The Land Down Under

6-2-2014:  Rory was very excited about Australia and kept asking me when it was going to be Australia night (our schedule had been hectic and I was a little slow in getting this one made).  Finally, we got to it!  I had found a CNN article entitled "Australian food: 40 dishes locals like to call their own".  Number 21 was Sausage Rolls and the article said it is the lunch choice of many Australians.  I then found a great Australian website called Kidspot with meals for kids - perfect!  We chose to make their Snazzy Sausage Rolls.  They turned out quite well and were SO yummy!  Gavin helped make them and the kids loved them - yeah!  My hubby loved them, too - bonus!  I loved that ours looked just like the picture on the website, too (pats on back!).  The extra bonus was that the meat mixture included veggies, including carrot, potato, leek, tomato sauce and a pepper.  The mixture was wrapped up in puff pastry.  I forgot to add the egg wash on top for a nice finish, I guess, but they turned out great without it.  I have some extra meat I froze and will be glad to have it on hand so we can make these yummy rolls again!  Thank you, Land Down Under, for a successful meal!

 

http://www.kidspot.com.au/best-recipes/Australian+58/Snazzy-sausage-rolls-recipe+2498.htm

Peru AND Kazakhstan?!

5-19-2014:  Well, Gavin is moving laterally now; he's moved just over from his last pick of Brazil to Peru!  This was actually a country combo night, as we chose to include Rory's pick, Kazakhstan, as well.  You don't get much different than those two countries!  I have to admit, Kazakhstan's popular food made me a little queasy.  Horse meat is apparently one of their main ingredients and I thought I'd be hard pressed to find that in the U.S. - as an edible, anyway.  Nor could I stomach the idea, though I realize, many countries eat other kinds of meat that we are not use to in America.  Anyway, we decided to go with a popular Kazakh bread roll instead, called Baursak.  The ingredient measurements were a bit difficult to follow (like "a glass" of sour milk), but I guess I figured it out (I just added enough to make the dough pliable) because they turned out pretty good.  Peru, I have to admit, I found more appetizing!  Though, they too have their own unique meat choices...  We chose to make Pollo a la brasa.  By coincidence, our next door neighbors had just returned from a trip to Peru, so it was neat to incorporate that into our learning about the country.  We enjoyed looking at pictures online and in library books from both countries.  We cooked the whole roasted chicken on the grill, though the recommendation was in a fire pit.  We do have a fire pit, but we opted to do it on the grill - I would like to try it in the fire pit sometime, though (for now, we have only managed to do smores on the pit!).  I had just read about a Guy Fieri method of cooking whole roasted chickens where you remove the breast bone and grill it very flat by laying a wrapped brick on top of the chicken.  It cooks the chicken more quickly and more evenly.  So, that's what we did!  The chicken turned out quite well.  Could maybe have been a bit more flavorful, but... our family all enjoyed it, so that is good by me!  We also enjoyed the Baursak - I had a hard time keeping myself from popping those down!  Typical for me, the carb lover :(  Overall, a successful, combo country night!

http://perudelights.com/pollo-a-la-brasa-a-golden-passion/

http://www.bestrealty.kz/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=186:baursaki&lang=en