This weekends world food tour took us to Croatia! This seaside country opposite of Italy had a lot of interesting choices but we decided on some traditional choices: Burek – phyllo dough stuffed with a variety of cheeses, blitva – chard and yellow potatoes tossed with an unnecessary amount of garlic, and pogacha – a traditional hearth bread.

Iranian Vegetable Stew – I’m a big fan of Ottolenghi and I’ve made quite a few of his recipes in the past. I was thumbing through one of his cookbooks and saw this really tasty stew and noted it was an Iranian recipe. Perfect! I’ll make a delicious vegetarian dish and satisfy one of my goals. The methodology was interesting – you start it in a pot then transfer it to a roasting pan in the oven to reduce the liquid and caramelize some of the vegetables. I made a few mistakes however – I cut the vegetables too large and they cooked unevenly – and I had the pan too low so it didn’t brown as much as it should have. That being said, the flavor was great and I’d make this again remedying those two issues.

Here’s the recipe if anyone wants to give this a shot

Cachapas Con Queso – So.. these are basically corn based mozzarella en carrozza. You make a dough with PAN (a fine corn flour) and some other ingredients then fill it with cheese and then fry it lightly. It came together pretty quickly and smelled amazing. The taste had a strong corn overtone (corn flour and fresh corn) and the mild cheese didn’t add too much. Overall it was a tasty snack but kind of fussy – if I need a fried cheese sandwich to satisfy a crazing I’ll stick to the Italian methodology.

Today we jetted off to tropical Guyana! Located on the northern tip of South America – this country used to be an English colony (who hasn’t, honestly) but has strong french influences. The Cassava is a major player in the cuisine with a sauce made from them called Cassareep is called for in a lot of recipes. We start with some plait bread – a soft enriched bread that doesn’t stand up much on its own but exists to soak up the flavors of the main course – pepperpot chicken. The pepperpot chicken is the traditional dish – mostly brought out for holidays. It’s a stew enriched with Cassareep and a multitude of bold flavors but it all melds together to make a tender chicken in a spicy flavorful sauce. Prior to having the main dish we fried up some pholourie – yellow pea four and cumin batter crisped up nice for some hearty flavorful ‘street food’. After all that savory, next up is the sweet. What we have here is a cornmeal pone – a cornmeal cake topped with a rich coconut caramel glaze. All in all a fun visit to a tropical locale – now what to do with all this leftover pepperpot sauce (pizza, perhaps? hmm)

Chotpoti – Bangladesh street food consisting of chickpeas, onions, peppers, and topped with a grated boiled egg. This actually came together quite quickly and the only thing I had to specifically source was the tamarind paste. Working with a new ingredient can be risky and it reared it head for this dish because the tamarind paste I was using was on the sour side – if I was tasting as I was going I would have added some sugar to balance out the sourness but I didn’t.. so the final dish was mouth puckering sour.. it was still good however. I’m not sure if I’m ever going to use tamarind paste again, but if I do I’ll be sure to be extra careful and taste frequently.

This weekend we visited lovely Costa Rica! Galo pinto – the national dish of Costa Rica is a very tasty rice and beans dish with a side of twice fried plantains (pantacones), and a big slice of pan de elote – sweetened cornbread made from fresh corn. Overall a flavorful combination of Latin American flavors that was so good it’s likely to make the standard rotation of foods!

This weeks world tour of food takes us to Belgium! I knew one thing immediately I wanted to make- Liege Waffles! The rest we had to do some research on and everything turns out delicious. The main dish was a chowder called waterzooi – a rich stew with chunks of carrots, leeks and chicken. The bread was pistolet – a kind of European crusty bread. The side dish was mashed potatoes and carrots with bacon called stoemp. I rounded out the meal with an imported Belgian Dopple beer that paired with the food quite well. For dessert I fired up the waffle iron and cooked up some delicious liege waffles – chunks of pearl sugar forming a crispy crust on the outside with warm pockets of liquid goodness on the inside.

I mean – I didn’t have to create an entire meal as part of this challenge as I cook Italian food all the time – but since I was making all the elements (bread, pasta, dessert) I figured I’d count this meal. Mangia!
(Manicotti, Rosemary Focaccia, Zeppole, and Summer Berry Granita)