Indonesia

Delicious.

Two fairly complicated dishes with preparation starting last night. First we made Rendang Daging; a beef curry of super tastiness made with lots of chilli, onion and coconut. After about 4 hours on the mortar and pestle (time is tricky to gauge when mortar-and-pestling - Bri tells me it was only 15 minutes) making kerisik and a curry paste that used pretty much every spice in our house, the end result was amazing. The beef had this amazing hint of coconut hidden behind a huge kick (thanks to Dad's home-grown chillies) of spiciness - great stuff.

On the side we had gado-gado, a vegetable salad with a peanut sauce mixed in, again this was good; the sauce and slightly cooked vegetables made this great combination of yum. A very successful meal.

Next up it is Tonga (after drawing one of Peter's joke countries that he has snuck into the hat - 'Wonderland'). First impressions is the food is very similar to Samoa so we'll have to see what we can come up with.

Honduras

Big week for our challenge - straight after a successful North Korea meal we hit up Honduras.

First up some street-food Baleadas, which are freshly made tortillas served with beans and sourcream or salty cheese.

We made our own tortillas and refried beans and both were amazingly tasty. Great food.

Honduras also gave us our second dessert (see Canada) of the challenge. Torrejas is a traditional Christmas food. It is basically french toast soaked for a couple of hours in a cinnamon and cloves syrup. Extremely rich, cinnamony and yummy, especially with some icecream.

Local one next; we're off to Indonesia.

North Korea

Well, it's been a long time between meals, and I have to say, we weren't super inspired by the notion of North Korea. Many a (probably tasteless) (no pun intended) joke was made about empty plates, gruel and the like. On a more practical level, Micky pointed out the severe lack of North Koreans publishing recipes on the internet. Having said all this, the night ended up being very successful.

We made these delicious dumplings (mandu). We made 60 or so all up, and we agreed it was very therapeutic. The boys were asleep, otherwise it may have been a bit less calming.

I think it's fair to say most people wouldn't be objecting to a plate of dumplings, so we weren't too worried about eating that portion of the meal. My trepidation set in when Micky started adding ice to the soup. Actually, in all honesty, it set in much earlier in the day, when it smelled like Micky had popped a bucket of sea water on the stove. I think it was the anchovies. And the seaweed. BUT........the mul-naengmyeon (cold noodles in chilled broth) was delicious. The noodles are topped with some egg, pickled cucumber and pear and it's a very refreshing, delicate dish. So, we had a great night. Next stop - Honduras.