Day 24
Dishes completed 18
Dishes remaining 62

Well, I am falling a little bit behind on my cooking. I just finished up week three, so that makes me think that I am going to need to start making a couple less dishes a week. After all I am working almost 40 hours a week... so I get home and feel absolutely wiped out. I don't want to burn out, and quit my culinary challenge... so I am just going to go a little bit slower! (But don't worry, I fully intend to see this thing through to the end!) Anyhow, I have made 18 dishes in total, and so here are some updated maps.

Here are all the countries that I made food from this week: pannkakor, Sweden. Blinchiki, Russia. Baleadas, Honduras. Yassa Ginaar, Senegal. Chocotorta, Argentina. Pork and Puha, New Zealand.

And here is the complete map of all the countries that I have made food from so far! :) It is starting to look pretty full!

So tonight I made Blinchiki, from Russia. We had it with a realllllyyy yummy potato soup that my mom made. It was a great combination, in my opinion. :) And the blinchiki was pretty easy to make! (And cheap!)

Ingredients:

Filling:                                             

*1 head of cabbage                           

*1 onion. (Or two If you'd prefer.)

Batter:                                              

*3 cups of milk                               

*3 eggs                                            

              *1/2 cup of water                                      

*3 cups of flour                            

*1 tbsp. of sugar                         

*1 pinch of salt                          

                                              *3 tbsp. of melted butter. Plus a little bit extra to butter   the pan with.                          

*First of all, you should start making your batter. The batter is very similar to crepe batter in that it is pretty liquidy. Like I said last time, it works best if you mix the dry ingredients together. and mix the wet ingredients together. Then slowly add the wet ingredients to your dry ingredients. It gives the batter a smoother consistency. Hold off on adding the butter, though, until you are ready to fry your batter. 

Batter with butter:

*Cut up your cabbage and onions, and cook 'em up with a bit of olive oil and a lot of salt. (In my experiences, cabbage needs a lot of salt in order to bring out the most flavor.

Cabbage and onion stuff:

*Now you can go back to your batter. Heat up a pan to medium/ medium-high heat. Butter in between every use. (Oh, and don't forget to add the 3 tbsp. of melted butter to your batter before you start frying it up!) Just cook up your batter like you would do for crepes. You should spread your batter out very very thinly in your pan. When it starts looking dry on the top, it is ready to flip. I was assembling my blinchiki whenever I had a crepe-y thing that was ready... but I don't think that that was the best idea... They were falling to pieces! So next time, I'd wait until my crepe-y things were slightly cooler before trying to assemble them! 

Here they are being assembled. Just plop a decent amount of cabbage onto the center:

And fold it all up!

                                 And here is my giant pile of finished blinchiki! :)

Thanks so much for reading, and enjoy! :)

Day 23
Dish 17

This morning, I made Pannkakor from Sweden. It reminded me a bit of crepes, and was really yummy! Personally I like crepes better than pancakes, but this was a little bit bigger than a crepe which meant that I only needed one instead of 83... So that was nice...

Ingredients:

*3 cups of milk

*3 eggs

*2 cups of flour (My recipe only called for 1 cup of flour, but that was not enough in my opinion...)

*1/2 tsp. salt

*2tbsp. sugar



*Combine the milk and eggs. Use a whisk to combine them thoroughly.

*Combine all the dry ingredients.

*Gradually add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients... I added my dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, which made my dough kinda lumpy. I think it'd work better the other way around.

Combined ingredients:

*Note: Your batter should be very very liquidy.

*Heat up your pan to medium/ medium-high. Butter the pan in between every pannkakor.

*Fry 'em all up! I only made about 6, because I made them pretty big.

Here is a photo from the middle of my cooking process.

And here is the finished product! :)

*I topped mine with maple syrups, and coconut yoghurt... which was really really tasty! :) But it would be great with fresh fruit, or whipped cream, or whatever kind of topping you normally use on your pancakes. 

*Enjoy!

Thanks for reading! :)

Day 21 (Post created on day 23)
Dish 16

On saturday, I made a dish from New Zealand called "Pork and Puha." It was relatively simple... all I did was boil stuff and add salt basically! But it was really tasty!

Here is a visual of where New Zealand is located on the map...

Ingredients:

*Pork. I used about 3lbs of pork loin.

*Watercress greens. I didn't think that I would be able to find them, so I was really happy that I actually was able to! If I hadn't found them, though, I think that spinach or kale would have been a decent substitute.

*Yams

*Carrots

*Salt


*First of all, I put my pork into a big pot with lots of water. I salted it, and let it boil.

*Then I chopped up my yams and carrots, added water and salt to that and let that boil, too.

*And then I put my watercress into yet another pot and added salt and let that boil.

*Once everything is completely cooked, you can throw together the yam, carrot, and watercress into a big bowl. And then you shred up the pork... and believe it or not, that is it! Told you that this was an insanely easy dish to make!!!! :)

This is the veggie mixture...

And the pork before it was shredded.

And the finished dish... It is great with a bit of siracha sauce! :)

*Enjoy! 

p.s. Thanks to my friend, Jessica, for recommending this dish! It was great! :)

Day 19
Dish 15

Today I made baleadas from Honduras, central america. I loved this meal, and it makes me want to go back to Honduras someday! (I lived in Honduras when I was a baby... so obviously I don't remember anything. Which means all the more reason to go back!) Ir was soooo simple and cheap but really tasty!

Ingredients:

*Two cans of kidney beans

*1 onion

*1 green pepper

*Cumin

*Chili powder

*1 serano pepper

*Salt

*1avacado

*Cilantro

*7 eggs

Ingredients for tortillas:

*2 cups of flour

*1 tsp. Baking powder

*2 tsp salt

*1/4 cup Peanut oil

*1 cup of water




*So I started off with making my tortillas... I have never done it with peanut oil... but I will definitely be doing it like this from now on! I love making homemade tortillas becauce they are so so simple, and tasty! You just combine all these indredients until you have a non-sticky, but pliable dough. You may need a little bit less water than a cup, though...

*Divide your dough into 12 parts, and roll out and cook. (Don't use any oil.) It should just be getting slight brown spots when it is time to flip it.

The finished tortillas.

*Sautee your veggies, add your two cans of beans and let it cook on medium heat. Add 1 or two cups of water, and let it simmer until most of the liquid is gone. Mash up your beans a little bit. Add salt, cumin, chili powder, and about a cup of cheese.

And here's my beans... Sorry not a great picture. :P

*Cut up your avocado, and cilantro. Fry up your eggs, and slice them into thin strips.

*Assemble!

*Enjoy!!! :)

Day 19 (dish created on day 18)
Dish 14

Yesterday I made a yummy lime chicken dish called Yassa Ginaar, from Senegal, africa. Senegal is in west africa... when I was flying home from Zambia, I had a short layover in Dakar, Senegal. Due to ebola, though, the people leaving and getting on the flight were very monitored. Anyhow, back to the food... Personally I really like lime, so I could handle the sourness, but some people may want to tone it down a bit... :/


Ingredients:

*About 8 limes, juiced. And the zest of 3 limes.

*Chicken breasts

*Peanut oil

*1 cup water

*Ginger

*Garlic

*1 serano pepper

*Crushed red chili flakes

*Rice




*First off combine all of your ingredients minus the rice. It should make a nice, and very lime-y marinade. Let your chicken marinade for 1 hour on your counter, or 2 hours in your fridge. (Make sure it is covered.)

Here is the chicken in its marinade:

*Remove the chicken from the marinade. DO NOT throw your marinade away!

*Broil your chicken in the oven, or cook on a grill. While your chicken is cooking, start you rice.

Chicken... yumm... I have issues with cooking meat, though, so this looks pretty black around the edges. But because of the extra marinade that I dumped on it while it was cooking, it wasn't too too dry. (Yay!)

*Now for the marinade... I know this probably sounds really really weird, but you are going to cook your marinade. I looked this up to make sure that it really was fine to do, and many people said that, yes, you had raw meat in your marinade, but you cook the meat and then eat it... so why can't you cook the marinade and then eat it...? But i guess this is really up to you whether or not you want to eat your marinade. I did. I boiled it for about 10 minutes. (And I also added an extra cup or two of water.) After it had boiled for 10 minutes, I added about 1tbsp. of flour to thicken the marinade and let it simmer until it was a nice texture.

Here is the thickened marinade sauce stuff:

*By now, you rice should be done. Serve hot with your marinade drizzled over top of the rice and with the chicken on the side... :) yummmm...

And the finished product... :)

*Enjoy! :)

Thanks for reading!

Day 18 (Dish created on day 17)
Dish 13

Yesterday I made a cake called chocotorta from Argentina. I really really liked this cake... but I do have to say, I changed it around quite a bit. So it was not very authentic. I stupidly grabbed the wrong piece of paper for my shopping list yesterday, so I had to get all of my groceries from memory. And I think I got almost everything, but somehow I forgot to get cream cheese... So I improvised quite a bit. Nonetheless, it turned out really good! I would even liked it enough that I would make it my improvised way again on purpose! :)

Ingredients: Fyi, I am going to do my blog post based off of my improv version.

*Some kind of chocolate cookie/ biscuit. I used chocolate graham crackers.

*1 cup of strong coffee

* 1 can Coconut milk (Improved)

*1 small container of coconut yoghurt (Improved)

*Powdered sugar (Improved)

Note: instead of coconut milk, coconut yoghurt, and powdered sugar, you could use cream cheese. Because that was what I was supposed to use. But since I didn't have any, I read up on what is a good substitute for cream cheese... and apparently yoghurt is a good substitute. But we only had one tiny thing of coconut yoghurt so I needed something else. Then I learned that you can whip coconut milk with powdered sugar to make a whipped cream substitute. And hey, coconut, coffee, and caramel is a good combo so I decided to just roll with it! Anyhow, part of the fun in cooking is trying new things and pushing your limits.

*Dulce le leche. (Made with milk, sugar, baking soda, and vanilla.)

*Dark chocolate for garnishing. I didn't have any so I just crumbled graham crackers on top of my cake for decoration.





*So first you will want to make your dulce le leche. I think you can also buy it at the store... but it is not that hard to make, so you might as well save a bit of money. Note: you can also use dulce le leche as a filling for the Conejos con crema which I made a blog post about the other day.

*Combine 2 cups of milk, 3/4 cups of sugar, and 1/8 tsp. baking soda.

*Bring it to a boil, and immediately reduce the temperature to an even simmer. Stir every once in a while. After about 40 minutes or so, it should begin to turn slightly brown. At that point, you'll want to pay more attention to it and stir more often so that it doesn't burn. Let it continue to simmer until it is pretty thick. It'll thicken more after it cools, though, so don't stress if it doesn't seem too thick. It's better to have a slightly liquidy sauce then a burt one. Once it seems like a good consistency, add about 1 tsp. vanilla and immediately remove from heat. let it cool.

Here is what it should look like.

 
*Now you can whip up your coconut milk, yoghurt, and 1/2 powdered sugar. Only use the thick coconut stuff at the top of the can... leave the liquidy stuff. You can save it for smoothies, or mix it with milk. It'll seem pretty liquidy, but it should set more later.

Just for fun, here's a picture of my yoghurt!

And a picture of my whipped coconut milk stuff.

*Now it's time to begin assembling your chocotorta. Use a small pan and lay out one layer or two layers of graham crackers. Dump enough coffee onto this layer to get it soggy. 

*Now add a layer of coconut whipped cream.

*And drizzle on some creme le leche.

*Repeat the last three steps (Graham crackers, coffee, whipped cream, creme le leche.) until you are out of ingredients... I probably did about 3 layers.

*For the last layer, drizzle on your creme le leche and sprinkle some graham cracker dust or chocolate on the top.

And voila!

*Let it chill in the fridge for about 8 hours if possible. And then enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

Day 17 (Dish prepared on day 14.)
Dish 12

Soooo... I am falling behind already. I missed the last two days, but I will make up for it! And I am just now writing my blog post for Saturday... ughh...

Anyhow, since I successfully have completed another week, here is an updated map of 1. all the countries that I made food from this week and 2. all the countries that I have made food from in total. :)

(P.s. Samoa is too small to really show up on this map...)

1.

2.                                                                                                                                                

So the dish that I made on Saturday was called Conejos con Crema from chile. I liked it, but it honestly wasn't my favorite thing so far. It wasn't quite as sweet as I was expecting... and not that I have to have everything super sweet, but I think either a more flaky dough or a slightly sweeter and less dense dough would have made this pastry slightly more enjoyable. But it was tasty as it was, too. :)

Ingredients:

*1 cup warm milk. (about 120 degrees.)

*2 tsp. instant yeast

*2 tsp. sugar (1/4 cup for later.) My recipe called for 4tbsp of sugar to be added to my yeast/milk mixture... but I think that too much sugar killed my yeast.

*4 cups flour

*3tbsp butter. maybe 4.

*2 eggs.

*1/2 tsp. salt

*Whipped cream or pastry cream.




*Combine your warm milk, 2tsp. sugar, and yeast. Don't stir. let it sit for about 10 minutes... It should get slightly bubbly because of the yeast reaction.

*Melt your butter.

*Combine your eggs with your butter.

*Add flour, salt, and the rest of your sugar to the butter/egg mixture.

*Gradually add your proofed yeast mixture. It should form a slightly sticky dough.

*Set aside your dough, and wash your bowl. Add a teeny bit of coconut/canola oil to your bowl. Cover your hands in oil, and coat your dough with that oil. Place your dough in the oiled bowl. Cover your bowl with a clean cloth and let your dough rise for about 1 hour, or until doubled in size.

*Flour or oil your hands, and divide your dough into 12 pieces.

Like this:

*Shape each piece into a nice oval, and place on a baking sheet.

*Cover and let rise for another hour.

*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown.

*Let them cool completely on a rack when they are done baking.

Here they are after they are all baked. And fun fact: the finished pastry is called a "rabbit."

*Once your rabbits are cooled, take a knife and make a slit through them. (Don't cut it in half... your pastry should still be in tact.) Don't cut from the top... cut from the side.

*Use a piping tool to pipe either whipping cream, or pastry cream, or con crema lecha inside. (I'll be making something later this week with Con crema lecha, so I'll include the recipe then.)

Here is the piping tool that I used. This one wasn't the best, though, because I could only pipe cream into two of my rabbits before having to refill my piper. :P

And here is the finished products!

If you don't have any piping tools, and don't want to buy any, you could always just use a butter knife to stick your cream in there. It would probably be pretty messy... but still tasty! :)

Thanks for reading!

Day 12 (Post created on day 14)
Dish 11

Wow... it's only week number 2, and I am already having a hard time doing blog posts every day. :/ But in my defense, I had worked an 11 hour shift at work on Thursday... I got home and made my food, and then I went to bed. And then last night I was too tired to do anything. I came home and fell asleep for a couple hours on the couch. :/ But I still made all my dishes this week! (I am half way through my last one at this moment, but the blog post for it will probably be up tomorrow.)

Anyhow, on Thursday I made pastel de banano from Guatemala. Basically, it is just a different word for banana bread. But every time I searched "pastel de banano" on google, it came up as a Guatemalan recipe. So it must be a pretty typical Guatemalan dessert. And this recipe was a little bit different from any other banana bread that I've made before. And just to make things a little bit more difficult, I decided to make my pastel de banano in a bundt pan. (I'll show a picture of my pan later...)

For those of you who don't know, here is where Guatemala is located on the map. I only found out exactly where it was a couple weeks ago when I was talking with a friend and I thought that it was right above Brazil for some reason.... but nooooo... I was very wrong.

Apparently Guatemala is right below Mexico... :)

This was a really easy recipe, and I really liked the results... It made for a very moist cake.


Ingredients:

*1/2 cup butter

*1/2 cup sugar

*3 large ripe bananas. This was the first time that I have used ripe bananas as opposed to overripe brown bananas... I actually really liked it... It made the bread have a very distinct banana-y taste. :) Of course, it is handy to use up those overripe bananas for banana bread... so that would be fine, too.

*1/2 tsp salt

*2tsp. cinnamon

*1tbsp. lemon juice

*1/2tsp. nutmeg

*1 egg (Beat it slightly before using it.)

*1 1/2 cups flour

*2tsp. baking powder




*Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

*Melt your butter slightly. and mix it up with your sugar. You can use a mixer if you want... But I kind of have issues with using mixers. If I can help it, I'd rather not use a mixer, though... I don't like washing those mix-y blade things. Whatever you do, mix it all up until it is well blended.

*Mash up your bananas, and combine it with your sugar and butter mixture.

*Add the salt, lemon juice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and egg.

*Add in your flour and baking powder.

In case you didn't know what a bunch of random combined ingredients looks like, here's a blurry visual for you.

*Ok, so this was my first time using a bundt pan. And just so that ya'll know, I'm not such an amazing baker that I already knew what a bundt pan was... I just saw this neat looking pan in our cupboard, and googled "What is the name of the funny shaped cake pan with ridges." Surprisingly, I actually found my answer. And I decided to use the bundt pan because it looked terrifying to me... but I don't really want to let a scary looking pan stop me from using it... So I faced my fear, and I feel like I will definitely be able to handle freaky pans from now on. (And anyhow... What's the worst that can happen? It may not come out quite right and it my cake may look all screwy... but it'll still taste good, which is the important thing!!!) :)

*So to use the bundt pan, you should butter it really REALLY well... make sure that you get every single nook and cranny buttered. I personally don't really like using spray because I feel like it doesn't always work the best... After it is sprayed, dump in some flour and shake your pan around to get every surface evenly floured.

It should look something like this... except not so blurry! ugh.

*Pour in your batter.

*Note: For a bundt pan this size, I probably should have done a double recipe... But that's ok... I'll know for next time now. :)

*Bake for 1 hour. (Or until you can insert a toothpick and it'll come out clean.)

Here is the finished product... see what I mean I should have done a double recipe... haha. It's a baby cake. :)

*Another tip for getting a stubborn cake out of a bundt pan, is to get a dish cloth wet with super hot water and place it underneath your upside down pan as soon as it gets out of the oven.

*Enjoy!

Thanks for reading! :)

Day 11
Dish 10

Today I made one of the most interesting foods I have ever tasted... This dish had so many unexpected twists to it, which made for an extremely unique and tasty culinary experience. This dish is called Bobotie, and is from South Africa. (Thank you to my amazing south african friend, Sonja, for recommending this dish!) When I was reading through my recipe, I kept thinking, "why would I add that? This is gonna be so weird..." And there were several times that I almost left things out... but I am so glad that I added everything, because it definitely enhanced this dish so much! The whole time that my dad and I were eating the bobotie, we were commenting on the flavors and how everything blended so nicely together... I really really enjoyed this dish and will definitely be making it again! It is lekker! (Nice)


Ingredients:

*Rice

*Tumeric

*1.5lbs of ground beef. (Since I don't know where to get meat mince here in the states...)

*1 onion

*2 slices of bread. (Or you can use bread crumbs... which is what I used...)

*1 cup of milk + 1/2 cup for later

*1-2 tbsp. apricot or orange jam. (I used orange marmalade because we had some in our fridge that nobody was ever going to use...)

*About 20 dried apricots

*5 tbsp. raisins

*3tbsp. slivered almonds

*Curry powder

*Lots of ginger

*1/2 lemon. (Juice)

*Garlic. I didn't have any, though... :(

*Salt

*Bay leaves. (Or better, lemon, if you can find it.)

*2-3 eggs



*Preheat your over to about 350 degrees.


*Cook up your rice. Set aside the tumeric... you'll need it later to go with the rice.


*You'll need to chop up your onion and ginger and garlic... I used about a 3inch piece of ginger... because I love ginger. Cook it all up.

*Cook your meat, and drain it.

*Combine your bread/breadcrumbs and about 1 cup of milk.

                                                   beautiful, right...? no, ew.

*Now combine all of your ingredients together, minus 1/2 cup of milk, eggs, and bay leaves.

*Cook it all together for a couple of minutes. And when you are adding your seasoning, you will probably need to taste test it a couple of times to get it just to your liking. (Meaning your curry powder, and salt.) I probably added about 1-2 tsps of curry powder.


Before mixing my ingredients...

After mixing my ingredients...

*Note: the part that was kinda weirding me out was the fact that it had apricots, raisins, almonds, and jam in it... but DO NOT skip out on these! It makes for such a unique and perfect dish! 

*Now back to your rice... It should be done by this time... mix in about 1-2 tbsp of tumeric, and some salt. It'll turn a beautiful yellow color... :)

yummmmm....

*So since my rice was done at the same time as my meat mixture, I decided to layer them instead of saving the rice for later and letting it get cold. Normally, I think that you'd serve these side by side, but separate.

I baked my bobotie in separate ceramic dishes.

Here is the first layer.... yellow rice...

and the second layer... the meat stuff... Sorry... not the best picture...

*Then you make an cutard-y thing to go on top. Wisk together the rest of your milk, and your eggs. This was another thing that I thought was kinda unique... it definitely added something neat to this dish... :)

Here is the bobotie all ready to go into the oven... :)

*Stick a bay leaf (or lemon leaf) on top.

*Bake (uncovered) for about 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, take the bobotie out of the oven and add a little bit more egg glaze. Bake for 10-12 more minutes.

*And here is the finished product!!!! YUMMMMMM!!!!!

*ENJOY!!!! :)

Baie dankie for reading! (pronounced like "buy a donkey." ... yeah we had fun using that all the time in zambia!) Apparently I really need to go to South Africa someday... i not only love all my amazing SA friends, but also their amazing food! Oh, and isn't Cape Town supposed to be like one of the most beautiful places, like, ever...? That's it, i'm going to South Africa! ;) (because the johannesburg airport doesn't technically count... even if I have been there twice!)