One Country, One Meal — (A)

To go along with the reading project, I’ve also been following the country meals from Global Table Adventure. It has become evident that I am better at reading than at cooking. I’m further ahead in the reading list, but will post a picture and some thoughts about the meals as I go. I refer to my husband as VK, since those are his initials.

Afghanistan — Kabeli Palau with seer moss (lemon garlic yogurt sauce), burani bonjon (spicy braised eggplant) and lavash

Palau (pilaf) is a very common dish in all the -stans and surrounding areas. We substituted goat for chicken in the recipe. VK grew up eating goat in Belarus, but if you’re new to it as an adult, it might be an acquired taste. People in many other countries boil meat (the water is used as broth and the meat is finished in the oven). If you’re an American, you’re probably going to prefer your meat cooked in another way. If I make this again, I’ll sear the meat in a pan. We cheated and bought lavash instead of making the flat bread indicated by GTA. Both lavash and Indian-style naan are common in Afghanistan. We got the lavash and goat from Arash. While looking up other recipes, it was a surprise that pumpkins are a common Afghan food. They’re native to North America but grow well all over the world. The way I pictured Afghanistan did not previously include pumpkin patches.

Albania — Tavë kosi (lamb baked in yogurt) with turli perimesh (sauteed vegetables) and savory cornbread

I’m not in a rush to take a food tour of Albania. No more boiled meats. The lamb-yogurt is a national dish, but not much to my tastes. On the other hand, the vegetables were good, but not distinguishable from a typical American preparation. The cornbread contained feta and scallions. I like cornbread, feta, and scallions, but it didn’t quite come together for me. According to Wikipedia, Albanian cuisine encompasses a wide variety of foods that I don’t particularly like. I wouldn’t have been able to guess what kinds of foods were available based on the geography. I’d be willing to try authentically prepared foods, but Yelp indicates that the few local cafes with Albanian food are now permanently closed.

Algeria — Hummus bi’l Kammun with green beans and zil zbib (sweet couscous)

The hummus was meant to be eaten as a soup, but as it was thick and spicy, we found it worked better to be eaten in small amounts with pita like we’d eat a Greek hummus. I’d make it again. The green beans were seasoned with garlic, cumin, paprika and cloves. Now that we have the spices, I need to remember to use them again in that combination. I had a cooking mishap with the couscous, leaving it rather lumpy, but it tasted fine. However, even if it had turned out better, I prefer it savory. Between the book and the meal, Algeria has gone from a place that I hadn’t thought about one way or the other to a place that seems worth visiting.

Andorra — Redfish with warm spinach and mushroom salad and trinxat (potato, cabbage and bacon pancake)

The meal called for trout. We can get trout locally. But the grocery was out of trout and we’d already bought the other ingredients, so we substituted. I figured that Andorra’s cuisine must be heavily influenced by Spain and France, but none of these foods are ones that I associate with either country, although that may be a flaw of thinking mostly of the coastal regions of Spain. The trinxat was fine, and cabbage makes a good filler and varies the potato texture, but it was a lot of prep work for a fairly mundane tasting potato pancake. The spinach and mushroom salad, on the other hand, has become a go-to dish for us. We’ve tried it with several different types of mushroom.

Angola — Muamba de Galinha (chicken stew) with Cocada Angolana (sweet coconut)

In between Andorra and Angola, we had a baby, and finding time to prepare meals got a bit fraught. We looked all over Aurora for red palm oil, but found that some African stores reported open were closed, and one small store appeared to only have lentils and an employee came out of the back looking like she’d been napping and surprised to see us. We ended up ordering it on Amazon. We substituted another squash for the pumpkin. Now I imagine both Afghanistan and Angola being full of pumpkins. I thought that the stew was great — it had garlic, chili, lemon, tomato, squash, okra and onion. VK thought the red palm oil was too heavy, but I can easily drain some off the next time.