Eating Around the World - Peru

Often, when I start planning our weekly international menu, I search "National dish of ___" as a starting point. When I found out that the national dish of Peru was ceviche, a spicy raw fish dish, "cooked" only by marinating a bit in lime juice, I was skeptical. Surely, we could find something more accessible to the kids. The more I looked, the more I realized ceviche was actually probably our best option. It certainly would be easier to procure and prepare than guinea pig.

So, after reading about the safety of raw fish, I followed the recipe and then let it marinate a good hour. As dinner approached, I tentatively tried a bite... and found the chewy texture singularly unappealing. Maybe I tried the wrong kind of fish. Maybe I'm just a midwestern girl with an unsophisticated palate. I do, for example, greatly prefer Korean kimbap to Japanese sushi - largely because kimbap doesn't involve any raw fish.

Anyway, when Collin walked in the door, he echoed my concern. So I threw the whole bowl into a hot skillet for a minute or two, and cooked it just until the fish started to taste flakier than chewier. That flash in the pan made a huge difference, even if it softened the vegetables a little more than was desirable.

I served the ceviche in cups made from corn tortillas, baked in a muffin tin. I just sprayed the muffin tin with oil, pushed in a warm corn tortilla (or two halves, since mine were largely broken), sprayed them with oil again and baked them about 10 minutes. They weren't perfect, but they made an otherwise not-so-kid-friendly dish fun to eat. We had roasted sweet potatoes on the side, as well as popcorn. 

Popcorn? As a side? Well, yes.

A common accompaniment to ceviche is toasted corn kernels called cancha. From what I gather, it's kind of like corn nuts, and kind of like the popcorn kernels that fail to pop. I didn't have the right kind of corn, but I did have this beautiful Indian flint corn I grew last summer. It pops, but leaves a lot of partially-popped kernels in the bottom. So, I popped a big bowl of half rainbow corn, half conventional popcorn, and separated out puffy from the crunchy kernels. The rainbow corn tastes a lot better toasted than conventional popcorn, but I'm sure the texture is still pretty different than Peruvian cancha.

So, in the end, we had both kinds of popcorn for dinner, and it was a fun, if unusual, side dish.

Toward the end of the meal, Jenny pulled the whole bowl of popcorn over to her place, and ate handful after handful. Popcorn for dinner was just fine with her!

For dessert, I made arroz con leche, or rice pudding. I followed this recipe, except I used a can of evaporated milk for part of the milk, and then filled the measuring cup the rest of the way with whole milk. One cup of dry rice makes quite a large pot of rice pudding, and I might have made a half batch if I'd known how large it would end up.

Collin loves rice pudding, and it's one of those things he's always asking me to make and I never make enough to satisfy him. So, before digging in, he had to take a moment to inhale the sweet smell of milky rice topped with cinnamon and cloves.

After that, he shared a bite with Eliza. She quickly realized it was THE BEST THING SHE HAD EVER TASTED. Then it was all Collin could do to get a mouthful in between sharing with Eliza, and keeping her hands out of the bowl at the same time.

She does look pretty adorable with a rice pudding mustache.

Eating Around the World - Brazil

This is going to be short and sweet. The national dish of Brazil is Feijoada (Pronounced fey-zhoo-ah-dah, but said kind of fast so it all runs together). It's a pork and black bean stew, eaten with rice and served alongside greens. It's straightforward, easy, and delicious! You can even cook it in a slow cooker, and anticipate the deliciousness all day. Here's the recipe. I served it with a fresh kale salad, dressed with an orange balsamic dressing, tossed with sun dried tomatoes, dried cranberries, and almonds, and topped with orange wedges. Boom. Done.

Eliza found the tender pork pieces irresistible. She's a total omnivore.

Eating Around the World - Argentina

Argentina. It's a huge country, with breathtaking scenery and varied landscapes. From frigid Patagonia to tall mountains ranges, to the grasslands of the pampas. I think Argentina was one of the countries we studied this year that I knew least about, and one that has now moved a lot higher on my list of places I'd love to visit. But, one thing I knew before this week was that Argentina was famous for its beef, and that we'd have to have asado for our meal.

Beef is expensive, and we almost had pork instead. In fact, we hardly ever eat beef at home, although we like it a lot. But just in time, chuck roast went on sale at the grocery. That's far from the choicest cut, but we rolled with it, serving it alongside a large array of grilled vegetables. We had grilled eggplant, zucchini, peppers, and mushrooms with our beef, and it was delicious.

Of course, we doused every bite of meat or vegetables in chimichurri sauce. Or, to be more accurate, Collin and I did. The girls each tried a little dollop, and begged not to have to finish it. Chimichurri sauce is a bit spicy, and a lot green, so I didn't really expect the girls to enjoy it. But I loved it! It really was a perfect grilling condiment.

It was a beautiful evening, so we ate our asado as a picnic in the back yard.

Eliza loved the picnic, because she could crawl around and steal food off everyone's plates. The girls certainly didn't protest when she took their peppers or zucchini away.

Dessert was the best! We had alfajores, which are tender buttery sandwich cookies, filled with dulce de leche, and sprinkled with powdered sugar. It would not be an exaggeration to say this was one of my top favorite new recipes from our whole geographical culinary adventures this year. Each element is familiar, but together they're just about perfect. 

Honorable mention does have to go to this dessert, however. I saw these chocolate and dulce de leche cups mentioned in a roundup of Argentine food, and they looked amazing. On closer inspection, however, I didn't see anything to say that these were actually an Argentine recipe. But it was too delicious to ignore, so I tried it out on another night. And it was marvelous. A lot like the inside of a truffle, actually. And so easy to make, especially if you simplify the instructions and simply melt dark chocolate chips right into the cream and milk in the microwave. Argentine or not, you should definitely try this one.

Eating Around the World - Antarctica

This week we spent learning about Antarctica, and just in time for our weekly geographic meal, we got a spring snow shower. I'm all for making the atmosphere realistic, but I was also glad not to have a picnic outdoors as Collin suggested.

Antarctica doesn't have much of a distinctive cuisine, but we did our best. This page from Cool Antarctica had the most helpful information, as well as a recipe for these sledging biscuits. They... weren't very good. But the girls loved them (they love anything in the bread family), and I'm sure they taste a lot better after a long hard haul in sub-zero temperatures.

I briefly thought about making pemmican, but it sounded both expensive and unappetizing, so we had a small bag of beef jerky, along with cheese and butter atop our sledging biscuits. For our main course, we had penguin stew, which on other days would be known locally as chicken noodle soup. I did steer clear of fresh vegetables for the evening, which would be hard to come by on the South Pole.

 

And for dessert, we had glacier ice cream. This was vanilla ice cream that I layered with blue raspberry jello, and from a culinary standpoint, it wasn't a home run. I'd like to try it again with a thick blue raspberry syrup rather than gelatin, because the jello did weird texture things when frozen. I was trying to get the swirled look of an Antarctic iceberg, which do look good enough to eat.

We enjoyed our iceberg ice cream in floats with blue soda pop. The only uncaffinated blue soda I found happened to be coconut flavored, which worked strangely well with our iceberg ice cream, even if the flavor was far more tropical than polar.

Cheers! And here's to leaving the frigid temperatures for some warmer climates, both in our geography study and as spring comes to stay in Indiana.

Eating Around the World - Papua New Guinea

It was cold today. I think the high was 15, and despite the glorious sunshine, the cold still hit you like a wall when you stepped off the porch. And inside, the furnace was working almost nonstop to keep things at a comfortable 68. As a matter of fact, as I write this right now I'm sitting in my favorite spot in the house, the large heat vent in the kitchen.

I bring up the weather outside because we spent this week learning about Papua New Guinea, an island nation close to the equator. As I'm writing, it is 7 degrees and snowy here in Indiana, and 79 degrees in PNG's capital city, Port Moresby. So, trying to recreate Mumu, a tropical dish that is cooked in a pit in the ground with hot stones and banana leaves came with some real challenges.

Using two blog posts and this video as a guide, I did my best. First I layered sweet potatoes, acorn squash, a plantain, and a green banana in the bottom of my large Dutch oven.

Next I sprinkled on frozen corn, and chicken seasoned with salt, ginger, and lime zest. Then I squeezed the lime juice over everything, and threw them in the pot for good measure. A layer of fresh pineapple (not pictured) followed.

I asked Collin if there was any chance of getting some banana leaves to wrap our dinner in, but he said the two trees he has growing at the university aren't nearly big enough to spare any. So I had to settle for the nearest equivalant I could come up with: collard greens. It probably wasn't very equivalent at all, but whatever.

Finally, I poured a can of coconut milk over everything, put the lid on the pot, and put it in the oven to cook for a few hours.

Today the amaryllis growing in my kitchen window bloomed! It was so big and cheerful and red, it made me enjoy spending the afternoon in the kitchen that much more. Also, it was kind of fun to have a giant red flower open just in time for Valentine's Day.

Oooh, and now the mumu is done! peel back the layer of not-banana leaves, and there's a whole bunch of tropical goodness ready for our dinner. 

Since the banana trees couldn't come to us, we decided to take our dinner to the banana trees. That's them, right straight back in the window of the greenhouse behind Laurel. The tropical room of the greenhouse at the college was the closest local setting we could find to a New Guinean jungle, so we brought our dinner over as a picnic.

This is our pineapple bowl with the baby pineapple at the greenhouse! I'm a little bit proud of that pineapple plant, because I started it from the top of a grocery pineapple myself. Collin and a whole bunch of students have done most of the work keeping it alive for the past two years, though. And now it has a baby pineapple that, from what I've read, will take up to six months now to mature to an edible fruit. Tropical fruits sure like to take their time ripening!

 
Annie and Laurel eating their picnic dinner with the banana trees. Annie liked the corn and sweet potatoes, and the pineapple was universally popular.

The plantains were surprisingly starchy and less generally popular. Kind of one of those "I'm glad we tried it, and it was kind of cool, but I'm not going out of my way to eat it again" things. Although, I'm guessing we'll be using them in other dishes in future weeks, and we might like them better in another preparation. Everything tastes good fried, after all!

Eliza and Collin, trying new flavors. 

As it got dark outside, we packed up our picnic and prepared to leave our tropical retreat.

Collin gave the room a final spray-down to raise the humidity back up in the greenhouse overnight, and we left for our own home. Where the girls had ice cream for dessert. I guess the illusion of a tropical getaway lingered a little bit after we returned to winter in northern Indiana.

Eating Around the World - Australia

It's been a while since I posted, but we're still working our way around the world, eating a meal from the country we've been studying each week. Last week we finished up Asia, and this week we moved on to Australia!

Our entire dinner consisted of Aussie burgers, or "Burgers With The Lot." And, boy, did they have a lot on them! 

Besides the burger and bun they had grilled pineapple, beets, fried egg, Swiss cheese, avocado, lettuce, and sriracha mayonnaise. Now, you may wonder, looking at that photograph, how one proceeds to eat such a tall burger.

Well, the first time I tried to take a bite everything slipped...

And landed right back on my plate. Amature.

Eventually, I got it! These burgers were delicious, although more up my alley than Collin's. He found them too rich and sweet, since he prefers his burgers with pungency: mustard, pickles, blue cheese, and raw onions. I like sweet and spicy. The pineapple and beets were the bit that was especially Australian, but while I loved the grilled pineapple I could take or leave the beets. They weren't bad, but they weren't that good and the burger was ridiculously tall.

For dessert we made Lamingtons! After a couple months in Asia I think the girls were glad to get back to a country with more familiar desserts. Lamingtons are a sponge cake cut in cubes, dipped in chocolate frosting, and rolled in coconut. I'd never made a sponge cake before (I know!) so that was fun for me. The dipping and rolling was a bit challenging, but fairly similar to breading chicken or vegetables for frying, which is a skill I'm slowly improving at. Just remember: One hand wet, one hand dry - and you'll save yourself a big mess.

Next week we're moving on to Papua New Guinea and the Pacific islands. Some summery island food sounds pretty good round about this time of year!

Eating Around the World - Russia

Russia. Land of snow, vodka, and depressing literature. At least, that's what I was thinking going into this week's study. After a bit of reading, I remembered there's actually a lot to like about the country and culture. So many fun stories, like The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship (more on that in another post), wonderful music (as I write this, Annie is in bed singing themes from Peter and the Wolf to her sisters), and matryoshkas! Also, the food isn't all meat, potatoes, and cabbage. Granted, a lot of it is. In fact, one of the common Russian dishes I found is Golubtsi, which is the same as the sarmale we had last week. Seeking a lighter meal, I came across this picture and knew exactly what we'd have for our weekly meal: a Russian tea!

My sister was visiting this weekend, which made our Russian tea party that much more fun. She brought our grandma's old teapot, which we used with our samovar (Russian tea urn - literally "self boiler") to serve.

I have an antique coffee urn which is very similar to a Russian samovar, so we had fun drinking tea Russian style. We used this recipe for tea, decaf, and with a fresh orange. We brewed the tea in a concentrated form in the teapot, and then diluted in our teacups with hot water from the samovar. The teapot sits on top of the samovar to stay warm, although we took ours down soon after taking the pictures so the kids wouldn't knock it off and break our grandma's teapot. That would be a tragic end to the story. The tea was delicious, and I'm not a big black tea drinker. It was almost fruity and sweet enough that the girls liked it, but they weren't entirely sold.

I'll tell you what they were sold on, was these tea sandwiches. Jenny probably ate five of them, one right after the next.

This beet salad was the centerpiece of the table: beautiful, and very interesting with the crispy fried potatoes combined with the dramatic color of the beets. It's definitely going to make a repeat appearance at our dinner table, although next time I'm only going to mix together as much as we can eat in one meal. The fried potatoes get completely lost in the salad when you're eating the leftovers.

The real star of the show was the tea in the samovar, and the tea cakes. I made Collin's favorite Russian tea cakes (the kind with powdered sugar and walnuts), and a huge string of sushki. The sushki are kind of a cross between a cracker and a cookie - very slightly sweet, and crunchy like Italian breadsticks (grissini). Both tea cakes are very dry, and not amazing on their own, but the perfect accompaniment for a hot cup of tea.

Learning about Russian tea and samovars was one of my favorite parts of geography this week. I bought our samovar a couple years ago because we needed a way to serve hot water to large groups of people for evening parties. Our tea kettle was running out of water too quickly, and an air pot was kind of boring. We bought this samovar off Ebay to have something more festive, but I didn't learn much about the way Russians use them until this week. This video on brewing tea Russian-style was especially enlightening. Apparently, before electric samovars became common, the water was boiled by a lighting a fire in a pipe inside the samovar. The fire was often fueled with pine cones, and infused the tea with a delicious outdoorsy flavor unique to old-style samovars. Mine is electric, so missing that unique smoky flavor, but it was still fun to drink cup after cup of tea Russian style, and imagine we were fortifying ourselves for the long, cold winter ahead.