The boys' first choices were Iran (Gavin's) and Hawaii (Rory's) (not really a country, but having lived there, I know it is its own country in its own right). While Hawaii I knew something about, Iran was going to be a whole new world! All right kids, here goes nothing....!
February 12, 2014: I found a recipe for Persian Basmati Rice Pilaf (Persia is also known as Iran), to which I added chicken, so as to satisfy my meat-lubber husband and add some protein.
http://www.food.com/recipe/persian-style-basmati-rice-pilaf-169862
I thought that it turned out quite well - yummy! My husband didn't complain or rave, but he ate it. The boys picked out the chicken and ate some rice. They love raisins, but cooked apparently does not sit well with them :( Overall, nobody gagged or spit it out. This is considered success when raising two young children! I also found a book at the library on Iran and I enjoyed reading it to the boys and letting them learn more about the country they picked, what life it like there, what the landscape looks like, their clothes, etc.
February 14, 2014: Next up Hawaii. Well, Hawaii is exciting to everyone, even my 6 year old has figured out it is a popular vacation destination and wants to know when we're taking him! For Hawaii night, we decided on Kalua Pork. Here's a before shot. I was too busy eating and forgot to get the after shot!
http://allrecipes.com/Membership/Signup.aspx?ect=8&lnkid=ret420
My husband loves to get this at our local Hawaiian eatery and I know from living there for a while that it is a traditional dish. I made sticky white rice to go with it. I did, unfortunately, forget pineapple :( A friend asked if I'd included it - maybe next time! The boys pretty well liked this dish. They are good meat eaters. However, my 3 year old's comment about the rice was hilarious - "I don't like this rice because it's white!" I had to laugh - he is use to the black, red and white rice blend I normally serve! PS: Couldn't find a book on Hawaii at the library, though! Ha, ha. I'm sure I just needed to delve a bit more, but that's hard to do with two young kids at the library. The internet is a great alternative :)
February 20, 2014: So, my friend, Lynn, is from South Africa and she told me if the boys ever picked South Africa to let her know. Well, the second week, Gavin picked Angola, which is not South Africa, but is still southern Africa. So, I asked for Lynn's input and she recommended Pap and Sous, served with a brat. Lynn let me know that Pap (or Phutu, pronounced poo-too) and Sous (a tomato based sauce) variations are common throughout Africa and that maize meal (the phutu) is an African staple. Lynn said she uses corn masa as a substitute for maize meal, as it is easier to find in America. This is the corn masa she recommended and I used: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B004VLVJ9U?cache=25aec896f9d43c5f6e311103bb857327#ref=mp_s_a_1_1&qid=1392688426&sr=8-1 .
Here is the recipe Lynn sent me that we used:
http://www.mirimoo.com/2012/10/05/the-perfect-pap-n-sous-phutu-pap-sheba-recipe/
February 23, 2014: Rory chose Greenland for our next country. Well, I was a little anxious about this one, especially when I read that reindeer and polar bear have been traditional fare in Greenland... hmmm, well, decided I couldn't do that to my kids. Plus, as my friend Lynn pointed out, polar bear are endangered! My boys are much better than I was about eating seafood as a kid, and seafood was pretty much the only other traditional fare in Greenland! So, I found a website called A Taste of Greenland and a recipe for Baked Cod with Potato Leek Soup. It sounded blah, but I decided to go for it. Surprise! It was actually very good!! My boys did eat the cod, but only a bite of soup :( The only version of potato they'll eat is french fries, and really they don't even eat much of those. One thing I loved about this recipe was using ingredients I have hardly, if ever used, like leeks and shallots. I know these aren't very unusual, but I just don't use them much. Discovering new foods or ones I don't regularly use has been another surprisingly fun aspect of this journey. I also subbed canola oil for the grapeseed oil when I discovered it was $8 for a bottle - thank you Google Search and iPhone for finding me a substitute right there in the grocery store aisle! Plus, I already had canola oil at home - score! I also totally screwed up blanching the chives and forgot to mix them with oil, too. So, I chopped up some new, unbalanced chives and just threw them on top. Here is the recipe I used:
http://atasteofgreenland.com/blog/baked-cod-in-potato-leak-soup/
February 28, 2014: Gavin's pick this week was Canada! At first, I thought, great, Canada! That should be easy - we live only a few hours south of Canada, been to B.C. multiple times... then I realized that the only thing I know about Canadian food is Canadian bacon and Cadbury chocolates, which are really more British than Canadian! Had I ever even had traditional Canadian food during my visits across the border? The two main dishes I found and debated between were poutine (french fries, with gravy and cheese curds on top) or a donair (made famous in Nova Scotia). The kids would probably eat the poutine, separated by ingredient (though I thought - and have heard - it's delicious). I decided to go with the Donair, thinking I'd have less heartache at dinner. Yes, I know, suppose to be widening my kids' tastebuds, but sometimes I just prefer less stress, and knew I'd have better luck with the donair! The donair is basically a meat sandwich with a sweet sauce inside a pita. The meat is formed somewhat like a meatloaf and sliced. Though the recipe did not call for red bell pepper, the picture showed what appeared to be pepper slices. I did not have any pepper, but added some spinach for a little bit of veggies in mine. I don't think I ended up with the right type of pita - mine were pretty thin and not very soft, which I think is the better choice having looked at more pictures online now. The boys loved the meat (they are total men - they love meat!), but wouldn't try the sauce no matter how hard I tried to convince them - it was basically straight sugar! Silly boys! I was happy with the outcome and would be up for trying it again. My friend Steph's husband is from Toronto, I believe, and she said she has had them many times and that they are very popular in eastern Canada. Oh, Canada! Thank you for a fun meal! Here is the recipe I used:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/the-original-donair-from-the-east-coast-of-canada/
The picture is pretty bad, but it is what it is!
Rory's next pick of the week was Sweden. As usual, I perused the internet for traditional Swedish food and ultimately did decide on... yes, you guessed it, Swedish Meatballs! Apparently, these are truly a traditional food in Sweden and can vary by household in their recipe. The recipe I used was from a Swedish website:
http://sweden.se/culture/classic-swedish-food-meatballs/
We served them with boiled potatoes and some lingonberries (found jarred in the international section of our grocery store). My husband's best friend, Bjorn, is originally from Sweden and is my older son's godfather. Rory immediately asked upon picking Sweden if we could have Bjorn and his family over for dinner and if we could have Swedish Fish for dessert :) Not sure if Swedish Fish were actually Swedish or not... so, I had to do some internet researching and found that, in fact, they are Swedish! They were first manufactured by a Swedish company, Malaco, and became available in the US in the 1950's when Malaco was looking to increase their business to North America. A manufacturer by the name of Cadbury Adams now owns and distributes Swedish Fish in America, but Malaco still makes them in Sweden. However, in Sweden they are called "pastellfiskar" ("pale-colored fishes"). My Swedish Fish history was found here: http://mentalfloss.com/article/23125/brief-history-swedish-fish.
I did not learn this info on Swedish Fish until after we ate our Swedish Meal, so I will have to include it as dessert at our next Swedish meal! Hopefully Bjorn and his family can join us then, as they weren't available the week we had our Swedish Meatballs. Instead of Swedish Fish for dessert, we actually had the Swedish ginger cookies called Anna's. They are so yummy. I use to eat them growing up.
The meatballs turned out so-so. The taste was good, but the texture was weird. The recipe called for putting the meat through a food processor, which I don't have. So, I started to do this in batches in my Magic Bullet mixer, but it was turning the meat really soft and mushy. I stopped after the first batch and mixed it back in with the not "processed" meat. It was hard to shape the balls, but I managed to do so. If I make this again, I won't put the meat through a processor, or I will try it once I have a real food processor. My husband and my kids both enjoyed the meal, so maybe I'm just being too hard on myself!
Here's how it turned out:
Next up was Gavin's pick, the largest country in the world, Russia! It was fun to remind them that the Winter Olympics had just been held there and what the Olympics is all about. I made pork Shashlik, which is a traditional Russian shishkabob. They required grilling and my husband, the grill master, ended up having to go out before dinner. So, I asked him to heat up the grill for me (I'm NOT the grill master). I did do the grilling that night, though, and my oldest was very impressed by this and told me I did a good job. I worried whether the pork was cooked all the way even though the thermometer said they were, so I gave them an extra "nuke" in the microwave, too. Pork always makes me nervous, but I Googled yet again and confirmed a little bit of pink in pork is ok :-/ Maybe all that worrying made me think they were not the best, but my kids ate it up and my husband raved about the leftovers (and it is near impossible to get him to eat leftovers!). So, I guess they must have been ok :) Of course, these were probably the coolest looking recipe so far - all kabobed and all - but I forgot to get a picture :(
Rory's next pick wasn't very far from his last, which was Sweden. This time, he picked neighboring Finland. The food in Sweden and Finland seemed pretty similar from my research and I suppose that would make sense. For Finland, we chose Smoked Salmon and Karjalan Pies, which are savory, rice porridge filled pastries. They took A LOT of work, though I enjoyed the process. The taste was so-so. No idea if I got it right? The recipe I used had great reviews including raves for being traditional. It did say you could serve the with ham or with butter, which I didn't do. So, maybe next time. None of my boys/men were too crazy about them, so I ate a lot of leftovers :( Oh well! The smoked salmon I cheated on - I bought it from one of our favorite spots, Larry's Smokehouse :) The salmon was delicious, as always, and the boys are good about eating salmon - they actually seem to enjoy it!
Here's the recipe for karjalan pies: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/karjalan-pies/
And, a link to Larry's website: http://www.larryssmokehouse.com/
Here's how our dinner turned out:
New Zealand was Gavin's next pick. That sounded exciting - somewhere I'd love to go and even the kids like the idea of somewhere warm and sunny with beaches to play on. I figured New Zealand would be a seafood kind of night and it was. We decided on fish and chips. I'm sure this is a Bristish colonization influence, but I want the boys to experience more of what a traditional meal is today in the countries we're picking. So, if they went there today, what they would find on a typical menu, not what they would find hundreds of years ago. So, I've been saying traditional, but maybe that's not the right word... modern traditional? Maybe. Well, in this case, from what I read, fish and chips are quite popular (maybe popular's the word) in New Zealand. I hardly ever deep fry anything and do not own a deep fryer. Once, years ago, I was frying something in a skillet with a bunch of oil and caught the oil on fire - very scary moment! So, I was anxious about frying the fish, but I managed to do it sans a fire - yeah! They actually turned out SO yummy. I was very pleased with myself :) My husband loved them and the boys ate them, too ("loved" would be admitting too much for them!). I took the easy out on the chips (heck, I might never get the food on the table if I did it all from scratch!), so I made frozen fries. I really don't care for frozen fries because they always seem to go limp, and this time was no exception. Anyone want a half used bag of frozen french fries?? Our other side to this meal was kiwi. I learned something I didn't know about kiwi - it has been a commercial crop in New Zealand for almost 80 years (though it is native to China). Another fact we also learned - New Zealanders are called Kiwis, but not after the fruit - rather after a flightless bird, native to New Zealand, called the Kiwi. My husband and I use to eat kiwi all the time. I think we had it at some point and our oldest refused to eat it and I guess it had been a while since I'd bought it. Well, my oldest loved it this time and ate a whole kiwi to himself! He also told us that they sell it at the cafeteria at school and now he eats it there! Yeah! Score at least 1 point for this eating adventure! Ha, ha. We all also enjoyed looking at gorgeous pictures of New Zealand on the internet. I hope I make it there one day! Here is the recipe we used and a picture of our results:
http://tvnz.co.nz/masterchef-new-zealand/beer-battered-fish-and-chips-3416488
Rory picked China for his choice this week. I was excited for this - a fare we know in America, right? But, then I thought, well, is the Chinese food we eat in America really what they eat in China? So, I did some research online and from what I found, Chinese restaurants in America have altered their dishes to a more American palate. However, some similarities do exist or are traditional. I went looking for a dish that we would find in China (maybe) and this is the one we chose, Beef Chow Fun:
http://chinesefood.about.com/od/beef/r/beefchowfun.htm
I picked it because it sounded, well, fun, and I hoped that the name might encourage my children! It also sounded yummy. Whether it is truly eaten in China - I've never been there, but the internet says it is ;) I had to buy a lot of ingredients I don't typically use like black bean sauce and oyster sauce, so I will need to make a point of making this again and/or finding other dishes to use them in! Well, our beef chow fun turned out to be delicious - my husband raved about it and the boys enjoyed it, too. I did add carrots and broccoli to add more vegetables, but did include the baby corn it called for, as well. The carrots and American broccoli may not be traditional, but I did read that real Chinese food has more vegetables than American Chinese food. So, maybe I did make it more authentic :) It was definitely a repeat, that is for sure!
So, Gavin picked Iceland for his next country. I hope you like fish, kid! I was a little lazy and cheap about this one and chose based on what we had in the freezer - salmon! I read that salmon is found in Iceland rivers, so that's what we went with. However, the only salmon recipe I found that wasn't for cold salmon, which I blatantly admit I didn't want or feel like trying (lazy mommy day!), was this one, Icelandic Salmon:
http://www.food.com/recipe/icelandic-salmon-grill-234748
I could not find any proof that this was Icelandic in any way other than the name it was given :) But, there is salmon in Iceland and we went with it. Not my best effort, I am willing to admit. I prefer to get a recipe from a website from that country or based on someone's appraisal that it was just like their grandma use to make in the old country. This did not past either of these tests... oh well... it tasted really good, so I'm cool with that. We had also told the boys about the story that the Vikings named Greenland its name in order to attract more explorers or immigrants to Greenland over Iceland, which the Vikings wished to keep to themselves. We both were sure we remembered learning this in school, but was it true? I looked it up and there is believed to be some truth to it. Iceland lesson of the week :)
April 3, 2014
Today we are making Chicken Bryani Potjie, potjiekos are popular stews in Namibia, a Southern African country and Rory's pick this week.
http://www.shonaskitchen.co.za/recipes-CHICKEN-BRYANI-POTJIE-823.html
Potjiekos are typically cooked in a 3-legged pot over an open fire. I'm thinking we made need to try this again this summer in our fire pit! For today, I'm doing it in a large pot on the stove. The process for cooking this recipe is pretty time consuming, so I had to start it early this morning in order to have time to eat it before our first baseball practice of the year! I thought I could quickly put together the marinade before I had to leave for preschool (my working day, too, so I needed to be on time). I hit a snag, though, when I realized the recipe was not calling for marsala wine, as I'd first thought, but red masala (no "r"). Oh no, what is that, I thought, looking at the clock. Praying I could make it somehow from ingredients at home, I quickly Googled it (secretly hoping it really was marsala wine - it was not!). I did find a recipe
(http://k--ravings.blogspot.com/2011/06/red-masala.html) and I basically had what it took to make it - I did not have the pastes listed, but had the spices. I did not have time for calculating measurements and knew I didn't need as much as it called for, so I quickly gaged what smaller proportions would be and went for it. It smelled good and made just enough for 2 tsp (10 ml by the way - why can't America get on the metric system like the rest of the world? Oh well, I am learning a lot! Thank goodness for Google measurement converters!). I threw in the red masala concoction with the rest of the marinade ingredients and quickly cleaned and cut the chicken, poured the marinade on top and put it the fridge. Finger crossed! It would have more than the 2 hours minimum needed to marinade while we were out and about with activities. When we did return, I walked into a house smelling so absolutely wonderful! I'm sure most of it was from the spills of spices left behind on our rush out the door to preschool, but it was fabulous. I just knew this meal was going to be delicious. I am so far very impressed with African dishes - yum! Love all the spices - cumin, coriander, turmeric, we need more of these in American fare. Quite the intensive recipe, especially while trying to finish it up with 2 kids clambering in and out and a husband getting ready for his first practice as head coach. When I saw how expensive cardamom was ($18 for a bottle), I found a substitute suggestion of mixing equal parts cinnamon and nutmeg (or cinnamon and ginger), so I saved some pennies with that alternative. Alas, it all came together and it was yummy and so aromatic. Rory, my big boy, even tried a few bites of lentils! Yeah, small steps. Gavin didn't, but they both enjoyed the chicken. I thought it was a tiny bit dry and I realized I drained the tomatoes, which it did not say to do, so maybe that could have made a difference. Otherwise, I was very impressed with another African dish. We also looked up Namibia and learned they are a free republic since 1990. The boys also enjoyed the pictures of Namibians, of their land (desert like) and of the huge animals roaming the plains.
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