Meal 131: Panama

For the second year, we invited everyone on the block for a late-summer Nosh. Laura got a permit to close down the street, neighbors brought over tables and chairs, and everyone sat down…just in time for the very first rain of the season to arrive!

Since most of what people know about Panama is its role in transportation due to its canal, it felt appropriate to be eating this meal in a long line in the street! It was also a treat to have the Smiths over from the other side of town; we were happy to have them crash our otherwise neighbors-only event because they lived in Panama and shared stories of living in the American community there.

A big thanks to the two dozen or so neighbors who showed up, both physically as well as for fundraising. It was one of our biggest meals yet in terms of money raised.

Patacones | Twice-fried green plantains | Recipe

Green or ripe, thick or thin or even lengthwise or diced, there’s pretty much no bad way to fry a plantain. But there’s an even better way: to do it twice. Some Caribbean countries call them patacones, others tostones, and all of them start by a quick one or two minute fry, then a smash, then a longer fry to get them crispy. Unlike the other countries, the classic Panamanian way to eat them is with ketchup on the side, a habit attributed to the Americans who built and for a long time ran the Panama Canal.

I figured they’d be popular, so I made nearly one plantain’s worth per person. Even though they’re of course best straight from the fryer, I made them all a bit before dinner and kept them warm in the oven, and nobody complained. They just asked for more.

Chicheme | Sweet corn drink | Recipe

This was kinda like Caribbean bubble tea: a fairly refreshing, milky, cinnamon-y beverage, studded with toothsome kernels of dried then boiled corn. It was fine, but most guests understandably opted for beer or other more familiar refreshments.
 

Sancocho | Hen soup | Recipe

Most recipes for this mainstay of Panama call for gallina de patio, which pretty much means the post-menopausal hen that’s tottering around outside of the house. It turns out that at both Hispanic and Asian markets, you can find stewing hens in the freezer, for pretty cheap too. (Pretty sure they’re from an environment a tad less prosaic than a rural patio, but we make do with what we can.)

The predominant flavor of the soup is meant to be culantro, a close relative of cilantro with a sort of earthier flavor, but I couldn’t find it so I used plenty of cilantro instead. The soup was tasty, but I should have cooked it even longer, because old hens are really tough. Maybe this would be a good one for a pressure cooker.

Arroz con guandú | Rice with pigeon peas | Recipe

Even if you’ve never heard the name, you’ve possibly had pigeon peas in Indian food; one of the most common dishes in that cuisine is the stew-like, yellow toor dal made with the dried, hulled, split version of the legume. In the Caribbean, it’s typically eaten fresh, though up here you get it frozen when possible and otherwise canned, which we did here. All the same, it’s got a beany flavor for sure, but with a bit of almost smokiness to it. Which makes it perfect to mix with rich coconut rice, as a hearty way to fill your belly and get some nice flavor.

Flan | Custard | Recipe

Flan is a thing pretty much anywhere the Spanish colonized. Usually when a dish is that widespread, you see different varieties and regionalisms evolve, but as far as I can tell, everyone who cooks flan pretty much does it exactly the same way and hardly ever with any flavor variation: a lightly vanilla-scented egg custard with a sauce of caramelized sugar.  (The only variations I’ve seen involve differing amounts of fresh and/or canned milk products.)

I put the request out for a neighbor to help make flan, and there was some confusion and suddenly we ended up with way too much flan. (There was one or two out of the picture!) They were all made with different recipes, and all tasted pretty much the same. The only variation was Holly’s flan cake, which added some much appreciated variety.

Meal 124: Nigeria

For our first ever Nosh in LA, a very Portland thing happened: it started raining while we were barbecuing. It wasn't too hard, and it actually made standing near the glowing coals really pleasant. And who knows, maybe that extra bit of moisture helped the beef suya skewers turn out as well as they did. Nigeria is by far Africa's most populous country, ranked #7 in the world at 192 million — with a median age of eighteen and the highest growth rate of the top 15 countries. There's enormous diversity of language, culture and religion, and accordingly there's a lot of variety in the food, though fortunately for the sake of Noshing, there are themes that run throughout most if not all of the food traditions, as well as foods associated with a particular ethnic group that are popular all over.

Huge thanks to Kirsten and Alex for not only hosting, but also helping so much with the cooking. Joining us were Sarah-Doe, Zoe, Jess, Jessie, and our guest of honor Ben, who taught us a lot about the foods he grew up eating with his Nigerian family.

Egusi pepper soup | Melon-seed spicy stew | Recipe

Soup is the core unit of most Nigerian meals. The term is applied more broadly than I'm used to; from what I can gather — and please, if you're more familiar with the cuisine, correct me if I'm wrong — any sort of food that's been cooked in liquid until soft will qualify.

The two soups I kept coming across were pepper soup and egusi soup. The former isn't a reference to chilis, but rather various spices named for a passing similarity to black pepper. The latter is a melon seed that's ground up and lends thickness, texture, and flavor. Having the time and kitchen space to make only one, I was glad to find that there's at least one group, the Urhobos, who combine them.

If you don't have a West African market near you there's no sense in trying to make it, as you almost certainly won't find the core ingredients elsewhere. If you do, well, maybe try finding another recipe. Despite the several steps and promising ingredients, the soup ended up as a confused and underwhelming jumble, both visually and flavor-wise. Or maybe I just messed it up. Either way, maybe better to stick with one soup or the other.

Garri | Cassava balls

Frequent readers of the blog, all five or so of you, will know that I've struggled with African porridge/mush, and so often ended up with something lumpy and runny. Well, this time I think I nailed it, with something thick enough to roll into balls. I think it's something about how the prepared cassava flour doesn't require any cooking, so you can keep adding either water or flour as needed until the consistency is right.

In Nigeria, a mass of starch like this is called a "swallow." You pinch a piece of it, form it into a scoop, pick up some of the soup or other thing you're eating, and swallow it all.

Suya | Spicy beef kebabs | Recipe

Lots of cultures grill meat on skewers, and some of them season the meat with a dry spice rub. But I've never seen ground peanuts mixed into the spices, the way the Hausas do it. This addition was awesome, adding just a bit of crunchy texture and just barely toning down a moderately fiery rub. A keeper!

Ewa | Honey beans in sauce | Recipe

This dish resembles the more straightforward ingredients and technique that I've encountered in many other African countries' meals. What's notable is the beans, a relative of the black-eyed pea that has a less prominent "eye," is more brown, and has a mildly sweet flavor, hence "honey beans." It was fine, maybe even good if you particularly like the flavor of palm oil.

Boli | Roasted plantains | Recipe

Many Nigerian sweets are fried, but making them would have violated my "no deep frying in other people's kitchens" rule. And fortunately, the market had packages of chin-chin, little semi-sweet fried nuggets. But we had to do something more, and the grill was already hot, so we made the simple yet very satisfying treat of sweet plantains cooked with nothing more than charcoal. There's something exotic about grill marks on fruit, and the end-of-the-coals low heat made for some very nice caramelization. While grilled plantains are most often eaten alongside fish and sauce, in this case they made for a very nice gently sweet finish to the meal.

Meal 123: Nicaragua

I try not to knock the countries whose food we cook, but I have to admit I've generally found Central American food to be pretty boring. The Nicaraguan food we cooked mostly fits the pattern, with one huge exception: enormous, overloaded, rich nacatamales. The variety of ingredients, from raisins to olives to rice to pork, is so enshrined in each family's recipe that it's like canon; as one fourth-generation nacatamal vendor put it, "We don't innovate. We make everything step-by-step the way we were taught." Joining in our attempt to avoid innovation were Emily (and Stella!), Courtenay, Courtenay Hameister +1 Elia, Julie, David, Nancy, Sue, Kaely, Brett, and friends. Muchísimas gracias to Emily for her guidance in all things Nico — that is, Nicaraguan.

Refresco de chia con tamarindo | Tamarind-chia drink | Recipe

There's a surprisingly broad range of non-alcoholic drinks in Nicaragua. Emily brought over a premixed cebada, a barley-based drink, while I whipped this one up from scratch. Well, sorta. I bought whole tamarind pods and tried to soak and strain them, but they were super old and tough, so I cheated and used an Indian tamarind concentrate. Way easier! I put the chia on the side, because not everyone enjoys boba-like texture in their drink.

Vigorón | Yucca with slaw and pork rinds | Recipe

It's odd how sometimes a very particular combination of foods becomes a common thing, almost like someone's late night fridge raid accidentally got enshrined in the national culinary canon. In this case, it's plain boiled yucca root with a mildly tangy cabbage slaw and fried pork rinds, wrapped in a banana leaf. It didn't do too much for me, though it was fun learning to make chicharrones from scratch.

Nacatamales | Deluxe tamales |Recipe, Article

I am a huge fan of Mexican food, but I'm just not a fan of the tamales, most I've had are pretty dry and almost all corn with just a bit of some filling. The Nico version, on the other hand, is rich and just about bursting with filling.

To start, the pork is great just on its own, in a vibrant red sauce. I was stoked to find the sour oranges fresh at Providore, and since every recipe called for a different cut of meat, I went with pork shoulder because I needed the skin for the chicharrones, and the generous layer of fat for the masa. Now that's how to avoid a dry tamal, just douse the corn in lard! The third component of the tamal is all the other random stuff you fill it with: rice, potatoes, tomatoes, onion, mint, olives, prunes, raisins, peanuts, capers, and chiles. You practically clear the pantry! Then it's all assembled on top of banana leaves — which themselves contribute to the flavor and moisture — wrapped and steamed for several hours.

Oh man, I loved these! So much flavor and color, so many textures, every bite a little adventure. They're so filling that I can hardly believe that the traditional accompaniment to a nacatamal is, I kid you not, bread.

Gallopinto | Rice and beans | Recipe

Very similar to the Costa Rican version with which I'm more familiar. According to Emily, this recipe was fancy compared to typical, which should be little more than leftover plain rice and beans, stir-fried. That said, this still didn't have a ton of flavor, the tamales were way better.

Maduros en gloria | Creamy sweet plantain casserole | Recipe

In extreme contrast with the Spartan plainness of gallopinto, this dish lives up to the name that literally translates as "ripe ones in glory." The ripe ones in question are fried sweet plantains, and the glory is layers of cultured cream and sweetened salty hard cheese.

Meal 105: Mali

Mali sits squarely in the Sahel, the semi-arid band between the Sahara Desert and the more tropical West African coast. It's the original home of the peanut sauce stew found all over West Africa, while in the north you'll find influences from across the desert.

Our guests were Linda, David, Caitlin, Zoie, Amy, Nicole, David, Stephanie, and friend. Nicole and Stephanie did Peace Corps in Mali, as well as my friend Emily who was a huge help with the menu.

Salade malienne | Green salad with fried plantains and potatoes

Emily says that a salad in Mali is a basic green salad — lettuce, onion, tomato, etc. — with two notable additions. One is that the dressing is made with a salt-and-MSG-laden Maggi bouillon cube. The other is fried plantain and french fries. I left out the potato part, but did the plantains and Maggi-cube dressing, and wow that was a fun, tasty, and probably not-very-good-for-you salad.

Widjila | Beef stew with dumplings | Recipe

This dish comes from the north of Mali, the area around Timbuktu, abutting the southern edge of the Sahara. This dish clearly has a very strong influence from the other side of the desert, with rich spices like cinnamon, and a slow, gentle braise evoking North African tastes and styles. The yeasted wheat dumpling is curious, as it looks much more like something from Eastern Europe than anything I've found in African cuisine. As you'd expect, this dish was equally tasty and filling.

Mafé poisson | Fish in peanut sauce | Recipe

Peanut sauce is a classic West African preparation, and I chose to make this one with fish to reference the bounty of the Niger River. The sauce recipe is par for the course with what I've cooked from other nearby countries, however by this point I've learned my lesson, and I don't add much water to start — I've waited for an over-thin sauce to cook down too many times! You can always add more water.

We served this with fonio, a grain that's roughly the size and fluffiness of couscous, but with a nutritional value in the ballpark of quinoa. Back when we cooked the Guinea meal I estimated that it might become the next quinoa; since then, The Guardian wrote an article about a chef in New York who's trying to make it happen. It's still tough to find; our friend Anna made the effort to send it to me from a store in Brooklyn.

Dégué fonio | Milky pudding | Recipe

A dessert common to this part of the world involves various sorts of soured dairy mixed with grain. Given that I had fonio on hand, that's what I used. Whether or not you like this dish depends entirely on how much you like your dairy tangy, and whether creamy-mushy is your thing. (It is for me.)

Meal 72: Haiti

Have you ever pondered what would have happened if something went differently at a given point in history? Compared with the rest of the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is sort of a real-life example of contrarian history. The crux is a slave revolt against French colonial masters that, incredibly, led to independence in 1804. The slave system was ruthless and required a constant influx of slaves, which had the silver-lining consequence of a strong syncretic culture quickly developing that combined French and West African influences — ranging from language (Kreyol is mostly French vocabulary but has strong West African grammatical influence) to cuisine to religion.

Our meal fell directly on fet gede, a Vodou celebration blending the Catholic traditions of All Souls' Day with West African-derived spirits and beliefs. To get into the mood, we made an altar with some of the traditional elements, including an offering of our own ancestors' favorite foods. The meal, while not unique to this holiday, is one that would be appropriate to the festivities, particularly because the spirits related to death love spicy food. To bring a little bit more of Port-au-Prince to Brooklyn, we turned out the lights and ate by candle, since most folks only get electricity a few hours a day, if any.

Joining us for this adventure were Lisa, Alex, Samantha, Johan, CJ, and Rachel. Alex spent a month in Haiti, whereas CJ recently lived there for a year.

Kremas | Rum cream | Recipe

The drink par excellence for fet gede is pikan, hard liquor steeped with scotch bonnets. CJ brought some that she'd made for last year's, so you can imagine how pungent it was — all you need is the tiniest sip of this truly firey water.

For the rest of our Haitian-style drinking, we drank this cordial that's pretty much the opposite — an unctuous, sweet, spiced blend — with the only part in common is the alcoholic strength, thanks to being made with overproof rum. Between the spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg) and the thickness of the liquids (condensed milk, evaporated milk, cream of coconut), this drink was quite reminiscent of eggnog, just a whole lot stronger. While all enjoyed the flavor, some found the thickness too heavy to indulge in more than a glass, but I quite happily managed to have several.

If you choose to follow this recipe, just note two things: you should use more than a quarter-cup of water to make the simple syrup, and this made two liters in total (and I only used a 750 ml bottle of rum, rather than 1L), so be prepared to give plenty of it away. Oh, and it's extremely important to look people in the eye when toasting. Goodness knows you don't want to get on the wrong side of the spirits.

Pikliz | Spicy pickled slaw | Recipe

Growing up in California, taquerias were a core part of my childhood, and at some point my dad taught me the awesome trick of picking out the carrots from amongst the pickled japaleños at the salsa bar, to get the spice infused from the surrounding peppers while also getting more of the vinegar flavor. I feel like pikliz takes this concept to a marvelous extreme, with just a few extremely hot scotch bonnet peppers seasoning a whole jar of shredded cabbage, carrots, and whatever other veggies you throw in, by bathing together in spiced vinegar. And then there's whole cloves thrown in there to add a little more exotic flavor. I threw all the vegetables through the Cuisinart's shredding disc, but next time I would probably use the thin slicer for the cabbage to keep it in larger pieces.

Pikliz is such an essential part of the cuisine that everyone who'd been to Haiti whom I told about this meal asked if I'd be making it, and there's even an expat website called Pikliz.com. So, if you're doing a Haitian meal, don't leave this out, and be sure to start this a few days in advance to let that spice from the peppers migrate over to the vegetables! And then throw it on just about everything, as there's little on the Haitian table that won't go well with some vinegary crunch-n-spice.

Tasso cabrit | Fried goat | Recipe

This was, hands down, the tastiest goat I've eaten in my life. What it's lacking in visual appeal, it way more than makes up in flavor and texture.

It started with a trip to the Fertile Crescent, where the butcher cut stew pieces of meat to order, including the super-tasty rib bits. Then to Bed-Stuy where I had to pop into a few markets to find the elusive sour orange, a green fruit with thick skin, a ton of square-ish seeds, and appropriately named flavor that's just excellent as a marinade. The night before the meal, I squeezed up the oranges, mixed with a bunch of other ingredients including lime, ground clove (there's that spice again!), hot peppers, etc.

Some recipes call for a simple vinegar marinade and then boiling with all the flavors; other call for a rich marinade and then a simple boil. I find it hard to let go of good flavors once you've got 'em, so the next afternoon I dumped the whole bowl, meat and marinade alike, into a pot, added water to cover, and then let that simmer for a good two hours or so. The recipes say to boil, but tough meat always enjoys slow heat, and my tweaks were vindicated by a really tasty and tender meat.

But wait, there's more! Once I finished frying up the plantains, I turned up the heat and threw the goat in the same oil, adding a lovely crisp to all the edges. Once served, these tasty chunks lasted approximately five minutes on the table. The only challenge was successfully navigating all the bones by candlelight!

Sauce Ti-Malice | Tomato and onion sauce | Recipe

This sauce is pretty much soupy sautéed onions with hints of other ingredients. I saw it mentioned on pretty much every site I visited, but I'm not sure I get it. The rest of the cuisine has such vibrant flavors and textures, while this came across as kinda bland and watery. Did I do something wrong?4

Diri ak pwa | Rice and beans | Recipe

Doesn't that look like an exotic, perhaps African, name for this dish? Actually, it's the Kreyol transformation du riz au pois. Highlighting one face of the large American presence in Haiti, this recipe comes by way of a missionary.

I'm fascinated by how many ways there are to cook rice and beans. This one has you boil the beans (which I'd pre-soaked), adding some coconut milk and parsley toward the end, then re-introducing the bean broth and the beans and then finally the rice, with a heavy unlidded boil and then finally a slow simmer with the lid on. It was a lot of work and required a lot of attention, which proved quite worthwhile, with a great semi-moist texture on both the rice and the beans, and a nice richness thanks to the coconut milk. (I actually made coconut milk from scratch, by cracking, prying, and shredding coconuts, adding water to the shreds, and squeezing to extract the milk. Maybe that made a difference, but it was probably hardly worth it.)

I made a whole ton of it, using a pound of little red beans and five cups of rice; three nights of leftovers later and we've still got plenty left! Fortunately, it tastes great when crisped up in the frying pan with the addition of extra veggies and some pikliz!

Banan peze | Twice-fried green plantains | Recipe

For all the fried ripe plantains I've made, this was actually the first time I've fried the unripe version. Known as tostones or patacones in Spanish, these bananes pesées — weighted-down plantains — are fried once, smashed, and fried again. I can't find confirmation online, but my suspicion is that if the edges would burn before you managed to cook it all the way through, so smashing after the heat softens it makes all part of the slice close to the surface. Or maybe it's just that more surface area means more crispiness. Anyway, yum. Even though I have a deep-fryer, I made these in a frying pan so I could get more of these flat things going at a time.

Bonbon siwo | Molasses cake | Recipe

This cake-like dessert can be pretty honestly described as a fluffy brownie, but with molasses and spices instead of chocolate. I thought it was OK, but on the dry side. (The first recipe I found called for a ridiculous four sticks of butter, whereas this one has one stick, perhaps the truth and beauty lies somewhere in between.) However, it was an excellent supporting actor for a scoop of the nutmeg ice cream left over from the Grenada meal!

Post-dinner lingering, by candlelight