Belarus

It was unusually easy to pick out recipes for Belarus!  Everything I read talked about potatoes, with draniki being the potato dish of choice.  They were described as a potato-based pancake, which sounded pretty good.  It seems that machanka is the most well-known dish to serve with draniki.  It features bites of pork cooked in a sour cream based sauce, and to me it looked similar to stroganoff.  Since I read about many meals starting with a soup, we picked that for our third dish.  Borscht seems to be a common choice, but we went with the cold version of it that is usually served in summer–Khaladnik.

Khaladnik (recipe)

This was one of our first cooking experiences with beets… we attempted to grow them in our garden a couple years ago and ended up with a handful of pathetic looking beets that we made into chips.  So we were pretty amazed by the vivid color this one beet produced when boiled in water.

We couldn’t find sorrel, so I followed the internet’s advice to substitute it with spinach and lemon zest.  We weren’t really sure how to interpret the instructions to boil the sorrel (boil usually implies boil in water, but the descriptions of sorrel online suggested it might wilt into a sauce without water?)  We ended up boiling the spinach in water, which I think was a mistake… there was a LOT of water left after the spinach was soft/wilted/slightly dissolving, so we kept it on the stove for 30 minutes or so to boil off the rest of the water.

We did all of these steps early in the afternoon since they needed to cool, and we went on a walk to enjoy the nice weather!  No green growth yet, but clear blue skies!

When we got back, we tackled the rest of the khaladnik recipe.  We put the food processor to good use shredding the beet and cucumbers then mixed all of the ingredients together.  I try to follow recipes as closely as possible during this project, but in this case I did omit the egg.  I don’t like taking chances with salmonella…

Draniki (recipe)

This recipe was pretty straightforward.  Grate/shred the potatoes and onion (thank you food processor!).  I started using the food processor blade that is specifically for grating, but since the recipe suggested that the potatoes should be somewhat liquidy, I pulsed them with the regular food processor blade for a little while to get some smaller/mushier pieces.  This was mixed with the egg, salt, and pepper.

Then I dropped tablespoon-fills into a hot pan with the sunflower oil.  I found that I had to spread out the batter drops with the back of the spoon to get more of a pancake shape.  This process went pretty well at first, but I ran into my usual problem of smoking out the kitchen when I fry things.  I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong, but every time we fry foods in oil we end up with massive amounts of smoke filling the house…

I put these in the oven on a warming setting to keep them hot while we finished the rest of the meal.

 

Machanka (recipe)

We first cut the pork into bite sized pieces and browned it.  Then it was simmered in beef stock for 20 minutes or so.  This made it nice and tender!

For the sauce, we started with a roux–the recipe said to sauté the flour, and since it never mentions when to use the butter, we assumed this is what was supposed to happen.  My experience has been that a lot of sauces started with a butter/flour roux.  The stock and spices (the recipe didn’t specify type of spice, but other descriptions and recipes used bay leaves, so that is what we went with) were added to this, and in the mean time the chopped onions were fried in a different pan.  Eventually it all got mixed together with the sour cream in an oven-safe pan.

It still seemed pretty liquidy after baking, so we put it back in a pan on the stove for 10 minutes or so, until it got a bit thicker.

This turned out to be another delicious meal!

The soup was very… unique.  I can’t think of anything I have ever eaten with a similar flavor…  the cucumber and green onion gave it a very light, fresh, and summery flavor.  The beets, on other hand, kept it grounded with a very earthy flavor.  It’s not a soup that I will find myself craving very often, but I’m definitely glad we tried it.

The draniki and machanka was wonderful.  It is amazing how such a short and simple ingredient list can produce so much flavor.  The draniki was very good by itself but even better with some of the machanka sauce.  The pork was perfectly tender, and the machanka sauce had a great flavor… who knew you could get so much flavor out of some sour cream, beef stock, and bay leaves!  It wasn’t the healthiest meal we have made, but I think it would be the perfect meal for a cold, winter night.

We get to stay and Europe and hop over a few states to Belgium next time!

 

 

Bangladesh

We have been pretty busy the last few weeks, but we finally got back to cooking last Sunday!  Bangladesh was next in the alphabet.  Once again, I was completely overwhelmed by the options.  I guess that is what happens when you try to cook a single meal from one of top 10 most populous countries in the world.

I wasn’t too surprised to learn that there is a lot of overlap with Indian cuisine, specifically the food of West Bengal, since the Bengal region was split in two when Bangladesh became independent.  Still, there were so many options.  I read that among other things, many foods include mustard based sauces (both mustard seed and mustard oil), seafood (particularly the Ilish fish), and of course, rice.  We weren’t feeling extremely ambitious at the time, so we also tried to limit the number of complex and labor-intensive recipes.  That is always easier said than done, though.

We selected:

• Singaras: these fried appetizers are similar to another Banladeshi/Indian appetizer called samosas.  A filling of tasty things like cauliflower, peanuts, peas, potatoes, spices, etc. are stuffed in dough and then fried.  They are typically served with a chutney, which gave us our “simple” recipe for the night.
• Tomato and green mango chutney: See above description–this was an accompaniment to the singaras.  This chutney included mango, tomatoes, and spice mix called panch phoron.
• Mustard fish and mango curry:  This satisfied the “mustard-based sauce” and “seafood” requirements, although I was a little hesitant since we generally haven’t had the best luck with fish-based dishes.  We couldn’t find the traditional ilish fish in Iowa, so we substituted sea bass steaks.
• Bengali Dal: As you will read below, we had some problems with the fish dish and decided to make a second attempt at cooking a Bangladeshi main course the next day.  I had been planning doing a dal dish for Bangladesh for weeks but backed out when I decided it would be more adventurous or authentic or something to do the mustard-based fish meal.

Singara (recipe)

The recipe called for a tablespoon of ground spices, such as cumin, coriander, bay leaf, red chili, fennel, cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom.  Once again, I got to measure about a bunch of spices and dry roast them until they become fragrant.  I am starting to love recipes where I get to do this… I love seeing the mix of colors and textures and smelling the different spice mixes as they heat up.

   

The cauliflower and potatoes were fried:

Then everything else was added to make the filling:

The dough was pretty straightforward, and it ended up being rolled into small balls, which were flattened and cut in half.  After the filling had cooled, I started rolling up the dough into cone-ish shapes (sealing the edges with water), then stuffing them with the filling.  As usual, we had more filling than dough… but we found that the filling was DELICOUS by itself and quickly disappeared.

   

By the way, I really don’t know why my hand looks so pink in that picture.  Since we cut the recipe in half (bad idea, these things were amazing), we ended up with 6 singaras.  Here they are, before and after frying.

   

Tomato Mango Chutney (recipe)

This was our “simple” recipe for this meal.  It did use another new spice mix, however, called panch phoron.  It used cumin, nigella (also known as black cumin or onion seed), fenugreek, mustard, and fennel seed.  These were fried in oil with a dried chili pepper (or in our case, a dried serrano from last summer’s garden).

Then the diced tomatos and mangoes were added with some salt and turmeric.  I love how colorful some of these dishes are.

These were cooked with water and sugar until the liquid was reduced/thickened.  I didn’t watch the clock to see how long this took… we just kept an eye on it while cooking everything else.

Mustard fish and mango curry (recipe)

We rubbed the mixture of chili powder, turmeric, and salt on the fish, then fried them in the wok.  Pretty straightforward, although it took a while.  Little did we know, this was the fatal flaw in this meal… as it turns out, they were not fully cooked in the middle.  More on that later.

   

Meanwhile, we had the mustard seeds soaking in water.  These were blended with with peppers (we used more thai/bird’s eye peppers since we STILL have a container full of those that has lasted over a month), and oil.  We couldn’t find mustard oil, so we substituted sunflower oil.  Tyler attempted crushing this mixture into a paste in the mortar and pestle (fail) and then in the small food processor (still a fail).  The “paste” was really chunky.  I didn’t even bother taking a photo of it.  I did, however, take a photo of the nigella seeds that were heated until they “crackled” in the oil.  I was extremely fascinated by the pattern the seeds made over time as they cooked in the oil without being stirred.  I’m still fascinated and curious at how they formed the repeating pentagon pattern.

The “paste,” tomatoes, remaining oil, nigella seeds, other spices, etc. were mixed together on the pan and cooked until the oil separates.  It was not pretty due to the chunky paste.  I can’t be sure, but I don’t think this is what it’s supposed to look like.  I don’t remember if this is before or after we threw it back in the food processor for a while to break up the chunks.  That only helped a little bit.

But we were committed, so we marched on down the path… next we added the mango, then the water (too much water, I think… oops again), and the fish.  It cooked for a while longer.  In another twist of fate to doom this meal to even more failure, we realized we forgot the cilantro to put on top.  Actually, I’m pretty sure I just thought the parsley in the fridge was cilantro when I made the ingredient list.  Either way, here’s the finished product.  Considering our struggles with the sauce, it didn’t look half bad.

Well, as we started eating, we both got about 2-3 bites in… and then at the same time, we both stopped, looked at each other, and asked, “Are you sure this fish is cooked all the way?”  It wasn’t raw by any means, and it was slightly flaky, but the texture was just… off.  We covered the pan with remaining fish and turned the heat back on to bake it some more.  I cooked mine in the microwave for a couple minutes, but neither of us quite had the appetite to eat any more fish that night.  SO, we made a resolution to try again the next night with a simple dal recipe.

We ended the night with a nice cup of chai tea (homemade by Tyler… he has been perfecting his chai recipe for months) to recover from the partially cooked fish trauma.

Bengali Dal (recipe)

I mostly followed the linked recipe, but I made all of the changes suggested in one of the comments.  We 1. Substituted chana dal for red dal (dal=lentils), 2. Substituted 1 or 2 small romas for the cherry tomatoes, 3.  Changed the ratio of onions to only frying 1/4 of the onion and putting the rest in with the dal, and 4. Used small thai peppers (which we had on hand) instead of serranos.

This recipe was pretty simple… sauté the onions and garlic, then add lentils, turmeric, bay leaf, tomatoes, slat, and pepper and cook for a long time.  I think the time of 20 minutes may have been accurate if I used the red lentils that the recipe called for, but the chana dal, which is actually baby chickpeas cut in half, took much longer to cook.  Fortunately we had two leftover singaras to relieve the hunger!

After 40 minutes or so of waiting, I started Googling chana dal and read about its long cooking time.  So we put the lid on the pan and cranked up the heat again.  After abutter 20 minutes or so, the dal was soft so we called it done.  In the mean time, I fried the onions. I learned that it is very important to have consistently sized onion slices for this!  I ran into problems with the thin onion slices being dark brown right away, while some slightly thicker slices were barely cooked.  Some of the small pieces ended up a little burnt, but it wasn’t really noticeable in the final dish.

The fried onions were mixed in with the dal, then served over rice.  Unfortunately, we forgot to get cilantro again, so this was missing. 😦

Meal review:

The singaras were AMAZING.  I very much regret scaling the recipe in half… for some reason, we thought we would have a ridiculous amount of food if we made all of them.  We were wrong.  I loved the flavors, and I loved the flakiness of the dough.  The chutney was good and did a great job of balancing out some of the more pungent spices in the singara, although it was a little too sweet, and I almost preferred the singaras without the chutney.

The fish… as discussed above, was a bit of a disaster.  The good news is that we didn’t get food poisoning from the partially cooked fish, and it was decent as a leftover.  However, I had a hard time getting the memory of biting into partially cooked fish out of my mind when I ate it at lunch the next day.  I think the mangoes might have been a nice addition, but they mostly dissolved into the sauce after giving the fish so much time to finish cooking.

The dal was good.  The flavor was very different from what I expected.  I’m not entirely sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this.  It was good, though.  I can see where many people describe it as a comfort food.

Bahrain

Next on this list is Bahrain!  An archipelago of islands, it is located in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Saudi Arabia.  Dates, which are a native crop to Bahrain, play a large role in their cuisine, and there is generally a large influence from neighboring middle eastern countries.

I quickly found two recipes that I wanted to make–chicken machboos, which uses an abundance of spices and flavorful ingredients mixed with chicken and rice, and muhammar, which is a sweet rice that is often flavored with dates.  HOWEVER, I didn’t think I could handle two rice dishes in one meal…

We went with the chicken machboos, which just looked too delicious to pass up.  I saw several comments with recipes for chicken machboos that it is often served with a salad and with a warm sauce called daqqous.  The muhammar/sweet rice is going on my list of recipes to revisit sometime in the future.

Chicken Machboos (recipe)

Like with the curry for Antigua and Barbuda, we prepared a spice mix for this recipe.  This mix is called baharat, and it is a wonderful smelling mix of cloves, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, pepper, cardamom, paprika, and nutmeg.

Everything except the paprika and nutmeg was cooked in a pan for a few minutes–just until it became fragrant and started to smoke a bit.  As I expected, this smelled great.

After that cools, it is ground up with the nutmeg and paprika.  At this point, I had no doubt that this was going to be an awesome meal.

Next, I prepared another set of ingredients.  One of which was new to me–loomi, also known as black limes.  These are limes that have been boiled in salt water and then set out to dry in the sun.  I was worried we would have to come up with a substitute, but the local international grocery store had them!

I set out the loomi, cardamom, ground cloves, cinnamon, garlic, pepper, onion, turmeric, baharat, ginger, onions, and tomatoes.  Seriously, with all of these delicious foods and spices going into it, how could this not be delicious?

While I was doing this prep work, Tyler cooked the chicken pieces so they were golden brown on both sides, then set them aside until later.  We used about a 2 1/2 lb package of bone-in chicken pieces.

The onions were fried in butter, then the ginger, garlic, and peppers were added.  Then the turmeric and baharat.

Next, all of the above ingredients, plus chicken broth, were added to the pot and brought to a boil.  Then it simmered for an hour and filled the house with wonderful smells.

We were worried about the chicken getting cooked all the way through, so I ended up adding water until the chicken was covered.

The Basmati rice, cilantro, and parsley were added for the last 20 minutes or so.  The rice absorbed all of the liquid during that time and came looking nice and yellow (thank you, turmeric!).  I sprinkled rose water on top before serving.

Daqqous (recipe below)

I read through several comments and descriptions of this sauce and decided to wing it.  I cooked two cloves of diced garlic in oil for a minute or two, then added 16 oz. of diced tomatoes, 2 Tbs. tomato paste,  some hot pepper (I used a half of a small Thai pepper, and I think I could have used more since I didn’t notice the kick), and salt.  I simmered this for 15-20 minutes, let it cool for a while, then pulsed it in a small blender to break up the bigger tomato chunks.

Middle Eastern Shirazi Salad (recipe below)

I merged several recipes and descriptions for this one too.  It is pretty straightforward–dice the tomatoes, onion, and cucumber into small pieces (I read somewhere that it is traditional/important to cut it into very small, evenly sized pieces).  Then I roughly chopped the parsley and fresh mint.  I mixed together some lemon juice, olive oil, and salt, and then tossed all of the ingredients together.

Review

YUM.  The smells and piles of delicious looking ingredients and spices while cooking the chicken machboos had me convinced that this would be a winner right away, and it did not disappoint.  I was starting to get burned out on these rice based dishes, but this turned that around!  There was just so much flavor.  It was a very different set of flavors than I’m used to–especially the use of cinnamon in a savory dish.  But every time I ate the leftovers I noticed different flavors coming out.  The consistency was thick, creamy, and moist.  I would give this 5 out of 5 stars, and it definitely gets me excited to make more dishes from this region.  As an added bonus, we threw some of the extra baharat seasoning in a batch of chili the other day, and I thought it was a great addition.  It was a nice mellow contrast to the spiciness.

The daqqous was good, but nothing too unique or exciting.  I wasn’t thrilled with it when we first made this, but I found that it was a great addition to the machboos chicken throughout the week as we ate leftovers, since it counteracted the slight dryness from microwaving the rice.

The salad was also good.  I really enjoyed the cool and refreshing flavor–I’m still so surprised every time I see mint paired with things like tomato and lemon juice!  I’m not a big fan of cucumbers or raw onions, so the crunchy texture wasn’t as enjoyable to me.  Tyler, on the other hand, liked the texture but wasn’t crazy about the flavor.  So I guess that evened out somehow.  Overall, it was nice to have a light side salad with the chicken machboos.  I don’t think I would have had room left in my stomach for a dessert after eating all the rice and chicken.

We’re going to be out of town the rest of this week, so we’ll be back sometime next week with Bangladesh!  In the mean time, we will be reminding ourself what American food tastes like for the next few days…

Daqqous Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 Tbs tomato paste
• olive oil
• hot pepper
• water and salt as needed

Directions:

1. Cooked the diced garlic in about 1 Tbs olive oil
2. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, pepper, and salt to taste, then simmer for 10-20 minutes.
3. Pulse in a blender to break up tomato chunks

Middle Eastern Shirazi Salad Recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 tomatoes
• 1 cucumber
• 1 red onion
• parsley
• mint leaves
• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 2 Tbs lemon juice
• salt to taste

Directions:

1. Chop the tomatoes, onion, and cucumber into small pieces.
2. Roughly chop the parsley and mint.
3. Mix the lemon juice, olive oil, and salt to taste.
4. Toss all ingredients together.

The Bahamas

We made it to the Bs!!  Once again, we had a cold, snowy day to cook a meal from the Caribbean.

This was another meal that tested my food aversion limits.  I have a bit of a mental block about most seafood, so I started getting nervous when I read about the most famous food being conch meat.  I took the word of several other global cooking bloggers and avoided spending too much time looking into what conchs look like out of their shells but before having the skin and eyes removed…

The three most common conch dishes I read about in The Bahamas are 1) conch salad (in which the conch is usually eaten raw… sorry, not that adventurous!), 2) conch chowder (maybe…), or 3) conch fritters.  The fritters looked the best out of these three, and it definitely occured to me that the conch would be most well disguised in this option.  I almost backed out on cooking with conch when we couldn’t find it locally, but Tyler and my brother convinced me to stick with it.  Amazon to the rescue–they sell canned conch! It was more expensive than I would have liked for one can, but as Tyler keeps reminding me, “we aren’t doing this to save money!”

Our second dish for The Bahamas is peas and rice.  Contrary to what you might expect from their name, pigeon peas are a type of bean.  I’ve read that this is common throughout the Caribbean, so I will probably come across it again.  It seemed like a good accompaniment to the fritters–and a good fallback in case I couldn’t stomach the conch. 🙂

I picked a dessert for our third dish, and I felt pretty confident that it would be good.  Gauva duff–sweet bread filled with guava goop and guava sauce!

Conch Fritters (recipe)

This was another “divide and conquer” meal, and I left Tyler in charge of the fritters (surprise, surprise).  I generally avoided the conch preparing scene, but I did snap a photo of the chopped conch.

The conch pieces were mixed with finely diced veggies–onion, red and green bell peppers, hot pepper (we used small Thai peppers that were leftover from a few countries ago), celery, and chopped cilantro–and the dry ingredients–flour, thyme, and seasoned salt.  Water was added to this to reach a thick, somewhat sticky consistency.  Yes, that is a glass of red wine that appeared between these steps. 🙂

   

It took much longer than we expected for the oil to get hot.  We used canola oil in the stockpot (to minimize splattering) and were probably a bit shy of the recommended two inches.  Since this used a LOT of oil, our plan was to add more only if needed.  We appreciated the tip from this recipe to drop a small amount of the batter in the oil to test whether or not it was hot enough.  Eventually, it got hot and Tyler started frying!

Sadly this took a long time and caused us to miss the beginning of the Olympics closing ceremony. 😦

We also made a basic dipping sauce for the fritters.  I saw a lot of variation in what the sauce should include, but I followed a common theme in the recipes and mixed together 2 Tbs. mayonnaise, 2 Tbs. ketchup, and 2 Tbs. lime juice.  I intended to add a dash of hot sauce but forgot about it until we were already eating.

Peas and Rice

There were a lot of recipes out there for Bahamian peas and rice, and just as many comments on those recipes from Bahamian natives with comments about what is it and is not authentic.  I merged a recipe from all of this information, although I have started to notice that two natives of a country do not aways have the same opinion of what is “authentic.”

This recipe started with 3 slices of bacon, chopped and cooked.  Yum.  I added the green pepper, celery, and onion to the bacon and bacon fat and cooked until the onion was translucent.  I added the minced garlic and cooked for another minute or two.

Next I added the tomato paste, thyme, coconut milk, and pigeon peas.  I forgot to take a picture at this step, but you’ll have to trust me when I say that it looked pretty tasty at this point.  As a side note, this is the step where I intended to add browning sauce, which some comments said was critical to make authentic Bahamian Peas and Rice.  I totally forgot to put it on the grocery list, and we (Tyler) had already made two trips to the grocery store that day.  I added some extra tomato paste to make up for it.

Once this came to a boil, I added the rice and enough water to cover it.  I used white Basmati rice, since that is the only long grain white rice we had on hand.  In retrospect, I should have soaked it for a while like I did for Azerbaijan, because that stuff was thirsty.  Every time I turned my back, the liquid was gone, so I kept adding water to the pan.  I gave it about 30 minutes, after which I declared it to be done.  It got to hang out on the stove for a while longer, though, since the fritters were taking forever.

Guava duff (recipe)

This was definitely the most labor intensive of the recipes!  We did most of the work before starting the fritters or peas and rice, and we had to run the dishwasher while cooking the rest of the meal since it was full after making the guava duff.

Unfortunately, we had to use canned guavas.  An employee at our grocery store told Tyler they had fresh guavas the day before, but they were getting too old and had to be tossed.  We used three 28 oz. cans of guava to reach the 4 cups of guava flesh for the filling!  We ended up with extra filling, so I think we could have gotten by with just two cans.

I have never cooked with guavas before.  They smelled deliciously sweet and tropical.  *Note below picture is just ONE of the three cans of guavas!

I separated the seeds and pulp from the flesh, which I chopped into small pieces.  These were mixed with brown sugar, nutmeg, and a pinch of salt and cooked over medium-low heat for about 30 minutes.  I’m not sure what the final consistency was supposed to be, but I kept mashing them to get rid of the big pieces.  It felt and looked like I was making applesauce!

   

I transferred this to another bowl to chill in our walk-in refrigerator (AKA the screened porch on a cold midwest evening).  Meanwhile, I made the sauce.  This used the pulp from the guavas (I ran them through the food mill to remove the seeds).  The recipe called for 1/2 can of sweetened, condensed milk but didn’t say what size of can, so I used somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 cup.  I also scaled back the sugar a bit from the recipe.  I added a splash of the optional vanilla extract and rum.  This was a crazy, thick, gooey sauce.

Meanwhile, Tyler prepared the dough and rolled it out.

And this is where disaster struck!  I scooped all of the filling onto the dough and attempted it roll it up.  There was sooo much filling that it was oozing out everywhere.  It was a total mess, and it was HUGE, so there was no way we could really wrap it up in the parchment paper/aluminum foil.  I made a controversial decision to unroll it and start over.  I scooped as much of the filling into a bowl as I could.  The recipe suggests mixing some of the guava filling in with the dough (originally we had skipped this since the filling was still hot), so I didn’t worry about the guava filling that stuck to the dough.  I kneaded it together and had a big sticky mess.  Several additions of flour later, I had a somewhat workable dough.  For the second attempt, we made two smaller rolls instead of one, and we didn’t use all of the filling.  The first roll was somewhat successful, and the second seems pretty close to what it was supposed to look like.

Since my hands were covered with sticky dough/guava goop and I was reasonably frustrated, I didn’t capture any photos of the disaster…

I did document one of the rolls as it was covered in parchment paper and 2-3 layers of aluminum foil.  I definitely felt like a wannabe burrito chef doing this part.

      

Now, the recipe suggests two cooking methods: one on the stove and one in the oven, both involving submerging it in boiling water.  We attempted this in our stockpot, but it just wasn’t big enough.  So we moved them to the crockpot, put on the lid, and set it on high!

We checked one after the suggested 1 hr. 20 minutes, and it was still pretty goopy.  We decided to experiment a bit, and I re-wrapped this one and set it in a shallow roasting pan with hot water in the oven at 300°F.  I left the second roll in the crockpot.  We checked on them after another hour or so, and then they both came out perfectly done!

I cut it into thick slices and served it with the sauce (not pictured below).

I think our frustration over the guava duff, annoyance that we missed the beginning of the Olypmics closing ceremony, and the fact that we ended up eating while watching the rest of it on TV (1-2 hours later than originally planned, as usual…) limited my ability to appreciate this meal.  However, I did enjoy it

The fritters were good.  I won’t say they were phenomenal, but they were good.  I am still working past my mental block of seafood as I eat the leftovers. 🙂  These reminded us a lot of a fried, seafood version of the breakfast muffins we like to make.  I really liked the extra kick of the lime in the dipping sauce.  The conch meat was pretty subdued in this, other than a general seafood flavors.  Several recipes I looked at said that you could substitute other types of seafood for the conch, and I can see why.  I don’t think the difference would be very noticeable.

The peas and rice were good, although they weren’t as flavorful as I hoped.  I think we ended up with too much rice relative to everything else, so the flavors were diluted.  Tyler really enjoyed this though, and I don’t think it will be a problem to go through the leftovers.  I could see jazzing this up with more seasonings (or less rice) as a simple vegetarian meal.

The guava duff was absolutely amazing.  Loved it.  The guavas had a unique and tropical flavor that I’m not used to, and the duff was a great, soft consistency.  I had to go light on the sauce to avoid it getting too sweet, but overall this was wonderful and a great dessert (at least as great as a dessert can be without chocolate 🙂 ).  I have a sneaking suspicion that it would be good with some fresh nutmeg grated on top, but I haven’t tried that yet.  Although I wouldn’t be exited about repeating the amount of work and frustration we had, I would happily eat this again!  I was glad we got to try a new cooking method, and I think we would have less frustration if we made it again.

   

Overall, I would say this meal was pretty successful!  The biggest downside is all the leftover celery that we have to do something with (sorry, no ants on a log in this house).

Next, we are back across the ocean to Bahrain!

Azerbaijan

We made it through the first letter of the alphabet!!  Finishing the ‘A’s felt like a huge milestone.  Of course, there are more ‘B’s than ‘A’s, so we will be on the next letter even longer…

I will admit to being a little nervous about Azerbaijan, since we didn’t have great success with neighboring Armenia.  However, there were tons of recipes to choose from, so it wasn’t hard to find a few that looked really good to us.  I was actually having a hard time narrowing down my options until I stumbled upon this blog, written by someone who grew up in Azerbaijan.  Her recipes and posts about dovga, a yogurt based soup (with lots of fresh greens and herbs!) and plov (a rice based dish like pilaf) with dried fruits and chestnuts looked too good to pass up.

We have tried to keep up with making 3 or more recipes for countries, but the dovga and plov were going to make more than enough food for the two of us.  I saw several references to a cold, sweet drink called sherbet.  There are many versions, but they all seem to entail fruit juice, sugar, and an additional ingredient such as herbs or rose water.  We decided this would be a nice, light third recipe to make.

Dovga (recipe)

I wasn’t very diligent about taking photos or even paying attention to the preparation of this dish.  Tyler was 100% in charge of the dovga, while I was working on the plov.  He started by chopping a bunch of fresh greens and herbs.  We selected these based on what we had in the fridge and what we could buy at the grocery store for a reasonable price.  We used a bunch of cilantro, about half of a small package of fresh dill, most of a bag of spinach, and a few green onions we had leftover in the fridge from another recipe.

The biggest problem we encountered with this recipe was the volume of soup that it made!!  I already had called dibs on the large stockpot for the plov, so Tyler started to make this in our largest saucepan (3 quarts).  Now, if we had done the math, we would have figured out that 2 qt. of yogurt + 1 qt. water + other stuff = more than the 3 qt pan can handle… but we didn’t.  So after mixing the yogurt and most of the water in the saucepan, we had an overflow emergency situation and made a quick transfer to our largest glass mixing bowl.  After mixing we split it between the 2 qt. and 3 qt. saucepans for the rest of the process.  At this point it had the yogurt, water, egg, and rice.  Tyler kept busy stirring both pots frequently.  Then the herbs and chickpeas were mixed in for the last 15 minutes.

      

Plov with Dried Fruit and Chestnuts (original recipe, found through this post)

This recipe reminded me of the detailed instructions for preparing couscous of Algeria to get the right texture and of the Kabuli Pulao of Afghanistan.  It started with a search for white Basmati rice, which brought Tyler to our local international grocery store, where he found this awesome bag of rice.  I can’t say I have ever purchased rice in a cloth bag before, but I think I’m going to have to think of something creative to do with the bag once we eat all the rice.

We also went on a quest to find chestnuts.  Our grocery store was sold out of whole chestnuts, so we found these pre-peeled and cooked chestnuts.  They really didn’t look appetizing, but I figured looks can be deceiving.

The dried fruit, on the other hand, looked wonderful (but seriously, what is it with the rest of the world and dried fruit?  I think I have eaten more dried fruit in the last two months than I did in the last 10 years of my life).  It looked even better cooking in the pan with some melted butter and the chestnuts.  I couldn’t find anything called dried “sour plums,” so I got a package of diced plums with cranberries, blueberries, and cherries.  These went with golden raisins, dates, and apricots.  It seems like there is some wiggle room with the exact variety and quantity of dried fruit, so I didn’t worry too much about deviating a bit from the recipe here.

   

Meanwhile, I transferred the rice (which had been soaking in water) to the stockpot to boil for 7-10 minutes, or until the rice floated to the top.  After this I drained the rice and set it aside.

The next step was assembly!  The first layer was chicken (cut into small pieces), which was topped with salt, pepper, and onion rings.  The second layer added half the rice, the third layer added the dried fruit and chestnuts, and the fourth layer added the remaining rice and melted butter. The original recipe recommends shaping the top layer into a pyramid.  I’m not sure what the purpose is of making this shape, but the artist in me had fun with it. 🙂

         

Next a towel is wrapped around the lid to absorb steam, and it cooks over low heat for 30(!) minutes.  (Un)Fortunately, we had a stack of clean laundry on top of the washer that was taller than me, so putting clothes away kept me from peeking and prodding at the food during those 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, I finally got to peek (it looked exactly the same.) and add the infused saffron water.  Then it cooked on low heat for another 30 minutes.

By the way, it was pretty fun watching the water change colors over 30-60 minutes as the saffron steeped/infused.

   

Rose-Pomegranate Sherbet (recipe)

This was very simple to make, partially because pomegranates are out of season, so we bought pre-made pomegranate juice.  And actually, blueberry-pomegranate was purchased instead by accident… so we didn’t exactly stay true to the recipe. 😕  We boiled the juice, sugar, and water, then let it cool.  Once it was cool the rose water was added.  It was served chilled after the meal.

Meal Review

This meal was delicious.  I had a feeling the plov would be a winner, since it had a lot of similarities with the Kabuli Pulao that we enjoyed so much, and it did not disappoint.  It was a little drier than I would have liked, but the flavor was wonderful.  The rice had a nice buttery flavor without feeling too heavy.  The dried fruit and chicken were done perfectly and had great flavor.  The chestnuts were just okay, but it may not have helped that I didn’t buy them fresh.  It has been interesting eating the leftovers of this (which we will be doing for a while… this was a LOT of food for two people)… my reaction seems to change with my mood.  It seemed dry and almost bland yesterday at lunch, but tonight at dinner it was perfect and totally hit the spot.

The dovga soup was another winner.  I don’t think it’s something I could eat every day due to the tartness/tanginess, but we both really liked it.  I liked how thick it was with the rice, and I loved the flavor from all the herbs.  This would be fun to make again in the summer when we can use fresh produce from our garden.  I know the chickpeas are optional, but I wouldn’t go without them… I really liked the occasional change in texture from biting into a chickpea.

The sherbet was good, but I felt it paled in comparison to the rest of the food in this meal.  This is my second time using rosewater, and I’m still surprised by the light, delicate flavor it adds.  It was a nice drink to sip on after the meal before we tackled the post-cooking war zone in our kitchen.

   

Next time we are on to a new letter and back across the ocean to the Caribbean.  We will be cooking food from the Bahamas, where the national food is conch. ..

Austria

I am a little behind with blog posts, but we cooked food from Austria last Sunday.  Since Australia was fairly simple and we were feeling more motivated than usual,  we cranked up the some Mozart music and started cooking the food of his homeland and made it two days in a row of international cooking!  Austria is another country that I was excited for.  It is the first of the countries that I have been to, and I really enjoyed the German and Austrian food I have eaten during my trips to Europe.  I was very tempted to make wiener schnitzel and spaetzle, but we decided to save those for Germany (which will be around September this year at our current rate).  We also wanted to avoid just recreating foods that we have eaten before.  I found many references to a boiled beef dish called Tafelspitz, which is often served with an apple-horesradish sauce.  We paired this with a pan fried potatoes recipe called Bratkartoffeln.  Much like Australia, the real struggle was narrowing down the list of fantastic looking desserts!  I wanted to avoid anything cake-like after having cashew cake for Aruba and Lamingtons (chocolate coated cake slices) for Australia, so we settled on Apfelstrudel.

Tafelspitz with apple-horesradish sauce (recipe below–we adapted on our own recipe based on various other recipes, descriptions of this dish, and ingredients that were available or in the fridge waiting to be used)

The tafelspitz is essentially a cut of beef boiled in broth with some seasonings.  The beef is slow cooked for about an hour with a a bone/shank, a bunch of root vegetables, peppercorns, bay leaves, and allspice.

Most of the recipes we looked at also suggested slicing an onion in half and frying the flat sides on a cast iron skillet.  I didn’t research why they do this, but it must have to do with releasing the magic onion flavors or something.  Anyway, I thought it looked cool.

We let this boil for about an hour (until the meat was cooked), then removed the veggies and replaced them with more root veggies.  The idea is that the first ones lost most of their flavor to making a broth, and the second batch of vegetables would be the ones we eat with the beef.  It continued simmering until the vegetables were cooked.  The beef is sliced against the grain and served with the vegetables.  Since the cooking liquid is essentially homemade beef broth, we put that in a gallon sized Ziplock bag and chucked in the freezer.  Whenever we need broth for a soup or something, I’m sure it will be delicious.

It seems to be common to serve tafelspitz with apple-horeseradish sauce and chopped chives (or chive sauce).  We used chopped chives instead of the sauce, but we were both intrigued by the idea of apple horseradish sauce.  It was pretty simple to make–we just chopped an apple and combined it with a small (4 oz.) jar of prepared horseradish sauce.  We blended this in a small food processor until it had a fairly smooth consistency.

Bratkartoffeln (recipe)

I roughly followed this recipe from food.com.  I’ve eaten similar fried potato dishes in Germany, so it looked relatively authentic to me.  I knew this would test my patience, since you are supposed to let the potatoes sit in the pan for several minutes (without stirring) to get crispy.  I am terrible at leaving food alone… I like to poke and prod my food, whether it is on the stove or leftover on my plate at the end of a meal…

This recipe called for cooking the onions and bacon first until the onions are translucent.  In retrospect, I think I should have given the bacon a head start because it looked pretty raw still when the onions were starting to turn brown.  I also should have used a larger pan.

Next the potatoes are added.  I boiled the potatoes earlier in the day until they were mostly cooked but not mushy.  Some people recommend cooking them the day before, but I didn’t even know I would be cooking this the day before.  I put them in the fridge for the afternoon then cut them into thin slices and added them to the pan.  I also added oil–since the bacon wasn’t fully cooked and, therefore, wasn’t emitting much bacon fat liquid to cook the potatoes in.  I wasn’t successful in getting the nice crispy finish I’ve had on similar dishes in Germany.  Although the bottom of the potatoes got crispy, the crispy part stayed behind every time I flipped the potatoes.  As a result, I kept adding oil to keep it from sticking.  In the end, I got some browned potatoes, onions, and bacon, and I scraped the crispies off the bottom of the pan and mixed them in.

The tafelspitz, sauce, chives, and potatoes made a nice spread of dishes for dinner.

Of course, this was supplemented with a loaf of crusty bread. 🙂

Apfelstrudel (recipe)

I found a lot of recipes from apfelstruedel, but I loved this blog post with a family recipe and a wonderful explanation of how to make it.  Once I saw the pictures of dough stretched out to fill a table, then rolled up with the tablecloth, I knew we had to make this.

This started with a small ball of dough, which we let sit out for several hours (as with the boiled potatoes, we didn’t plan ahead well enough to make this the day before).

Once the rest of the meal was almost ready, we started preparing the apfelstrudel.  I chopped apples and measured the cinnamon, sugar, and bread crumbs, while Tyler worked on the dough.  He put flour out on a clean tablecloth then started rolling out the dough, occasionally spreading melted butter over the dough.  It started pretty small and eventually stretched out to the size of our table!  Then he trimmed off the thick dough around the border… which looked like a surprisingly large percent of the original ball of dough’s volume.

         

I spread the apples, cinnamon, sugar, and bread crumbs (we omitted the raisins, because… yuck.  I may have warmed up to raisins in savory dishes, but I’m keeping them out of dessert as long as possible).  It was super fun to roll up the strudel with the tablecloth.  I took an awesome video of this, but sadly it appears that I can’t uploaded it without paying to upgrade my WordPress account. 😦  So here are a couple snapshots of the process.

   

We twisted it into a horseshoe shape and spread some more melted butter on top, then baked it.  YUM.

   

The finished meal was wonderful.  I was a little worried that the tafelspitz would be bland, but the flavor really came from the meat.  I liked the flavor the chopped chives added. The apple-horesradish sauce was also very good with this, although it was a very dominant flavor.   I had to make sure I ate a few bites without it to appreciate all of the flavors.  The potatoes were also good, but they weren’t as good as similar dishes I’ve had in Europe.  I had too many problems with them sticking to the pan, and I think they also ended up too oily from all the oil I added to prevent sticking.  They were good with the meal, but I think I will opt for less oily potato cooking method. 🙂

As much as we enjoyed dinner, the apfelstrudel was the clear winner of this meal.  Delicious.  The flaky pastry layers were wonderful, and the apple filling was so wonderfully cinnamony and warm.  I can’t say enough good things about this… we will definitely be making it again!!

   

Tafelspitz Recipe

Prep 10 mins ∙ Cook 4 hrs ∙ Makes 6 ∙ Difficulty Medium

Ingredients

• 4 lbs beef (we used Bottom Round Roast)
• 1 beef bone (shanks work)
• 1 onion
• 6 carrots
• 2 turnips
• 2 leeks
• 12 peppercorns
• 2 bay leafs
• 1 allspice berry
• 1 jar horseradish sauce
• 1 apple, skin removed and chopped

Directions

1. Separate the carrots, turnips, and leeks (other root vegetables can be substituted) in half.
2. Cut half of the vegetables in large chunks.
3. Bring a small pan to a high heat. Cut the onion in half (do not peel it). Place the onion halves on the heat and hold until brown but not charred.
4. Place the bone in a large stock pot. Put the meat on top of the bone and placed the chopped vegetables and onion halves on top of the meat.
5. Fill the pot with enough water to cover the vegetables with an extra inch above. Guess if the vegetables start floating.
6. Bring the pot to a boil. While the water is heating up add all spices except the salt.
7. Once the water is boiling, reduce to an uncovered simmer for 1 hour.
8. Add salt to taste, about a tablespoon. Resume simmering until the meat is tender, about 2 to 2.5 hours. Refresh water as necessary.
9. Once the meat can be easily stabbed with a fork, remove meat, bone, and vegetables. Save the water but discard the vegetables and bone (they have no more flavor). Put the meat back in the water.
10. Chop the reserved vegetables in whatever manner you want to eat them. Add them to the broth. Simmer for 1 hour or until the vegetables are at desired tenderness.
11. While vegetables are in the water, combine horseradish sauce and diced apple in a food processor. Use the amount of apple that seems appropriate. Blend the two until the sauce is smooth.
12. When vegetables are done, remove the beef and slice thinly against the grain. Vegetables can be removed and served along the beef or kept in the broth and eaten as a soup. If serving the vegetables as a side, keep the broth for later use.

Notes

This meal sounds bland but the boiling process adds wonderful flavor to the meat. This meal is the rare sort where the flavor comes from the meat and not the spices on the meat.

Australia

On Saturday we made our way to Australia!  After watching the parade of nations during the Olympics opening ceremony on Friday evening, it felt kind of boring for our next country to be so similar to American cuisine.  They seem to be another “melting pot” when it comes to food and culture, so most of the foods were familiar to me.  I also saw a lot of desserts… Pavlova, Tim Tam cookies, Anzac cookies, and Lamingtons.  Two of the iconic foods I saw were hamburgers loaded with toppings (most notably including beets) and meat pies–often served as “floaters,” which means they are dunked in pea soup and topped with tomato sauce (ketchup).  The alternative would be to go with the aboriginal food, such as grubs and kangaroo meat… one of which is not appealing, and the other of which is not cost effective.

We went with meat pies, mushy peas, and Lamingtons.  I considered the Pavlova, but it seems that the widely accepted origin of Pavlova is New Zealand, so I think we will save it for the Ns next year.

Aussie Meat Pie (recipe)

This recipe was pretty straightforward… yet another dish that started with cooking ground beef and onion together (this seems to be a reoccurring theme around the globe).  This was mixed with water, beef bouillon, tomato sauce (ketchup), Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, oregano, nutmeg, and flour.

This was our second country in a row that involved a ground beef filling with ketchup and Worcestershire sauce.  I have to admit, this one looked more appealing than the last. 🙂  This went in a pan with regular pie crust (not homemade) on the bottom and puff pastry (also not homemade) on top, glazed with egg.

   

It came out of the oven looking perfect!

Mushy Peas (recipe)

Our side of mushy peas was even simpler.  I cooked the green onions in melted butter, then added the frozen peas and let it steam with the lid on.  It definitely took longer than the suggested 3-4 minutes… it was probably closer to 10.  We also omitted the mint leaves, having just thrown away a bunch of extra mint from the mint tea of Algeria and stuffed grape leaves of Armenia.  Once the peas were hot and soft, I mashed them with a potato masher.  I added olive oil a few times to make it creamier, and I ended up putting about 2/3 of it in a small food processor to make it smoother.

Let’s just say that mushy peas won’t win any beauty contests.  It actually looked a bit like guacamole.

Lamingtons (recipe)

Last, but not least, are the Lamingtons, whose name is almost as fun as mushy peas.  I read that this is commonly made with day old cake, so I made the cake earlier in the day and didn’t worry when it got a little dry from being overcooked.  The recipe instructed me to pour the batter into an 8×12 baking pan.  I’m not sure the word “pour” was appropriate in this case…

   

It was a little overdone coming out of the oven, but I think that was okay for this recipe.  I let it sit out to cool and later sliced it into fifteen pieces.

   

The icing consisted of sifted powdered sugar and cocoa powder mixed with melted butter and warm milk.

      

The Lamingtons were dunked in the chocolate icing and then coated with coconut.  Sadly I ran out of coconut for the last four or five slices. 😦  In the past I would have seen this as a hidden blessing, but after enjoying coconut on the Alfajores of Argentina, I’m coming to accept that coconut may not be so bad after all…

(We kind of thought these looked like a fleet of Borg cubes.  I will call it a win toward our Star Wars vs. Star Trek debate that Tyler made the Star Trek reference before I thought of it. 🙂 )

The verdict?

Delicious.  This meal was definitely another winner.  I can say confidently after eating leftovers tonight that we will be making this meat pie again.  The meat pie had a great savory flavor, and I liked the texture of the puff pastry on top.   It doesn’t seem to be quite as authentic to make it in a pie pan instead of individual servings, but we had to work with the dishes we had.  It also wasn’t quite the iconic floater, but we tried to capture that spirit with the mushy peas and ketchup on the side.

By themselves, the mushy peas were nothing spectacular, but the sweetness was a nice contrast with the meat pie.  And darn it, the ketchup was actually good with the pie and peas!

The Lamingtons were also tasty.  They were a little dry, but somehow that seemed appropriate with the icing and coconut flakes.  However, they didn’t compare with the Apfelstrudel we made for Austria the next night…

Antigua and Barbuda: Meal Review

I think Antigua and Barbuda was our first all around winner!  Everything we made turned out well and was enjoyed by all.

Curry Chicken Roti

Making our own curry powder was a blast, and it gave the chicken such good flavor.  It was a little too spicy for my taste, but it hasn’t bothered me in leftovers (it either mellowed over time or I adapted).  We also totally forgot the fresh cilantro the first time we made it, and that has been a great addition when we ate this for leftovers.  The roti bread was just different enough from tortillas and other flatbreads to justify making it from scratch.  It didn’t seem to fold into a square pocket as well as the photos and recipes I saw, but that didn’t bother me.  This recipe is definitely a keeper.

Rum Punch

We enjoyed breaking from our routine of the last 5 countries and making a fun drink to go with the meal.  It was a little too strong for me, but not bad after I watered it down a bit.

Flambéed Bananas

This is definitely one of my favorite dishes that we have cooked so far on this adventure!  Obviously lighting the rum on fire was fun, but the finished product was so warm, sweet, and gooey on the ice cream.  This is another keeper recipe that we will definitely be making again!

Angola: Meal Review

This meal looked very promising.  Relatively simple recipes, tasty ingredients, and reports of delicious, rich flavors in this region’s food.  We added a few more new ingredients to our pantry… such as palm oil, cassava flour, and okra (we had both eaten okra once before and had fairly neutral opinions of it).  We also finally made a trip to the new international grocery store in town, which was fun.  We will definitely be stopping back there for future unique and hard to find ingredients.

Calulu de Pixe (Fish in palm oil)

This recipe looked so good.  I was excited to make it, although I was a little worried it would be too spicy.  In the end, I think it was slightly overcooked since it took so long to make the funge, and the flavors were just okay.  It wasn’t spicy at all, and we were already using more pepper than recommended (since we scaled the recipe we should have used just 1/2 of a pepper).  If we made this again, I would use 4 or 5 of the Thai peppers.  I would also scale back the water.  The recipe didn’t say how much water to add, so we guessed.  Not much of the water boiled off, and the finished product was a lot more liquidy than I think it should have been.

Funge

This dish was not successful.  The consistency did not look anything like the photos and videos I have seen.  It was chunky instead of smooth (should have sifted the flour in gradually).  It was also pretty much flavorless, which I expected.  I had read that even though it doesn’t have much flavor, it absorbs the other flavors from the dish and balances out the spicy food of this region.  We made a second attempt to prepare funge with leftovers the next day, and it turned out closer to the desired consistency, and it actually thickened when I put it in the microwave with the Calulu de Pixe, but it still didn’t do much for me.  Maybe we just didn’t do a good job preparing this dish… or perhaps it just an acquired taste (and texture).

Mamao com Vinho de Porto (Papaya with port wine)

This was the shining star of the meal!!!  I didn’t have much experience with papaya, and I’m not a big fan of lime, but this was really good.  I was amazed at how well these three flavors compliment each other.  I would definitely eat this again.

Overall, we didn’t feel we did this meal or this country justice.  So far we have not had great luck with African main courses, so hopefully our next trip to Africa (I think this will be Benin) will be more successful.  Fortunately, ending with the delicious papaya partially made up for the flop of a main course.

   

Next we will be hopping across the Atlantic to Antigua and Barbuda!

Andorra: Meal Review

This meal was delayed a few nights, but we finally had a chance to make it on Friday evening.  As the evening of cooking progressed, we realized that ALL FOUR recipes use garlic… so we went through copious amounts of garlic and had wonderful breath when we were done eating.  Three of the four recipes were pretty simple, but we had a lot of struggles with the Trinxat, which made for a long cook time and a big clean up effort after dinner.

Pa amb Tomaquet

This was such a simple and delicious way to dress up a side of bread.  The tomato and garlic flavors were wonderful on a piece of crusty bread.  We will be repeating this in the summer once we have more tomatoes in our garden than we know what to do with.

Spinach Salad with Raisins and Pine Nuts

This is the second time in our cooking adventure that I have eaten raisins voluntarily.  I was surprised how much I enjoyed this salad, although or pine nut and raisin to spinach ratio was off.  Next time we will use more spinach or scale back the pine nuts and raisins.  Overall, this had good flavor, was fairly simple, and seemed like a good way to add a side of vegetables to any meal.  There were only two things I didn’t like about this recipe–1. I burned the garlic when adding it to the oil (I think the burner I was using had been on high heat from the Trinxat moments earlier, so I suspect the oil just got too hot), and 2. It didn’t retain heat very well, so it got cold before I could finish eating.

Trinxat

This was the most unique dish we selected for this country.  Ours didn’t turn out anything like the pictures I saw, and it evoked polarized opinions in our household.  The cabbage taste and texture, along with the bacon fat flavor, was just too much for me.  I ate about half of mine before I gave up.  Tyler, on the other hand, loved it.  He has been powering through the leftovers for breakfast since Friday!

Catalan style Trout

This recipe was another winner.  I am not a huge seafood person, but I generally like fish.  I had heard that trout can have a lot of bones to pick through, but I didn’t encounter any.  The trout had good flavor, and the prosciutto topping was a wonderful addition.  I wouldn’t have though to combine prosciutto with garlic, lemon juice, and parsley, but the flavors were great together.  I would make this again, and I would also consider using the prosciutto topping with other types of fish, with chicken, or on pasta.

The finished product: