Travel by Stove

Recipes from Bahrain

2012-01-26T10:22:00.000-08:00

This week we're headed to another island nation, but this time it's not in the Caribbean, which is good, because as you know I really need a break from all the coconut. The nation we're visiting this week is Bahrain, which is a small island state in the Persian Gulf.

The big white area is the Persian Gulf.

The nation of Bahrain includes 33 different islands, the largest of which bears the same name as the country itself. The total number of people living in Bahrain is somewhere in the region of 1,200,000, which population-wise makes it roughly the size of Dallas, Texas. I'm sure it won't surprise you to hear that Bahrain is known for its oil production, which puts it squarely into the stereotype most Americans have for the Persian Gulf. Before it had an oil based economy, though, it was known for its pearl industry. The waters near Bahrain are (or once were?) full of oysters bearing natural pearls, which were considered by many to be some of the best and the world and were traditionally collected by "breath-hold" divers.

Because Bahrain is a small nation, there isn't exactly a plethora of websites out there devoted to Bahraini cuisine. I'm sure Bahrain, like all countries, has a long and rich culinary tradition but I'll be damned if I could find anything written about it. Pretty much everyone who mentions classic Bahraini cuisine presents just one recipe: machbous al djaj (spiced chicken with rice).

Machbous ala Djaj with Khubz

Here are the ingredients:

2 large onions, chopped
2 tablespoons ghee or butter
1 tablespoon baharat
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 3 or 4 lb chicken
1 1/2 cups chopped tomatoes
3 cloves
1 strip lemon rind
2 cinnamon sticks
6 cardamom pods
2 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups water
2 cups basmati rice
2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
2 tbsp chopped parsley

So that's what I made, because I was quite frankly tired of looking around for other options. There are a scant few of them out there, but I figured there had to be a pretty good reason why machbous was coming out on top as the Bahraini favorite.

A quick ingredient note: I got baharat, a spice mix, from Amazon.com for about five bucks. I elected not to try making it because the first recipe I found called for "cassia bark," and you know, huh? So I decided I'd really rather just buy the stuff ready made, rather than try to track down some cassia bark, thus adding another level of complication more than I would have if I just ordered the baharat. Of course when the baharat arrived there was no mention on the label of any "cassia bark," and I've since seen several recipes that don't call for it so I guess I wasted some money in order to save myself the 10 minutes I would have spent just making the stuff myself. So if you'd like to make it instead of buy it, you can get a cassia-free version from my good friends at Food.com.

Here's the baharat I bought on Amazon.com for five bucks. Whatta sucka I am.

For my next recipe, I found a mention on Wikipedia of a pita bread eaten in Bahrain known as "khubz." After digging pretty deeply I found a recipe for it:

2 1/2 tsp dry active yeast
1 1/4 cup lukewarm water
A pinch of sugar
3 3/4 cup bread flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp vegetable oil

It's actually very, very similar to the recipe I use for naan bread (which like the recipe I did for Azerbaijani Tendir Choreyi falls just that little bit short of being authentic because it isn't cooked in a clay oven).

I almost stopped there (I've got Henry's second birthday party coming up so I figured I could use a little bit of a break), but then I found a recipe for Bahraini-style baba ghanoush, which is also popular in Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey:

1 large eggplant
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp sesame tahini
¼ tsp salt
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup yogurt
3 tbsp olive oil
5 kalamata olives

It looked pretty simple, so I figured I'd throw it together in the afternoon and devote the evening to the other two dishes.

In Bahrain, baba ghanoush is usually eaten as a dip with sliced kuhbz (in Egypt they eat it as a salad or a side dish). To make it, just take a large eggplant and put it on a baking sheet, then stick it in a 400 degree oven for about an hour (I turned mine over about 30 minutes through, but the recipe didn't say that was something you needed to do). When the hour is up, take the eggplant out and let it cool, then remove the skin and the green top and put the soft insides into a blender.

After an hour in the oven the skin comes right off.

Add the rest of the ingredients and pulse until smooth. Garnish with the kalamata olives. That's it! Easy-peasy.

Baba ghanoush. Yes, I forgot the olives, which was annoying because kalamata olives cost like $5.99 a jar.

The khubz is pretty easy too, until you get the part where you have to put it in the oven. As always, I'm going to give you the manual instructions, even though I just put mine into my bread machine.

Dissolve the yeast and the sugar in about a half cup of the lukewarm water. Let stand until frothy.

Sift the flour together with the salt and add the yeast mixture. Knead by hand until the dough is soft, adding water as necessary. Add the oil and keep kneading until the dough becomes elastic and is no longer sticky, which should take about 15 minutes.

Here's the dough as it appeared in my bread machine.

Now form the dough into a ball and rub all over with a little bit of olive oil, to prevent it from drying out. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Punch down and knead for another five minutes or so. Now break the dough into tennis-ball sized portions. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and roll flat, until each ball is about a quarter inch thick. Dust with flour and transfer to a lightly floured surface, leaving a few inches between each one to allow for rising. Let rise for another 30 to 60 minutes.

About halfway through the second rise.

Now for the tricky bit:

Oil two large baking sheets. Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. About 10 minutes into the preheating, put the sheets in the oven. Leave them there for another 10 minutes.

Now open your oven and quickly transfer the dough balls onto the baking sheets. Close the oven and go press the "hush" button on your smoke alarms.

Bake for 6 to 10 minutes. When the breads are lightly browned, take them out. Now go hush your smoke alarms again. Let the bread cool.

If you did this right, each bread should be puffy with a little pouch inside. I did not do it right, apparently, since mine came out light and airy inside but with no pouch. Still pretty danged tasty though and went well with the baba ghanoush.

No pockets but still tasted very good.

Now on to the machbous. Start by melting the ghee (you can also use butter, ghee is just a clarified version) in a saucepan and frying the onions until they are transparent and beginning to turn brown. Add the baharat and turmeric and stir for another two minutes or so.

Saute some onions. Ho, hum.

Now add the chicken pieces to the pot and turn to coat. Cook over a medium heat until the pieces are lightly browned on all sides.

This is where it all starts to smell really good ...

Then add the tomatoes, cloves, lemon rind, cinnamon, cardamom pods and salt. Stir to get everything well incorporated, then add the water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cover. Simmer for about 45 minutes.

Add the water and simmer for about 45 minutes.

Wash the rice in cold water and drain (this helps remove the starch and makes for a fluffier finished product). Add the rice, cilantro and parsley to the pot and bring back to a simmer. (You can also wait until just before serving to add the cilantro and parsley, which is what I did. 'Cause you know, I like my herbs to taste fresh. Or maybe it was because I forgot to put them in until just before serving).

Keep cooking for another 35 to 40 minutes, until chicken is tender and almost all of the liquid has been absorbed. Remove from the heat and let rest for 10 minutes.

Now, my kids don't like rice because they were spliced with alien genes in utero or something. So although I thought the rice was the best part of this meal, their plates all still had rice on them when everyone left the table. The chicken did go down pretty well, though I thought the white meat was way too dry. But I find that to be the problem whenever I try to stew white meat--even white meat that is swimming in liquid always seems to come out dry unless it's removed at the precise moment it reaches 165 degrees.

We liked the bread, too, even though it wasn't the pocket-pita it was supposed to be. I thought it tasted great with the baba ghanoush, which was really very similar to hummus (with eggplant instead of chickpeas) but of course my kids wouldn't go near that wierd brownish gray substance I put in a bowl on the table. Poor Martin didn't think much of the baba ghanoush, because I didn't give him any, because I'd forgotten all about it by the time he got home from his late night at work. Oh well.

Next week: Bangladesh

For printable versions of this week's recipes:

Recipes from the Bahamas

2012-01-19T11:52:00.000-08:00

First a bit of blog news: if you're just joining me on my weird little gastronomical journey around the world, I'm in the process of archiving all the recipes I've done so far offsite in a much more printer-friendly format than you'll find in any individual blog entry. To view the list (and all the countries I'll be doing in the future), click on "The List" on the left hand side of this page, under the header "Pages." From there you can link to each of the individual recipes from past weeks. I hope to also add lists that organize the recipes by course and type (meat, fish, vegetarian etc.), so keep an eye out for that too.

Now on to the usual business: the Bahamas. Despite this being yet another Caribbean nation, I actually enjoyed the whole process of putting together this week's meal, which was both tasty and unusual.

Johnny cakes with crab 'n rice. I don't know if this is a traditional combination, but it worked for me!

But first a bit of history.

Considering the fact that it is a tropical paradise, the sovereign nation known as "The Bahamas" actually has a pretty dark early history. It was the site of Columbus' first landing in the Americas, which was bad news for the native Lucayans, who by 1513 had all been shipped off into slavery. The Bahamas remained mostly unpopulated for the 135 years that followed, until English colonists began settling there in 1648.

There's the Bahamas, just off the coast of Florida.

After the Amercian Revolutionary War, pro-British loyalists who had formerly lived in the US began moving to the Bahamas, bringing African slaves with them so they could set up a plantation economy. Not long afterwards the British abolished the slave trade and began resettling freed African slaves in the Bahamas. Today the descendents of freed slaves comprise about 85% of the population, which means that Bahamian cuisine has a strong African influence, shaped of course by the tropical foods that are readily available on the islands.

So I decided to start my psuedo-trip to the Bahamas as a tourist would, with conch fritters, which I'm told are something of a requirement on the menu of every restaurant on the Bahamian islands. When I was a kid we had a conch shell (pronounced "konk") sitting on our patio, so it's kind of a childhood memory thing for me although I can't really say I ever thought about what it might be like to eat one. In case you've never seen a conch shell:

This is a conch shell, just like the one we had on our patio when I was a kid.

They are beautiful, big, and unsurprisingly difficult to find in a California supermarket. I did, however, locate a canned version on Amazon.com. I ended up spending $20 on four cans. Yes, I really wanted to try eating conch. Of course now I'm stuck with two extra cans I have no idea what to do with. Maybe I can find a conch recipe that includes dulce de leche, which I also have an extra five cans of. Haha.

Here's the recipe for conch fritters:

For the fritters:

1 ½ - 2 lbs, conch meat, ground
½ green bell pepper, diced fine
½ red bell pepper, diced fine
½ yellow bell pepper, diced fine
½ white onion, diced fine
1 celery rib, finely sliced
1 teaspoon jalapeño chile, minced
1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon dried thyme
3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp Jamaican jerk seasoning
Water
Vegetable oil for frying

For the dipping sauce:

1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup lime juice
1/4 cup mayonnaise

Note: this recipe makes about 30 fritters, so as an appetizer if you made the whole recipe you'd be able to feed between 10 and 15 people. I actually did about 1/6th of the recipe, which given my third grade math skills was not easy, and it was still too much for me and Martin.

The second recipe I hit on is also very popular in the Bahamas, though it sounds like it might be a bit less touristy and a bit more traditional than the conch fritters. Here it is:

Crab 'n Rice

3 tbsp oil
1 onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
5 tbsp tomato paste
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tsp thyme
1 tsp paprika
4 cups water (traditional) or crab stock (my tweak)
2 cups long grain rice
2 cups canned or soaked pigeon peas
4 whole crabs

Now the thing about crab 'n rice, as prepared in the Bahamas, it's usually made with land crabs rather than sea crabs. If you don't know what a land crab is, prepare to be horrified:

Hey, isn't that the thing that tried to eat Frodo?

OK, actually that is a coconut crab, which is a kind of land crab that doesn't live in the Bahamas. I just wanted to freak you out. This image kind of went viral a couple of years ago so it's all over the internet and I have no idea who to credit for it. I wish I did, because I would ask that person where the hell he/she got a lens long enough to take that photo, because I wouldn't personally get within about three or four miles of that thing.

Actually the land crab you will find in Bahamian Crab 'n Rice is more like this one:

A Bahamian land crab is a little less scary.

Which only grows up to just over a foot in size, which is still actually pretty damned big, and I wouldn't really want to see one of those climbing into my trash either. Anyway you can't get land crabs of any kind at my local Safeway, so I just used regular run-of-the mill crabs, of a variety I can't actually recall at the moment. I'm pretty sure any kind will do since I'm told that land crabs taste pretty much exactly like the ones that come out of the ocean.

For my third recipe I decided to do Johnny cakes, which are popular all over the Caribbean and which I've passed up until now because they just seemed a little too much like the cornbread recipe I always do with chili. The Bahamians do Johnny cakes a little differently, though (without cornmeal) so I decided that it was a good time to try them. Here are the ingredients:

Johnny Cakes

3 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
2/3 cup whole milk

And I also decided to do a dessert, which really, I don't know what I was thinking. What happened to my resolve to lose another 20 pounds this year? Oh I know, it weakened in the face of a Bahama Mama carrot cake:

For the cake:

2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cup oil
3 eggs
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cardamom
1 tsp salt
2 cups grated carrots
1 cup crushed pineapple, drained
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup raisins

For the frosting:

1 8-oz package of cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Note: I couldn't find a Bahama Mama carrot cake recipe that included a frosting recipe, though one did suggest using a cream cheese frosting. The above frosting recipe is just a generic version I found on one of the big recipe sites.

So I had all these plans made and was ready to go, then Martin said, "If it's the Bahamas don't we need rum?" Well OK, I guess a cocktail would go down pretty well with all that. Here's the one I picked:

Banana Orange Daiquiri

1 1/2 cups sliced banana
1/2 cup light rum
1/2 cup sweet and sour cocktail mix
1/4 cup concentrated orange juice
30 ice cubes

Yeah, a little frou-frou I know. But it does contain the required rum.

My kids were home all day Monday, which meant I had all morning and most of the afternoon to pursue this little venture. I started with the carrot cake, since it needed to bake and then cool completely before it could be frosted. As cakes go, this one is pretty easy:

First mix the sugar with the oil and eggs. You'll end up with a big schloopy mess like this one:

This is just eggs, oil and sugar.

Next, add the dry ingredients and mix well. Fold in the carrots, walnuts, coconut, pineapple, raisins and vanilla extract.

Yum. Don't you just love cake batter?

Pour the batter into a greased 13x9 inch pan. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour.

Here's where I ran into a bit of trouble: my hour was up just as I was supposed to be leaving the house to take Dylan to his Kung Fu class. I opened up the oven and discovered that my cake was still jiggly in the middle. Dang. I set the shut-off time for another 20 minutes and then hoped for the best. Fortunately, when I got home the cake was just a little crispy around the edges but solid in the middle, so it worked out OK.

Mine was a bit too dark around the edges, but it didn't affect the cake experience at all.

Let the cake cool completely, then make the frosting:

Cream the butter with the cream cheese, then gradually add the sugar and vanilla. Try not to eat it all before you have a chance to get it on the cake. Now just slather it on the top of the cake and put it on a high shelf in the fridge, far, far, far out of the reach of your children. And husband.

Damn you, and your deliciousness.

I did the Johnny cakes next. They are better served warm, but as always I didn't think I was going to have time to bring it all together at the same time so I did mine in advance. The recipe is kind of weird and I had a hard time believing it was going to come out OK. Here's how it's done:

Mix all the dry ingredients together, then cut in the shortening. Work the mixture with your hands until the grains are about the size of rice. Then add milk until you get a soft dough (I had to use a bit more than the recipe called for).

Turn out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth. I did not actually use my bread machine for this. I know you are shocked.

This is a lot like a pastry dough.

Let the dough rest for 10 minutes, then transfer it to a greased 9x9 inch pan. You will have to press it down so it fills in all the corners. Poke the top of the dough a few times with a fork.

Now put it in the oven and bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. You can tell it's done when it starts to turn a little golden around the edges.

Johnny cakes taste a little bit like a traditional English scone.

The next thing I did was prepare the crab. I started by chasing my kids around the house waving dead crab bodies at them. This was a lot more fun than actually cracking the crabs, which is what I had to do next. I'm really bad at cracking crabs. I can never get all the shell out of the meat.

I chased my kids around with these. Hahaha.

After you're done cracking the crabs, you can use the shells to make stock, which is what I always do with crab shells since seafood stock isn't usually readily available in the market where I shop, and it comes in handy when making fish curries. In this case I also used it to make the crab 'n rice, which was a bit of a cheat since I couldn't find any recipes that called for anything other than water. But I just felt like it might be bland if I didn't use a stock to cook the rice, so I deviated.

In case you're interested in making crab stock, here's how it's done:

Dump all the crab shell into a big stockpot and cover with water. Quarter an onion and drop it in the pot with about 10 whole peppercorns, a half cup of dry white wine, 3 or 4 sprigs of parsley, 1 teaspoon of salt and 2 tablespoons of tomato paste. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Strain the stock through a piece of cheesecloth (I usually just use a fine-mesh strainer). Use it up in a day or two or you can freeze it to use later.

Crab stock is made with crab shell, onions, tomato paste, peppercorns, some parsley and a little white wine.

Next chop up the vegetables and fry them in the oil until they are soft. Stir in the tomato paste and seasonings, adding a little more oil if you need to. Saute for a few minutes until the flavors are incorporated.

Saute the onions and peppers.

Add three cups of water (I used non-traditional crab stock) and bring to a boil. Add the pigeon peas (Remember the pigeon peas from back in Anguilla? I still had half a bag left over, which was pretty convenient) and crab and let boil for five minutes or so.

(Note: I had to add liquid since the mixture seemed really dry before I'd even put the rice in it. I ended up using about twice as much as the recipe called for).

My mix was pretty dry, so I had to add extra liquid.

Add the rice, return to a boil, then reduce heat and cover. Let simmer until all the liquid has been absorbed (about 20 minutes).

While the crab 'n rice is cooking, you can work on the fritters. I did all the prep work in advance so I'd be serving the fritters just as the crab 'n rice was finishing. Here is the method for the fritters:

First pulverize the conch meat. I used my handy little food processor, which has pulverized many a meat including ham, lamb and kangaroo.

This is ground conch.

Now sift the flour over the bowl containing the ground conch meat. Stir until the flour coats all of the meat.

After you add the flour, the conch should look like this.

Gently fold in the chopped vegetables and the herbs, then add some water. The trick is you want just enough to bind it all together but not so much that the batter becomes runny. Here's what it ought to look like:

The batter should be pasty, but not too wet.

Heat up the oil in a stockpot. You want about two inches worth in the pan. It's ready when it bubbles up around the non-stirring end of a wooden spoon.

While the oil is heating, you can make the dipping sauce. Just whisk the three ingredients together in a small bowl.

Scoop up some of the fritter batter and flatten it out into the spoon. You kind of want them to be a little thin because you don't want to end up with fritters that are burned on the outside and raw in the middle. These aren't sushi fritters.

Heap the batter onto a spoon--you'll probably want it a little flatter than pictured here.

Now drop them into the oil. Flip them once during cooking so they will cook evenly.

There's something really satisfying about watching food in a deep fry.

When they are a nice golden color on both sides take them out and drain them on a paper towel.

Finished fritters. Mine were slightly overdone, but still really tasty.

Serve hot with the dipping sauce. Don't forget to serve the dipping sauce or you'll be annoyed when you see it sitting forgotten on the counter top next to the cooking oil.

The fritters work pretty well with the banana orange daiquiri if you can manage to squeeze it in between all the other things you're doing. Fortunately it's pretty simple:

Put the banana slices, the rum, sweet and sour mix and orange juice concentrate into a blender and pulse until smooth. Add the ice cubes one at a time until you get a nice slushy texture.

Frou frou, anyone?

A couple of notes about this recipe: I think it really needed more rum. I couldn't really tell I was drinking a cocktail. Also, this recipe is supposed to make six drinks. I halved it and barely got enough mix to fill two margarita glasses. So I think you could probably keep two people happy if you did the recipe in its entirety. With more rum.

The verdict--conch fritters: yum. Except that the meat was so mild, I couldn't even tell I was eating shellfish. Though very basic, the dipping sauce (when I remembered it) was actually a nice compliment though it further disguised the flavor of the conch. The crab 'n rice was also delicious--it was kind of earthy, which was quite different from most of the rice dishes I've done recently. Sadly, my lack of crab-cracking prowess kind of put Martin off the rice since he found a few bits of shell in his. Note to readers: Make sure you pick through your crab meat carefully. Or just buy it already cracked, which is what I'll probably do next time.

The cocktail was really good and I particularly enjoyed having it in the kitchen with me while I finished making the meal. Maybe I will have to do this every time I cook. (Hmm, a good idea or just the first step down a long, sad road?)

The Johnny cakes were probably the biggest surprise of the meal. They were tasty. I mean really, really tasty which was unexpected considering how simple the recipe was. I'm definitely putting these in my side dish rotation. I also think they would be great for breakfast, warmed up with a little honey and butter.

Finally the Bahama Mama carrot cake. Oh my god, yum. I had to ask Martin to get the leftovers the hell out of the house to share with his coworkers, which he forgot to do, which meant I ended up eating like five pieces of it, which meant my quest to lose another 20 pounds got shelved for another week. This was also the only part of the meal my kids really got to try. Hailey ate a slice then had a complete spaz attack because I wouldn't let her have seconds. This was quite possibly the best carrot cake I've ever had.

So yeah, it was like my billionth culinary trip to the Caribbean this year but one of the better ones, and definitely a lot of fun to prepare.

Next week: Bahrain.

For printable versions of this week's recipes:

Recipes from Azerbaijan

2012-01-12T10:51:00.000-08:00

Hey guess what, I have officially cooked one meal from every nation on Earth ... that begins with the letter "A."

That's right, culminating with this entry I've now gone through all the "A" countries on my list, which took just about four months.

The nation that holds the proud distinction of "last of the A's" is Azerbaijan, which is a surprisingly medium-sized country (surprising because in my albeit limited knowledge of world geography I'd never actually heard of it) located between Western Europe and Eastern Asia. Azerbaijan was once a part of the Soviet Union, but regained its independence in 1991. Neighbors include Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Turkey.

Azerbaijan, located between Western Europe and Eastern Asia.

Azerbaijan is a Muslim country, but it keeps out of the chaos-loving international spotlight for the most part because it doesn't really partake in radicalism or government entrenched orthodoxy; in fact, Azerbaijan is a secular democratic nation, known for its progressive ideas and tolerance and support for secularism in general. It is also considered to be one of the most liberal Muslim-majority nations.

Food in Azerbaijan is, like food from most of Eastern Asia, full of color and flavor. It shares a lot of similarities with Armenian and Turkish cuisine, with dried fruits and nuts commonly appearing in dishes we tend to think of as being more savory.

Tandoori bread with "plov," Azerbaijan's national dish.

The "national dish" of Azerbaijan is "plov," which in Turkey is called "pilav," which of course is where we get our word for "pilaf." Azerbaijan has no less than 40 different versions of plov, most of which are cooked with some type of meat, dried fruit or both. Here is the recipe I chose:

Parcha-dosheme Plov (layered rice pilaf with dried fruits and chestnuts)

3 cups long-grain white Basmati rice
4 tbsp butter, melted
1 cup peeled chestnuts
½ cup pitted dried apricots, halved
1 cup barberries
½ cup pitted dates
½ cup golden raisins
1 ½ lbs skinless, boneless chicken cut into 2-inch cubes
1 medium onion, peeled, cut in half lengthways, then thinly sliced in half-circles
1/3 tsp ground saffrod threads, dissolved in 3 tbsp hot water
salt
ground black pepper

(Barberries, by the way, can't usually be found in the big grocers. You can get them at Asian markets or, like I did, from eFoodDepot.com, which has $5.99 shipping and is therefore my new favorite place to order exotic ingredients).

Barberries are kind of like really tiny cranberries.

This recipe comes from Feride, who blogs at AZCookbook.com. I love finding these sorts of blogs, and I wish every nation had someone as enthusiastic as Feride posting authentic recipes for hapless Googlers like me. I feel like my entries are more reliably authentic when I can use recipes that come from people who live or have lived in the countries I write about.

So my second recipe also came from Feride. Here it is:

Tendir Choreyi (Tandoori Bread)

2 1/4 tsp dry active yeast
1 ½ cups warm water
1 tsp salt
3 cups bread flour, plus extra for kneading
1 egg yolk, for brushing
1 tsp poppy seeds

Now what to serve with these recipes? Well, I learned from Feride after I'd already been to the store that plov is typically served with a salad made from cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers, or with pickled vegetables. But since I live 25 minutes and four obnoxious children away from our local grocery store, I elected not to go back and pick up the salad ingredients. Instead I went with my earlier tentative plan, which was to do the plov with the tandoori bread, and serve an appetizer instead. The appetizer recipe I chose came from News.Az, an English language news and politics website devoted to Azerbaijani issues, which also happens to have a pretty extensive recipes section. Here it is:

Kelem dolmasi

20 oz minced lamb
1 large cabbage
8 oz onion
Salt & pepper
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
2 tbsp chopped fresh dill
2 oz short-grain rice
2 oz chickpeas
3 oz lamb fat
1 tbsp tomato paste
3 tbsp water

So I thought by stopping at three recipes I would have an easier time of it than I did with Australia and Austria, both of which had a whopping five recipes in their entries. Sadly, this was not the case. Azerbaijani cuisine is really not difficult to make, but it is time consuming, reminding me of the five hours I once spent in the kitchen trying to put an authentic Mexican meal on the table.

I started late Tuesday morning by making the filling for the Kelem dolmasi, more simply called "dolma." But if I had it to do over I would start with the bread, because although bread is always nicer when it is just out of the oven it can be prepared in advance and reheated.

First a quick note about tandoori bread (or tandoori anything, really). The name comes from the clay oven, or "tandoor" that it is traditionally cooked in, and you will never be able to duplicate the flavor of any tandoori recipe without one of those ovens, no matter how hard you try. Now, a tandoor oven is actually a part of my dream kitchen (I love naan bread and tandoori chicken) but I don't have one in my current kitchen, so this bread just goes in a plain oven, which makes it not very authentic. However, this is how an Azerbaijani stranded in the US would make a tandoori bread, so I guess I don't feel too bad about including it in my meal.

The ingredients for this bread are roughly similar to the ingredients for a basic french bread, but the shape is different and it is topped with poppy seeds which actually makes it quite beautiful in appearance. In fact this bread is quite possibly the most beautiful thing I've ever baked (my cakes certainly don't fall into that category).

So as always I used my bread machine, but this time I didn't proof the yeast first. I just put it in the little yeast dispenser at the top of my machine, then added the water, flour and salt to the bucket. I put it on the dough cycle and then went and picked my kids up from school.

This bread uses very basic ingredients, including bread flour and salt.

If you want to do it the old-fashioned way:

Mix the yeast with the water and let stand for a few minutes. Then sift the flour with the salt into a large bowl. Gradually add the water and yeast and mix with your hand until the dough forms a ball.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead the dough for 8 to 10 minutes, or until it is smooth. Put it in a large bowl and cover, then let it rise in a warm spot until doubled (this typically takes 1 to 1 1/2 hours).

The dough after it has risen.

Punch down and turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Stretch the dough until it is an oblong shape, then with a rolling pin roll it until it is about 1/2 inch thick. Transfer to a greased or non-stick baking sheet and let stand for another 15 minutes.

After stretching and rolling, your dough should be roughly this shape.

Cut crosshatches in the top of the dough, about four in either direction. Brush with the beaten egg yolk (I mixed mine with a little bit of water to make it easier to work with) and sprinkle with poppy seeds.

Crosshatches, egg wash and poppy seeds give this bread its distinctive look.

Bake in a preheated oven at about 400 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes, until golden on top.

Isn't it pretty? Yummy too!

Now on to the kelem dolmasi. Here's how it's done:

First boil the rice for eight minutes. Meanwhile, peel and finely chop the onion. Then chop the herbs.

The recipe didn't really say what to do with the chickpeas (also known of course as garbanzo beans), beyond soaking them overnight and rinsing them. I used canned chickpeas, since I've never actually seen them dried. I decided to chop/mash them slightly so they would better incorporate into the filling.

Chickpeas (or garbanzo beans) roughly chopped

Now mince the lamb (I used my mini food processor). Here's where I ran into another problem: what to do with the lamb fat this recipe calls for? Mince it? Melt it? Does lamb fat even melt? I decided to mince mine. Thankfully, my husband doesn't actually read this blog because he'd be horrified if he knew I put fat in the dolma on purpose.

Minced lamb and its good friend, minced fat. Ew.

The ingredients for the dolma stuffing include onion, cilantro, chickpeas and turmeric.

Anyway, now get your hands into all that slimy raw meat and mix in the onion, spices, chickpeas, rice, chopped herbs and fat. Add a little salt and pepper for good measure. In fact, based on my results I would say to err on the side of a little extra salt and pepper.

Mix well with your hands until the stuffing looks something like this.

Fill the biggest saucepan you own with salted water and bring it to a boil over high heat. Now pull the outer leaves off of the cabbage (save them) and drop the rest of it, whole, into the water. Let it boil for three or four minutes, turning it if the water level isn't quite high enough to completely cover it.

The reason you are doing this is because it's difficult to get whole cabbage leaves off of an American cabbage. The cabbages you typically buy in our supermarkets come in very tight round balls, and because the leaves are crispy they will snap and crack when you try to pull them off in an un-blanched state. Blanching them for a few minutes makes it so they will come right off without tearing.

Now carefully take the cabbage out of the water (but keep the water boiling) and let it cool for a minute or two so you don't burn your fingers. Carefully pull the leaves off the cabbage, cutting them at the base if you have to do so to loosen them. Try to get them off in one piece. If the inner leaves are still crispy, return the cabbage to the boiling water for another three or four minutes. Repeat until all of the useable leaves are free.

Blanched cabbage leaves

Now put the leaves on a cutting board and cut out the tough stalks (save them). Cut the largest leaves in half.

Remove the tough inner stalk and set aside. Cut larger leaves in two.

Put a heaping tablespoon of the filling in the middle of each leaf, making a short cylinder shape. Fold the ends over the filling, then roll tightly (as if you are making a tiny burrito).

This is not much of a cylinder, but you get the idea.

Fold the edges over ...

Then roll, as if you were making a really small burrito.

Your finished dolma should look kind of like this, only without the hole in the middle.

Put all of the discarded cabbage leaves, stalks etc. into the bottom of a stockpot. I know, this seems a little strange. What you're basically going to be doing is steaming the dolma, with the discarded cabbage pieces forming the base of your steamer. Carefully place the dolma on the bed of cabbage leaves.

These dolma are resting on top of discarded cabbage leaves.

Add water to the stockpot up to about the top of the discarded leaves. Don't cover the dolma.

Now here's where you have to get a bit creative. The dolma needs to be weighted down so it doesn't unwrap during cooking. I used a metal pie pan, and then I put my mortar on top of it. You could also use a dessert plate with something heavy on top of it, but it would need to be an oven-safe one.

The dolma need to be weighted down during cooking so they don't unwrap. Just improvise.

Bring the water to a boil, then simmer for 25 minutes.You might have to use your ears to figure out if the water is actually boiling; I personally couldn't see what was in my pot after I weighted it down.

Meanwhile, make a simple tomato sauce out of the tomato paste and water. Heat it up for a few minutes over a medium flame. After the dolma have been cooking for 25 minutes, pour the sauce over them and cook for another five minutes.

The finished dolma, ready to eat. Mine were a little bland and could have used a dipping sauce.

While you're doing all this, you should also be making the plov. Because it takes a long time. A long, long time.

Here's how it's done:

Rinse the rice in lukewarm water until the water runs clear. Now personally, I never do this, which is probably why my rice is always a little sticky. But for this recipe rinsing is important because it removes the starch and gives the rice the right texture (it should come out fluffy with each grain separate).

Now fill a large bowl with lukewarm water and a tablespoon of salt and add the rice. Soak for 15 minutes or so.

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Add the peeled chestnuts and stir-fry for 3 minutes.

Saute the chestnuts for no more than three minutes, stirring constantly.

How do you peel chestnuts? With much frustration and annoyance, because you had no idea what an ordeal and a time suck it is to peel chestnuts, and you wish that the other Safeway had also been sold out of them for the year like the main Safeway and Savemart were, because then you would have just had to use the walnuts you bought at Savemart and you would have saved yourself the trouble of peeling the damned things, most of which weren't any good anyway because in January chestnuts are pretty much out of season and any of the ones that are left over are mostly going to be dried out or rotten or just a bad texture, thus adding to your frustration and annoyance because you're spending all of your time doing this and it's already 6:30 and the kids still haven't had their dinner.

What? Sorry, I blacked out there for a second.

Peeling the chestnuts. What a horrible memory.

Anyway, to peel chestnuts cut a slit across the middle of each one, then boil them for about 20 minutes. Let them cool, then peel back the outer and inner shell to remove the light-brown nut that is inside. Simple, huh?

After the chestnuts have been stir-fried for three minutes, add the apricots, barberries and dates. Keep cooking for another three minutes. Lastly add the golden raisins and stir fry for one more minute. Don't leave the fruit and nuts unattended or you will burn them (like I did). Remove from heat.

Apricots, dates, and barberries.

Break out that huge stockpot again and put 10 cups of salted water into it. Or just fill it up almost to the top if it's not that big. Drain the rice (but don't rinse) and add it to the water. Boil for 7 to 10 minutes. You can tell when the rice is done because it will rise to the top of the pot. Don't overcook! The rice should be just a tiny bit chewy, not too soft. Bite a piece to make sure. Drain it in a colander and set aside.

Now in that large stockpot, melt a tablespoon of butter over medium heat. Put the uncooked chicken cubes in the bottom of the pot, distributing evenly. Add about a half teaspoon of salt and some pepper. Cover the chicken with the sliced onions and simmer for three minutes or so.

Now cover the chicken and onions with half of the rice. Spread the fruit and nut mixture out on top and then put the rest of the rice on top of that. Pour a tablespoon of melted butter on top.

Under this rice is a layer of fruit and nuts, another layer of rice, some onions and some chicken.

Now here's where things get a little weird. This is by far the most unusual cooking technique I've ever personally tried.

First let me just say that cooking plov is an act of faith, which means you kind of have to blindly trust that this technique is going to work. After reading the instructions I was really personally skeptical.

Put a clean dishtowel or two layers of paper towel over the pot. Be very careful to fold up the corners or otherwise make certain that the dishtowel or paper towel is nowhere near the flame. I really really don't want you to burn down your kitchen.

Put the towel/paper towel over the rice and fold up the edges. Top with the lid.

Put the stockpot lid on top of the towel. The towel will help absorb the steam from cooking, which I'm supposing is what prevents burning. I really, really expected that this dish would be burned, because the next step is to let it cook like that for 30 minutes, without stirring or disturbing it in any way. And then the step after that is to pour saffron water over it and cook it for another 30 minutes. I used the lowest heat setting on my stove, which is kind of a cheap crappy stove that cooks way too hot and kind of unevenly.

Making saffron water. Ideally you would actually crush the threads first.

To make the saffron water, combine the crushed saffron threads with three tablespoons of hot water. Stir until the water turns a deep orange. Note: have you ever tried to buy saffron? It is ridiculously expensive. A standard sized spice jar costs about fifteen bucks. But if you look closely at that spice jar, you will see that what you're actually buying is a tiny envelope with a pathetically small number of saffron threads in it, deceptively stuffed into a standard sized spice jar in order to provide the appearance of a much larger quantity. I got my saffron from the aforementioned eFoodDepot.com, which sent me a comparatively generous portion for around eight bucks. But if you don't want to spend the money, you could probably get away with substituting turmeric.

Pour the saffron water over the top of the plov about 30 minutes into the cooking process.

If you're worried about what is happening to your plov during this long hour, you can listen to the pot. If you hear it crackling, it's burning. If you don't hear any suspicious sounds, you should be OK.

When the plov is done, it should look like this:

1. Fluffy rice with separate grains.
2. The meat should have a golden crust on the bottom.
3. The onion should be translucent (almost invisible).

Scoop it all out of the pot and arrange it on a big platter. It's ready to serve.

Now by the time I actually got through all of this the kids were in bed. I had to give up on the idea of letting them share in the meal because it took a lot longer than I thought it would to finish. Of course they wouldn't have really eaten the plov anyway, and they most definitely wouldn't have eaten the dolma. They would, however, have devoured most of the tandoori bread, which would have left less for me. So it was just as well that they were in bed I guess.

The dolma was a little disappointing, especially after all that work. Martin and I both thought it was kind of bland. With a dipping sauce, though, I think it could have been rescued. In fairness, I suspect that the blandness of the dish was more in my failure to use enough salt than it was in any downfall of that particular recipe.

Shockingly, even after all of my skepticism the plov turned out perfectly, with the possible exception of a few burned chestnuts. The chicken was just as it was supposed to be, with a golden crust on the bottom that tasted really wonderful. The rice was an amazing texture, perfectly fluffy and separate just like it was supposed to be. I've never had rice turn out that well.

The bread was awesome. It was a beautiful color and the texture was perfect. After my last two bread failures it was great to finally get one right.

I think both the plov and the bread are going to go in my rotation for meals served to friends or on special occasions. The plov was way too labor intensive for every day, but way too delicious not to make again.

Next week: The Bahamas. The Caribbean again. Yay.

Sachertorte

2012-01-10T12:51:00.000-08:00

My darling husband has expressly forbidden me to post the Austrian dessert recipe I promised you last week. Something about the integrity of my blog being compromised if I post a recipe I haven't actually made, blah blah blah. Seriously though, those were the exact words he used, "I forbid you." To which my reply is, of course, "Wilst thou cut off mine hand shouldst I disobey thee?" Anyway since I'm not actually a medieval wife, I'm going to post the recipe anyway, though I will promise poor dear Martin that I'll make it and report back here in the next couple of weeks, since really his only reason for "forbidding" the posting of the recipe had nothing to do with the integrity of my blog and everything to do with the fact that he wanted to eat sachertorte.

So first I want to thank Ted Field, who has a great blog called "A Year of Wine" and has graciously allowed me to use his photo for this entry, since I haven't (yet) made a sachertorte and have no photo of my own. I admit I only stumbled on his blog because I was searching for said sachertorte photo, but I'm putting it on my Google reader because a girl can always use help pairing food and wine, since all I personally really know is that red wine goes with beef and white wine goes with fish. At least I think it does.

This is Ted's photo:

Photo courtesy Ted Field, "A Year of Wine"

Now after seeing that, can you really blame Martin for wanting me to make a sachertorte? Though you know, I still think his choice of words was a little unfortunate.

Here is the recipe:

For the Cake:

6 eggs, separated
5 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
9 tbsp butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup apricot preserves

For the Glaze:

4 oz bittersweet chocolate
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup whipping cream
2 tsp light corn syrup

(Note: this recipe came from Epicurious.com, and originally appeared in a book called "Kaffeehaus: The Best Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague." Except for the chocolate glaze recipe, also borrowed from Ted's blog, because it just sounded better than the one they had on Epicurious.)

Start by preheating the oven to 400 degrees. Lightly butter a 9-inch springform pan.

Melt the chocolate over medium heat, stirring frequently. Let cool slightly.

With an electric mixer, beat the butter until smooth, then add the powdered sugar and continue to beat until fluffy. Add the egg yolks one at a time, then the melted chocolate and vanilla.

Beat the egg whites with the granulated sugar until they form soft peaks, but don't overdo it. Add about 25% of the egg white mixture to the chocolate mixture (just enough to lighten the color and texture), then fold in the rest. Sift one half of the flour over the batter and fold in gently. Repeat.

Spread the batter into the pan and bake about 45 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for about 10 minutes, then remove the cake from the pan and allow it to cool completely.

Cut the cake into two equal layers (carefully!) Heat the apricot preserves over a low heat until melted. Top of one of the cake layers with a generous amount of preserves, then add the second layer and top with the rest of the preserves. Let cool.

Now melt the chocolate and the butter over low heat, until just melted. In a separate saucepan, combine the whipping cream and corn syrup and bring to a gentle boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 2 minutes, then stir in the melted chocolate and butter. Cool slightly, so that the glaze is no longer hot but can still be poured.

Pour the glaze over the cake and smooth it with a spatula on the top and sides. Let stand at room temperature for 1 hour before serving.

Can you see why I haven't made this yet? I'm exhausted just from typing all of that.

Recipes from Austria

2012-01-06T11:29:00.000-08:00

Last week I got a bit of a poor start, so this week I'm going to dive right in, with just a quick note to let you know that Henry is happily recovered and eating everything in the house, including all of that cocktail bread from last week's post, which frankly I can't understand because I have since decided that I personally really dislike pumpernickel bread.

So we're still in Austria this week, and if you don't already know a little about this small European country I'll just give a few details.

I was actually surprised to discover that Austria is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, with a per-capita GDP of around $48,000. This puts it in the same club as Switzerland, the United States and Brunei, as far as personal income for its citizens is concerned. Austria is landlocked and located in the Alps, so it is very mountainous with its highest peak at 12,461 feet elevation and only 32% of its land area below 1,640 feet. It is bordered by eight other nations, including Germany, Switzerland, Hungary and Italy, many of which have had an influence on its cuisine.

There's Austria, somewhere in the middle of Europe.

Food cooked in Austria is fine-dining almost by default; this is because of Austria's very strict food quality control laws. It is considered the number one European producer of organic foods and the government has taken many steps to limit or prohibit biotechnology, growth-hormones and other production-enhancing techniques that are standard practice here in the United States. The result is very high quality food products and a reputation for fine cuisine.

Filet mit Äpfeln and Gebackene Kohlsprossen. See if you can say that 10 times fast.

So with that in mind, I picked a fine-dining favorite as my Austrian main course: Filet mit Äpfeln, which is a broiled beef tenderloin served on sautéed apples. Here are the ingredients:

6 6-ounce slices filet of beef
1 pound potatoes
2 egg yolks, well beaten
2 tbsp ground horseradish
salt and pepper to taste
2 tbsp butter
6 mushrooms, peeled
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced

On the side I did Gebackene Kohlsprossen, which is a baked dish made with Brussels sprouts, ham and mushrooms (note: if I did this over again I might have made a different side dish, since there were already mushrooms in the steak recipe).

For the sprouts:

1 pound Brussels sprouts
1 cup lean cooked ham
1/2 pound mushrooms

For the sauce:

2 egg yolks
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp grated Parmesan, divided

I skipped dessert this time, mostly because the one I wanted to do required more time than I actually had that day. But I may post it separately anyway, because it looks seriously yummy.

I did do an appetizer, which was interesting. Notice how I did not say it was good, I said it was "interesting."

Remember the pumpernickel recipe from last week? Well I started with that (here it is again):

2 tbsp + 3/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 3/4 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees F)
1/2 cup dark molasses
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon caraway seed
1 tablespoon salt
2 1/2 cups dark rye flour
1 cup Shredded Wheat cereal
1/4 cup cocoa
2 to 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Cornmeal
Butter or margarine, softened

And with the bread I did a popular cheese dish called Liptauer Käse:

8 ounces smooth farmer's cheese, room temperature
3 tbsp finely chopped onion
1 tbsp anchovy paste or finely chopped anchovies
1 tbsp finely chopped capers
1/2 tsp caraway seeds
1/2 tsp sweet paprika

Which brings me to my first challenge of the week, which was the farmer's cheese.

Now, farmer's cheese doesn't necessarily mean the same thing to all people, and I'm still not sure I got it right. In these parts, you can't just go into a store and buy something called "farmer's cheese," oh no, because nothing is ever that easy. For me.

"Farmer's cheese" in its broadest interpretation is just an unripened cheese. Queso Fresco, which is that white crumbly stuff you often see on beans in Mexican restaurants, is sometimes called a farmer's cheese. So is cream cheese, and so is Ricotta. But these three cheeses would have made three completely different dishes, and I really had no idea which one would have been closest to the real thing, so I chose not to use any of them.

Instead I looked around locally for a cheese labeled "farmer's cheese," without any success. I did find some Halloumi at the co-op, though, which was annoying (do you remember what I had to do to get Halloumi back in Akrotiri?) After failing to find any farmer's cheese at any of three local markets, I decided to make some instead. Strictly speaking, "farmer's cheese" (the kind that is not Queso Fresco, cream cheese or ricotta) is compressed cottage cheese, and the technique for making it is really simple. Here are the ingredients:

16 ounces 4% milk fat small curd cottage cheese
Cheesecloth

To make farmer's cheese, scoop the cottage cheese out of the pot and wrap it up in the cheesecloth. Squeeze it with your hands until the liquid comes out of it. Keep squeezing.

See all that liquid? Ew.

Now put the cheesecloth-wrapped cheese in a colander inside a bowl, and put the bowl in the fridge. Leave it for a day or two until all the liquid has drained out.

Let it drain in the fridge.

Remove the dry curds from the cheesecloth and put them in a food processor. Blend until smooth. You're done! (once the liquid has been squeezed out, you'll end up with about nine ounces of cheese).

Fresh farmer's cheese, after processing in a blender.

The next step of course is turning the farmer's cheese into Liptauer Käse, which is also pretty easy. Here are the instructions:

Mix everything together. Serve.

Just mix it all together ...

... and you're done!

The Austrians like to eat Liptauer Käse on rye bread or on pumpernickel, which is where that recipe from last week comes in. I did decide to make it after all, mainly because Henry kept sneaking into the kitchen and eating all the cocktail pumpernickel behind my back.

So I did what I always do with bread recipes, and for the second week in a row I ended up with flat loaves, which means I may be rethinking my approach to converting bread recipes for the bread machine.

I always proof the yeast in warm water first, but my bread machine's dough cycle has a 30 minute delay at the beginning, which I'm now thinking is probably the equivalent of proofing the yeast. Maybe I'm over-proofing? If anyone has a guess, I'd love to hear it.

Anyway this part of the entry is a description of my failed bread-machine interpretation, so if you want the traditional instructions, please see last week's entry.

So after I proofed the yeast I put it and all the ingredients except the all-purpose flour into my bread machine and set the machine on the dough cycle. I let the machine mix for about 10 minutes, then I added all-purpose flour until the dough looked right. I did need the full 2 1/2 cups.

When the machine was finished and the dough had done its first rise, I turned it out onto a floured surface and divided it in two. Even with the 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour this was a really sticky dough, which may have been another part of my problem.

This dough seemed waaaay too sticky.

Undeterred though, I added a little cornmeal to a buttered cookie sheet and put the two dough halves on each end. I brushed some melted butter on the tops and let them rise for another 45 minutes.

Just about ready for the oven.

The final step of course is to bake at 375 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes, until you hear that hollow sound when you hit it with your knuckles. Or as in my case, a dull thump, because nothing that flat can make a hollow sound.

I could not taste the cheese over the strongly-flavored bread.

Now on to the steaks. Fortunately, steaks are hard to screw up.

Start by taking the steaks out of the fridge and rubbing salt and pepper into both sides. Keep them at room temperature for about an hour.

A little salt and pepper is all these need.

Filet mit Äpfeln is served on a potato cake, so the next step is to peel the potatoes and boil them in salted water for about 12 minutes. When they are soft, take them out and put them through a potato ricer. If you don't have a ricer you can use a potato masher, but you do need to make sure there aren't any lumps.

Riced potatoes.

Now mix the potatoes with the egg yolks, horseradish, and a little salt and pepper. Shape them into cakes that are roughly the same size as your steaks. Place them on a greased cookie sheet and bake them in a 375 degree oven for about 10 minutes, or until the tops turn a nice golden color. Flip them over and repeat with the other side. Remove from the oven and keep warm.

Two steak-sized potato cakes.

Light your broiler and cook the steaks, turning once, until they reach an internal temperature of about 135 degrees (remember that the temperature will continue to rise by about 10 to 12 degrees after you take them out of the oven, which will give you a medium-rare steak).

While your steaks are cooking, slice the apples and saute them with the mushrooms in melted butter.

Sauteing the mushrooms and apples.

When the meat has rested for about 10 minutes, assemble the dish. Start by placing a potato cake on the plate, then cover with sliced apple.

The first two layers ...

Put the steak on top and top with the mushrooms.

... and the next two.

The Gebackene Kohlsprossen can be prepared in advance, and then popped in the oven about 15 minutes before serving (I put them in the oven at the same time as the potato cakes, and then stuck them on the bottom rack for the last few minutes while the steaks were broiling to keep them warm).

Start by boiling the sprouts in salted water for 20 minutes or so, until they are tender.

Here's a quick note for all you Brussels sprouts haters, which is based purely on my anecdotal experience and some wisdom passed down by Martin's dad, who always used to say that Brussels sprouts shouldn't be picked until the crop has been through a good frost. He claimed that the frost took away some of the bitterness which is what puts a lot of people off of Brussels sprouts. Of course, here in California sprouts almost never get a frost, so fresh ones just aren't very nice. Personally, I will always buy frozen sprouts because I think freezing them does the same thing for them as a frost does. Though like I said, this is pure anecdote. I haven't even checked to see if anyone in the culinary world agrees with me.

In my defense, Brussels sprouts are really the only vegetable I will buy frozen.

Anyway, boil your sprouts, then drain them and put them in the bottom of a casserole dish. If you have enough of them, just put in half.

First put down the boiled sprouts.

Next, lay down the diced ham, or half of it if you're making a big batch.

Add the ham ...

Now the mushrooms, and so on, until you've used up all of your ingredients.

... then the mushrooms.

In a small bowl, beat together the egg, cream and 1/4 cup of the Parmesan cheese. Pour the mixture over the casserole and sprinkle with the remaining two tablespoons of grated cheese. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes.

This dish is ready for the oven.

Martin and I had this meal after the kids went to bed. It's really just too hard for me to waste beef tenderloin on picky eaters.

You can't really go wrong with a filet, unless of course you overcook it, so the main meal was a nice treat. The potato cake had just enough horseradish in it to compliment the beef without being overwhelming, and the apples and mushrooms were a nice addition. I guess my only complaint was that I couldn't really figure out how to eat it all. I have no problem with recipes that incorporate many different flavors, but if you can't combine all the flavors in a single bite the dish just seems a little disjointed. In this case, it was impossible to get potato, meat, apple and mushroom on the fork at the same time, so I had to eat most of the layers separately. Martin's main complaint was that it just didn't seem different enough, which does seem to be his most-used Travel by Stove complaint. He's not really happy unless there's kangaroo in it I guess.

We both liked the Brussels sprouts, which were creamy and cheesy and worked really well with the mushrooms and ham. Since I was serving this with another meat, it might have been a good idea to cut back a bit on the ham.

What about the pumpernickel and the Liptauer Käse? Well, even if my bread hadn't come out flat, I don't think I would have liked it. Pumpernickel is just a little too bitter for me, and its flavor really overwhelmed the Liptauer Käse, to the point where I almost couldn't tell I'd even put anything on the bread.

The good news is, that extra loaf made an awesome frisbee.

Next week: Azerbaijan.

DPG8YN7NQTAF

Austrian Pumpernickel Bread

2011-12-29T13:11:00.000-08:00

My poor baby boy has been sick since last Thursday, and he spent last night in the hospital with dehydration and low blood sugar. So it's been a really rough week for us (though we did manage to pull off a pretty decent Christmas).

So I'm putting off my adventure to Austria, though hopefully only for another couple of days (it's obviously going to depend on when Henry gets home and starts feeling like himself). But I did want to post a recipe today anyway, just to get the proverbial ball rolling.

First a disclaimer: I wasn't actually going to make this recipe, nor have I ever made this recipe, though now that I've looked at it I might try it once things settle down. This week I was planning to keep things pretty low key, so I actually just cheated and bought a loaf of cocktail pumpernickel to serve with the appetizer I plan to make. But in case you don't want to cheat, here is a genuine Austrian pumpernickel recipe:

Dark Pumpernickel Bread

3 packages active dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees F)
1/2 cup dark molasses
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon caraway seed
1 tablespoon salt
2 1/2 cups dark rye flour
1 cup Shredded Wheat cereal
1/4 cup cocoa
2 to 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Cornmeal
Butter or margarine, softened

Now if you read this blog you already know that I always try to make a bread machine recipe out of pretty much every yeast bread recipe I come across. So if it was me, I would prove the yeast and then I would just dump all the ingredients into my bread machine and let the machine do the work (though I don't ever actually bake bread in the machine, I usually take it out and bake it in the oven).

So to make this bread, first dissolve the yeast in the warm water and let it sit until it is frothy. Then add the molasses, vegetable oil, caraway seed, salt, rye flour, shredded wheat and cocoa.

Mix until smooth, then add the all-purpose flour until a smooth dough forms. Turn it out onto a floured surface and cover. Let it rest for 10 or 15 minutes.

Now on to the kneading, which is something I never do so I can't really speak here with any authority. The recipe tells you to "knead until smooth," which evidently should only take about 5 minutes.

Now place the dough in a greased bowl and cover. Let it rise in a warm place until the dough has about doubled in size, which usually takes about an hour.

Sprinkle a greased cookie sheet with cornmeal. Punch down the dough and divide in two, shaping each half into a round loaf. Put loaves onto opposite corners of the cookie sheet so they don't bake into each other. Brush the top of each loaf with some melted butter, then let them rise again until they've about doubled, another hour or so.

Bake the bread in a preheated 375 degree oven for about 30 to 35 minutes, or until the loaves sound hollow when you rap them with your knuckles.

Viola! Austrian pumpernickel.

And because you can't do a blog post without a photo, here is a picture of the very much not Austrian pumpernickel I got at the grocery store. I promise if I ever make this recipe I will replace it with a genuine photo.

This is not Austrian pumpernickel. This is the cocktail pumpernickel I bought at Safeway.

Please wish Henry some good health; hopefully in a few days I'll be able to post the complete meal. Happy New Year everyone, in case I don't post before then.

Recipes from Australia

2011-12-22T08:27:00.000-08:00

This week we're traveling to the land of huge spiders and deadly snakes. Thank god we're only going there figuratively. Don't get me wrong, I would actually like to visit Australia one day, but I think I'll wear a hazmat suit when I do.

Australia is probably not a huge mystery to anyone reading this blog, but I'll give you a little background anyway. It is the world's sixth largest country by land area, the world's 13th largest economy and it ranks second on the global human development index, which means that Australian citizens enjoy an advanced healthcare system, a good education system and a very good overall quality of life. Except for the spiders and deadly snakes of course. Here is Australia on a map, although unless you flunked geography I'd be really surprised if you didn't already know where it was:

Because Australia was settled primarily by the British, mainstream Australian food is heavily influenced by British cuisine, though there has been something of a revived interest in "bush tucker," that is, foods that are native to Australia (many of which were used as traditional food sources by indigenous Australian people).

Sadly, though, bush tucker isn't really available worldwide, even on gourmet websites, so I quickly ruled this out as something I could do practically for my Australian meal. I did, however, have a card to play that I haven't had in any prior weeks: I was able to ask, you know, an actual Australian. I figured my friend Heath, who was born and raised there, could probably at least point me in the right direction.

Heath came back with a dessert recommendation pretty quickly, but when I asked him if he had any main course ideas, he reconfirmed what I'd already read: that most of what Australians eat could pass for European or American food, with the exception of maybe one meat: kangaroo.

Kangaroo burgers with tomato chutney and chips.

Now I admit, as soon as he said this my first reaction was, "Yeah right, like I could find kangaroo in Grass Valley, CA." But then I got to thinking about it and wondered if I could maybe track some down in Sacramento, which is about an hour and a half drive. I'm down there a couple of times a month anyway, so it wouldn't be that big a deal to sidetrack a bit to pick up something that would really make this meal experience an authentic one. So I did a quick search on the internet and within about five minutes came up with a source that claimed they could special-order kangaroo, among other things (like alligator, caribou, wild boar and rattlesnake). So I called them, and they had it in their store in less than five days. Just in case you're in the greater Sacramento area and would like to order some kangaroo (or alligator, caribou, wild boar etc.), the store is called "Corti Brothers," and you can call them at (916) 736-3800.

Now, before you say, "Oh my God, kangaroos are so cute, how could you eat one??" Please keep in mind the following two facts:

1. Kangaroos are assholes. If you don't believe me, watch this video.

2. Kangaroo is an environmentally friendly meat. Kangaroos are killed by hunters under a government quota system, which means that wild kangaroo meat has very little environmental impact apart from what kangaroos naturally do to their environment. Even farmed kangaroo meat is more environmentally friendly than traditional meats such as beef, since kangaroos need less feed, don't destroy the root systems of pasture grasses and are adapted to dry and drought conditions.

So with all of my justifications in place, I decided on this recipe:

Kangaroo Burgers

1 lb miced kangaroo meat
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tbsp cilantro, chopped
1 tbsp vegetable oil
4 large lettuce leaves (I used butter lettuce)
4 burger buns (recipe follows)

Now kangaroo, I was warned, is a very strong flavored meat, so it needs to be paired with other strong flavors so it doesn't become overwhelming. Instead of ketchup, I decided to use an Australian condiment called "bush tomato chutney." Here is the recipe:

"Bush" Tomato Chutney

3 tomatoes
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup dried bush tomatoes, chopped (or substitute sundried tomatoes)
1 red onion, chopped
1 clove garlic
1/2 a granny smith apple
2 tbsp golden raisins
White vinegar (enough to cover)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp chili powder

I also baked my own hamburger buns. I found a few Australian burger recipes that called for brioche buns, so I tracked down this recipe (posted by an Australian blogger):

Light Brioche Burger Buns

3 tbsp warm milk
2 tsp active dry yeast
2 1/2 tbsp sugar
2 large eggs
3 cups bread flour
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
Sesame seeds (optional)

And of course, what burger is complete without chips? Here's an Australian chip recipe, which is really no different from any American French fry recipe I've ever seen:

Aussie Chips

6 medium sized red potatoes (the Australian recipe called for Désirée potatoes)
3 cups vegetable oil
Sea salt to taste

And finally, the dessert recipe Heath suggested:

Pavlova

4 large egg whites
pinch of salt
8 oz baking sugar (super fine, but not powdered)
1 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla essence, divided
2 tsp cornstarch
3/4 cup heavy cream
2 tbsp baking sugar
1 lb strawberries, quartered

That's a lot more recipes than I usually do, but hey, how often does a person get to eat kangaroo? I wanted to do it justice.

So the very first thing I did (the day before meal day) was make the tomato chutney. I love making chutney (I've made mango chutney a few times) and this was my first attempt at doing one with tomatoes, which are technically fruits but don't really make a particularly fruity chutney.

Now I am pretty sure that kangaroo counts as "bush tucker," but one thing I didn't actually notice when I imported this tomato chutney recipe into my recipe book was the presence of another bush tucker ingredient, "bush tomatoes," which though closely related to the tomato are actually a kind of wild berry that grows in the arid parts of Australia. By the time I noticed this ingredient in the recipe, though, I'd already started making it. Yes I know, "bush tomato chutney," bush tomatoes, duh. I just thought it was an Aussie name for an Aussie recipe. In my defense, I would have had a pretty hard time finding bush tomatoes even if I'd known about this in advance, because as I said earlier, even online gourmet shops haven't yet come around to the idea of bush tucker.

Fortunately, I quickly found a source that suggested substituting sun dried tomatoes, which have a similar flavor, so I called that good enough since I had some sun dried tomatoes on hand. Of course, mine had a long gone best-by date which I won't even repeat here, but I figured some heat ought to bring them back to life. I hoped.

Sundried tomatoes. No, they are not supposed to be that color.

So other than the presence of this impossible-to-locate ingredient, this recipe is actually blissfully simple. First cut up the tomatoes, garlic and onions and put them in a medium sized saucepan. Add just enough vinegar to cover them.

Cover the tomatoes, onion and garlic with white vinegar.

Now add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the vegetables are soft and the entire mixture has a jam-like consistency.

Here's the chutney after about an hour on the stove.

This recipe makes about a jar of chutney, which is way more than you would need for the burgers. I put mine in a sterilized Ball jar, but I don't know anything about canning so I plan to use it up in about a week. Unless you know what you're doing, please don't try canning this recipe for the long haul (botulism, need I say more?)

The next thing I did was make the brioche buns. This recipe was a little weird because it made a super-sticky dough that was really difficult to work with. Part of this, of course, was because I missed the part that said I was only supposed to put one of the eggs in the dough. (I later discovered that the other egg was just supposed to be used to brown the buns while in the oven).

So this is not a bread machine recipe, but I made it in my bread machine because there's no way I'm ever going to be caught kneading dough. If you want the old-fashioned instructions I'm going to point you to the original recipe, because they are pretty long and this post is already longer than usual.

Before getting my bread machine involved I do prove the yeast like so:

In a glass bowl, combine the water, milk, yeast and sugar. Let it stand until frothy.

Frothy yeast is ready to be added to the bread machine.

Mix together the dry ingredients and put them in your bread machine, then add the milk/yeast mixture. Now beat one of the eggs (just one!) and add that. Set your machine to the dough setting and let it do all the hard stuff for you. Note: don't forget to put the paddle in the machine. I know, who would be stupid enough to do that? (whistling and looking around innocently)

Here is the dough after rising.

After the dough has risen in your machine turn it out onto a well-floured surface, (and I do mean well-floured). Divide it up into eight equal sized balls. This will be difficult because even with just one egg this dough is really sticky. I mainly just approximated balls, trying to make a few that were the right size for my kids. After rising I ended up with two enormous buns and a whole bunch of regular-sized ones, so I very much overestimated the size of the balls.

This is about as close as I could come to making balls.

Put the dough balls on baking sheets lined with wax paper and let them rise for another hour or so. When they're big enough, mix the second egg with a little bit of water and brush the tops of the buns, then sprinkle with sesame seeds.

After rising, the buns are painted with an egg wash.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes at 400 degrees, turning the pan once to make sure they bake evenly.

Mine came out huge but flat, which might have had something to do with that extra egg. They still tasted good and made great burger buns.

Finished brioche buns. Mine were a little flat.

So I did both the chutney and the buns a day in advance. The next day at around lunchtime I started on the pavlova.

Just a quick note on pavlova, though served all over Australia there is evidently some controversy about which country actually owns this dessert. The main contender against Australia is, of course, New Zealand. Because you know, Australians and New Zealanders always have to fight about something. The only thing that can really be agreed about is that pavlova was invented in honor of the ballet dancer Anna Pavlova.

Pavlova is basically a meringue filled with whipped cream and topped with fruit (strawberries are popular). If you've never made a meringue, don't worry, it's not as scary as it sounds.

Start by beating the egg whites with the salt until they form stiff peaks. Then gradually add the sugar, vinegar and half a teaspoon of the vanilla. If your meringue comes out like mine did, it should be thick and creamy with a lot of volume, but not necessarily fluffy. Since I've never made a true meringue like this one, I don't know if this is really how it is supposed to look, but based on my results I'd guess I probably came close.

This is my meringue after adding the sugar, vanilla and vinegar.

Now spread the mixture into a lightly-greased pie plate, leaving a hollow in the center for the filling (which you will add after baking). I interpreted this to mean I should make a ring out of the meringue with an actual hole in the center, and it wasn't until I'd baked the danged thing that it dawned on me that "hollow" probably meant and indentation in the center (as opposed to a hole). This would obviously make for easier slicing.

Spread it into the pan, but don't leave a hole (just a hollow).

Baking times differ for this recipe depending on the kind of oven you have. The important thing to remember is that you have to start off with a 400 degree oven whether you have gas or electric. If your stove is electric, you preheat to 400, put the meringue in the oven and immediately reduce the temperature to 250 degrees. Bake for 1 1/2 hours, making sure not to disturb the pan.

If you have a gas oven like mine, put the meringue in and bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 250 and bake for another hour.

Turn the oven off, but don't take the meringue out until it is cool. Leave it alone.

The meringue should be crispy and light brown in color.

Just before you are ready to serve, whip the cream until stiff peaks form, then add the sugar and vanilla extract. Spread the whipped cream into the hollow at the center of the meringue, then top with strawberries (or use whatever fruit is in season. Strawberries are most definitely not in season around here, and the ones I had were kind of blah).

Here's the finished pavlova. Mine had cracks (oh well).

OK, now for the main event: the kangaroo.

Just in case you thought I wasn't serious ...

The first thing I noticed about kangaroo is the color (a very deep red) and the total absence of fat. I don't think I've ever seen a piece of red meat that lean. The second thing I noticed was the blood. This was by far the bloodiest piece of meat I've ever worked with.

Kangaroo is a really dark read meat with almost no fat.

Because the meat came as a steak, I had to grind it myself. I don't own a meat grinder but I figured my little mini food processor would do the trick, and it did. But I ended up with some really wet ground meat, presumably because of all that blood.

After grinding, the meat looks a little pinker.

Kangaroo, as I said, is a very flavorful meat so it needs to be prepared with other flavorful things. This recipe called for finely chopped onion, garlic and cilantro, which basically just needs to be mixed into the meat with a little salt and pepper.

Mix the meat with onions, garlic and cilantro.

Now if your kangaroo meat is as bloody as mine was, you'll end up with a really wet patty that won't really cook well on a BBQ, because it will ooze between the grill wires instead of sitting on top of them, then it will fall apart when you try to flip it. Trust me because this is what I tried to do, even though I suspected I wasn't going to have great results. I guess this might be why most of the kangaroo burger recipes I've seen call for cooking on a grill pan instead of on an outdoor grill. Anyway, I did get a little charcoal flavor into mine before I had to rescue them (in bits and pieces) and take them inside to finish cooking in a pan. Fortunately they were burgers, so they could be reassembled and then hidden in a burger bun, and none's the wiser.

Mine fell apart on the grill, so I finished them in a pan.

Note: don't cook your kangaroo (or any other game meat for that matter) to more than medium rare. It will become tough and unpleasant.

Finished kangaroo burgers. Crazy, huh?

On to my final recipe: the chips. A couple of quick notes: this recipe really isn't particularly Australian, as chip recipes go, though I did try to find some potato varieties you would expect to find in Australia. Sadly, you can't get any of those varieties over here, unless you really want to drop 45 bucks plus shipping on a 10 pound bag of "heirloom potatoes." The recipe I used called for Désirée potatoes, which are a red skinned variety. So I had settle for your common, garden variety American red skinned potato, which I guess was a reasonable substitute. Anyway, I've never actually deep fried fries before, so this was a totally new experience for me. Here's how it's done:

Slice your potatoes. It's important to make sure they are uniform thickness so they will cook at the same speed. If you do this in advance, you can stop them getting brown by submerging them in ice water until they are ready for frying.

Make sure your chips are cut to a uniform size.

Now heat the oil. You can tell when your oil is hot enough by sticking the non-stirring end of a wooden spoon into it. If bubbles rise up the wood, the oil is ready.

Pat the potato slices with a paper towel to soak up some of the excess moisture, then dump them in the oil. Be sure to stir them around for a couple of minutes or they will stick to each other and they won't cook correctly.

Deep frying the chips.

When the fries are a golden brown, take them out. Using another paper towel, remove some of the excess oil and add the sea salt.

Take the chips out when they are golden brown.

So even though Martin came home early to help with the barbecue, since I am barbecue-incapable, I somehow managed to get through the entire burger-cooking process without letting on to anyone what kind of meat I was preparing, which was quite funny really since the patties did look pretty strange. I served the burgers on the very flat brioche buns with a generous portion of tomato chutney and a whole leaf of butter lettuce. Martin took a big bite of his and exclaimed, "Wow, these are good!"

"Really?" I said. "You're eating kangaroo."

Nothing really shocks Martin (he's English) but he was definitely intrigued ... after he got over a brief moment of feeling sorry for the kangaroo (personally I think cows are way more deserving of our pity). He ate his burger faster than anyone, then he ate pretty much all of Hailey's, who I don't have to tell you took a tiny little nibble and exclaimed "thank you but I don't like it." Surprisingly, though,the other three kids each finished off their burgers. Surprising because all the stuff I read in advance about kangaroo was pretty much the truth: it's a very strong meat with a gamey flavor. The very strong-flavored tomato chutney really was the best condiment I could have chosen.

The fries were kind of overshadowed by the strange entree, but I thought they were really tasty and totally worth the trouble. The pavlova was a huge hit with everyone--light and crispy on the outside and creamy inside (I don't know if that's how it's supposed to turn out, but between the six of us we managed to put away the entire pan, so I must have done something right).

Overall this had to be one of my favorite Travel by Stove meals, both in the pursuit of ingredients, the challenging preparation and the taste. Plus I still have two kangaroo steaks in my freezer for another time.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!! Next week: Austria.

Ashmore and Cartier Islands: A brick wall in the middle of the ocean

2011-12-15T20:05:00.000-08:00

I have hit a brick wall. I've finally found a nation that has no culinary tradition, not even a modern one (like Antarctica).

This nation is number 15 on my list: "Ashmore and Cartier Islands."

So why is this a problem? Well, quite simply, no one lives on Ashmore and Cartier Islands, and as far as I can tell, no one ever has. These two islands are part of a larger marine reserve that is governed by Australia. It is populated only by non-human species, and unless I am mistaken, none of them know how to cook.

So I could skip Ashmore and Cartier. But I'm not gonna.

Yes, I know, there's really nothing I can do to create an authentic culinary experience for Ashmore and Cartier, because you can't have an authentic version of something that doesn't even exist. But based on what I've read about this area and its history, I feel like I can at least come up with a fantasy meal.

These two dishes are from Indonesia, which has fishing rights on Ashmore and Cartier.

Ashmore and Cartier Islands, as it turns out, are traditional fishing grounds for Indonesian fishermen, who have been using the waters there for centuries to harvest sea cucumber, trochus (a mollusk valued for its shell), shark fin, abalone, green snail, sponges (poor SpongeBob) and clams. Because most of these species were threatened by overfishing, in 1974 Australia and Indonesia drafted a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that allowed "traditional" Indonesian fisherman to continue to use the waters surrounding the two islands, subject to limitations.

Ashmore and Cartier Islands is an external territory of Australia.

So based on this information, I am going to make the huge leap to the following recipe:

Mock Clam Satay

I'm basing this decision on the following:

I can't get sea cucumber or green snail at Safeway
I wouldn't know what the hell to do with a sponge, but I'm guessing they aren't harvested as a food item
Trochus is mainly used to make jewelry and buttons, not food
Shark fin is illegal
I couldn't find any Indonesian recipes for abalone

So by process of elimination, I chose an Indonesian clam recipe. I figured that traditional Indonesian fishermen probably used clam at home ('cause you know, I have great knowledge of the subject, haha), and although the species doesn't match what we can get here in the US I figured I didn't need to be 100% accurate when deciding on a recipe that is 100% inaccurate.

So here we go, the world's only known recipe from Ashmore and Cartier, that I just personally attributed to Ashmore and Cartier even though I lack even a shred of credibility.

Mock Clam Satay (why this is a "mock" satay will become clear)

1 lb clams
5 shallots, sliced
2 tsp sweet soy sauce
Juice of 1 lime
salt and pepper to taste

Of course I also have to have a side dish, so I just picked a basic Indonesian fried rice:

For the rice:

3 cups cold cooked rice
2 tbsp oil
3 1/2 oz cabbage, shredded
4 eggs
2 shallots, chopped

For the spice paste:

3 shallots, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2 red chillies, seeded
1/2 medium tomato
2 tbsps sweet soy sauce
Salt to taste

One more thing: Sweet Soy Sauce, otherwise known as ...

Kecap Manis

1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tbsp water
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 star anise pod
1 garlic clove, crushed

First a couple of interesting notes about kecap manis: 1. It seems to be in just about every Indonesian recipe and 2. "Kecap" is pronounced "ketchup." I am told that this is where our word for "ketchup" actually originated, though I find this claim a little puzzling since Indonesian food just isn't that popular in the west, and since there aren't any tomatoes in kecap manis.

But anyway, I did try to find kecap manis in the Asian market down in Sacramento, though I came up empty handed. I found a few bottles labeled "sweet soy sauce" but they didn't appear to be Indonesian, and the ingredients weren't really any more interesting than those in the homemade version (with the exception of some additives like MSG and high fructose corn syrup). So I didn't think that the homemade version would be any less authentic. And since this whole endeavor is basically a fantasy anyway, who really cares about authenticity.

So to make the kecap manis, melt the sugar together with the water over medium heat. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer until the mixture becomes a thick syrup.

Simmer the sugar and water until it becomes a syrup.

Remove from heat and cool by setting the whole pot in a larger pot full of ice water.

When the syrup has cooled, add the soy sauce, the star anise and the garlic. Bring back to a simmer and let cool, discarding the garlic and the star anise.

(In case you aren't familiar with star anise, you can find it in most major grocery stores with the ethnic spices, usually packaged in a small plastic bag. I just happened to have some on hand since I occasionally make Vietnamese Pho Bo.)

This is star anise. Each one is about the width of a dime.

When the kecap manis is done, move on to the clams. Now, this is where my world fell apart.

Henry was in a bad mood. He kept clinging to the kitchen gate and crying. Meanwhile, I rediscovered something I learned the first time I tried to make clam chowder: Baby clams are gross.

Yes, I just bought a couple of cans of baby clams for this recipe, because I really couldn't be bothered to cook live clams and take them apart. But when I opened the cans of baby clams I realized what a mistake this was, at least for me. Because baby clams are mostly stomach, and their stomachs are filled with this nasty, pasty, gritty stuff that makes me gag when I eat it. So what did I do? I pulled the guts out of each and every one of those baby clams. It took me about an hour. When I was done I had maybe 3/4 cup of gutted baby clams.

Gutted clams. I won't tell you how I did this, because only a crazy person would try it.

The second problem with the baby clams approach, of course, was size. Satays are supposed to be cooked on a skewer. There's no way you can skewer a gutted baby clam. So I just mixed my clams up with the shallots, kecap manis, lime and salt and pepper.

The basic ingredients for the mock clam satay.

I let this mixture marinade for about 30 minutes, then I sauteed it. So this really wasn't a satay, but all the flavors were there so I consider it only cheating by a little bit.

Sauteing the clams.

So while my mock satay was marinading, I threw the fried rice together. Here's how:

Put all the spice paste ingredients into a blender and pulse until you get a paste. Then shred the cabbage.

The spice paste.

Put the spice paste into a medium hot pan and stir until fragrant. Then add the cabbage and cook for a few minutes.

Stir fry the shredded cabbage with the spice paste.

Dump in the rice and add the kecap manis, and stir until blended.

One last step: add the rice and kecap manis.

Finally, while Chinese fried rice is usually made with a scrambled egg, Indonesian fried rice is typically served with a fried egg on top. So fry up a few eggs until the yolks are just firm, and top each serving of rice with a fried egg.

So how did my fantasy meal go over? Not well. I thought it was OK, but almost certainly not worth the effort of all the research I did. I guess I don't really like clams, not even gutted ones.

I didn't give the kids any of the mock satay because there just wasn't enough of it, and I was pretty sure they wouldn't eat it anyway. Predictably, Hailey ate nothing. Natalie had a screaming fit because her egg wasn't hard boiled. Dylan ate both his egg and Natalie's, and nothing else. Henry ate everything. Martin was completely unimpressed.

This would have actually been a do-over if Ashmore and Cartier Islands was a populated nation with a culinary tradition of any kind, but I am excusing my failure this time since I really don't know what I could do differently. Instead I'm looking forward to my next stop, a country that is most definitely populated and most definitely the source of some interesting foods.

Next week: Australia.

Recipes from Aruba

2011-12-06T14:15:00.001-08:00

I'll admit, I was a little annoyed to be cooking yet another Caribbean meal from yet another Caribbean nation. Seriously, why do all these Caribbean countries have to begin with the letter "A"? So far, 22% of the countries I've cooked from have been Caribbean. Gettin' a little sick of papaya, you know?

But this time I was definitely pleasantly surprised. In fact, our main course this week is actually Martin's favorite so far, since I first started on this endeavor back in August. Though I did go through several meal plans before I actually landed on the one we ended up eating.

Cuisine ala Aruba: Pan Bati and Keshi Yena.

So yes, Aruba is Caribbean. Let's start there. Like many Caribbean nations, it's tiny, just over 20 miles long, which means you can probably get from one end to another in about 30 minutes, though I guess I'm really not qualified to make that assumption since I have no idea what the road system is like. Despite its small size, it is home to more than 100,000 people and enjoys a thriving tourist industry.

Aruba is in the southern part of the Caribbean islands, in a chain of islands called the "Lesser Antilles." It is actually a part of the Netherlands, which makes its residents all Dutch citizens. So is it really a country? *Sigh.* Maybe if I knew more about political geography I'd be able to answer that question. Maybe I should change the subtitle of this blog to "I'm cooking one meal from every country and sub-country on Earth."

Aruba, another microscopic country in the Caribbean.

Aruba is blessed with a consistently warm and sunny climate, and cursed (depending on your perspective I suppose) with a dry, arid landscape where cactus is one of the more common types of vegetation. Its standard of living is one of the highest in the Caribbean; it has a low unemployment rate and a full three quarters of its gross national product comes from tourism. There is very little agriculture or manufacturing, and much of Aruba's food is imported.

Seafood is one of the traditional staples in Aruba, which is why the first recipe I chose was a grilled swordfish. I adore swordfish and let's face it, I was pregnant for like five years straight so I haven't eaten a whole lot of it in recent years (swordfish is one of those high-mercury fish you're not supposed to go near when you're expecting). So I set out to find some swordfish, which I really didn't think would be too difficult. But, like most of my other seafood quests in this town, I came up empty-handed. I couldn't even find any frozen swordfish, though I'll bet you 10 bucks there will be some at Safeway next week, because that's always what happens.

So I scratched that off my list and decided to go instead for a traditional dish called keri-keri, which is supposed to be made with shark. Now I figured my chances of finding shark would be pretty slim but I asked the local fishmonger anyway, and was bluntly informed that shark was illegal. OK, I can remember eating shark in a restaurant once, but that was many years ago so I guess that its legal status might have changed since then. But as I was thinking this over the fish guy did a double take and said "Oh no, actually it's shark fin that's illegal, shark is legal." And I was thinking, um, don't you sell fish? And do you really get a lot of people asking for shark fin in Grass Valley, California? But OK, that still didn't solve my problem because he didn't have either shark or shark fin in stock.

The recipe did say I could substitute any firm, white fish but since it's traditionally made with shark and I didn't really know offhand which other firm white fish would be correct for the region, I was rapidly ruling out the keri-keri. Also it's made with celery, which both Martin and I dislike. So I went home and regrouped and finally settled on this recipe:

Keshi Yena

1 lb Gouda cheese, sliced
1 large onion
4 tbsp butter
2 cups diced cooked chicken
1 large tomato, peeled and chopped
2 dill pickles, minced
1 large green pepper, seeded and finely chopped
8 large stuffed green olives, sliced
1½ tbsp garlic, minced or pressed
1 tbsp capers, rinsed
¼ cup golden raisins
1 tbsp prepared mustard
½ cup ketchup
½ tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 cup chopped cashews
1 tsp fresh thyme, minced

The old-school way to make Keshi Yena is in the hollowed out shell of a four pound wheel of cheese. Now I'm pretty sure Martin and I could put away four pounds of Gouda in fairly short order, but I didn't have even an extra day to spare by the time I decided on this recipe, so I went with this updated version, which comes from Gasparito's Restaurant and Art Gallery in Aurba.

I needed an appetizer too, and for that I found a great Aruban recipe resource at VisitAruba.com. Evidently Arubans enjoy their fried-balls-of-whatever appetizers, as I had several to choose from. I wanted something a little less artery-clogging, though, so I picked a baked appetizer called Bolitas De Jamon. Here's the recipe:

Bolitas De Jamon

1 egg, beaten lightly
1 cup soft white breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons chopped onion
1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley
1/8 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/2 teaspoon French's prepared mustard
1 pound cooked ham, ground
1-10 ounce jar apricot-pineapple preserves

Note: the original version of this recipe calls for one 10 ounce jar each of apricot preserves and pineapple preserves. I thought that was a little excessive, in fact, I only used about half a jar of the apricot-pineapple combo.

On the side I put a popular pancake-like bread called Pan Bati:

2 cups flour
1 cup corn flour
2 tbs baking powder
pinch of salt
sugar to taste
1 egg
1 3/4 cup milk
vanilla to taste

And for dessert:

Banana na Binja

2 very ripe plantains
2 tbsp butter
3 tbsp dark brown sugar
2 tbsp water
2 tbsp port wine
Dash of cinnamon

So starting with the Bolitas De Jamon:

I've never actually seen ground ham at Safeway, so I just picked up a ham steak and chopped it, then threw it in my little mini food processor until it was nicely pulverized. I did the same thing with the bread, since I was having a hard time imagining how one might "grate" a piece of soft white bread, which is what the recipe told me to do.

Ground ham. I just did this in my mini food processor.

When the ham and bread are ready, mix them together with the egg, breadcrumbs, onion, parsley, seasoned salt and mustard. Note: I halved this recipe and I still needed a whole egg to bind it all together.

Add the rest of the ingredients ...

Now roll the mixture into one or two inch balls and place on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes.

... then form into 1 or 2 inch balls.

When the balls are done, let them cool for a few minutes. While they are cooling, put the apricot-pineapple jam into a small saucepan and heat to simmering. Then drop the balls into the jam and roll them around until they are coated and heated through. Serve immediately.

The Bolitas De Jamon are glazed with apricot-pineapple preserves.

Now on to the Keshi Yena. I have to admit, I don't think I've ever seen an ingredient list quite like this one, which is kind of what drew me to this recipe. Dill pickles and raisins? Oh-kay ...

This dish has to bake for about 30 minutes, so you could prepare it ahead of time and then stick it in the oven when you are ready, which is what I did.

Start by melting the butter over medium heat. Then add the onions and sauté until they turn a golden brown color. Stir in the remaining strange concoction of ingredients (except for the cheese).

Keshi Yena: That is one strange concoction of ingredients.

If you're making this ahead of time, it is probably a good idea to let everything cool a little so the cheese doesn't melt prematurely.

Butter a baking pan and line it with slices of Gouda. Then pour the chicken mixture on top, and cover it with the rest of the cheese slices.

Cheese on the top, cheese on the bottom, everything else in the middle.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, then put it under your broiler for a few minutes, just long enough to start browning the cheese.

The finished dish. It tastes way better than it looks.

While the Keshi Yena is baking, move on to the Pan Bati. I was already putting this recipe together when I realized that it called for "corn flour" instead of "corn meal." In the UK, "corn flour" means "corn starch," but I was pretty sure that wasn't the translation to use for this recipe (yuck). "Flour" did imply something finer than cornmeal, though, so I just took some cornmeal and ground it finer in my food processor. That seemed to work pretty well.

Pan Bati goes together almost exactly like pancakes. Just mix everything together in a large bowl, then gradually add water until the batter is slightly thicker than pancake batter.

The Pan Bati batter should be a little thicker than pancake batter.

Fire up your pancake griddle, adding a little spray butter to prevent sticking. Pour the batter on the griddle. When the Pan Bati is a golden color on one side, flip. Remove from the griddle when the Pan Bati is firm and golden on both sides and keep warm until ready to serve.

Pan Bati: they look just like pancakes don't they?

The Bananas na Binja was easy to make, which is good, because I didn't find them particularly easy to eat. More on that later. When I first found this recipe I vaguely hoped that the "banana" part of the name meant that there were bananas in it, and that the word "plantain" as it appeared in the list of ingredients was simply a mistranslation. Before I made this I'd never actually eaten plantains, but I hadn't exactly heard great things about them, either. But alas, I was able to verify that Arubans call plantains "bananas," and that they call bananas something else entirely.

For this recipe you need ripe plantains. Really, really, ripe plantains. They should look something like a banana you were planning to throw out. I am told this is because a riper plantain is a sweeter plantain ... though I think it's only fair to tell you that my plantains were pretty ripe and they didn't really taste sweet. At all. It might just be a question of what your palate is used to.

This is one of the ripe plantains I used. Does it really get any riper than that?

Anyway, first peel the plantains and slice them in two lengthwise. Then mix the sugar, water, port and cinnamon together and set aside. Melt the butter over medium heat and saute the plantains until they turn a golden color. Flip them over. Pour the port mixture over the plantains and bring to a boil, then cook until the liquid reduces down to a syrup. Serve hot.

Looks yummy doesn't it? Tastes awful.

OK, so here is the Robins family verdict:

The Bolitas De Jamon were delicious. I might actually make them for New Year's Eve this year. The apricot-pineapple glaze was a nice compliment to the saltiness of the ham.

The Keshi Yena was really good. Really, really good. In fact, Martin took a few bites and asked, "where is this from again?" "Aruba," I said. "We need to go there," he replied. This was Martin's favorite dish out of any I've made in the 14 weeks I've been doing this.

The Pan Bati was pretty good. Bland, but bland was actually a nice compliment to the very flavorful Keshi Yena. It didn't taste at all like a pancake, obviously; the corn flour was its most notable flavor.

And now the Bananas na Binja. Have you ever eaten plantains? If not, imagine a dessert made with potatoes. Yes, just take a baked potato and pour some port wine syrup over it. That's pretty much what this dessert tasted like. Neither Martin nor I ate any of it. In fact, I'm sorry to say I had to spit mine out. Gordon Ramsey would be so proud. I thought it was awful. Maybe a connoisseur of plantains would disagree with me, but I think that's probably the last time I will try eating them. I might be convinced to try them in a savory dish, but for a dessert ... no way.

In fairness, though, the syrup was pretty good. In fact, Bananas na Binja would probably be delicious with, you know, actual bananas.

Oh, and my kids didn't eat any of this. Circumstances this week just made me feel like Martin and I were better off visiting Aruba alone.

Next week: Ashmore and Cartier Islands. And for those of you who have actually heard of Ashmore and Cartier Islands, yes, I know. Just bear with me.

Recipes from Armenia

2011-11-29T14:57:00.001-08:00

Just after I got out of college, in ... Oh I don't know, like a million years ago, I had an Armenian boyfriend. So you would think I'd already have one or two Armenian recipes filed away somewhere, but sadly, no. My Armenian boyfriend knew how to cook exactly one meal, and that one came out of a very American cookbook called "Cooking for Bachelors," or something to that effect. I think it was made with ground beef and refrigerated pie crust. I really can't remember, because it was pretty underwhelming.

So I embarked on this leg of my culinary adventure just as blind as I've been for all the other nations on my list. Fortunately, for the second week in a row I am cooking recipes from a nation with a rich culinary tradition, so I had plenty to choose from.

Armenian entree: Chicken Herriseh with artichokes.

First the usual background stuff:

Armenia is in a geographically interesting location; it is landlocked and positioned right at the proverbial crossroads between Western Asia and Eastern Europe. It has Middle-Eastern neighbors, including Turkey and Iran and is a former republic of the Soviet Union, but the European Union considers it a European country.

Armenia is a small country wedged between Asia and Europe.

Armenia's current position in the world can be heavily attributed to its status as a former Soviet republic. Its economy--in fact its entire economic system--depended on Soviet dollars and policies for so long that since independence it has just been sort of limping along. Agriculture has replaced industry in many sectors, but the economy still relies heavily on outside investment, mostly from Armenians living abroad.

Armenia's cuisine, like its economy, has also been heavily influenced by its neighbors, with Middle-Eastern, Russian and Greek qualities evident in many popular dishes. Armenian food relies less on spices and more on fresh ingredients like fruit and nuts, and a lot of the recipes are either very labor-intensive or just have to cook for a very long time, which made my choice a little difficult, since time isn't really something I have a lot of.

Despite knowing all this, I stupidly chose four recipes this week, one of which has a cooking time of about six hours, give or take two hours. Actually, just take two hours. I know, I'm a masochist.

The first recipe I chose is an appetizer made with cheese. I'll bet you are so surprised. Here it is:

Cheese Borags
(Makes about 30, I cut this recipe down to 1/4 and there were still plenty)

8 oz Monterey Jack or Muenster cheese, shredded
15 oz ricotta cheese
4 oz feta cheese, crumbled
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 lb phyllo dough, thawed
1/2 stick melted butter

Next, the godfather of all stews, and I mean that in the sense that if it were a person, this stew would cut off a horse's head and leave it in your bed.

Chicken Herriseh

1 3 lb whole chicken (I just used a pack of thigh/leg pieces)
8 cups water
2 cups wheat berries, rinsed in cold water and drained
2 tsp salt, or to taste
cumin to taste
paprika, optional
butter, optional

This is the side dish I chose, because my kids love artichokes even though my poor husband isn't too enamored with them:

Enguinar (Artichokes)

4 small to medium artichokes
2 large onions, sliced thin
1 tsp dried dill
1 tsp parsley
1 15-oz can tomato sauce
½ cup water
2 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste

(Recipe comes from Helen Merigian)

And finally, the dessert. I almost didn't do this recipe because I thought I was just putting too much on my plate (pun intended, sigh) and also because I'm trying to shed some summer vacation/Halloween/Thanksgiving pounds and figured I didn't need the extra calories. But I'm glad I did decide to make it because it was probably my favorite of the four recipes.

Armenian Lemon Cake

For the cake:

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs
2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder

For the syrup:

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
3/4 cup water
3 sprigs mint

I have another blogger to thank this week: the cheese borag and the Chicken Herriseh recipes both came from The Armenian Kitchen, which is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in Armenian cooking. The other two recipes came from Adventures in Armenian Cooking, which is not quite as colorful (or illustrated) but is also a great resource with tons of recipes to choose from.

Onward: I made the cake first, but I'll start here with the appetizers:

The cheese borags are pretty straightforward, and thanks to Robyn Kalajian from The Armenian Kitchen, I now have some useful tips on how to work with Phyllo dough, which until now has been an activity that has usually ended in disaster.

Armenian cheese borags are usually made with, surprise, Armenian cheese, which I bet I could have gotten from our semi-local cheese shop. However, with Thanksgiving just behind me and my husband's birthday just ahead of me, I really couldn't be bothered to hunt down any Armenian cheese. Besides, Robyn's recipe calls for Monterey Jack or Muenster; I chose Muenster because Monterey Jack is so, you know, California.

So start by mixing the three cheeses with the egg. Because I cut this recipe back quite a bit, I just used a tablespoon or so of the egg, or roughly a quarter of it once it had been beaten.

Once blended, set aside.

Mix the cheeses with the egg.

Note: thaw the Phyllo dough out in the fridge overnight before using. You'll save yourself a lot of headache.

Here are the tips I got from Robyn's recipe: Have you ever used Phyllo dough and had it just become papery and brittle and impossible to work with? Well, that's because it doesn't like being exposed to air for even short periods of time. To solve this problem, simply cover the dough with a piece of plastic wrap, then put a damp towel over the plastic wrap. The dough will stay pliable long enough for you to finish working with it.

Ready? Take one sheet of Phyllo and fold it in half. That's right, just one sheet. Now brush the folded sheet with melted butter.

Put a blob of the filling onto the lower right corner of the sheet.

First put a dollop of filling on the corner of the dough.

Now fold the sheet over the filling, from corner to corner, as if you were folding a flag. You should have a triangle. Fold again, and one more time, like this:.

The recipe says to fold the borag like a flag.

I have no idea how to fold a flag.

I'm pretty sure, though, that this is not how you do it.

Cut off the excess. This worked fine for me, even if it wasn't exactly correct.

You may need to squish the filling around a bit inside the borag to be able to fold it properly. Take care not to let it squish out of the folds, though. You may also have to trim excess dough off of your finished borag, as above.

Repeat with the rest of the filling, until it's gone. Keep the finished borags moist by covering with plastic wrap and a damp towel.

Cheese borags, ready for the oven.

Brush the top of each borag with melted butter, then bake at 350 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the borags turn a golden brown color. Serve hot.

Finished plate of borags. Yum!!

Now for the Chicken Herriseh. I picked this recipe because I like trying out unusual ingredients, and I've never cooked anything with wheat berries. I have a warning for you, though: don't make this recipe unless you have all day. Seriously, all day. The chicken takes almost two hours to prepare and the stew has to simmer for four to six hours.

Now that you are forewarned, start by boiling the chicken in 8 cups of water for about an hour and 45 minutes. Leave the lid on your pot but tilt it slightly so that not a whole lot of steam can escape. I used a package of leg/thigh joints instead of a whole chicken, because I hate trying to pull apart a whole chicken, even after it's been cooked.

Boil the chicken and let cool.

Remove the chicken to a plate and let cool. Do not discard the broth! Shred the chicken and set aside.

After this long in the pot, you should be able to shred the chicken with your fingers.

Strain the broth into a measuring cup and figure out how much you have left. Then add water to the broth to bring the amount back up to 8 cups.

Put the broth in a large pot and add the wheat berries, the shredded chicken, and salt to taste. Note: you should be able to find wheat berries at an organic grocer, or at a grocer that specializes in Middle-Eastern foods.

These are wheat berries. I got mine at the co-op, where they sell a lot of organic, healthy type stuff.

Bring to a boil then reduce heat to low. Simmer covered for four to six hours, or until the berries are soft. Don't be tempted to stir the pot.

Now get a potato masher and squish the wheat berries up with the chicken. The finished mixture should look like oatmeal. If it doesn't, you didn't cook it long enough.

The finished Herriseh. I think mine could have been cooked longer.

Serve in bowls with a pat of butter and some cumin and paprika sprinkled on top.

Now on to the artichokes. They don't take quite as long to cook, but you do need to allow about 45 minutes or so in order for them to become tender.

First cook the onions in the water until they become soft. No oil! How's that for healthy? Then add the remaining ingredients and stir.

First cook the onions in water, then add the tomato sauce and spices.

Here's where I had to do some guesswork. The recipe called for frozen artichokes, but I've never been able to find frozen artichokes at any grocery store in California, maybe because fresh artichokes are so easy to find here. So I don't know how pre-cooked frozen artichokes usually are, but the recipe said to simmer the onion/tomato sauce mixture for 15 to 20 minutes, then add the artichokes and "cook until tender." I chose to add the artichokes right away, because 20 minutes plus 45 seemed like way too long for that little bit of tomato sauce and all of those onions. As it was, I cooked the sauce with the artichokes for about 45 minutes and still managed to burn the sauce.

Now add the artichokes and cook until tender.

At last, the cake. As I said, I made this before I made anything else, mainly because it also has kind of a long preparation time.

The batter is easy. First preheat the oven to 350 degrees, then cream the butter and sugar together.

Cream the butter and sugar. Mine didn't really cream that well, it just got lumpy.

Add the yogurt and the eggs, mixing well. Pour in the lemon juice. Sift together the flour, baking soda and baking powder and add to the bowl, mixing until everything is well incorporated.

I would have had more batter if I hadn't eaten so much of the dough.

Spoon the batter into a buttered pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the color is golden. In my oven this took about 40 minutes.

Let the cake cool. Meanwhile, combine the ingredients for the syrup in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook over high heat for about 10 to 12 minutes, or until the syrup coats the back of a spoon.

Put the mint sauce ingredients into a small saucepan and boil.

Remove the mint, which will just be a limp vaguely green weedy looking thing at this point, and let the syrup cool until it is just warm.

Loosen the cake in its pan and pour 1/3 of the syrup over the top. Wait 10 minutes, then do it again. Wait another 10 minutes, then pour the rest of the syrup on the top. Your cake should now have a clear glaze on it, like this:

Here's the finished cake with the syrup glaze.

Let the cake sit for about an hour, which will give it enough time to absorb the syrup.

Now the recipe said to invert the cake onto a platter, then slice and serve. I didn't do this because I thought the cake looked a lot nicer from the top. But I guess that's just my opinion.

Best part of the meal: dessert!

The meal went over okay. I thought I'd like the Herriseh a little more than I did. It had a very earthy flavor but was a little too chewy for my tastes (maybe six hours on the stove wasn't enough?). I guess I expected it to be a bit more like a risotto, which I adore.

The cheese borags were delicious, loved by everyone in my family except of course for Hailey, who hates all things cheesy. The artichokes were so-so, really nothing special but entirely edible. The cake was really good, with a texture that reminded me of a scone. The cake itself wasn't too sweet but the syrup was just sweet enough to make it a nice treat. We all really liked the cake.

Next week: Aruba. A Caribbean nation. Another Caribbean nation.

Recipes from Argentina

2011-11-23T13:20:00.000-08:00

Argentina: Steak with chimicurri and potatoes with basil.

This week I am thankful for simple recipes, and for other bloggers.

We're hosting Thanksgiving again this year, so I guess I don't have to tell you that I have a million things to do before tomorrow. So what I really needed was either a week off from blogging or a some really, really simple, easy-to-find recipes.

As luck would have it, my next country is a nation of 40 million people who appreciate food. Argentina is the biggest Spanish-speaking country in the world (by land area) and the third-largest economy in Latin America. It was also one of the founding members of the United Nations. Here it is on the map:

Argentina: the largest Spanish-speaking nation in the world.

(Notice the light green areas there on our old friend Antarctica? Argentina once had land claims in Antarctica, which were suspended by the Antarctic Treaty of 1961.)

In addition to being a major economy in South America, Argentina is also considered a major world economy. Much of its prosperity comes from agriculture (the tallgrass prairie ecosystem in central Argentina, known as the humid pampas, is considered one of the most agriculturally productive regions in the world). Seven percent of the population works in agriculture, and more than half of Argentine exports consist of processed and unprocessed agricultural products such as soybeans, wheat, flour and maize.

As far as cuisine goes, Argentina is probably best known for its beef. Which brings us to our first recipe:

Steak with Chimichurri

For the steak:

1 1/2 lbs flank steak
2 tbsp olive
Salt and pepper

For the Chimichurri:

4 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup red wine
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh oregano
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes*
1/4 extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup minced fresh flat-leaf parsley

Chimichurri is often (if not always) served with beef and other kinds of meats, making it one of the most popular condiments in the country.

Argentinians, or so I'm told, enjoy potatoes with their steak (just like we do here in the USA), but I had a hard time finding a recipe that was interesting. Most of the recipes I found (when I found them) were just basic potato recipes similar to what I prepare all the time throughout the year. I finally settled on one that was a little bit different, and though I found it on a Spanish-language website called "Recipes of Argentina," I guess I can't really vouch for how traditional or how widely-ejoyed it actually is. Here it is:

Potatoes with Basil

1 1/2 lbs baby potatoes
1/4 cup butter
3 cloves garlic
8 leaves basil
Salt and pepper to taste

There was a third recipe that I couldn't resist: Provoleta, which is basically just a grilled slice of provolone cheese topped with herbs and spices. Even though I really didn't need to complicate things this week, I had to do this recipe ... because, you know, cheese.

Provoleta

1 1-inch thick slice provolone cheese
Chopped fresh oregano, to taste
1/2 to 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes*
1 garlic clove, peeled and cut in half

And finally, you can't take a culinary trip to Argentina without dulce de leche. What the heck is that? It's a sweetened, condensed milk that is a part of pretty much every popular dessert eaten in the country. Of course, it takes several hours to make dulce de leche, so I gave myself a pass on doing that (given that it's Thanksgiving week) and I bought it in a can. In my defense, Argentinians don't seem to have anything against dulce de leche from a can.

Here's the recipe I made with my canned dulce de leche:

Milhojas de Dulce de Leche (Dulce de Leche Napoleans)

One package puff pastry, thawed
1 cup dulce de leche
1/2 cup powdered sugar

*A note about the red pepper flakes used in these recipes: Argentinians use a mild red pepper flake called Aji Molido, which is difficult to find in the US. Argentinian food is typically not spicy, so using a typical US red pepper flake is technically not authentic.

Now before I go any further, I have someone to thank: Rebecca Caro, who blogs at From Argentina with Love. Rebecca's website has hundreds of Argentine recipes, and her blog saved me loads of time by by providing three of the four recipes I used this week: the chimichurri sauce, the provoleta, and the Napoleons.

I began the meal with the potatoes, which have to be roasted and take the most time to prepare. I didn't have baby potatoes, so I just used thick slices.

First melt the butter in a dutch oven. Note: the recipe calls for a TON of butter. I halved mine and it was still a lot of butter.

Now saute the potatoes in the butter, adding salt and pepper, until they begin to brown.

Saute the potatoes in butter.

Then add the garlic and cook for a few seconds, until fragrant. Then move the dutch oven into your oven, preheated to about 350 degrees.

While the potatoes are roasting, move on to the chimichurri.

Chimichurri ingredients (oops, the olive oil isn't in this picture).

Chimichurri is pretty simple. Just finely chop the herbs, mince the garlic, and whisk all the ingredients together in a small bowl (I used about half the oregano the recipe called for--oregano is a strong flavor and I thought it would be overwhelming to use that much of it).

My chimichurri is probably a little too watery, because I left out some of the oregano.

Now brush the steak with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill over a medium flame until the internal temperature reaches about 140 degrees (the meat will continue to cook a little after you take it off the fire, which will give you a medium rare steak).

The flank steak is simply seasoned with salt and pepper.

To serve the flank steak, cut into thin strips and spoon some of the chimichurri sauce over.

At this point you can check the potatoes. They are done when the insides are soft (just prick with a fork to check). When they are finished, toss with the chopped basil.

Toss the potatoes with chopped basil.

While the meat is resting, you can do the provoleta. Now, this can be a bit tricky when it's just you and four kids at home (Martin was working late). I ended up serving the appetizer with the meal, which meant preparing plates ahead of time, keeping them warm and trying to get everything on the table at the same time, before the provoleta got cold. I was only marginally successful.

The provoleta is also pretty simple. Rebecca from From Argentina with Love has suggestions on how to toast the bread under a broiler (rub with the cut piece of garlic, paint with olive and brown under the broiler). I didn't do any of that, because I was in a hurry. So I stopped at just slicing the bread, and compromised by rubbing the cheese slices with the garlic.

Now heat a cast-iron skillet over very high heat (I used non-stick and it worked just fine) and put the cheese in it. Sprinkle with half the oregano and red pepper flakes and cook until the cheese begins to melt and you can see some brown around the bottom edges. Now carefully flip the cheese (that's the tricky part). Make sure you get all the crispy brown bits, because they are the best part. Sprinkle with the remaining oregano and red pepper and continue to grill until you see those brown edges again. Remove from the pan and serve immediately.

Grilled provolone cheese with pepper flakes and oregano. Yum!

By the way, you will set off the smoke detector when you make this.

Finally, the dessert, which was blissfully simple (when you don't have to make the dulce de leche from scratch). Here's how:

Unfold the puff pastry and slice into thirds, along the fold lines. Then slice each third in two so you have six rectangles. Repeat with the other piece of pastry. Then put the rectangles on a wax-paper lined baking sheet, leaving about one inch between pieces. Bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 12 to 14 minutes, or until pastry puffs up and turns a golden color. Remove and let cool.

Puff pastry ... what could be easier?

Now cut the tops off of each piece of pastry, so the two halves are about equal in size. Make a pile of top halves and a pile of bottom halves. Start by spreading dulce de leche on one of the bottom halves. Then cover with a second bottom half, and spread that one with dulce de leche.

Now top with one of the top halves. Repeat until you've used up all the bottom halves (you'll have several top halves left over). Now dust with powdered sugar and serve.

Three layers of pastry, two layers of dulce de leche.

Note: the recipe says to use a "generous" amount of dulce de leche, but I found it overwhelming. If I make these again I'll probably use half as much.

This meal was a huge hit with Dylan, though I didn't bother to offer him the chimicurri sauce. He was perfectly happy just with the steak. He ate the potatoes and the cheese, too. Hailey enjoyed the potatoes, Natalie didn't eat anything and Henry ate it all. Martin, when he finally got home, ate his entire meal almost without a word and then said, "They eat well in Argentina."

My poor kids didn't get to try the Napoleons. I really didn't want to deal with a sugar high right before bedtime, so I saved them for me and Martin. Like I said, the liberal amount of dulce de leche I used was pretty overwhelming, but they were still good--though I have to admit eating a whole one made me feel a little off. Way too much richness.

By the way, in case you are a fan of self-inflicted pain, here is the recipe for dulce de leche from scratch (this one comes from Alton Brown):

Dulce de leche

1 quart whole milk
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 vanilla bean, split scraped (optional)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Put the milk, sugar, vanilla bean and seeds in a large pot over medium heat. Bring to a simmer and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Then add the baking soda and stir. Reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally. If any foam appears on the surface, don't try to mix it in.

After 1 hour, remove the vanilla bean. Keep cooking until the mixture is a dark caramel color, which will probably take about an hour and a half to two hours. You should have about a cup of mixture.

Strain the mixture through an fine mesh sieve and place in the refrigerator.

And that's Argentina! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Next week: Armenia.

Recipes from Antigua and Barbuda

2011-11-17T12:18:00.000-08:00

This week we're doing pork chops with bacon. And bananas.

Yes, bananas. If you think that sounds weird, it is (at least by American standards). But even more weird is, we liked it. It was definitely different, but it was good.

First a few notes about the country that spawned this weird-though-palatable recipe: Antigua and Barbuda, the nation so nice they (apparently) named it twice.

Antigua and Barbuda are twin islands located between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. A number of other smaller islands are also included in this "Land of 365 Beaches," which I guess alludes to the idea that you could spend all year there and go to a different beach every day (personally I think I would get sick of beaches). Around 85,000 people live on Antigua, Barbuda or those smaller islands, which are a bit British in culture, language and governance since they were once, like 95% of the world's small nations (OK I exaggerate ... a little ...), a part of the British Empire.

Antigua and Barbuda. Puerto Rico is off there to the left somewhere.

Temperatures on these two islands range from the mid-70s in the winter, and the mid 80s in the summer, which explains why the British were so keen to have them in their empire. Although really, that's way too hot a summer for my freakishly cold-loving British husband, but I don't think he speaks for all Brits.

Like so many other Caribbean nations, the cuisine of Antigua and Barbuda includes a lot of tropical fruits such as mangoes, plantains and papayas. Salt fish, lobster and other types of seafood are also eaten there, but the locals also like many of the same types of meat that Americans do, such as chicken, pork and lamb. The two "national dishes" of Antigua and Barbuda are fungie, which is a little bit like Polenta, and pepperpot, which is a thick vegetable stew. I chose not to do either of these recipes for a couple of reasons--the first was because I was pretty sure they would be rejected not only by my children but by my husband as well--and the second was because I was pretty sure they would be rejected by me. Some of the ingredients--such as taro root--are also scarce enough that I didn't want to spend time tracking them down for something I didn't think I was going to like (vegetable stews aren't really my thing). Also I won't really get into the part about the pig snout.

The three recipes I did settle on had pretty standard ingredients (although in unusual combinations), which was something I needed after all the work I had to put into nailing down the recipes for last week's post (Antarctica). Here they are:

Pork Chops with Bananas and Bacon

4 pork chops
3/4 tbsp cumin
Salt and pepper (to taste)
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp butter, softened
2 bananas
6 strips bacon
Beer (optional)

Black Bean Cakes with Salsa Roja and Cilantro Yogurt

For the cakes:

2 cups canned black beans
½ cup finely chopped onion
1 ½ tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp finely chopped jalapeno
2 tbsp olive oil

For the salsa:
(Note: this will make more than you need for the beans, but the leftovers make a great dip)

1 small serrano pepper
5 Roma tomatoes
1/2 a white onion
salt

For the cilantro yogurt:

1/2 cup plain yogurt
2 tbsp chopped cilantro
Juice of 1/2 a lemon

And for dessert: Papaya Pie

1 medium pre-baked pie shell
3 ripe papayas (the riper the better)
2 tsp lime juice
1/2 tsp lime zest
pinch of cinnamon
dash orange extract
4 tbsp flour
4 tbsp sugar
4 egg whites

The pie needs to be served chilled, so that's where I started. The recipe is actually pretty straightforward until you get to the egg whites.

Start by peeling the papayas and removing the seeds. Then mash them up. I couldn't find any really ripe papayas, which will help you during this part of the process (unripe papayas don't mash very easily). If yours are also less than ripe, you can try cooking them on the stove for a few minutes to soften them up.

Mash the papayas. This is easier if they are ripe.

Now add the lime juice, the lime zest, the cinnamon and the orange extract. Mix well.

Add the zest, juice and spices.

Now fold in the flour and sugar (I doubled the amount of sugar since my papayas weren't very ripe, and since papaya isn't really a super-sweet fruit to begin with. At this point, you might want to taste the mixture and adjust the ingredients according to how you like it).

You of course remember how lazy I am about beating egg whites. Well with this pie you can't really afford to be lazy about this part, so I used my grandma's 1960s era mixer for this. Did I mention how much I love this mixer? They don't make 'em like that any more.

So, beat the eggs until bona-fide stiff peaks form.

Now those are stiff peaks!

Now here's the tricky part. Gently fold the egg whites into the papaya mixture. This is tricky because the papayas are so much heavier than the egg whites, and they tend to sink to the bottom. So don't be overly worried if you don't think it's mixing very evenly--it's much more important not to over-fold because then you may fold out too much of the air from the beaten egg whites.

Your mixture will probably look a bit like this: more egg on the top

Now pour the mixture into the pie crust. Be careful because there's a lot of mix, so to make it all fit you might have to pile it up a little.

Ready for the oven.

Now, the original recipe said to bake for 25 minutes, "or until top is just brown." It neglected to tell me what temperature to bake at, though. Since this recipe is a little bit like a meringue, I figured on a slightly lower temperature and I put it in at 325 degrees. After 25 minutes, though, my pie was most definitely not done. Also, I really had no idea what texture I was going for. The pie was indeed "just brown," but parts were still jiggly and I was pretty sure that's not what my finished product was supposed to be like. So I left my pie in for somewhere on the order of 45 to 50 minutes. At that point it had a few brown spots, some cracks on the surface and a sort of "set" texture--like a mousse, almost. It didn't jiggle anymore but it also came off on my finger when I touched it. I can't vouch for whether or not this was how it was supposed to turn out, but I thought it worked.

My finished pie.

Note: as I've heard you should do with a meringue (though I've admittedly never made one), I turned off the oven and left my pie inside until it was completely cool. This gave it time to firm up a little more before I moved it into the fridge (it should be served chilled).

The next thing you want to prepare is the salsa for the bean cakes, since this takes a little bit of time. It's simple, though, just halve the tomatoes and the chile pepper, and roughly chop the onions. Place them on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil (I actually just use one of those olive oil sprays, since I can get better coverage that way). Place in a hot oven (mine was 500 degrees).

Before ....

I won't tell you how long to roast the vegetables because you really need to watch them. All ovens are a little different and you don't want to end up over-cooking them. Just pull them out when they develop a nice brown color.

After! That serrano at the bottom is a little over-done.

Now put the vegetables in a pot and add just enough water to cover them. Boil for about 5 minutes, then put the vegetables (and the water) into a blender and puree until smooth. Then put the whole mix back into the pot and cook over a medium high heat until reduced down to a thick sauce-like consistency.

Reducing the salsa,.

You can whip up the cilantro yogurt now too, if you want. Just mix the three ingredients together and set aside.

I did the pork chops next. Here's how:

First combine the butter with the cumin, salt and pepper. Rub the pork chops all over with the mixture. Pork chops are slimy and so is butter, so you'll have to rub pretty vigorously to get the butter to stick to the chops.

Pork chops with butter. Wouldn't Paula Deen be proud!

Now put the pork chops on the grill and cook them over medium heat for about 7 and a half minutes per side.

Meanwhile, prepare the bacon and bananas.

Start by cooking the bacon in a frying pan for just a couple of minutes, long enough for some of the fat to render. Now I have to admit, I'm not sure of the reasoning behind this step--I'm thinking you could just use the bacon as-is without frying it first, since it will be cooked completely through in the next step.

Now cut the bananas into chunks sprinkle them with lemon juice. Wrap the bacon around each chunk. Skewer each wrapped piece through the overlap in the bacon, like so:

Bananas and bacon. Who woulda thunk.

After the chops have been cooking for about 15 minutes, turn the heat down to medium low and put the bacon and bananas on the grill. Use a meat thermometer to make sure the chops aren't cooking too fast. Continue to turn the chops and the bacon/banana skewers. At this point you can also start basting the chops with beer.

The steam is from the beer.

Now while all this is happening, you can work on your bean cakes. Personally, I think the author of this recipe was trying to play a joke on me, or else there are some cooking skills that I have yet to master. Or rather, that I am totally inept at.

So you need to start by rinsing the beans and then putting them in a food processor with the onion, cumin, jalapeno and about a tablespoon of water. Process until you have a nice paste.

Bean paste. At this point Martin walked in and said, "what the hell?"

OK, now is where everything went all downhill. The recipe says to make little cakes using about 2 tablespoons of bean mixture each. Then you're supposed to fry the cakes in the hot olive oil for about three minutes per side, or until the cakes are a "crispy brown."

Here's what happened to mine:

The cakes sucked up all the oil and then stuck to the bottom of the pan. When I tried to flip them, the "crispy brown" bit stayed put and all I got was a pile of mush on my spatula.

It all began with such good intentions ...

So after struggling with my unagreeable bean paste for way more than the recommended three minutes, I finally gave up and just mushed them all together and basically just made refried beans. After I took them out of the pan I put them on a plate and moved them into a warm oven so they dried out a little.

Uh ... yum?

Then guess what I did ... I got out the pastry cutter Martin uses to make scones, and I cut round cakes out of the slightly dried bean mash. Then I topped it with the salsa and yogurt. Suddenly it went from looking like something you may or may not feed your dog to something almost gourmet. Here it is on the plate with the pork chops, bacon and bananas:

Not so bad a food save if I say so myself.

So how was it? Well, when I put the plates on the table I would have bet someone's college savings (which is actually only about 50 bucks right now) that my kids were going to be unanimously grossed out. But I was surprised when Dylan ate everything on his plate--bananas and bacon included! He even liked the beans. Hailey tried everything and disliked most of it (which is Hailey's typical dinnertime routine), Natalie decided not to try any of it and Henry threw most of his on the floor. But the grown-ups both gave the meal a thumbs up. Bacon+banana: a surprisingly tasty combination. But for me the highlight of the meal was actually the beans! That was shocking, since the entire cooking process seemed so headed for disaster. But the little dollops of salsa and yogurt really made them taste good. I just wish I'd gotten the frying part right.

How about dessert? Well the papaya pie was definitely different from the pies my kids usually eat, but with the help of a little spray whipped cream, everyone enjoyed it. So as far as my family goes, the meal was not a disaster ... which is more than I can say for at least a few of these little multi-cultural experiments.

A slice of papaya pie.

Next week: Argentina.

Recipes from Antarctica

2011-11-10T09:56:00.000-08:00

This week's recipes come from Antarctica. No, really. Antarctica.

I won't lie. I was really concerned about this one. I started doing research for it almost as soon as I decided to start writing this blog.

Here's why: There are no traditional Antarctic recipes. There is no "national dish of Antarctica." Recipes don't get passed down from generation to generation. That's because Antarctica has no native population, unless you count the penguins. No one really raises kids in Antarctica. In fact, until 1820 no human being had even laid eyes on the southern-most continent. And the only people who live there now are research scientists and the people who provide them with supportive services.

Just to set the record straight, Antarctica isn't a country. Unlike many of the other territories and psuedo-nations on my list, its status as a non-country isn't even in question. It has no government, though there are a few countries who have tried to lay claim to various regions. Activities in Antarctica are regulated by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which was signed by 12 nations (including neighbors Argentina, Chile and Australia, as well as the super-nations of the time, the USSR, the UK and of course the USA). The treaty primarily banned military activity and designated the continent as a scientific and environmental preserve.

Antarctica, the bottom of the earth.

So I guess I could have opted out of Antarctica, since it clearly doesn't belong on a list of sovereign nations. But you know me.

So how does one go about finding recipes for a land of ice, that has no real culinary tradition and no permanent population?

Google, of course. At least that's where I started ... but I didn't get very far. Predictably, there were no easy-to-find Antarctica recipe collections or even single recipes anywhere on the internet. By week three of my search I'd almost resigned myself to cooking a meal of pemmican and sledging biscuits. My poor family.

I wasn't quite ready to quit yet, though, so I thought I'd try emailing some of the bloggers I'd found who had traveled to Antarctica or were just particularly enthusiastic about it. The first couple of people I contacted were happy to write back with suggestions, but when I asked them for a recipe that was "quintessentially Antarctic" they really just shrugged their electronic shoulders. I finally got put in touch with Jason Anthony, who is the author of a forthcoming book about food at the South Pole (Hoosh: Roast Penguin, Scurvy Day and Other Stories of Antarctic Cuisine, published by the University of Nebraska Press). Jason's book is "a narrative history of Antarctica with food as its focus," but even he had to admit that there really is no real "Antarctic cuisine." He did send me a link to a semi-famous cookie recipe by Antarctic dietician Sally Ayotte, but woman cannot feed family on cookies alone, though my kids would certainly not have a problem with the idea.

Jason also offered to send me some recipes for penguin and seal. Now, I'm pretty sure, though I have never asked, that Safeway doesn't carry penguin or seal. I briefly considered substituting duck, but that felt too much like cheating. So I had to decline, and I was back to square one.

I was almost coming back around to the idea of pemmican and sledging biscuits (with cookies for dessert?) when I decided to try contacting someone who actually worked in a kitchen in Antarctica. So I emailed the Office of Legislative and Public Affairs at the National Science Foundation, which is in charge of the United States Antarctic Program, and they referred me to the contract agency that hires kitchen staff some of the research stations in Antarctica. That's when I first got in touch with Elaine Hood, who I have to thank for finally setting me on the right course.

Elaine got in touch with two Antarctica chefs--one former and one current--who both sent copies of the same recipe: Beef Wellington, which is served at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station every Christmas. Because it's the busy season in Antarctica, I wasn't able to coax any additional recipes out of them, but I did find a transcript of a sous chef at McMurdo Station cooking parsnip mashed potatoes, from which I gleaned ingredients (though I had to guess at measurements). And finally I went back to that Sally Ayotte cookie recipe for dessert. Yay! My Antarctica menu was complete.

"Cookie" Jon Emanuel, former chef at the
Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.

James Brown, current chef at Amundsen-Scott South Pole. Both
these guys sent me a copy of the same Beef Wellington recipe.

Ready? Here are the recipes:

South Pole's Favorite Beef Wellington

Courtesy South Pole Chef James Brown and Former South Pole Chef Cookie Jon Emanuel

1 whole beef tenderloin, trimmed of fat and silver skin
4 tbsp butter
1 lb mushrooms, sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 C red wine
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves, chopped
2-3 sheets 12 x 6 frozen puff pastry dough (or equivalent) thawed
1 lb. pork liver paté (optional)
2 T prepared Dijon mustard
1 egg, beaten with 1 T water
Salt and pepper to taste

Parsnip Mashed Potatoes

3 medium white potatoes
3 parsnips
1 medium onion
5 cloves garlic
Salt to taste
3 tbsp butter
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 tsp. white pepper

Sally Ayotte's South Pole Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup margarine
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup chocolate chips
2/3 cup white chocolate chips
2/3 cup butterscotch chips
1 cup nuts, chopped (I used peanuts and cashews)

First a word on the beef tenderloin. If you regularly shop for beef, you probably already know that this is the most expensive cut on the cow. If you get a whole tenderloin (as dictated by the recipe), you will probably spend more than 100 bucks (Sam's Club had whole tenderloins for $75). Unless you're feeding an army or a bunch of scientists at the South Pole, you won't need this much meat. But supermarkets usually cut tenderloins into fillets and sell them as "fillet mignon." If you want a piece of meat that will work in a Wellington, you'll need to ask your butcher to cut off a piece of a whole tenderloin. I asked for a pound and a half and was given more like a pound and three quarters. Here's what I spent:

Yes, that's right. Thirty bucks for a pound and 3/4 of beef.

I ended up cutting off two steaks and putting them away for later. The amount left over was just enough for Martin and I to enjoy and for my kids to reject (I didn't give them more than about a quarter slice each). So I'm guessing you could probably feed four adults on about 1 1/2 pounds of tenderloin.

A quick note on adjusting this recipe to feed fewer people: I used a lot less beef but I really only halved most of the other ingredients. So I probably ended up with a higher mushroom mixture to beef ratio than they'd see at the South Pole on Christmas day, but this worked just fine for me and made it easy to figure out what quantities to use.

So first trim all the fat and silver skin off the tenderloin, then rub it all over with salt and pepper.

Ready for the pan.

Now add about half of the butter and melt it over medium heat. Let it foam, then add the tenderloin and sear it on all sides until it is a nice brown color.

Sear the beef until all sides are brown (a little longer than pictured).

Remove the meat from the pan and let it cool. Now in the same skillet, add the rest of the butter and melt over high heat. Add the mushrooms and sauté until they reduce in size, but don't let them brown.

Saute the mushrooms in butter.

Just before the mushrooms are done, add the garlic. Pour in the wine and cook over a medium high heat until the liquid is reduced and the mixture is almost dry. Add the thyme, salt and pepper.

After the wine has reduced, add the thyme, salt and pepper.

Remove the mushrooms from the heat and let them cool in a shallow pan. Then put them in a food processor and chop them until they form a rough paste. Set aside.

Your chopped mushrooms should look a bit like this.

Lay the puff pastry out on the work surface. You may have to use some flour to prevent sticking (you may also have to roll the dough a bit until it is the right size). Now spread the mushroom mixture in a wide strip down the center of the pastry, leaving about an inch and a half of bare pastry at each end.

Spread the mushroom mixture in a wide strip down the center of the pastry.

Now if you were brave, you bought some paté. Personally, I think organs are yucky. But I like to be true to the recipe, so I got the paté. If you're not really used to buying such things, you can find pork liver paté in the canned meat section of most supermarkets. Here's what it looks like:

Ew.

Now the recipe says to "arrange thin slices of the paté down the center of the mushroom strip." My paté was a paste, and it didn't slice. So using my fingers (double ew), I just spread it down the center of the mushroom mixture. It was fiddly, but it worked.

The mushrooms with the paté. Ew and blech.

Brush the tenderloin all over with dijon mustard.

The tenderloin is ready to be wrapped in pastry.

As gently as you can, place the tenderloin in the middle of the mushroom and paté strip and wrap the pastry over it. Seal the edges with your fingers, then brush with the egg and water mixture to ensure a good seal. Repeat with the ends (trim any excess pastry, or it won't cook all the way through).

Seal the ends and brush with egg wash.

Now turn the wrapped meat over (carefully!) and place it in a greased pan so the seam is at the bottom. Brush the egg mixture over all the pastry, and then make three slits in the top to stop the pastry from bursting open while cooking.

An oven-ready beef Wellington. I still can't believe I got this right.

Bake at 400 degrees until the internal temperature reaches 120 degrees. Note: this temperature seems low, but once you take it out of the oven the meat will continue to cook and the temperature may climb by as much as 15 or 20 degrees. So if you want a rare or medium rare beef make sure to take it out early. Use a meat thermometer that can stay in the oven while cooking to ensure perfect results.

The pastry should be a golden color when you take it out of the oven. Let it rest for at least 15 minutes before slicing. When you do cut into it, the juices should flow out and you can use this to make an au jus sauce to serve with it.

Yum yum yum yum yum yum yum

While your Wellington is in the oven, you can start on the parsnip mashed potatoes. This isn't usually what they serve with the beef Wellington on Christmas at the South Pole, but they do serve it at various other times of the year. So it's not the full Christmas-at-the-Pole experience (you would actually also need lobster tail for that) but it's still true to the region.

First assemble your ingredients:

A simple recipe: parsnips, potatoes, onions and garlic.

Now peel the potatoes and parsnips and boil them with the garlic until all the vegetables are soft. Meanwhile, saute the onions until they are translucent but not brown (you want the final dish to have a creamy white color).

Saute the onions. I should really have a stock photo of this.

When the vegetables and onions are done, mash them all together and add the cream, butter, salt and white pepper.

Now put it all together:

This meal is from Antarctica! Wow!

But ... we can't forget the cookies! I am told that these cookies are so famous, the Air National Guard has been known to detour to the South Pole just to get some.

I made them earlier in the day with Hailey's help. For a famous recipe there's actually not much to it (at least nothing that different from making any batch of cookies).

First, cream the butter, margarine and the two kinds of sugar. Confession: when I made these I read the recipe wrong, and only used a half cup of butter (without the margarine). Mine were still really good, but the extra half cup of butter will give you a softer cookie.

My mixture was more of a crumble than a "cream," because I left out the margarine.

Now add the eggs and the vanilla:

This made the mixture a lot creamier.

In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt. Then add to the sugar/butter/egg mixture and blend until a soft dough forms. Then dump in the chips.

Dang, that is a whole lotta chips.

Finally, add the chopped nuts. I made a batch with nuts and a batch without (I'm not quite ready to test Henry for peanut allergies).

Now drop the dough by teaspoons onto a baking sheet, about two inches apart. The recipe doesn't say to grease the baking sheet, but my cookies stuck pretty badly so I would definitely put a little butter on the pan next time I make these.

Ready for the oven.

Bake at 375 degrees for 12 to 14 minutes, or until the bottom edges are lightly browned. Now try telling your family they can't have any until after dinner.

We want cookies NOW!!!!

So how did this meal go over? Well predictably, my kids were more interested in the pastry than in the meat, but that's just them. As far as I'm concerned, the whole meal was delicious. The beef was juicy and perfect (and I couldn't even taste the paté!) The potatoes were good too, with just a little hint of parsnip flavor (next time I might use a few more parsnips). I did undercook the onions which was kind of unfortunate, but they were still good.

Now Martin didn't like having onions in his mashed potatoes. I guess it wasn't British enough for him. Also I think he was a little perturbed because I invaded his territory (Martin usually makes the beef Wellingtons in our house). But he admitted that the meal was good, though he would not admit that it was better than the ones he usually does. I won't say what I thought.

As for the cookies, well, they were awesome too. I guess I don't have to tell you that my kids agreed.

The finished cookies. The recipe makes between 3 and 4 dozen.

Next week: Antigua and Barbuda.

Recipes from Anguilla

2011-11-03T11:50:00.000-07:00

Back in my very first blog post, I clearly remember vowing that I would not spend any unreasonable amount of time in search of unusual ingredients. Now, nine weeks later, I think I can say that was a bit of an unrealistic statement.

Sure, you can usually find international recipes that don't contain ingredients that are unavailable at any Safeway, but with some of these countries that can be a long, difficult ordeal. Also, I have to admit, looking for unusual ingredients is kind of a fun challenge.

First it was the halloumi, back in Akrotiri (remember that)? Then it was the piri-piri sauce in last week's shrimp recipe from Angola. This week it was pigeon peas.

OK so let's back up a little. Why did I spend half my week trying to track down pigeon peas? Well, because pigeon peas are a key ingredient in the "National Dish" of our next country: Anguilla.

Anguilla is yet another tiny, tiny place--16 miles long by 3.1 miles wide--which (at least in my mind) has questionable status as an actual country. Located in the Caribbean (near Puerto Rico), Anguilla is a British overseas territory, perhaps known best for its typical Caribbean beauty, and of course for the complete absence of most kinds of taxes, including profit, capital gains, estate taxes and most other kinds of direct taxation on both individuals and corporations. Tourism is one of Anguilla's biggest industries, though it has suffered a severe decline because of the past few years of worldwide economic decline.

Anguillan cuisine includes a lot of seafood, though funnily enough, I couldn't actually find any of those recipes during my research. Very little is grown on Anguilla either, with exceptions including limes, tomatoes, squash and, yes, pigeon peas.

So what in the what what are pigeon peas? Well, they look a bit like black-eyed peas, except without the black eye--hence one of their other common names, "no-eyed peas." Where do you get them? Well, you can try Amazon.com, if you want to either buy a whole case of them, (and let's face it, you don't really want to buy a whole case of something you've never tasted), or you can visit other sources if you want to pay more to ship a single can than you paid for the can itself. How about iGourmet? Well, they don't seem to have even heard of pigeon peas. Where else then? When I Googled "Pigeon Peas" I discovered that a lot of the stores selling them online were Latin and Mexican grocers. So I did a Yelp search for Mexican grocers near me and was excited to discover one about 30 minutes away in Auburn, a town where I go to shop all the time anyway. A quick stop there and ta da! Pigeon peas.

Yeah, it's kind of fun to track this stuff down. When the hunt results in a kill of course.

So pigeon peas in hand, I returned home to embark on my virtual culinary adventure in Anguilla. Here are the recipes:

Pigeon Peas and Rice (Anguilla's national dish)

water
juice of one lime
1 cup of rice
1/4 teaspoon of thyme
1 tablespoons of butter
Dash of hot pepper sauce
1/4 pound of corned beef (optional)
6 ounces of dried pigeon peas
Black pepper to taste
Salt to taste

Anguillan Beef and Pineapple Kebabs

2 pounds of beef
1 tablespoon of salt
Black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons of molasses
1/2 cup pineapple juice
1/4 cup wine vinegar (white)
About 1/2 a fresh pineapple, cored and cubed
Wood skewers (soaked in water for about 20 minutes)

And for dessert: Warm Chocolate Pie

1 egg, separated
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter
1 roll white bread, crumbed
1/4 cup mixed nuts
2 ounces dark chocolate, melted

Starting with the elusive pigeon peas:

Here they are, finally tracked down at a semi-local Mexican market.


Pigeon peas look a bit like black-eyed peas, but without the black eye.

Like other dried legumes, pigeon peas require overnight soaking, which of course I forgot to do. So I boiled mine for about two hours, which meant this dinner was just for me and Martin and my kids got to eat burritos and go to bed early.

So whether you soak or boil, when the pigeon peas are soft it's time to drain and rinse them. If you're serving this as a main course, you can add corned beef at this point with just enough water to cover, and boil until the meat is done. I didn't add the corned beef to mine since I was planning to serve it as a side dish.

There should be about two cups of water in the pot for the next step, so if you are making this with corned beef you'll need to drain the liquid, reserve and measure it, then add enough water for a total of two cups. If you're going sans-beef just add two cups of fresh water to the beans, then bring to a boil. Add the rice, lime juice, thyme, hot sauce and butter, then cover and reduce heat. Simmer until the liquid is absorbed, which should take about 20 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

The pigeon peas actually darken quite a bit when they are cooking.

If you think that dish seemed pretty simple, the kebabs were even more so. This recipe consists of a very basic marinade made from molasses, pineapple juice and vinegar. Just cube the beef into kebab-sized bits, mix these three ingredients together and marinade the beef chunks in them for about an hour.

Marinading beef chunks.

Then cut up your pineapple into equal sized chunks (you could use canned chunk pineapple, but I love fresh pineapple) and thread onto the skewers with the beef (I used about two parts beef to every one part pineapple). Drizzle the remaining marinade over the skewers and grill over a hot flame or cook under your broiler (which is of course what I did).

Slightly blackened, just the way I like it!

While the rice is cooking (but before you put the beef on, since that will only take a few minutes), gather the ingredients for the warm chocolate pie. This dessert is prepared a little strangely by American standards: there is no crust, and the body of the pie comes from crumbled bread rather than flour. Here's how you make it:

Chop the nuts and set aside. Now cream together the butter and sugar.

Cream the butter and sugar.

Add the egg yolk and continue to blend until well incorporated.

Add the egg yolk.

Next add the breadcrumbs and the melted chocolate.

I just melted the chocolate in my microwave. Try not to lick it out of the bowl.

Fold in the chocolate and breadcrumbs.

Whip the egg while until stiff peaks form, or if you're like me convince yourself you can see stiff peaks even though you can't, because your arm is tired and you'd really just like to stop beating the stupid egg white already. Gently fold in the egg white and the nuts.

Pour the mixture into a pie tin lined with wax paper. Note: this recipe does not make very much, so I used a pretty small pie tin, probably about half the size of a standard one.

This pie has no crust, just filling.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes. Serve warm.

Warm chocolate pie, ready to serve!

Here is my verdict on this Anguillan meal: Good. Decent. But sadly, after all that searching for the right ingredients I really can't give it higher marks than that.

Pigeon peas and rice: sadly bland.

Beef and pineapple kebabs: good but uninteresting.

The pigeon peas and rice were predictably bland (you can really see that just based on the recipe), even though I over-salted them in an attempt to draw out some flavor. In fact the pigeon peas were so underwhelming that Martin failed to even comment on them, even though they were clearly not something he'd ever eaten. When I prompted him he just said, "They don't really taste any different than pinto beans." The kebabs were good but not really that unusual in flavor. Ditto for the warm chocolate pie.

So was I disappointed? No, and we did both go back for seconds. It was satisfying food, just not very exciting.

Next week: Antarctica. Yes, that's right, Antarctica.

Recipes from Angola

2011-10-27T13:39:00.000-07:00

I really needed another week off, but I managed to limp my way into the kitchen this week anyway. By the way these antibiotics make me loopy (the other day I caught myself trying to put the flour in the refrigerator, and when making chicken and buttermilk dumplings I put the cream in the dumplings and the buttermilk in the sauce) so please forgive me if I write any non-nonsensical sentences and then don't bother to correct them.

Fortunately, Angola was pretty easy on me, and the food both tasted and looked pretty good:

But first a little background. The Republic of Angola is a pretty good sized country in south central Africa. Here it is on the map:

From about the 16th century Angola was occupied to some extent by the Portuguese, who left their mark on the cuisine that is still popular there today. Angola has been independent since 1975, but it is a troubled place, with appallingly high rates of infant mortality, a very poor record of human rights and an average life expectancy for its citizens of less than 48 years.

Angolan cuisine depends greatly on imports from Portugal, as well as on non-western ingredients such as palm oil, banana leaves, cassava flour and a number of other things I couldn't find locally or even on igourmet.com. So I did have to pass up a number of otherwise perfectly good recipes just based on my failed pursuit of ingredients.

I also passed up many other recipes, including Cabidela, which is traditionally cooked in blood, Catatos, which is caterpillar fried in garlic (and I had a few juicy looking ones on my tomato plants this year too, darn it), Gafanhotos de palmeria (toasted grasshopper), Jinguinga (goat tripe and blood), and Mafuma, which is made out of frog's meat. I know, I know, they all sound delicious. What was I thinking.

Here are the dishes I did settle on:

Camarões Piri-Piri (Shrimp in red pepper sauce)

2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/2 cup Molho de Piri-Piri
6 cloves garlic, minced

Arroz de Coco e Papaia (Rice with coconut and papaya)

1 cup rice
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 cups coconut milk
1/4 cup water
1 papaya, peeled, de-seeded, and finely diced

Salada limão (Lemon salad)

1/4 cup lemon juice
4 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
2 fennel bulbs
2 ounces finely grated parmesan cheese

60ml lemon juice 4 tsp olive oil 1/2 tsp salt 2 fennel bulbs 50g grated parmesan cheese

Read more at Celtnet: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-lemon-salad
Copyright © celtnet

Let's start with the shrimp, since that has to marinade at least 30 minutes (mine was marinading for a couple of hours).

You are, of course, wondering how to make "Molho de Piri-Piri," which is the key ingredient in Camarões Piri-Piri. Here's the recipe:

Go to www.igourmet.com
Search for "peri-peri" (an alternate spelling of the same thing)
Click "Add to Cart"
Check out

Is the a cop out? Not really. Well, kind of. Piri-piri is the Portuguese spelling for the African bird's eye chili pepper, which is native to Southern Africa. Now you can, with some effort, get piri-piri seeds and grow them here in the US, but I thought my chances of doing that in less than a week weren't very good, so that's not a route I chose. You can also buy pickled piri-piri peppers, but I thought that would change the flavor too much. A third alternative is to substitute habanero peppers, but that didn't seem particularly authentic either. So I chose to buy the ready-made sauce in the hope that it would provide for a finished product that was a little closer to what they might eat in Angola. Of course, I was disappointed to find that the peri-peri sauce sent to me by igourmet.com is actually bottled in Georgia, but I guess you can't have it all.

DiChickO's "Peri-Peri" sauce

In case you'd rather make your own psuedo-piri-piri, here is the recipe:

3 to 5 habanero peppers
2 cloves of garlic
2 tsp salt
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1 cup olive oil

Put the first four ingredients into a blender or food processor and pulse until smooth. With the blender running, slowly add the olive oil. Add salt to taste.

Now peel and devein your shrimp. I'm sure you love deveining as much as I do. Then add the piri-piri sauce and the crushed garlic to the shrimp. Mix well and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

The shrimp, peeled, deveined and marinading. Oh how I love deveining shrimp.

Now on to the rice. I've made Jamaican peas and rice plenty of times, but have always had a hard time getting the rice to absorb the coconut milk, so lately I've been boiling the rice and then just adding it to the milk after the fact. This recipe gave me that "aha" moment (or maybe it was a "duh" moment) by instructing me to thin the coconut milk with 1/4 cup of water. Oh wow, that seems so obvious.

Now add the rice, salt and cinnamon.

Coconut milk, water and cinnamon

Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce heat. Simmer for 20 minutes or until the rice is done (mine took quite a bit longer). Also it says to "fluff" the rice and let stand covered for 10 minutes. Mine was distinctly unfluffy. In fact, it was almost the opposite of fluffy, kind of risotto-like.

While you're doing all this, you can get the shrimp ready for grilling. Traditionally this dish would be cooked over an open flame, but in our house Martin does all the outdoor grilling. I usually broil anything that would otherwise be grilled.

Thread the shrimp onto skewers and cook for about five minutes, turning once, until the shrimp is pink (note this can be a little hard to figure with this recipe, since the marinade is red. You can also tell shrimp is done when it starts to curl and develop a firm texture).

The shrimp are skewered and ready for the broiler.

Back to the rice: while the rice is standing (presumably undergoing fluffification, if you did it right), cut and seed the papaya, then finely dice it. Mash half of the dice and keep the other half as-is.

Dice half the papaya and mash the other half.

Put both the mashed papaya and the diced papaya into the rice and mix, warming over the stove. Easy huh?

My finished rice looked a bit like risotto with papaya.

Finally the salad, which was my least favorite part of the meal. Normally I like fennel as a garnish or as a minor ingredient, but as the focus of a salad it was a little overwhelming. Easy, though. Here's the directions:

Trim the fennel bulbs, reserving about two tablespoons of the fronds. Finely chop the fronds and whisk them together with the first three ingredients.

Lemon juice with fennel fronds, salt and olive oil.

Thinly slice the fennel bulbs and toss with the dressing. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and serve.

The finished salad was OK. A little too fennely for me.

Now I didn't make my kids eat any of this, mainly because it was really spicy, and also because it was shrimp (I have a hard time even getting my husband to eat shrimp). Martin did give the meal kudos though, which is nice from a guy who doesn't like shrimp. "If I have to eat shrimp," he said, "This is probably one of the better ways to have it." So that's a high compliment. Sort of. He did also go back for seconds of the rice, though by popular vote the leftover salad went in the trash. Shame about all that wasted parmesan cheese.

Next week: Anguilla

Taking a week off ...

2011-10-19T15:48:00.000-07:00

Last week I was complaining (again) about being sick, and this week I'm upping the anti. Evidently my unpleasant but routine bout of influenza has turned into pneumonia, so this week I'm bowing out.

I've got my antibiotics in the medicine cabinet, and so far they haven't killed me so unless that changes I'll do Angola next week. I also have a do-over coming up for Andorra (provided I can find some trout). So see you then, I'm going to go make some lemon tea.

Recipes from Andorra

2011-10-13T14:27:00.000-07:00

I am sick. Yes, I know I was crying sick only a couple of weeks ago, but this time it's knock-down, drag-out, 100+ temperature, coughing, sore muscles influenza. So although I wouldn't say I half-assed this week's meal, I did not go in the elaborate direction I was planning to.

Of course it wasn't entirely my fault. Mostly it was Safeway's fault. And also Raley's, Savemart and the co-op. And also the fact that recipes from Andorra are just not that easy to find.

Here's why. With a 2009 population total of 84,082 and a square mileage of 181 Andorra is not a big country. In fact, on a map it's practically microscopic:

Yes, that tiny little spec between France and Spain is Andorra.

Of course, many of the other countries I've cooked from aren't huge, either. So I guess I don't really know why it's so hard to find Andorran recipes. In any case, I wasn't able to find a whole lot on the internet. Maybe they just aren't that into computers there.

Or maybe they're just too busy with their economic mainstay: tourism. The Andorrans are apparently very busy people indeed; in fact for every one person in the country there are roughly 121 tourists who visit the country every single year. Why? Two words: "duty-free." And one more word: "resorts." Even so they apparently don't have very famous cuisine.

I found a few Andorran recipes on the Andorra Tourism website, most of which were either side dishes, appetizers or recipes containing ingredients you just can't find in California: "kid goat" (nope), "wild boar" (uh-uh), "quinces" (no and no), "duck gizzards" (well, probably with some effort, but ew). There were a few that seemed doable but too labor intensive for someone with the flu and four children (I wasn't up to cooking a whole duck) and a few that just didn't sound very good.

After venturing away from the site I happened on a recipe for poached river trout, which sounded nice and easy and palatable. I decided to do this with "Trinxat," one of the more popular Andorran side dishes (from what I can tell anyway), which sounded a little heavy but I thought would probably go down well with the trout. So I made my shopping list and off I hauled my poor pathetic exhausted self to the grocery store. Don't worry, I was careful not to cough on anything.

Well, as it turns out, there is a trout shortage in our little foothills town. Apparently. Just last week I saw trout at both Safeway and at the co-op (two different kinds!) but this week it was no where to be seen. So I had to abandon my plans, go home and start over.

So the other single option I had was the so-called "National Dish of Andorra:" Escudella. Which loosely translated means "more cholesterol than most people consume in an entire year." Now, given that the Andorran people have the fourth highest life-expectancy in the world, I have a hard time believing that this is really the national dish. But at any rate, I figured I could make this in my weakened state. It's a one-pot dish, and I wouldn't really need to do the trinxat with it since trinxat is also very rich and uses many of the same ingredients. So this week I am going with just one recipe, though I will include the two I was *going* to do in a separate entry.

Escudella, the national dish of Andorra.

If I feel better, I might also try making an Andorran dessert later in the week. If I do, I'll post that recipe too.

So here are the ingredients for the Escudella:

2 cups dry white beans (I used a 16 oz package of the small white ones)
1 ham bone
1 marrow bone
3 chicken thighs (the recipe called for 1/4 of a chicken, but boneless-skinless is so much easier)
14 oz raw pork sausage, rolled into balls
1 thick ham steak, cut into chunks
1/2 head of green cabbage
1 large white potato, cut into large chunks
1/4 cup uncooked rice
1 cup of pasta shells
1 cup canned garbanzo beans
Salt and pepper to taste

Yes, I know what you're thinking: "Marrow bone?????" I don't have any experience with marrow bones myself. So I asked the butcher at Safeway. He took me to the frozen meat section and showed me a package labeled "soup bones." So, it turns out I do have experience with marrow bones, because I use them every time I make a Vietnamese Pho. But I can see why they are called marrow bones, and here's why:

See the marrow?

A marrow bone is just what it sounds like, a bone that has marrow in its center. All you need to do with this bone is put it in the pot to make the stock, you don't need to actually use the marrow (though evidently some people do).

Onward: this is a one-pot meal, and it's actually pretty easy (which is exactly what I needed). Start by rolling the raw sausage into balls. Mine were two-bite sized, you could also do smaller ones.

Raw sausage all over my hands. Awesome.

Next, rinse the dry beans in cold water.

Just a short wash in your colander.

Meanwhile, cook the sausage balls over medium heat. The original recipe said to cook them in vegetable oil, but why? There is already enough grease in sausage without adding even more to it.

Cooking the sausage. Mine were just a little overdone.

Now dice the ham:

I just used a packaged ham steak. This week was all about simple.

Now put the beans, sausage, ham, chicken and bones into the pot with 8 cups of water. A couple of notes, the recipe says to tie the bones up in cheesecloth, which I didn't have--so I just put them in the pot loose. The recipe also says to add salt to the water. I figured with all that bacon and ham I wasn't going to need the extra salt (and I was right).

Now bring the pot to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer, covered for two hours. The chicken should be very tender, almost falling apart.

Simmering beans, meat and bones.

Now the recipe says to remove the bones. Here's the crazy part, it then says "If you like eating marrow, and most people do, you can save it for later." Wait, "most people do?" Seriously? Do you like eating bone marrow?

Now bring the remaining stock and meat back up to a boil (if there isn't a lot of liquid you can add more water) and stir all the rest of the stuff in. Here's where the recipe gets a bit weird.

I've never cooked rice with pasta, or pasta with potatoes, or rice with potatoes (except for this uninspired cream soup thing I used to do in college). There's a lot of starch in this recipe, in addition to a lot of different kind of meats. I'm guessing this recipe probably had its roots in a peasant tradition, where hungry people just throw together whatever they have and cook it over a hot fire.

Ingredient-o-rama.

Cook for another 30 minutes, or until the potatoes and rice are tender.

Now I think most people will probably like the results of this recipe, and if I'd been feeling better I probably would have been one of them. But it was way too oily and rich for me, given the state of my health. I predicted that Martin wouldn't like it at all, and he did not disappoint me. He usually dislikes anything that tastes fatty, except maybe hamburgers. My kids were also predictably unimpressed. Dylan ate the sausage, but the rest of their dinners went in the trash.

Sadly, I didn't even save the leftovers, and there were a ton of them. The pasta, rice and potatoes meant I'd get poor results if I tried freezing them, and I couldn't see eating this for lunch. It was too rich and heavy and I really am trying to eat light during the day.

So there you have it ... probably my most disappointing experience with International cuisine thus far. If you've cooked Andorra and had a different experience, please send me some recipes. This one will probably be good for a do-over.

Next week: Angola.

Recipes from American Samoa

2011-10-06T11:25:00.000-07:00

The night I cooked a meal from American Samoa, my kids ate everything on their plates. That's because I gave them mac and cheese and put them to bed early.

It's not that there aren't any recipes from American Samoa that are American-kid-friendly, it's just that there was one in particular I wanted to make, and there was no way I was going to ask my poor kids to eat it.

American Samoa is located in the South Pacific. It is an unincorporated territory of the United States, not to be confused with Samoa (formerly called Western Samoa), which is a sovereign nation. Both American Samoa and its sovereign counterpart are located in the Samoan Island chains, west of the Cook Islands and north of Tonga. In case that doesn't ring a bell, here it is on a map:

Yes, it's tiny. In fact as of 2000 the number of people living in American Samoa was just over 57,000 people, which means that the entire population could settle in quite comfortably to watch a football game at Kenan Memorial Stadium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. American Samoa encompasses just 76.1 square miles, and the customs and traditions are pretty much the same as they are elsewhere in the Samoan Islands. The climate is tropical and the food reflects this, with staples including bananas, coconut, mangoes, papayas, taro and breadfruit. Meats include seafood, pork, canned corned beef and some chicken.

Now when researching this week's meal, I unfortunately had to exclude a rather large number of potential meals, just based on the unfortunate shortage of taro, breadfruit and banana leaves in my local supermarket (Safeway had better get on that). I did, however hit on one recipe that was both doable and way too intriguing to pass up: 'Oka popo. Or as I like to call it, Samoan sushi. Yes, this is the dish that made me decide to put my kids to bed early.

'Oka popo. I did not dare try to give this to my kids.

I lived in the San Francisco Bay area for 10 years so I've eaten a lot of great sushi, and have even prepared it at home a few times. So raw fish doesn't scare me, although I did find the idea of very large quantities of 1-inch chunks of raw fish a little off-putting. So I did alter the recipe a little, and I served it as a small appetizer instead of a main meal. I can't really vouch for the authenticity of this approach.

Anyway, here is the recipe:

'Oka popo

1 pound raw fish, cut into bite-sized pieces (This recipe calls for marlin or swordfish, others call for red snapper. I used tuna, which was the only sushi-grade fish I could find.)
1/2 cup cubed cucumber, seeds removed
1 tomato, chopped
1/2 one onion, finely diced
1 cup canned coconut milk
1 tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped
Juice of one lime
Salt and pepper to taste

My next two recipes came from the Samoan blog Panipopo's Kitchen. I don't know if I've spent much time on the subject of how I find most of my recipes, but when the information is available I prefer to source websites written by and for nationals, rather than big recipe sites that repost recipes from many different countries. A lot of the recipes on those sites probably are authentic, but there's no real way of knowing which ones have been altered and which ones are traditional. I figure the best way to make sure I get close to an authentic experience is to find a recipe posted by someone who comes from that country. So Panipopo's Kitchen was like a small goldmine.

Here is the second recipe:

Keke pua’a

For the filling:

2 small pork chops, minced
1/2 one onion
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp soy sauce

For the dough:

1 tbsp yeast
2 tbsp warm water
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 cup milk
2 tbsp melted butter
2 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 large eggs, room temperature
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

And for dessert:

Paifala (Half-Moon Pies)

For the filling:

2 cups drained crushed pineapple
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup cornstarch
1/3 cup reserved juice from crushed pineapple

For the piecrust:

3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup butter
1 cup coconut milk
pinch salt

The 'oka popo is easy, so let's start there. First I want to clarify something important, though. If you are going to make this dish, it is very important for you to use a sushi-grade fish. If you are in a metropolitan area the best place to go for this is a Japanese market. You could also go to a fishmonger, but make sure whatever you buy is "sushi-grade." you can't use anything previously frozen or even a little less than fresh. If you can't find sushi-grade fish, don't make 'oka popo.

As you can see, the original recipe called for a firm, white-flesh fish like marlin or swordfish. We do have a fishmonger here but for inexplicable reasons, they are closed on Mondays (just like everything else in this town) and this fish really needed to be bought same-day. So I had to go down to our co-op instead, where they do carry a sushi-grade tuna. Not exactly on-recipe, but safe to eat.

Since there is no cooking involved in this recipe, it's pretty simple to prepare. The first thing you need to do is make a brine with salt and pepper. Brines are typically made with one part salt to 16 parts water (because it was only me and Martin eating this dish I used just eight ounces of fish, so I did a brine with one tbsp salt and one cup of water, with a few twists from my pepper mill). I cut the fish into very small pieces (probably half an inch instead of the called-for 1-inch cubes) and soaked them in the brine for 30 minutes. You could do as much as 45 but go over that and your fish may be too salty.

Put your fish in a simple salt and pepper brine for 30 minutes.

While the fish is in the brine, chop the vegetables.

Vegetables, ready to go.

At the end of the brining, drain the fish and add the coconut milk and the chopped vegetables. You could also add half a finely chopped jalapeño, if you like it spicy. Add the cilantro and the lime juice. Now put it back in the fridge--it's traditionally served cold.

Yes, that's right. You put the lime in the coconut.

I can't really say this with authority but Samoan food seems to have some measure of Chinese influence, at least that's what I'm getting from this next recipe (as well as a few others I saw during my research). Keke pua'a is a Samoan style bao, which I have eaten a few times in one of our local Chinese places. It's made with a yeast dough and baked in a steamer.

Now if you've been following this blog you know that I never make any bread by hand if I can use my bread machine instead. I have way too many kids for kneading. So I proofed the yeast with the water and first measure of sugar, as instructed, then I dumped it and the rest of the ingredients into my bread machine.

To proof the yeast, just add it to warm water with the first measure of sugar.

For entirely uneducated reasons I set the machine to "pizza," then let the dough rise a extra 30 minutes after the end of the cycle. It was huge and sank quite a bit when I took it out. It was also really, really sticky so when you are ready to handle it be sure and use a floured surface.

This dough stuck to my cutting board. Be sure to use a floured surface.

Meanwhile, make the filling. According to Panipopo, a traditional Samoan filling is typically made with pork, onions and garlic, and seasoned with soy sauce. Without exact measurements I just had to wing it, but I do think what I did worked, though it may have been a little dry. If you trust me, do as I did:

Mince the pork and sauté in a little olive oil with the onions. Add the garlic and soy sauce towards the end of cooking. Set aside and let cool.

Mine seemed a little too dry, though I don't know what the traditional filling looks like.

Back to the dough: punch down, or if you have my problem, just watch the dough fall as you take it out of the bread machine. Now divide the dough into eight pieces and press each one down with the palm of your hand.

They flatten easily with the palm of your hand.

Spoon a little bit of the filling into the center of each circle, then pull up the edges of the dough and twist to seal. Make sure the filling is completely contained by the dough. Repeat until you have eight little packets.

Aren't they pretty?

At this point, Panipopo says to let the dough rise for another 45 minutes, but it was almost 9pm and my husband was starving. So I only let them sit for another 15 or so.

You can bake these keke pau'a in the oven, but that's not the traditional way to do it. Traditionally, you put them in a three tiered bamboo steamer. Now I don't have one of those any more than I have a tagine (ala Armenia), but I do have my trusty, old-fashioned electric vegetable steamer, so I thought I'd give that a try. I guess I could have gone with the oven, but I was really intrigued by the idea that bread can be baked in a steamer. So in they went, and 15 minutes later this is what they looked like:

I did not expect them to get this puffy.

They puffed up a tad more than I was expecting. In fact they were all so fused together that I ended up not taking any of the ubiquitous "finished meal on the plate" photos, because they looked pretty sorry by the time I pried them all apart.

Now on to the dessert. I was smart and did most of it while my kids were at school (and for some reason it still took ages to finish making the whole meal). The recipe is a lot like making a calzone, if you have ever done that.

First make the filling, so it will have plenty of time to cool. To do that, just empty the pineapple, sugar and milk into a saucepan and heat until simmering. Be careful not to boil or the milk will curdle.

Now mix the cornstarch with the reserved pineapple juice until it is smooth, and add to the pineapple. Stir until the mixture thickens, then remove from the heat.

Pineapple filling, made with milk, sugar and cornstarch.

Now put all of the dough ingredients into a bowl and blend until a dough forms. Divide the dough into five parts, then roll each part into an 8-inch circle.

Divide dough into five parts, then roll each ball out flat.

If the filling has cooled, spread some onto one half of each circle. Fold the other half over the top, stopping about a quarter inch from the edge. Fold the bottom quarter inch over the top edge, then crimp with a fork. Repeat until you've finished all of your pies. Prick a couple of holes in the top and put into a 375 degree oven for 30 to 35 minutes. The recipe didn't call for an egg wash, but you could do that if you want a more golden color on your finished pies.

Spread the filling over one half of the circle ...

... then fold over, leaving an edge on the bottom.

Fold the edge over to make a tight seal.

Now, I had a lot of filling left over. I don't know if this was because I rolled the dough too thick or if I was way too conservative with the filling, but the pies came out pretty close to perfect, at least I thought so.

Finished pies, yum!

Here's how dinner went:

As a mentioned earlier, I started this meal with the 'oka popo. I served it chilled in small bowls, and Martin and I each got about 4 oz of tuna. The first few bites were delicious, heavenly even. But I have to admit--and I am someone who has tried all manner of sushi, from octopus to head-on-shrimp to smelly mackerel--that even with the small pieces and the conservative portions it was a little too much raw fish. Sushi is easy to eat because it has a lot of filler in it (rice), in addition to the fish, but this was basically just raw fish and vegetables. Very flavorful, but overwhelming. I'm glad I served it as an appetizer, and if I had it to do again I might actually do even smaller portions. (Note: the leftovers were really good the next day heated up in the microwave).

The keke pua'a were our second course, and they were really good. The bread was amazingly fluffy--I did not expect those kinds of results from steamed bread. The filling could have been a little more flavorful--I wish I'd added another spice to it, or something to make it a little less dry, though I don't really know what. But the whole dish had a really wonderful texture that Martin and I both enjoyed.

We ate the half-moon pies for dessert. Martin complained that there wasn't enough coconut flavor, and thought maybe a little coconut extract would have helped. I pointed out that I was going for traditional Samoa, not traditional Samoa altered to please Martin's British palette. But this recipe was good enough that I will probably make it again off-blog, so I hope the Samoans will forgive me for adding a little extra coconut.

We had plenty of leftovers, too, which I decided to hide from the kids. Haha!

Next week: Andorra.

Recipes from Algeria

2011-09-29T11:46:00.000-07:00

Once again, I have bitten off way more than I can chew on this little culinary adventure. None of the recipes I chose this week were particularly difficult, but trying to bring them all together was certainly a challenge.

First the usual background stuff:

Algeria. A country in North Africa, in the same vicinity as Libya and Morocco. Algeria isn't really on the international radar, so it may surprise you to hear that--geographically speaking--it is the largest country in Africa as well as the 10th largest country in the world.

There are 36.3 million people in Algeria, so recipes aren't hard to find. In fact, Algeria has its own celebrity chef: Farid Zadi, who is kind of like the Gordon Ramsay of North Africa. Zadi has a website, which you can visit here: http://www.chefzadi.com. Unfortunately, his website is far less impressive than his cooking skills apparently are--I poked around on it for about 20 minutes without finding a single recipe, despite links with titles like "Algerian Cookbook" and "Tagine Recipes." I don't doubt that Chef Zadi has many skills, but web design ain't one of them.

I have way too many kids to waste more than 20 minutes on any pointless endeavor, but I did think that at least one of my Algerian recipes should come from Algeria's most famous chef. The one thing I did discover is that Zadi had a few recipes printed in some of the big food magazines, so I went to epicurious.com and did a search for his name. Viola! I hit on my first recipe: Chicken Tagine with Apricots and Spiced Pine Nuts. Here are the ingredients:

For the tagine

1 whole chicken (I used a grill pack)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
3 large shallots, finely chopped
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 tablespoon peeled, grated ginger
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon sweet paprika (I used Hungarian, don't substitute regular paprika)
Pinch of saffron threads (optional)
1 cup water
2 tablespoons blood-orange preserves or bitter-orange marmalade
1 (2-inch) cinnamon stick
1 thyme sprig
2 cilantro sprigs
6 dried apricots, chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped cilantro or flat-leaf parsley

For the spiced pine nuts

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon sweet paprika
Pinch of cayenne (optional)

Two separate bits of information I gleaned during my search were these: 1) Algerians hardly ever eat a meal without bread and 2) couscous is the national dish of Algeria. So my next dish is an Algerian flatbread, or kisra:

2 cups semolina flour
1 tbsp salt
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup water

(Please note that this is not the recipe I used, for reasons which will become clear to you later in this entry).

And the third is a vegetable couscous, made with chicken broth:

2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
8 oz mushrooms, sliced
1 grated carrot
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander seeds
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 cup raisins
1 1/4 cups of chicken stock
1 cup couscous

I began this rather ill-conceived ordeal at about 3:30 in the afternoon, thinking that would give me plenty of time to finish three dishes, clean everything up, mediate disputes between warring tribal factions and maybe do a load of laundry. All by 5:30 pm, which is when I usually like to have dinner on the table. All I can say about that now is "ha!" and also "hahaha!"
So, starting with the tagine, here are my disclaimers:

A tagine, if you haven't heard of such a thing, is a dish named for the pot it is cooked in. The tagine pot, in turn, is an earthenware unit with a base that holds the food and a top shaped a little like a chimney. The pot is designed to return condensation to the food, which results in a very moist dish.

Now, if you are cooking Algeria and you want to be super-authentic, you can pick up a tagine on Amazon.com for about 60 bucks. I, as you know, am not that devoted. I would rather just admit that my dish is not 100% authentic and move on from there, rather than spend the equivalent of three boxes of diapers on something I'm not likely to cook with more than occasionally.

In my defense, Zadi doesn't say in his recipe that you should use a tagine, though I bet he's thinking it. Anyway, his dish starts simply enough, with the ritual browning of the chicken.

Zadi calls for a whole chicken, which you cut up yourself. Personally, I have a grocery store that does that for me so I never bothered to learn how to cut up a chicken. That just sounds like way too much work. Way too much gross work. So I just used a grill pack, which contains two breasts and four leg joints, since I have three kids who will gladly box each other for two drumsticks.

So first brown the chicken in olive oil, then transfer it to a plate and keep it warm.

Browned chicken, waiting for the next step.

Next, finely chop the shallots.

Shallots, the onion that wants to be garlic.


Finely chopped shallots.

Zadi says to then melt the butter and sauté the shallots in a separate pan, but I didn't see the point of having to wash up another pan, so I just poured off some of the oil and melted the butter in the same pan, deglazing as I stirred.

Sauteing the shallots.

When the shallots are soft (in about 8 to 10 minutes), add the garlic, ginger, turmeric and paprika. Continue to stir for two to three minutes, then return the chicken to the pot, making sure the shallot mixture coats the front and back of each piece.

Coat each piece of chicken with the shallots.

Add the water and a half teaspoon of salt. If you are fabulously wealthy and can afford to buy like three strands of safforn for 15 or 20 bucks, here's where you add it (you can probably guess that I left it out). Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer and cover. Simmer for 30 minutes. Now is a good time to move on to the bread.

This version of kisra is made with semolina flour, though Zadi does have a version on Epicurious that is made with all-purpose, in case you can't find semolina. I live in hodunk nowhere and I was able to find this bag of semolina in the baking section of my local grocery store, so I don't think it's too tough to find.

Semolina is often used to make pasta.

Now here's where disaster set in. The recipe I used (as opposed to the one copied above) called for 3/4 cup of oil. Then on top of that, it called for a whole cup of water, which was just craziness. I faithfully and stupidly tried to follow the recipe. I got about a half cup of water into the mix and realized there was no way it was ever going to become a "soft, pliable dough" so I quit and hoped for the best.

This is going to become bread? I'm feeling skeptical.

Next, flatten the bread out and put it in a frying pan--this bread bakes over a flame instead of in the oven.Yours should look a lot less oily than this one. Heat over a medium flame until golden on the bottom. Because mine was so oily, it took a while to get to that point.

My kisra. Sad.

Now back to the chicken. Take the lid off your pot, then turn the chicken pieces over. Add the marmalade (unless you actually managed to find blood orange preserves), the chopped apricots, and the cinnamon stick, thyme and cilantro sprigs. Cover the pot again and simmer for another 10 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, move on to the pine nuts. This part is easy. Just heat a small amount of oil in a little pot, then add the pine nuts, turmeric, paprika, and cayenne. It will only take one or two minutes for the nuts to start to brown, so watch carefully. You don't want to burn them. When they're done, transfer to a small plate or bowl.

Browning the pine nuts.

Here's where I went back to my bread. I could see that turning it over was going to be a problem, based on the way it tried to fall apart when I lifted the edge to see how well it was cooking. I tried to slide it onto a plate, then flip it quickly back into the pan. Here's what happened:

Oh, the horror!

Yes, my kisra exploded. Fortunately I had a second ball ready to go in my bowl. I tried to save it by adding more semolina (a lot more) and some all purpose flour, hoping it would stay together. While this one was cooking, I started on the couscous. In retrospect, I should have started on the couscous during the chicken's 30 minute cooking interval, because none of these dishes were ready at the same time.

So for the couscous, slice the mushrooms, chop the onions and grate the carrots (I prefer grated carrots, you could also chop them). Heat the oil in a large pain and saute until the vegetables soften.

Saute the vegetables.

Next add the spices, the couscous, the lemon zest and the raisins. Stir until everything is well incorporated, then add the stock and the lemon juice. Simmer for three minutes, then cover and remove from the heat source. Let stand for five minutes.

Oh couscous, how I do love you.

Your chicken should be just about ready. To finish, take the chicken pieces out of the pan and keep them someplace warm. The sauce at the bottom of the pan will probably still be quite thin, so crank up the heat and cook at a rolling boil until it has reduced to a thick sauce.

Reducing the sauce.

When the sauce is nice and thick, take it off the heat. Transfer the chicken to plates and pour the sauce over, then sprinkle with the pine nuts.

Oh my gosh, does this look heavenly or what?

Yes, there is the kisra, or the substance that is pretending to be kisra. Please let me know if you had better luck with the recipe I ended up posting. Actually my version didn't taste too bad, Martin described it as "a big piece of shortcrust pastry." I thought it was a little bit like that, with a cornbread like texture. It did taste pretty good.

The chicken and the couscous stole the show, though. Both were seriously yummy. I mean really, really yummy. If I lived in Algeria, I would be fat. This was good food.

My kids stayed away from the sauce (they are insane) but they enjoyed the chicken, and Hailey ate more of the bread than anyone. No one under then age of seven went anywhere near the couscous ("Ew! Mushrooms!") Oh well, more for me.

Next week: American Samoa.

Recipes from Albania

2011-09-23T11:17:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday morning of last week I woke up with a cold, which had me wiped out by Sunday ... the same day we'd planned our last summer family outing to the lake. I was recovering a bit by Monday but two days later I was supposed to show up at our school, ready to help on an overnight camping trip with 70+ five and six year olds. So time was not on my side this week.

In addition to packing a boat and packing my car for the camping trip, I had to come up with three recipes from Albania. So I confess, I didn't put a whole lot of effort into it. Remember the Chicken in Peanut Sauce from Abkhazia? This week I'm doing something pretty similar: Chicken in Walnut Sauce. Why? Because it was either that or meatballs, which featured in my Afghanistan post. And frankly, I just couldn't be bothered to do any intensive research this week.

So here we go:

Albania is a country in the Balkands region of Southeastern Europe. There are roughly 3,000,000 people living there, but by European standards it is actually one of the poorer nations in the region. Its main industry is agriculture, with major crops including wheat, corn, tobacco, figs and olives.

Albania: a tiny country in southeastern Europe.

Albanian cuisine is influenced greatly by the various countries that have occupied it throughout its history, including Greece and Italy. The main meal of the day is lunch, which I will not be replicating in my little experiment since no one in my family except me and Henry is home at lunch time.

When choosing recipes, I went with what seemed to be the most commonly posted Albanian dishes, Internet-wise. Really this was just because I was tired, sick and much busier than a tired and sick person ought to be.

Recipe the first:

Gjellë me Arra
Chicken with Walnuts

2 tablespoons flour
Two dozen or so shelled walnuts, crushed to a powder
2 egg yolks, beaten
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 stick of butter
6 chicken breasts
1/2 cup chicken stock, more if needed

You can also do this with veal. I stay away from veal, personally, because I can't stand the thought of those baby cows in crates (shudder).

My second dish:

Byrek ose Lakror
Vegetable Pie

For the dough:

5 cups flour
1-1/2 t. salt
2 cups lukewarm water
1/2 lb. butter or melted margarine

For the filling:

2 small leeks
1 lb cottage cheese
2 oz feta cheese
3 eggs
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup yogurt
1 tbsp melted butter

And for dessert:

Date Cookies

For the cookies:

1 cup oil
1/2 cup orange juice
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp sugar
3 cups flour
1/2 cup ground walnuts

For the syrup:

1 cup sugar
2 cups water
1/2 tsp lemon juice

Sounds pretty ambitious for someone with a cold and two trips to pack for doesn't it? Well, let's start with the vegetable pie.

The recipe says to mix the flour, salt and water together and knead for five minutes. Let sit for 10 minutes, then divide in half. Roll out one half until thin and then butter. Fold the sides toward the center, then butter again. Fold the dough in half lengthwise, then butter again. Keep going until you want to kill yourself. Then butter the top and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 15 minutes. Repeat with second ball of dough.

Grease a standard sized pie-pan. After 15 minutes in the fridge, bring the dough out and roll it until it is the size of the pan. Lay it on the bottom, leaving about a half inch hanging over the edges. Now you are ready to make the filling.

Now, about the time I was reading all of this in the recipe instructions, my children were pummeling each other with their stuffed animals (this is why I've never purchased any baseball bats or hobby horses for these kids). So I did not do any of this. Instead I bought a package of frozen phyllo dough. To be fair, I did see variations of this recipe online that also called for phyllo dough, so I don't think it was too much of a cheat not to do it the way this particular recipe instructed. Although in retrospect I think I should have used puff pastry (another alternative I found in a different variation of the same recipe). The phyllo dough I used was really dry and papery and hard to work with--though I admit to not having a whole lot of experience with the stuff, so I don't know if that's normal for phyllo dough.

The filling was comparatively easy to make, since you don't have to cook anything before mixing it all together.

Leeks are a funny vegetable, just in case you aren't familiar with them. They are kind of like a giant green onion, and they are always dirty. Really dirty, usually full of grit and mud. So make sure you wash them really well. Sometimes I wash them, then slice them, then put them in a colander and agitate them for a few minutes just to make sure I get all the dirt out.

For this recipe, the leeks should be pretty thinly sliced, since they aren't cooked before they are added to the filling. And only use the white and light green parts of a leek--the dark green parts are inedible.

Thinly sliced leeks. Mostly.

In a large bowl, mix the cottage cheese, feta cheese, eggs, salt, yogurt and melted butter. Then add the leeks and mix until everything is well incorporated.

If you scratch-made your dough, just pour the filling into it. Roll out the other piece of dough and top the pie with it. Crimp the edges or just roll the top up with the dough on the bottom. Brush with butter.

I used phyllo dough, as I mentioned, following the instructions from a different version of this recipe, which advised me to lay down two sheets, brush with olive oil, then repeat with another two sheets until about half the package is gone. Here's what the bottom of my pie looked like:

Lovely.

After I had this elegant presentation complete (haha) I poured the filling in and topped it with the second half of the package, laid down in the same way (two sheets, brush with oil, two sheets, brush with oil). My recipe also advised me to roll the edges of the dough together, but the suggestion was laughable. The dough was so dry and papery there was no way I was going to get it to stick together, so I just trimmed it off with a pair of scissors and sprayed olive oil around the edges in the hope it would help seal the dough. In my defense, I knew in advance that this probably wouldn't work.

Yes, this really was as ridiculous as it looks.

When assembled, the pie goes into a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes.

The next dish on my list was the chicken with walnuts. This is actually a pretty easy recipe that just starts with cooking the chicken breasts in olive oil.

Can't get any easier than this ...

Meanwhile, gather the flour, walnuts, egg yolks, garlic, butter and chicken stock. You'll have to act fast when you are ready to bring the sauce together.

Sauce ingredients, ready to go.

When the chicken is done (I use a meat thermometer to make sure), take it out of the pan and add the flour. Keep stirring until brown (don't overcook!), then add half of the butter, garlic, walnuts and egg yolks. Continue to stir--you don't want the yolks to solidify.

Now if your recipe turns out like mine did, you will end up with a kind of lump of walnuts. Although the original recipe did not call for chicken stock, I found I had to add some just to get it to a sauce-like consistency. Just use as much as it takes to make the sauce smooth ... more if you like a watery sauce. When it's ready, remove from the heat and add the chicken, stirring to coat.

Chicken in walnut sauce. (Hailey just looked over my shoulder and said "Ew!!")

The recipe then says to melt the rest of the butter and pour it over the chicken to serve. I decided not to do this, since we don't really need any more fat in our diet.

My pie was ready at just about the time I finished the chicken. I attribute this to my impeccable sense of culinary timing (not really, it was just a very unusual coincidence). Here's what it looked like:

Albanian leek pie, gone terribly wrong.

I actually peeled a few layers of phyllo off of the pie and gave them to my kids, who are very fond of "paste-a-wee." It improved the appearance at least a little. Here's what it looked like when I sliced it:

Despite its origins, this pie was actually pretty good.

Here's the entire meal. My kids actually tried everything, because of the promise of dessert. Predictably, the pie did not go over well (though they picked off the phyllo dough and ate that). They did like the chicken, surprisingly. I don't think any of them left the chicken.


Albanian leek pie and chicken with walnuts.

But the best part was the cookies.

I was smart this time, and I baked the cookies in the morning, while the kids were at school. I was really looking forward to trying these because the recipe is unusual compared to American cookies, which are usually full of sugar and butter. This recipe calls for a comparatively small amount of sugar and some orange juice, which is sweet-ish but not usually used to sweeten cookies. Additionally, the fat comes from vegetable oil instead of butter.

First three ingredients: oil, vanilla extract and orange juice.

First put the orange juice, oil and vanilla extract into a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients, then add to the orange juice mixture until a soft dough forms.

Break off pieces of the dough and roll into 1 1/2 inch balls. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet, and press one date into the center of each cookie.

Ready to bake!

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool.

Here's where the recipe gets a bit tricky. After the cookies have cooled, spread the crushed walnuts out on a plate. Mix together the water, sugar and lemon juice in a small saucepan and bring just to a boil over the stove. Dip each cookie into the syrup, then press into the walnuts. (Note: the recipe told me to press the tops of the cookies into the walnuts, but I thought it would be prettier if the walnuts were on the bottom.) Repeat until all the cookies are done.

As predicted, this is not a sweet cookie. The syrup also makes it super crumbly and soft, but yum! These cookies are really delicious, and the date adds enough sweetness to make up for what the dough lacks in sugar. This was definitely my favorite part of my culinary trip to Albania! My kids, however, were pretty lukewarm about them. Not enough chocolate, I guess.

Yum!

Next week: Algeria.