Meal 37: Colombia

With coasts on the Caribbean and Pacific, and a variety of lowlands, highlands, and valleys leading all the way to the Andes, there's plenty of regional variation in much of Colombia, expressed in both in music and food. But unlike for China, where we picked representative dishes from across the country, we took a different approach with a deep dive on a traditional meal from the Paisa Region. That's because the bandeja paisa is a traditional, unitary, and utterly abundant amalgam of a good dozen ingredients, famous across the country and region.

Cooking started the day before, and ended in a frenzy of last-minute prep. Our guests tonight included three out-of-towners: Carla and Kirk from LA, and Kelly from DC. Rounding out the table were Sophie, Kambui, Anna, Elsa, Mal, and Jim.

Chicharrones | Fried pork belly | Recipe

I have made a lot of rich things in the past year, but it's kind of hard to top fat fried in its own fat. You cook pork belly in water, which softens the meat and renders out a bunch of the fat; once the water's evaporated, the extracted fat becomes the medium for deep-frying what remains. Utterly crisptacular.

Chorizo | Spiced sausage | Recipe

This was a pretty darn good chorizo. iIf you ever find yourself in Sunset Park, La Vaquita on 5th Avenue will hook you up at a good price. But what's more notable is how after a few minutes, the grill turned into an inferno, with flames so big they were licking out the sides and threatening to melt the cables running along the outside of the building. (Note to self: turn down the grill after putting on fatty sausages!) The outside was fantastically seared while the inside wasn't yet cooked, but there was so much heat lingering after I turned off the heat that ten minutes with the lid down and it was cooked through. ¡Sabroso!

Arepas de queso | Corn and cheese griddle cakes | Recipe

I'd never heard of arepas before moving to New York. Typical of Colombian and Venezuelan cuisine, they're a certain type of corn meal (nixtamalized and pre-cooked, I believe), mixed with warm water and butter, and in this case cheese. Smush 'em down, panfry 'em in more butter, and you've got a tasty treat. Not a bad idea to keep some arepa flour on hand, since this is a pretty easy-to-whip-up snack.

Plátanos horneados | Baked plantains

There's enough opportunities when cooking the world's cuisines to fry plantains that I jumped at the alternative of baking. Not only is the oil really rich and completely unnecessary on the same plate as the chicharrones, but it's also time consuming and annoying to fry all those slices. Baking plantains actually is really easy: cut and rip off the peels of the darkest, ripest plantains you can find, brush them with melted butter, and bake for about a half hour at 400 degrees. That's really it! Only regret is that I didn't buy more plantains.

Frijoles paisas | Pinto beans with pork and vegetables | Recipe

Though they were staring me in the face in the meat case at La Vaquita, I forgot to pick up ham hocks, and couldn't for the life of me find them anywhere local yesterday. So I substituted bacon, which is rarely a poor decision. In combination with the tomato-onion-cilantro mix thrown in toward the end, these beans were seriously tasty. The fact that I made them the day before surely helped, because the flavors were nicely blended and the texture very smooth.

Carne en polvo | Powdered beef | Recipe

Yep, powdered. Marinate some thinly sliced steak, simmer until done, then throw it in the food processor! Kind of a shame, I thought it tasted better as whole steak than ground to smithereens, but maybe it's an acquired taste.

Mazamorra | Hominy porridge | Recipe

This is one of those dishes where I'm not sure if I did it wrong, or if it's just something that we simply didn't like all that much. Hominy from a can, simmered in water, and chilled, and then you add milk, chunks of sugar, and guava paste. The sugar chunks and guava paste didn't really dissolve, so there was a lot of smushing on the side of the bowl. Maybe we were supposed to eat (or drink?) the hominy-milk and then nibble on the sugar and guava paste? Hm.

Chocolate caliente | Hot chocolate | Recipe

The hot chocolate, on the other hand, was a surefire winner. Get bars of chocolate specifically made for the purpose, with a higher sugar content and without milk. Melt in the pan with a bit of milk, then add more milk until it's drinking temperature. Very fortunately, I bought too much chocolate so we'll be having this again soon.

Though we dined outside, throughout the evening we played a big long playlist of Colombian music, which features a ton of variety, from cumbias to Shakira, reggaeton to waltzes. Can't wait for our Jambox to arrive, so we can enjoy more music outside.

This was our last Nosh in Brooklyn for over a month! In two weeks we'll be in the Bay Area for a meal from the islands of Comoros, which are north of Madagascar. That'll be quite the shift!

Meal 36: China

When asked over the past year which upcoming meal intimidated me the most, I'd answer "China." The most populated country in the world covers a huge variety of cuisines, virtually uncountable ingredients and cooking techniques, and tremendous extremes: it has 9,100 miles of coastline and also the point on Earth farthest from any ocean. China is a telling example of the imperfection of using the United Nations member list as a proxy for the world's cuisines. But here we are.

Thanks to the thorough consultation and guidance of Chrys Wu, who gave generously of her time and knowledge to compile the menu (and then jumped in to help with the cooking!), I think we did about as well as we could have in a single meal in terms of variety on several dimensions: pork, duck, fish, seafood, tofu; steaming, pan-frying, roasting; rice, wheat, bean noodles; and heck, we even managed to include yogurt. A huge shout-out as well to Oliver, for making the trip from DC to shop and cook and enjoy, and bringing back memories of cooking Chinese food together in high school.

Our other guests were Sam, Jenny, Ben, and Caroline. Thankfully this on-again, off-again rain gave us a respite, and we enjoyed the meal outside — which is a good thing since the house got seriously smoky when we reheated the Peking duck!

Cha | Tea

Chrys brought over some gorgeous white needle tea. It was just a bit hot out to enjoy the tea warm, so we iced it. Good decision! It was crisp but not too bitter, a nice contrast to the rich flavors we encountered throughout the meal.

Shanghai: Xiao long bao | Soup dumplings | Recipe

This is probably my single favorite dish in all of Chinese food, and so of all the dishes in the pantheon of Shanghainese cuisine, I insisted we make this one despite all the work. The day before, I made the broth, extracting the flavor from two pounds of chicken and a pound and a half of pork belly, boiling it down to a cup and a half of super-rich stock, and mixing it with gelatin. The next day, we mixed this gelled aspic with a rich, aromatic, pork-based filling, stuffed it into wheat-based dumpling skins, and steamed them until the skins got rich and glossy, and the aspic magically melted into soup. Eaten in one bite with a little splash rich Chinkiang vinegar (I like to call it the Balsamic of China due to its complexity), this explosion of textures and flavors is a fantastic appetizer.

Hong Kong: Yee mein | Pan-fried noodles with shrimp and scallops | Recipe

"Should I use the same marinade for the shrimp and the scallops?" I asked Chrys. "Oh no, then everything would taste the same," she cautioned. Thus I learned an important aspect of Chinese cuisine: even if everything is ending up in the same dish, keeping flavors separate allows the individual elements to carry their own identity. What a tasty and easy-to-prepare dish: provided you've got the right sauces and noodles on hand, you can make this with pretty much any land- or sea-based protein in a matter of minutes. Tasted arguably better as leftovers the next day!

Guangzhou/Canton: Hoi sam | Sea cucumber stuffed with pork and shrimp | Recipe

Whenever I hear the term "flavorless, gelatinous delicacy," I grow skeptical. And as you can see, these sea-lubbers ain't exactly lookers, nor are they cheap. But you know what, this dish turned out well. If you think of the pork-and-shrimp filling as a hotdog, this salad-of-the-sea made for a nicely chewy but not at all tough bun of sorts.

Sichuan: La zi yu | Fish with chilies and sichuan pepper | Recipe

Though drenched in chilies and Szechuan peppercorns, this dish was somehow really pleasant and well-balanced. We started with some sea bass that I bought live in Chinatown, and filleted using the knife and the skills I picked up at Brooklyn Kitchen's Knife Skills 201 class. Oliver made the spicy base and the even spicier oil for on top, while I sliced the fish into chunks and boiled it in water, before we put it all together. Why boil the fish rather than fry it in that spicy oil? Maybe that's why the heat is manageable. Also, if you've never had a Szechuan peppercorn experience, this dish is a first-class way to experience the tangy, tingly, numby, intense flavors of this mysterious spice.

Beijing: Kao ya | Peking duck | Recipe

    Unlike fortune cookies and chow mein and General Tso's Chicken, dishes thought of as Chinese but made popular in the States, Peking Duck really is famous in China too. That said, I'm pretty sure the classic recipe isn't exactly like this one we used, which calls for — get this — using a bicycle pump to inflate the skin! Check out the video. Apparently this makes the skin looser, so that when it goes in the fridge after being scorched with a soy sauce/sherry/honey mixture, it dries out more.

Since I don't have a vertical roaster, and I avoid buying cooking equipment for single uses, we had to get creative, and Oliver had the great idea of using skewers to keep the duck propped upright. And it worked! You can see how beautifully bronzed our duck turned out. The only problem we ran into was in the reheating right before service: we had the oven up too high, and it filled the house with smoke. (Oh, and the pancakes we bought that are traditionally used as little fluffy tacos were moldy and so we tossed them. Oh well!) While we got surprisingly little meat from this five-pound bird, it was sure tasty.

Luo han zhai | Buddha's delight | Recipe

To represent the Buddhist traditions of the southern highlands, and also to insert some veggies into the meal, we made what's known in English as Buddha's Delight, a vegetarian stir-fried dish that's traditionally eaten for the new year. Taking cues from various recipes around the internet, we went a bit nuts with the varieties of fungus, including wood ear and bamboo fungus, and so it had quite the earthy flavor. We're also not positive the romaine lettuce is entirely authentic. But it was definitely flavorful and abundant.

Xinjiang: Durap | Sweetened yogurt

I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of typical Chinese desserts. So I jumped on the opportunity to acknowledge the Uyghurs of far Western China, and make this dish of yogurt sweetened with honey and lemon juice and thinned with shaved ice. We couldn't find a recipe for durap, only descriptions, so we had to wing it. And I think it was pretty good!

I'm happy to say we ended up with surprisingly few leftovers given the abundance of this feast — our guests were eatin' champs! And now our attention turns to Colombia, where with the bandeja paisa they've managed to create that treasure that's rare and highly appreciated here in Noshlandia: a single dish that incorporates the essence of the country's cuisine. See you next week!

Meal 35: Chile

Chile has gone through a nutritional upheaval in the past half century. Whereas a few decades ago malnourishment was a worry, now their obesity levels are in the same league as the US. With flaky pastries and tasty breads, it's easy to see where the temptation lies.

For this long Memorial Day weekend, we shook things up by heading up to the Catskills. Our friend Sarah-Doe spent much of her childhood in this big, rambling structure, a former grain mill that her family converted into a home and woodworking shop, set between two streams that form part of the headwaters of the Delaware River.

photo by Kirsty Bennett

Given that we were farther from the ocean than just about any point in Chile, and the concerns of transporting fish for hours by car, we decided to pass up Chile's robust seafood opportunities and stick to safer foods. Our friends around the table were Kirsty, Saskia, Adam, Raven, Dan, Sarah-Doe, Michael, and Julia. A huge thanks to all the kitchen help, especially Kirsty for her major efforts particularly on pastry. And of course an enormous abrazo to Sarah-Doe for hosting us all!

Pisco sour | Brandy cocktail | Recipe

Chile and Peru have fought over many things, including territory and pisco. Peru claims that since the town of Pisco is in Peru, only their grape brandy may go by that name. Chile renamed a town as Pisco Elqui to nullify that argument. In any event, both countries produce a pretty similar product, but they whip it up in a cocktail somewhat differently. In Peru, a pisco sour is made with egg whites; in Chile, it appears it is not. The recipe we found had the further improvement of champagne, and it made for a powerful and refreshing potion.

Mote con huesillos | Dried peach and wheat drink | Recipe

Speaking of refreshing, this beverage, which looks like it's come straight from a different planet, is a great summertime cooler. Dried peaches are soaked in water with cinnamon overnight, then boiled with sugar, and the whole thing has some cooked grain added to it like a bizarro bubble tea. (It's supposed to be a form of dehusked whole wheat grains, but pearled barley made for a decent substitute.) We all agreed it tasted better than feared, though for those of us not used to chewing our way through a drink, it was a bit of a challenge.

Marraquetas | Double rolls | Recipe

This looks a lot like a butt, yet it had a great texture and tasted fantastice. For whatever reason this is the shape that Chileans expect their bread to be in, to the extent that specialized machines are manufactured to help bakers achieve it. Luckily I remembered to bring up some sourdough starter, which the recipe said was optional; I have no idea if that's really authentic, but gosh it helped! We tore our way through this double batch of bread, alternating between butter, pebre (see below), and butter and pebre in combination.

Pebre | Chilean salsa | Description

Apparently this comes from the Catalan word for bell pepper, but since I forgot to print out the recipe I didn't know what ingredients to buy and didn't get any peppers, sweet or otherwise. It ended up being a non-spicy salsa of tomato, chopped onion, and cilantro, and whaddya know it was still a great topping for the bread.

Porotos granados | Fresh cranberry bean stew | Recipe

There's a saying in Chile, tan Chileno como los porotos, meaning "As Chilean as beans." Although bean consumption has dropped dramatically in recent years, this dish of fresh cranberry beans with squash and corn is still a signature dish of the country's culinary repertoire. It also very well represents three foods that were enjoyed in the country long before the conquistadores arrived, and just so happens to be completely vegan. If you care to make this, I wish you luck in finding fresh cranberry beans; I was shocked and pleased to see them at Fairway.

Ensalada chilena | Tomato and onion salad | Recipe

This salad of onions, tomato, and cilantro might seem like no great shakes, but notice the technique of pouring boiling salted water on the onions to remove the sharpness. It really works!

Empanadas de pino | Ground beef empanadas | Recipe

The second half of this meal was brought to you by a really beautiful hunk of leaf lard I bought from the farmers market a while back, just sitting in my freezer for such an occasion. It makes for rich and supple pastry that, of course, gets crispy and flaky like none other. The filling was mostly meaty and savory, but with tang from the olive and a burst of sweet from raisins. Yum!

Torta de mil hojas con manjar | Thousand-layer caramel cake | Recipe (translated to English)

For dessert, we enjoyed what was seems to have been invented by a stoned teenager locked in a patisserie: layers of pie crust with dulce de leche and nuts. Rather than the very tedious, stir-for-many-hours method of making classic Chilean manjar (that's what they call their dulce de leche, which omits the vanilla that the Argentines use), I opted for the much easier and more common method of simmering cans of condensed milk. I cooked the for two hours, and lo and behold they got that brown hue, though they probably could have gone for maybe an hour longer for a richer flavor. But there was plenty of richness from the individually baked layers of pastry dough, in which we used lard instead of butter for extra crispiness. Wow. The only thing better than this cake was the leftovers the next day, when the caramel had soaked about halfway through, leading to a broader spectrum of textures.

This coming weekend we're tackling China, which is shaping up to be quite the adventure!

Photos by Laura Hadden, who's looking forward to more noshing in the countryside.

Meal 34: Chad

Chad spans the three S's of the heart of Africa: the Sahara desert in the north, the arid Sahel in the middle, and the wetter savanna to the south. Or put into culinary terms, this extent is why we see both dates and peanuts factor into this meal.

However, on the heels of the generically-named Central African Republic, Chad's another country that poses some online searching problems, at least in English. To wit, I was looking for advice on cooking the staple grain of that country, but a search for [chad millet] turns up a doctor with that name in Louisiana. Fortunately, French provides a nice opportunity for disambiguation: they spell it Tchad, and as far as I could tell, nobody goes by that name.

Chad's going through a rough time right now: the food crisis in the Sahel has made food scarce and expensive across much of the middle of the country, and unfortunately the World Food Program is predicting a looming humanitarian disaster. They're hoping to help 1.2 million people in Chad alone — now would be an excellent time to consider helping before the situation turns from "extreme" to "famine." Our guests' generous donations tonight, after matching, will enable WFP to provide 1,000 meals.

Tonight's guests included Matt Green, a nosher with a mission: to walk every single street of New York City. Check him out! We also welcomed Matt's friend Jason, Laura's psychogeography professor Rachel and classmates Alex, Grayson, and Gabi, and Bradley and Jenny. Although Chadians are relatively big meat-eaters, we kept this meal pescatarian.

Karkanji | Hibiscus drink | Recipe (translated to English)

Along with the traditional Chadian welcome of sweet green tea, dates and peanuts (according to this page), we served this super-refreshing drink made of steeped hibiscus flowers (aka sorrel, or jamaica in Spanish). With ginger, cinnamon, and cloves, this tasted downright Christmassy. All the ingredients are so pungent that I made two batches from the same base of stuff, I just added more sugar and water and steeped it again.

Sauce koumragan | Sorrel leaf sauce | Recipe (translated to English)

I was planning on making a dish with okra, but when I happened upon bunches of sorrel at the farmer's market, I had to let fate sway me. The full-circle nature of this is just too good: use the flowers for the drink, and the leaves for the dish! I modified the recipe to be vegetarian: I upped the onions and added tomatoes in place of meat, and used porcini bouillon cubes (hey, it's what I had on hand) in place of veal bouillon. Turned out pretty tasty!

Mulukhiya | Recipe (translated to English)

Whatever goopiness we missed from skipping okra, this one made up for in abundance. This plant is sometimes known as mallow, in fact its mucilaginous properties are what they used to lean on to make marshmallows before they discovered more convenient ways to make sugar goop together in a fluffy manner. It was kind of hard to get beyond the texture because the dish itself wasn't terribly flavorful, despite the exotic smoked fish which added surprisingly little. I know we'll encounter this vegetable again as we go through Arab lands so I hope to improve on my mallowmaking.

Courgettes avec des arachides | Squash with peanuts | Recipe

Seems so simple, with nothing more than salt to flavor it, but this mix of squash (or in this case zucchini) and peanuts is really tasty: both peanuts and summer squash are mildly sweet, and the mushy and crunchy play off each other well. If you choose to make this, note that the five-to-ten-minutes for sauteeing until soft is wildly optimistic, I budgeted 20 to 30 minutes and used it all.

Boule | Millet ball | Recipe

Another African country, another fufu derivation! In Chad the staple grain is millet, though it was tough to find instruction on how to actually prepare it. I finally found this one that advised putting a little wheat flour in, and that probably helped it thicken up. Following instructions, we pressed the mush into lightly greased bowls and inverted them to eat from.

Jus de fruit | Fruit shakes | Recipe

Pretty straightforward and tasty, we made them with both mango and papaya. Even better with some rum.

Fangasso | Fluffy beignets | Recipe

A rather common name for these crispy, airy concoctions is pets de nonne, or "nun's farts." I'd never quite made anything this way before; from the initial instruction of melting butter in water it was all an unfamiliar approach, but I'll be darned, once batter hit oil, these things puffed up and got all lovely. The one modification I made was to cook them in palm oil, hopefully it was something like you'd get on the street in N'Djamena.

And that does it for our stretch of six African countries in eight meals! We take a break next weekend, followed by a trip to the Catskills where we'll cook Chile.

All photos by Laura Hadden who, after the guests went home, accidentally ate the beignet batter thinking it was boulet.

Meal 33: Central African Republic

I'd have been pretty clueless about what to cook were it not for a chance introduction to the daughters of the US Ambassador to the Central African Republic. You see, I begin my research for a country's cuisine by searching online, but the Central African Republic certainly wasn't thinking of search-engine optimization when they chose their name, and it's super hard to find info that relates to the country and not to Central Africa generically. But thankfully, through my friend Oliver (sous chef for Cameroon!), I met the Wohlers daughters, and got first-hand advice on what to cook from those who know! This was really handy, because some of the food, like the mangoes and the avocado salad, aren't exactly the sort of things you find recipes for, but are the touches that make for a more representative meal.

We hosted a rare Saturday brunch because Laura and I rode the Five Boro Bike Tour the next day with an early wake-up time. For whatever reason — perhaps the country name that few have heard? — we didn't get many signups off our list, and it was a great opportunity to invite some last-minute guests. On hand were Jessica, Jill, Chrys, Al, Juliet, Barrak, and Kate.

This was the first meal I made with my new African mortar and pestle. Not only does it have a fun design, but having this long-handled and heavy mortar and tall-sided and heavy-bottomed pestle is a big improvement over the wine-bottle-and-bowl method I've used for previous African meals!

Boisson au gingembre | Ginger drink | Recipe

Most authentically I should have had palm wine, but I haven't seen it in any stores I've visited yet (but I hear rumors that there's a place in Fort Greene that sells it so I'll check that out soon.) I've heard ginger drinks are popular in Central Africa and it seemed fun to try, so hey. I went big on this recipe and interpreted "three or four big pieces of ginger" as one honkin' one pound hunk that I got for just $1 in Queens. Well, that, plus pennies' worth of sugar, cinnamon, cloves and lime juice made for a gallon of deliciously sharp refreshment. A good idea to keep it in something you can shake like jars with lids, because the yummy bits settle pretty quickly. It also mixes nicely with grapefruit juice; you could get adventurous with gin!

A note on technique: I pounded the ginger in the mortar and pestle before soaking it in boiling water; you could grate it or whiz it in the food processor, but both of those methods would release more juice and might make for a different flavor. Also, I didn't do the second hour's worth of soaking in a warm spot, I just added warm water from the tap and stuck it straight in the fridge.

Mangues | Mangoes

According to our source Sophie, who's spent considerable time in CAR, during mango season the fruits are abundant and free for the taking, and people eat so much of it that they poop orange. That's a pretty strong indication that we should be eating it too! I think finally, after nearly three decades on this planet, I've got a satisfactory mango-deconstructing technique: slice parallel to the flat side of the pit on both sides, use a big spoon to scoop out the mango from each side you've sliced off, slice those into thin slivers, and then hack at the pit to remove what you can. Though if you have advice, please share, since I know we'll be eating much more of this, the world's most popular fruit.

Ngoudja | Cassava leaves with beef and peanut butter | Recipe (in translation with a few of my notes)

Yet another leaves-n-peanut stew! This recipe comes straight from an employee of the US Embassy in Bangui, and apparently this is a pretty representative dish, although the meat is probably a privilege. Cassava is an extremely common plant throughout the region, both the root and the leaves: it grows abundantly throughout the year, and between the leaves and the root it satisfies two major ingredient types. Mixed with peanut butter, it makes for an earthy, slightly bitter, and filling sauce. We also enjoyed it sprinkled with some Senegalese pepper flakes that were bigger on flavor than spice, and that I hope are a decent approximation of what might be found in CAR.

Foutou| Mashed yams and green plantains

We had this sauce on top of yams and green plantains which I boiled and mashed, again in the mortar and pestle. Perhaps doing this with cassava, either boiled from whole or made into a fufu from powder, would have been a bit more representative, but we've had that so much recently that I wanted to shake it up. In the end, though, there's only so much variety: boiled, unseasoned starch is never going to be terribly exciting, although the texture of mashed-from-whole is a lot easier to get right then boiling and mixing the powder.

Linguistic note: the term foutou is one minor vowel modification away from a notorious swear word in French. It's as if mashed potatoes were named feck or something.

Salade d'avocats | Avocado salad

Sophie recounts that a very common salad in CAR is avocados, tomatoes, and onions, dressed with palm oil (and we added a bit of lemon juice too). Done! And tasty. I've now cooked plenty with palm oil but never eaten it raw, and wow, it lends a lot of flavor. The salad, which Barrak prepared and Chrys mixed up, was surprisingly rich and tasty.

Macara ti fôndô | Banana beignets | Recipe (translated to English)

After the Cameroon frying fiasco, I was anticipating a break, but Sophie insisted that these "beignets are sold everywhere, and people love them." Twist my arm! Out came the deep fryer, with a mix of palm and corn oils — latter to save our unaccustomed Western guts from the full onslaught of the, uh, richness of the palm oil. It took a bit of experimenting with the batter recipe. I used plantains since I figure that's what they mean by bananas in that part of the world, but either one would probably be fine. The 100 grams of semolina was not enough to absorb the liquid and made for a very goopy batter that didn't hold together when frying. With perhaps double the amount of semolina, it made for fantastic fritters: a crispy outside redolent with luscious palm oil, and a soft and sweet inside with the lovely flavor of banana and a hint of the nuttiness of semolina.

Thanks to the generosity of our guests, we were able to contribute over $160 for the World Food Program USA this week. The WFP is active in Central African Republic, with plans to serve over 320,000 people there this year.

Big thanks again to the Wohlers sisters, especially Sophie, for the help in figuring out what to cook! Next week we head one country to the north to Chad, where we'll wrap up our string of six African countries in an eight-country stretch. I'll be trying my hand at millet beer, let's see how it goes!