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.

Catch up post #2... St Vincent and the Grenadines

This was an interesting one. Turns out a popular dish over there is `Green pigeon pea soup'. The soup was a little funny in that it called for a bunch of starchy vegetables like tannais (we used potato) and plantain (we used a greenish banana). It also needed green pigeon peas (we used normal green peas). Not our most accurate dish with a lot of the ingredients more readily available in the tropics but the result was really yum. We were a bit worried about having banana in our soup however it gave just a little hint of sweetness without being anywhere near overpowering.

Also included in the recipe were dumplings. Not sure what I got wrong with these but they ended up being little golf-balls of disappointment. Soup = two thumbs up, dumplings = one thumb down.

Now that we've caught up it's time for our next country - tonight we cook some North Korean food.

Catch up post #1... Togo

Long ago in the distant past we went to Togo. It wasn't a particularly memorable meal however the highlight was a tasty grilled chicken marinated in lots of garlic and pepper. With the chicken we served Albo, which is a Togolese corn bread. Our bread ended up a bit dry and dry and grainy but all-in-all not a bad meal from a country that proved hard to research.

(The salad was an non-Togo type just because we needed a green side for the meal)

The bread was cooked in the one pan separated by baking paper; it ended up being flat and quite like - much like unsweet sponge.

On Sunday night we took a leisurely stroll through Andorra. We were certainly not left hungry. We began with an entree of 'Pa Amb Tomaquet', which I believe translates to tomato on bread. It was more or less a do-it-yourself bruschetta, complete with a red onion salad. We agreed it would be perfect on a hot, lazy summer afternoon. 

Which might not be said about the rest of meal: Trinxat (Cabbage and Potato Pancake) and Escudella de Pages (Peasant Stew). These two dishes were definitely winter fare. They were filling and delicious and meaty and carb-y. We topped a pleasing meal off with a pleasing Spanish wine. 

Next up: Togo

Paraguay - sopa, bori bori, maté and lots of meat

It's been a little while since we've done this and Paraguay didn't let us down. Heaps of stuff to cook tonight and we started with bori bori - a beef soup with cornmeal and cheese dumplings. The drink of choice in this part of the world is mate - a tea made from a native plant and drunk out of a gourd.

Along with the soup we also made Sopa Paraguay (Paraguay soup) which despite its name is corn bread.

The main course is meat - lots of meat. We attempted an asado (BBQ) with a range of meat on offering - traditionally included in an asado is offal which we didn't completely comply with although we did get some white pudding in a passing acknowledgement of other more gross meat bits.