Recommend a recipe!

[apple_pathways]

Bah, I keep meaning to make this post and forgetting to do it!

So, for my Food & Culture class I have an assignment to prepare a recipe for a food that is new to me from a culture that is not part of my ethnic background. Here are some of the guidelines:

This project will provide you with an opportunity to prepare and try one new food that you have not previously integrated into your own diet and that is not a part of your cultural background.

Select a culture that is being studied in this course other than one that is a part of your own cultural background.

Using your textbooks and other resources provided to you through this course, e.g. "Notes" links; or a cookbook that contains recipes from the culture that you selected, locate a recipe that you find to be appealing and that you are willing to prepare and consume.

The only problem with this assignment is that I'm a bit of a foodie and have sampled and incorporated into my diet A LOT of foods from different cultures! I've regularly consumed organ meats, exotic vegetables, and just about everything that swims in the sea (tentacles, anyone?). I have ghee, tahini, tamari, oyster sauce, and sumac powder in my cupboards right now.

So, I'm asking for some suggestions for recipes that I could use to fulfill this assignment. To help out, my ethnic background is German and Polish, so those are out. I'm fairly familiar with a lot of different cultural foods, but just throw some suggestions at me! I don't mind if the dish is fairly confidant, as I love to cook.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

ETA:

From AO3: This work potentially has adult content. If you proceed you have agreed that you are willing to see such content.

Um, AO3 darling...I WROTE that adult content!

Comments

[housemaid79.livejournal.com]

Have you made scones, sodabread (Irish)?

My guess is that you have, but I have recipes on the off chance you have not.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I have made scones before, but not sodabread! I would love your recipe if you're willing to share. I love to bake.

[planejane.livejournal.com]

I have one Burmese sweet made with sesame flour/seeds that my gran gave me. I wrote it down in a notebook but have never made it! I'll dig it out for you. If I can do some research there are some other dishes my Gran made that I don't have recipes for, but I would recognise them if I saw them. We could, if you like, arrange a time for you to come over and we can muddle through trying to prepare them!

[planejane.livejournal.com]

Hey! I found them! Khow Suey and Letho. The semolina cake is sanwihn makin.

[planejane.livejournal.com]

Or, if you want, I have suet from the UK, which you can use to make steamed puddings such as spotted dick or jam roly-poly or steak and kidney pudding. Yummy for winter!

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I would love to make a Burmese dish with you! That is definitely a culture from which I haven't sampled any food, and I would love to give it a try. The Khow Suey in particular looks amazing. Thanks for your help!

I need to submit my recipe choice by the end of the weekend, but the project itself isn't due until December, so I have plenty of time. I'm excited!

[planejane.livejournal.com]

I'll talk to my dad this week and see if he can give me the names of the accompanying dishes and condiments. A lot of them intersect with Thai and Indian cuisine in terms of spices.

I'm not really into cooking, but those two dishes are like Eastern comfort food and really take me back to family events in my childhood. I'd at least like to have them in my repertoire. Thanks for making me think about it!

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Thanks for you help! I can't wait to try the recipe, it looks delicious. I just need to pick a version now to submit to my instructor.

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I like this assignment. I'm not very good at coming up with things people haven't tried before, though, as I'm on one of the lowest rungs among my foodie friends. (-; My go-to for 'unusual' 'most people haven't tried it' food (outside of tentacles and things) tends to be Moroccan food. It's not really out-there in the ingredients sense, but I had no idea that you could pair chicken with cinnamon and other baking-type spices and have it turn out so good. (In fact, I've been toying with this idea myself now, and recently made an acorn squash-stuffed hen with cinnamon and nutmeg and veggies which was rather awesome, and later boiled down into a fantastic stock as well.) So, my suggestion is something like this, which is the kind of chicken pie that was my first experience with Moroccan food. It's slightly sweet, which is odd for dinner, and it's pretty much the choice of spices that make it unusual, but it's very good, and the sort of thing less adventurous people might relate to well enough to actually try. (Rather than homemade octopus sushi, for example, which is something I have scared my co-workers with on several occasions. (-;)

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I like this assignment, too, which is why I'm taking it so seriously! I could lie, and pretend I've never made and Indian or Thai curry before, or that I've never sampled menudo, but I really do want to try something new!

I've had a little bit of Moroccan food before, but I don't have an extensive experience. I will say that I am NOT a fan of cinnamon in my meat dishes! I bought a garam masala blend once that ended up having cinnamon in it, and I just couldn't use it. (Hey, I've discovered a food taboo I never knew I had! Also, that'll teach me to waste my money on spice blends instead of just getting the spices individually.)

The recipe you linked to looks really good, apart from the cinnamon! (I'd having a difficult time mentally pairing it with the cilantro, though...) I'm definitely going to add this to my list of things to try, possibly leaving out that spice. (Which is funny, because I am a cinnamon lover otherwise!)

So you make your own sushi? I had a roommate once that used to make us sashimi; she had spent a couple years working in a Japanese market. I've never trusted myself with it, though!

[middlegirl.livejournal.com]

Have you ever tried Scandinavian? My grandma has recipes for lefse, krumkake, and a couple of dishes I don't know how to spell but sound like "sahnbockles" and "sutsooppa."

She usually breaks them out at Christmas, but if I ask nicely, she might share them with me...

[middlegirl.livejournal.com]

Okay, here we go (I had to look up how to spell them):

Lefse - potato tortillas
Krumkake - really thin wafer cookies
Søtsuppe [SUtsooppa] - cold fruit soup
Sandbakkels [sahnbockels] - little tart shell-shaped cookies

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Gah, you got ahead of me!

Tart cookies sound delicious! I am going to look that one up.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Ha, you're like me when I'm trying to describe the Polish food my grandmother used to cook! I know how to say it, but I can't for the life of me spell anything in Polish. (Except pierogi and golabke.)

I had to do some quick googling to get some examples of Scandinavian foods to see if I've tried any. I've had some, but not a lot. Some of the dishes (the cabbage, the potatoes, and the pickled beets) are very familiar and similar to Polish or German foods.

What's your favorite recipe of your gradmother's? You don't have to go out of your way for me, but I do love to expand my culinary horizons. I can always look up a recipe for whatever you recommend.

[middlegirl.livejournal.com]

Definitely the lefse. I love to treat it a bit like a crepe and roll it up with butter and sugar (10 seconds in the microwave to warm it up and it's heavenly), but it's also good dipped in Swedish meatball gravy.

It's a bit time-consuming to make, but so, so very good.

[ladylovelace.livejournal.com]

Err.

Damper? Flour + Water, kneaded and baked in foil. Aboriginal is exotic, no?

Potato bread is kind of awesome, too. Mashed Potato + Flour + Butter. Rolled thin, cut into wedges and fried on a griddle.

Or Lamingtons, but that's kinda cheating. This has reminded me that I wanted to put together an Australian cookbook.

Or I can dig out my reams of Chinese/Japanese recipes, if they'd be any help. Or I have a good reference for Filipino stuff filed away somewhere...

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the ideas! I know next to nothing about Australian cooking. I'm going to have to get a book out of the library sometime.

What does damper taste like, and do you eat it with anything else?

[ladylovelace.livejournal.com]

Damper tastes surprisingly like normal white bread. A pinch of salt of sugar is usually a good idea, or a little of a given flavouring works nicely too.

Traditionally, it's made either plain or with a little sugar and eaten with honey or jam. Strawberry, for preference, but whatever there was a huge crop of last year and has been consigned to jamminess.

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

Hm... have you considered Mexican food? I love Pollo con Mole, chicken in a spicy chocolate sauce. If you'd like, I can dig up the recipe from my favourite Mexican restaurant. :)

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I love Mexican food! Rick Bayless is one of my favorite chefs period, and he does awesome traditional mexican cooking.

A friend of mine got married over the summer to a man from Mexico, and they all traditional Mexican recipes at the reception, including Pollo con Mole. It was probably the best wedding meal I've ever had!

[voltaires-vice.livejournal.com]

Dutch food stuffs count, right? Andijviestamppot is yummie and as Dutch as it gets. What about Austrian? I have a recipe for Donau Welle if you'd like it.
I don't know how to make Haggis, but that would be good, if you could get your hands on a sheep's stomach.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I imagine I could get my hands on a sheep's stomach...I just have no idea where I'd even begin to look!

I looked up Andijviestamppot and had a confusing time trying to figure out they meant by "Chicory". It turns out chicory is a big genus. The species used in the recipe is Cichorium endivia, which I know as endive. What I think of as chicory is Cichorium intybus. It grows by roadsides all over the U.S. and has extremely tough leaves you wouldn't want to eat. (The root is often roasted and steeped to make a coffee substitute, though; in New Orleans they add the root to their coffee to enhance its flavor. Their cafe au lait is AMAZING!)

I am definitely going to try that dish sometime though.

I am having too much fun researching all the recipes everyone is suggesting! You might have noticed, I'm a huge geek who loves collecting information.

Oh, and I just googled Donau Welle, and it looks SO GOOD! Talk about food porn! I would love your recipe, if you're willing to share!

[voltaires-vice.livejournal.com]

It is endive. The Dutch for that is "andijvie". :)

I translated the Donau Welle recipe for you:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/db462x

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the translation! I should have no problem converting the metric measures into english standard, but I do have one question: how much is in a sachet? (As in "one sachet baking powder".) In the U.S., baking powder and sugar are sold in big packages containing more than one serving.

[voltaires-vice.livejournal.com]

It's about two heaped teaspoons.

[voltaires-vice.livejournal.com]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Donauwelle_blech_hg.jpg

Here's one I made earlier. ;)

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Good lord! You're telling me you MADE that? It's gorgeous! Ooh, can't wait to try it out. Thanks!

[voltaires-vice.livejournal.com]

Good God no! I googled an image. Just to show you what it should look like.

It takes about 48 hours to make a proper Donau Welle, what with the cooling times. My mother lets the cake cool overnight before she makes the pudding mixture and the chocolate layer.

I think the next time we're making one will be around Christmas. It serves about 36 people and it's HUGE. I should really take a photo next time.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking of making one for my future sister-in-law's bridal shower. It's certainly an impressive dessert!

[voltaires-vice.livejournal.com]

Great idea! Let me know how you get on!

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

Middle Eastern food ftw!