.

Welcome to modern Buenos Aires and the posh gated community of La Maravillosa, a place for the rich to live outside the dirty fray of city life — until violence invades their privileged enclave and a trio of intrepid reporters investigates the crime.

Although their queries take our heroes — Jamie, Crime Boy, and Betty Boo — into dark territory, they make time to eat, drink, and be as merry as possible. Perhaps you’d like to do the same and share this easy, delicious milanesa with some of your favorite people.

Milanesa — at its most basic, a meat cutlet that’s been breaded and fried to crispy perfection — is a popular dish in Latin American countries, but almost every cuisine has its own version. In the United States, it’s chicken-fried steak. There’s Austrian Wiener Schnitzel, Italian scaloppine, and Japanese tonkatsu. No matter what name you apply, it’s pretty irresistible.

In Argentina, you might try milanesa napolitana, which clearly highlights the relationship between Italy and Argentina. In this recipe, the cutlet is topped with a slice of ham, tomato sauce, and slabs of mozzarella that are melted under a broiler.

For a portable milanesa, there’s the sánguche de milanesa, a baguette stuffed with milanesa, mayo, tomatoes, onion, and shredded lettuce. You can make it extra luscious with a drizzle of chimichurri sauce.

And if you agree that a fried egg on top of just about anything is a good idea, you might like milanesa a caballo with a sunny-side-up egg on top and french fries on the side.

Our version (gluten-free) is from our cookbook Well Fed Weeknights, and it’s inspired by milanesa de peceto, a recipe made with lean beef that tastes best when it’s cooked quickly. The breading is seasoned with fresh garlic, salt, and pepper — traditionally, it might be accompanied by fresh tomatoes or salad. We put our veggies on top in the form of a peach-and-tomato salsa spiked with bright basil.

You can use fresh peaches in summer if you’re lucky enough to have them, and you can also replace the beef with thin-cut pork or chicken cutlets, if you prefer. Should you want to try any of the other versions, skip the salsa and replace it with marina and mozzarella, or a fried egg.

Beef Milanesa with Peach and Tomato Salsa

Serves 2-4. Total time 35 minutes.

Mondays are the days it takes the longest to get into the Maravillosa Country Club… Gladys Varela knows this all too well, and that’s why she’s swearing to herself as she stands facing the barrier, from which a sign reading ‘Personnel and Suppliers’ hangs, behind another fifteen or twenty people who are waiting, like her, to go in. She curses herself for not having charged up the electronic card that would grant her automatic entry. The problem is that the card expires every two months, and the times at which you can make an appointment to reactive it clash with the hours she works for Señor Chazarreta. And Señor Chazarreta isn’t a very nice man… he’s the reason she hasn’t yet dared to ask if she can leave early or have a break to go to the gatehouse and renew her entry card. Because of that way he looks at her. Or doesn’t look at her, because in actual fact, Señor Chazarreta rarely looks right at her, rarely looks her in the eye. He just generally looks, looks around, looks into the garden or looks at the bare wall. Always with a long, unsmiling face, as though he were cross about something. — Claudia Piñeiro

This crime novel (410 pages) was published in February of 2016 by Bitter Lemon Press. The book takes you to modern Buenos Aires. Melissa read Betty Boo and loved it; it wouldn't be on our site if she didn't recommend it.

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