Global Recipe Project

I wanted so much to like this dish. But, I couldn't deny the little voice inside my head that said "Wow, this is going to be fishy" after I bought dried ground crawfish. Seriously, do you realize how many crawfish it would take to fill a cup of ground crawfish powder? I say at least 30--that's a lot of crawfish. The national dish of Cameroon is Ndole which is apparently incredibly popular and supposedly delicious. It "flies off the plates" one article told me. Unfortunately, it was way too fishy for my American palate and even my very adventurous husband declared it was "hardly edible." My dinner guests were kinder and even finished their servings with grace and politeness. The toddler shriveled her nose and boycotted dinner. However, it was universally agreed that without the egregious ingredient (ground crawfish) the dish would have actually been quite tasty. I loosely followed this recipe from africanbites.com.  Ndole   Ingredients ...

Monaco is a fun country. Fun to pretend to be a zillionaire and go to fancy stores and restaurants. It also has the swankiest casino in the world. The dish we prepared was Barbagiuan . These are delicious fried snacks similar to empanadas. I followed the recipe from Celtnet Recipes found here . Ingredients: For the Pastry: 500g self-raising flour 125ml extra-virgin olive oil 1 tsp sea salt water, to bind For the Filling: 400g Swiss chard leaves 2 large onions, finely chopped 60ml olive oil 100g ham slices 6 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped 75g freshly-grated Parmesan cheese salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste 2 or 3 eggs, beaten Read more at Celtnet: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-barbagiuan Copyright © celtnet Ingredients For the Pastry: 500 g of flour 125 ml olive oil 1 tsp sea salt Filling: 400 g swiss chard (blanched and chopped) 2 large onions (chopped) 60 ml olive oil 100 g ham slices (chopped) 6 t...

Wow, it is hard to find the time for creative cooking with a toddler..whew! Tonight's menu includes Chicken Kabsa. The national dish of Saudi Arabia. It's essentially chicken and rice, but the Middle Eastern version. Who doesn't love chicken and rice? Especially when it's made with cardamon, coriander and black limes. Yes, black limes. The black limes were an intriguing yet elusive ingredient. I traveled all around town to specialty spice shops looking for these little beasts. I finally located a small Middle Eastern market about 40 minutes from my house and sent Tony on a mission.   He came back with small bag of dried, black limes and a report that the market made very delicious shawarma sandwiches. Double win! We invited a few friends over and the Saudi Arabian feast began. Chicken Kabsa 1 cup of basmati rice 1 whole chicken cut into 8 parts 2 tablespoons sunflower oil 1 large tomato, diced 2 bay leaves 1 chicken bouillon cube 1 onion, diced3 garlic c...

Who doesn't like Italian food? Really. Anyway, we jumped ahead to Italy because I wanted to try out my pasta maker attachment for the Kitchen Aid. What I failed to realize, (until the dough had already been made, rolled, and prepped) was that I do not own the pasta cutter attachment. This meant that I had long paper-thin sheets of dough that were cut by hand. Oh well. It was fun and more importantly, it was absolutely delicious.  I used a simple recipe for the pasta dough. 2 cups of flour, 3 eggs, dash of salt. Make a well in the mound of flour and mix with your hands. Kneed until your wrists hurt. Set aside for a half an hour then process through pasta roller attachment. Cook. Eat. Done. It was slightly more complicated than that, but not by much. You can find the recipe I used here . I also made some turkey meatballs (not Italian) and everything was phenomenal. Even the uncooked pasta was fabulous. Trust me I know. M (our resident toddler) kept sneaking up to the counte...

Since it was a high of 107 today and I spent the better part of the afternoon in the pool, I wasn't super thrilled about having a ridiculously carb-heavy meal of cepelinai. Oh well. Cepelinai are potato dumplings filled with ground pork, beef or veal. They are then drowned in a bacon, sour cream sauce. Hearty. Although all the recipes I found called for "grated potatoes" this is a lie. If you grate potatoes then you will get fine angel-hair like strands of potatoes and they will not mix well and when boiled will fall apart. Instead, you need to pulverize the potatoes. Ingredients:        Dumpling Mixture: 4 lbs Idaho potatoes, peeled and finely grated pulverized 1 lb Idaho potatoes, peeled, boiled and riced 1 teaspoon salt, more or less to taste            Meat Mixture: 1 pound ground pork or 1/3 pound pork, 1/3 pound beef, 1/3 pound veal 1 medium onion, peeled and finely chopped 1 teas...

Middle-Eastern food makes me happy.  The play on savory/sweet makes my tongue tingle and belly smile. Tonight is Pakistan. I know. We've been gone for a while. Okay. A very very long while. However, we had a kid and were learning how to live with another human being in the house. We think we have the hang of it now so we decided to re-start the recipe project. Tony relinquished the job of picking a country from the jar in favor of baby M. She picked Pakistan and I decided to make Chicken Chapli Kababs. It was delicious. The Middle-Eastern version of turkey burgers, but better. And, with chicken. I loosely followed the recipe here. Baby M, Tony and I loved it. Heidi's Rating: 7 out of 10. Delicious. Tony's Rating: 7 out of 10. Yum.

Tonight's country is San Marino which, if you are like me and have no idea what/where it's located, is an independent republic smack in the middle of Italy.  Apparently it has enjoyed independence since 1291 though my American educated self has never heard of it before. It doesn't have an army and I'm not entirely sure you would know you crossed any borders if you traveled through on a road trip in Tuscany. I was seriously tempted to make nidi di rondine (a rolled pasta/prosciutto dish smothered in bechamel) but, prosciutto isn't really included in my pregnancy diet so I opted instead for pasta e cece (pasta and chickpeas).