Meal 92: Laos

If a lot of this food looks like what you've eaten at a Thai restaurant, it's no mistake. Much of the population of northern Thailand is ethnically Lao, and many "Thai" restaurants in the US are actually run by Lao families, or Isan, which is a term for people in northern Thailand whose language and culture have Lao roots. In fact, the Center for Lao Studies is encouraging "Lao people laying claim to the food that is rightfully theirs." So if you like green papaya salad, sticky rice, or larb, well, you like Lao food!

(At this point, I should mention that while Lao is the predominant ethnicity, there are several other groups who can be called Laotian, that is, coming from the territory of the country of Laos. Notably, the Hmong are Laotian, but not Lao. I didn't specifically aim for any Hmong or other ethnicities' food in this meal. Also, I by no means mean to imply that all Thai food is of Lao origin, there's a whole universe of amazing food in Thailand that blends influences from all over with local ingenuity and ingredients.)

Lao food is a riot of herbs; just about everything is abundantly flavored with super-fresh greens like cilantro, mint, scallion, basil, and a variety of others that barely have English names — seriously, I bought four bunches of cilantro and probably should have gotten more. It's also got a distinctive fish sauce, padaek, which is almost as thick as ketchup and has a richer complexity than the liquid kind seen in Vietnamese and Thai. Recipes didn't specifically call for it, but padaek turned up enough in my research that I felt emboldened to use it. But the number one distinctive aspect of a Lao table is the sticky rice. Laos is the world leader in per-capita consumption of sticky rice, and it's considered an essential part of the Lao experience. Apparently it can also get pretty spicy, but I toned that down quite a lot so the crowd would enjoy the food.

Joining us for this post-holiday meal were our neighbors Chris, Cam, and Colin; my aunt Marcia and her boyfriend Jeff; Deena; and Laura's parents Eileen and Lyall and her sister Jen.

Bia | Beer

Beerlao is probably Laos's best-known export, and it's really pretty good. I'm not sure if I'd go so far as the newspaper review that deemed it the "Dom Perignon of southeast Asian beers," but it's quite satisfying. The dark version's maltiness was a lovely balance to the sour and fishy flavors of the dishes, and apparently it's gluten-free, which I'm assuming means they brew it entirely with rice and no barley. (The standard lager is apparently about 20% rice, and while less flavorful to my tastebuds, certainly satisfying and easy to drink plenty of.) I implied earlier that Thai restaurants show no explicit hint of Lao influence, but that's not quite true — some of them serve Beerlao, and if you see it, I encourage you to try it as a more flavorful alternative to lighter Thai beers.

Larb gai | Chicken and herb salad | Recipe

Larb, laap, lahb, lab — it's the Hanukkah of southeast Asian cuisine, what with how many ways there are to transliterate it into English. There's also as many types of meats you can make it with: pork, beef (cooked or raw), fish, and beyond. I went with chicken, as it's a milder flavor that creates a platform for all those other flavors to launch from.

Perhaps foolishly, I decided to hand-chop rather than grind the chicken thighs. Maybe there was a slight difference in texture, but after fifteen minutes with the chef's knife (and regretting several times that I'd gotten rid of my cleaver in the move), I was regretting my choice. The rest of the recipe proceeded nicely, and I was glad that I was able to find all the ingredients, because that little bit of toasted sticky rice powder ended up having a huge impact on the texture and flavor, adding both a rich nuttiness and a little bit of grit to contrast the squeaky chicken and crisp herbs.

The only lettuce I could find was really sad and brown, but fortunately I picked up a bunch of shiso (chrysanthemum) leaves on a lark. They probably don't use those as the taco-like vessel for eating larb, but the leaf's haunting mint-basil-esque flavors sure worked well.

Nam khao | Crispy rice salad | Recipe

Holy wow, this is a delicious dish. It's a lot of work, but what a payoff! And it introduced me to a brand new food I never new about: sour sausage, a fermented and uncooked — and bright red — pork product, usually called nam or nem in your better-equipped southeast Asian market. (Before you get all grossed out, remember that salami works on the same uncooked-fermentation principle, just for longer until much of the moisture is lost.)

So, once you've made rice and cooled it (or, if you've got leftover rice on hand, so much the easier — turns out you want jasmine and not sticky rice for this one), you mix it with both shredded and powdered coconut, egg, and a bunch of garlic, make it into balls, and fry it to crispy. Then here's where it gets fun: after those fried balls have cooled, you break them up, so some bits are crispy and others are the soft inside, and mix that with herbs, fish sauce, lemon juice, and crumbles of the aforementioned sour sausage. It's a similarly abundant burst of flavors and textures, but in a different direction from the larb, so even though the two are meaty salads, they're certainly different enough to count for variety on the table.

Khao niao | Sticky rice | Recipe

The name I saw in all the recipes was "sticky rice," but when I got to the store, the closest thing I saw was called "sweet rice." It was also labeled in Chinese, Vietnamese, and Hmong, so as I stood in the aisle of Hong Phat Supermarket, I pulled up a PDF scan of a health-practioner's Hmong-English dictionary to verify that what I saw on the package could also be translated as "sticky rice." (Here's what I bought, though I only got 5 pounds.)

I generally make a rule of not buying cooking equipment I'll use only once, but happily I found the proper steaming basket for a mere 2 bucks at another market, so I made an exception. It did require a bit of adaptation to fit over the steaming water, but it turns out the ring from one of those two-part deep cake pans (the kind with the hole in the middle) worked pretty well. I didn't do the flipping right: rather than a single assertive jostle to get the grains on top closer to the steam, I ended up stirring it around, which was slower and less efficient. I think going for five pounds all at once wasn't the right approach, and with so much rice it probably would have benefitted from an overnight soak rather than the 4 hours I afforded. But hey, it turned out tasty. And abundant.

Jeow mak keua | Eggplant dip | Recipe

While there's an abundance of fresh herbs in the other dishes, there wasn't anything featuring a vegetable proper, so I took a shot at this eggplant dip. I was also interested to see how the combination of sticky rice and dip would work. It's pretty easy to make this dip, just roast everything, let it cool, peel it, throw in that funky padaek fish sauce, and mash. But, whooo-eee! On first taste, it was really pungent, the uncooked fish sauce overpowering everything. Good thing I made this a bit in advance, because like a complex wine, an hour of breathing allowed it to mellow out and become decent, like a bizarro fishy baba ghannoush, eaten in an equally bizarro manner with little clumps of sticky rice. Not sure if this was the pinnacle of Lao cuisine, and it sure ain't pretty, but it was fun to try.

Tom hua pa | Fish soup | Recipe

This one involved a bit of adaptation. While the recipe says it's for fish heads, I made it with chunks of catfish. And the grocery store didn't have the normal button mushrooms that are probably intended, so you see oyster mushrooms here. Finally, instead of arugula, I opted for watercress, which is also what the store had and what I figured was probably more likely to be what you'd get in Laos.

The soup was tasty enough, with the tang of lime, the trinity of lemongrass, ginger and galangal, and the freshness of herbs, but it was missing depth. And then I realized I forgot to add the padaek, the fish sauce! With a little swirl of sauce, the soup took on a vibrancy and richness that made all the difference.

Khao niao ma muang | Sweetened coconut sticky rice with mango | Recipe

An astute reader will note that there's no mango in this photo. I should have read the writing on the wall when both Asian markets I went to had no mangoes for sale, opting for another option such as banana, but I kept plowing ahead until I found a produce stand with five sad mangoes left. They were terrible, overripe and too starchy at the same time, and went straight to the compost bin.

Fortunately, the rest of the dish was tasty enough to stand on its own. It's really nothing more than a sauce of palm sugar dissolved into warm coconut milk, poured over the rice left from the meal. It was surprisingly reminiscent of the sticky toffee pudding I'd made for Christmas dinner two nights before: thick, rich, and addictive, with a caramel-esque flavor from the palm sugar. A satisfying, and filling, end to one of the better meals of the year!

Meal 91: Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan is the very definition of landlocked. It's farther than any other in the world from the sea, its rivers end in lakes rather than flowing toward the ocean. The vast majority of the country is situated over 5,000 feet, with massive mountain ranges covering most of its modest expanse. Yet the country hardly isolated: this land played host to part of the Silk Road, and several nomadic groups have called the area home. As with so many other countries, a land named for one ethnicity neither fully encompasses that group's expanse, and also incorporates other peoples. Accordingly, the menu I planned for Kyrgyzstan samples from various influences on the country. (Also, were I to go for a strictly traditionally Kyrgyz meal, it would have turned out a lot like what we had for Kazakhstan, which we didn't enjoy so much.) 

Our guests were Sarah, Estel, Alondra, Heidi, Ken, Miguel, Ana, and Maya. We're pictured doing the traditional gesture of thanks after the meal: you raise your hands in the air, say "omen," and rub your open palms slowly down your face.

Lapyoshka | Flatbread | Recipe

Though the name has a classically Russian sound, this is a truly Central Asian bread, puffy and substantial. I found it pretty fun to make, especially since I've recently developed the touch and patience to do rolled breads slowly. Letting the bread rest for even just 3o seconds when it feels like it's about to rip makes a world of difference. Not having the traditional tandoor-like stone oven, I opted for a pizza stone as the surface, which did the trick. It only takes fifteen minutes to bake, but by the time I took the second loaf out of the oven, the first was nearly gone! Clearly a successful, if unfancy, appetizer.

Laghman | Soup with hand-stretched noodles | Recipes: noodles, soup

The patience I've learned with flatbread was ten times as important with these amazing noodles, an incredible demonstration of the magic of gluten. (Don't even think of trying to make this one gluten-free, it won't work!) These come from the Dungan people, who came from eastern China and settled across the region and are known for being farmers, in contrast to nomadic herders, which may explain their association with a grain-based specialty. Though their percentage of the population is small, their impact on what people eat is big, as these noodles are really popular. With good reason!

Assuming you have lots of time and patience, they're not difficult to make. The trick is to let the dough relax, once when it's in a big mass, again after it's rolled out and cut into chunks, and maybe even a third time while you're in the process of stretching. What a pleasure it was to take a piece of dough that shaped like a slightly oversized piece of Trident gum, and pull and stretch it nearly effortlessly into a strand over two feet long! Toward the end I was trying out the showier and speedier technique of wrapping the noodle around my hand to accomplish the stretching.

The soup was fine, a fairly basic broth of lamb and vegetables (including that pretty watermelon radish, which is the closest I could find to the "green radish" the recipe calls for), but the noodles were really the star. The texture was great: enough tooth to provide substance, but still soft and easy to slurp. Next time — and there will be a next time — I'll try them pan-fried.

Paloo | Rice with lamb and carrots | Recipe

Paloo, plov, pilau, polo, pilaf...so many languages, so many nearly identical ways to refer to rice with stuff in it. Compared to how intricate this sort of thing can be in Persian or Indian cuisine, this version with carrot sticks and lamb may seem pretty modest, but this felt like a big step compared to the utter blandness of Kazakh food. The dish wasn't as exciting as the noodles, probably in part because I discovered after everyone had left that I'd forgotten to distribute cloves from the garlic head that I'd steamed on top!

The drinks were just about the same as for Kuwait: watered down kefir and tea. After the hyper-caffeinated experience with the last meal, Laura and I took it easy with the tea this time!

Meal 90: Kuwait

When I asked my parents if we could host the Kuwait nosh at their house while visiting over Thanksgiving, I had no idea that their new neighbor across the street, Amira, had grown up in Kuwait! The happy coincidence made planning and cooking this meal a dream, especially because Amira's father Al, now living in northern Wisconsin, was more than happy to dictate his family recipe for a chicken-and-rice dish with a great deal of precise advice.

Amira taught me a fascinating perspective on recipes: in Kuwaiti cuisine, what defines a dish isn't so much what kind of meat or vegetable is used, but rather the blend of spices. Hence, a machboos could be chicken, or lamb, or something else, but if the spices are about the same, then it's all under the same name. And if we were going super-authentic, we'd all be eating cross-legged on the floor with our hands, but that didn't quite feel comfortable with over a dozen people two days after Thanksgiving, so we stuck to a table.

This may look like a small menu, with only two dishes plus dessert, but trust me that there was plenty of variety to be had. The machboos is essentially three dishes in one, and we also had an assortment of pickles and olives on the table, plus copious lemons and parsley to freshen up each dish at will.

It was a full house at my parents' place: Chris, my Aunt Jody, Uncle Guy, Amira and her husband Grant, Chris, Terry, Albert, Karen (another neighbor!) and Betty (who wrote a story on us in 2013); my cousin Bryan and his wife Shilpi joined soon after Laura snapped the photo.

Vimto | Berry-flavored drink

Alcohol is completely illegal in Kuwait; not even foreigners can bring it in or enjoy it at a hotel bar as in Dubai. One favorite beverage in Kuwait and several other Arab countries is this cordial from a British company. I thought it tasted one step above cough syrup, but many around the table took more than just polite sips, particularly appreciating the dash of rosewater. Although most of us were enjoying wine with our meal, Amira stuck with Vimto, declaring that even though she has a drink now and then, it just felt too strange to have alcohol with Kuwaiti food!

Laban | Yogurt drink

Another, more traditional, beverage is kefir or yogurt mixed with an equal amount of seltzer, plus a pinch of salt. From Turkey to Afghanistan, this is a very popular and healthy beverage in a hot part of the world. While yogurt has finally cemented its position in the American kitchen, it rarely makes it into our beverages. I happen to love it (particularly with the slight improvement of a crumble of dried mint), but this pitcher just didn't get passed around as much.

Machboos | Chicken with spiced tomato sauce and split peas over rice | Recipe at end of post

I've never done so much to chicken in one dish: you first boil it, then sear it, then braise it, then finally bake it. All this work is to lend flavor to the rice and the sauce, and also serves to make the meat simply fall off the bone by the end. None of the individual steps in this dish is particularly difficult, but the combination, especially when tripling as we did, makes for a whole lot of chopping, stirring, and monitoring. Making the spice blend from scratch also added to the effort.

The peas also took more attention than expected, particularly because it took them longer to soften up than expected when simmering with the raisins and onion. It was worth it, 'cause they ended up tasting so nice! I'd never considered that split peas could marry well with sweet, but it sure did, and that gentle sweetness was a good contrast to the thoroughly meaty chicken.

If you've got a few hours for a weekend cooking project, the effort will pay off. Even an hour before dinner, the enchanting smells of freshly ground spices, earthy chicken, and tangy tomato got us all really hungry. And the final result, of cinnamon-encrusted chicken on top of all that rice and sauce, was just fantastic. The split peas, with that improbable studding of raisins, also exceeded expectations — just a great dish overall, and easy to see why Amira's family cooks it time and again.

Zubaidi | Stuffed fish over rice | Recipe

What with so many people coming over, and knowing that Kuwait has a long and storied maritime history, I wanted to try out a fish dish. As with many meals from far-off countries, I had to substitute the fish, as silver pomfret is a few oceans away from the West Coast, and went with snapper. The dish came out okay, with some of the haunting tang of the dried lime playing off the sweetish white flesh, but it just couldn't hold a candle to the fantastic chicken. It felt to me like the ham on the Thanksgiving table: it has to know from the start that it's just playing second fiddle to the turkey.

Gers ogely | Cardamom saffron sponge cake | Recipe

While Amira suggested we cook lugaimat, a seasoned doughnut rolled in honey, I passed because of the "don't deep-fry in other people's kitchens" rule we codified early on in the project. It was probably a kind gesture to our full stomachs to give them something lighter, in the form of this fragrant sponge cake. With bold but not overpowering spices, a little went a long way: a single cake fed the whole crowd. Which is good, because Mom's first attempt at making a double batch failed. Turns out some recipes simply can't be scaled, such as those leveraging the complex and delicate physics required to make a sponge cake.

We ate the cake with sweet, strong black tea with cardamom, in classic Kuwaiti style. Unfortunately, being unused to a late-night caffeine jolt, many of us stayed awake into the wee hours! The occupational hazards of experiencing other cultures!

Thanks again to Amira and Al for all the help, and to everyone who came and gave generously to our new non-profit cause, Mercy Corps!

~~~

Recipe for Machboos from Al, Amira's dad

Serves four, but if you're going through all this effort, consider doubling it and inviting friends over or freezing it.

Basmati rice, according to how hungry your crowd will be (maybe 1/2 cup per person) 1 chicken, cut in half, or in pieces; or four leg quarters A few cloves Vegetable oil 2 onions, chopped 2 cloves of garlic, minced Small can of tomato paste Arab spice blend: look for “bezar” or “chicken spices” at an Arab market, or make the fantastic blend from this recipe (and use the leftovers for barbecuing) 1/2 pound yellow split peas 1/2 cup golden raisins Ground cinnamon Pinch of saffron

Thoroughly wash the rice, then leave to soak as you prepare the rest of the dish.

Heat water, cloves and a pinch of salt in a pot to boiling, reduce the heat to medium, and cook the chicken just until the flesh turns white, maybe 5 or 10 minutes. Save the flavorful broth for cooking the rice. Note that some recipes call for adding other spices to the boiling water: cinnamon, cardamom, bay leaves, and whatnot.

Heat a skillet on medium heat. Sauté half the onion and garlic with vegetable oil until soft. Add the chicken, and nestle it in so as much flesh as possible is touching the pan, skin-side-down. Once the first side is seared, flip and sear the other side. Add the tomato paste, a generous dose of the spice blend, and enough water to let the chicken braise. Add some salt, too. Stir to break up the tomato paste into the water, and once things starts bubbling, turn down the heat. Cook until the chicken is soft and the sauce tastes amazing, maybe a half hour. Remove the chicken to a baking dish, which you can optionally line with foil for easier clean-up.

While the chicken’s simmering, get the split peas going. Cover them with water in a small pot, bring to a boil, and simmer until tender but not mushy. Drain and set the peas aside for a moment. In the same pot, sauté the remaining onion and garlic, plus the raisins, with oil until the onion is soft. Add the peas back in with a splash of water if it, add salt and your favorite seasonings (to keep it simple just use a pinch of cinnamon, or you could add allspice or whatever other spices strike your fancy). Simmer gently until it’s all nicely soft.

You can cook everything up to this point well in advance if that suits your schedule better.

45 minutes before you want to serve, start heating the oven to 350, Sprinkle a healthy dose of ground cinnamon all over the chicken on both sides, if it’s too hot use tongs to flip. Bake skin-side-up until the smell is unbearable.

About a half-hour before it’s time to serve, drain the rice and put it in a pot or a rice cooker. Add enough of the chicken-clove broth to cover the rice by the length from your fingertip to your first knuckle, somewhere between a half an inch and an inch. (Don’t throw out the remaining water just yet, you may need a splash at the end if you didn’t use enough water.) Crumble some saffron in your fingers and sprinkle it over the water. If using a rice cooker just set it going; if on the stovetop, bring the water to a boil, then reduce to a very low simmer and cover tightly for about 20 minutes. Fluff.

Serve on a large platter, with the rice in the center, the split peas on the edge, and the chicken and tomato sauce in the center. Whether to put the tomato sauce under or over the chicken is a matter of your aesthetics. (Ours was actually on the side to accommodate allergies.) Serve alongside abundant parsley and limes.

Meal 89: Kiribati

Move over, Equatorial Guinea: Kiribati, a constellation of a few dozen atolls in the heart of the Pacific, now holds the title of Country the Least People Have Heard Of, judging from an unofficial tabulation of "huh?"s and "where's that?"s as we told friends and family of this meal. Even if you've heard of it, you geography nerd you, you're probably pronouncing it wrong. Say it "KEE-ree-boss," because it's really a Polynsianism for Gilberts, the British colonial term for the territory they arbitrarily created. That's why it's not called by any native name: as a collection of disparate chains of tiny clumps of land, there was no pre-colonial precedent for what to call it.

Kiribati is right up there in the hardest countries for figuring out the menu. My usual tricks didn't work: No Wikipedia article. No awkward but workable site from an embassy or the Ministry of Culture. No lovingly compiled blog by an expat living there, or a homesick student abroad. No chatter on food discussion boards. Even when I granted myself a temporary reprieve from the prohibition on looking at other cooking-around-the-worlders' sites, much of what I saw didn't ring true (though I ended up borrowing some). When I couldn't find even a Peace Corps cookbook, a trick that rescued me for some smaller West African countries, I took my search to the next level and reached out to a Peace Corps volunteer whose name I found in a newsletter of returned volunteers. Thankfully, Laura Montez quickly replied, and we had a great chat on the phone.

She explained the challenge: there's no cuisine as such, no recipes handed down from grandmothers around the hearth. On the further-flung islands where life is at its most traditional, food is, quite literally, catch as catch can: whatever you manage to pull from the sea; coconuts, breadfruits, and a few sweet fruits from trees; and a limited assortment of roots and squashes. Whatever greens exist are for the pigs and chickens that run around for a special-occasion meal. With that limited assortment, and the notable lack of herbs or other embellishments, it now makes a lot of sense why I didn't find much in the way of recipes. (Note that on the most populated island where the capital is, life is totally the opposite: it's so crowded that there's no land for farming, not even coconuts, so everything has to be shipped in: some from other islands in the country but mostly from Australia/New Zealand. Accordingly, the cuisine is quite different, with canned corned beef, curry powder, and other smatterings of global cuisine.)

So thank you, Laura, for the advice! And to Jaymee, her brother, and Deena for coming. It was a small crowd but we scarfed it all down! (Alas, we were having such a good time we didn't end up getting a group photo. Imagine happy people with their faces stuffed. Done!)

Papaya cocktail

In the spirit of throwing together what you've got, I juiced a papaya, which Deena mixed with some palm juice, lime juice, and rum, and voilà! A suitably tropical-esque drink to get us in the mood.

Te ika | Raw tuna

Laura told me that yellowfin tuna is the most common, but the closest I could find was albacore. I defrosted a few frozen steaks from Trader Joe's — if that sounds weird or unsafe for sashimi, keep in mind it's frozen on the ship very shortly after being pulled out of the water, and much of what you eat in a sushi restaurant was previously frozen anyway. (I also grilled some for those less inclined to raw fish.)

Not knowing how an I-Kiribati would prepare it, I cut the fish into random bite-sized morsels, with little bowls of coconut milk I painstakingly extracted by hand from fruit I cracked, pried out, and shredded. I've done this a few times, and frankly I can't taste much of a difference. From now on, I'll stick to canned, or at least buying it frozen pre-shredded.

Te inai | Fried parrotfish

Fiji Market didn't have most of what I was looking for — dried pandanus fruit, for instance, which I'd read about as being used as a starch — but they came through with a few fun things. A load of this fantastically exotic fish had "just come in last week" according to the friendly owner. A quick search on my phone revealed a parrotfish on a Kiribati stamp, which was good enough evidence for me that they've got it there. I let it thaw overnight in the fridge, removed the scales, and did a halfway decent job at filleting it. Right before we ate, I slipped it into the oil I'd already had going for the breadfruit.

Te mai | Fried breadfruit

We first tasted this peculiar food with the Jamaica meal. Popular as it is in the Caribbean, the tree is actually is native to Polynesia, and appreciated everywhere it grows for providing abundant, filling fruit. It's not sweet, though; like a green plantain, it's mostly starches and needs to be cooked. The tastiest preparation is to boil and then fry it, and that's just what we did, with a generous dusting of salt. Unlike in Brooklyn, I could only find frozen breadfruit at Fiji Market, but my palate, unaccustomed as it is to the food, couldn't tell the difference after cooking. Its artichokey aspect was less pronounced after frying than with grilling, but of course the texture was a whole lot more pleasing.

Te bwaukin | Pumpkin simmered in coconut milk with pandanus leaf | Recipe

Coconut milk isn't just for dipping, it's also a great simmering medium. Coconut milk and pumpkin are both foods that can go either sweet or savory, and in this case tossing on some sugar brings out nice flavor in both. On the islands it'd probably been a palm sap that seems like the Polynesian version of maple syrup; as an attempt of replicating the flavor, I threw in a bit of that palm juice along with regular sugar. (If I'd had my druthers I'd have bought palm sugar, which is easily found at Asian markets.) It's worth noting that coconut and palm are different flavors: while they both definitely have that toasty-nutty undertone in common, coconut is richer and brighter, and palm is muskier.

A new-to-me ingredient showed up in this preparation: pandanus leaf. It's used like bay leaf: added in a simmering dish for the flavor it lends. I later learned that I've definitely tasted it – in the water at Pok Pok, Portland's famous Thai restaurant. I'd always thought the flavoring came from rice, and I wasn't far off: according to Wikipedia, Basmati rice and pandanus share the exact same aromatic compound. So, if you want to impart a Basmati-esque flavor to your next simmered dish, pick up some pandanus from your Asian grocer's freezer.

All this said, a very tasty dish. We gobbled it all down.

Te bua toro | Sweet potato and coconut milk loaf | Recipe (in comments)

Once again to a fellow cooking-round-the-worlder for the recipe — though in this case the insight comes from the comments. (Corrections always welcome on blogs like these!) It's a coconut-milk based casserole wrapped in leaves: we saw this sort of preparation with Fiji, and I suspect we'll see it a fair bit more with more Pacific island nations. I ended up using some sweet potatoes, the drier white variety. The result was again pretty sweet, thanks to sugar, and not terribly impressive. I'll stick to the simmered pumpkin, thank you.

Meal 88: Kenya

We've already enjoyed three meals from the Horn of Africa, but it's taken us until the K's to start into East Africa proper. It looks a whole lot more like Central African, though I'm happy and relieved to report that we found it quite a bit tastier.

As with so many former colonial countries, the borders of Kenya arbitrarily threw a bunch of tribes together. Accordingly, there's not exactly a national cuisine as such, but there are a few dishes that are extremely common throughout the country. So we made those collards and corn mush dishes, and rounded out the meal with dishes chosen from around the counties that stretch from the sea to Africa's highest mountain.

After our small trial run for Kazakhstan, we went big for this meal, taking advantage of our new, large dining room to seat twelve around two tables. Our guests were Hannah, Emily, Frank, Don, Chelsea, Sebastian, Craig, Laura, Kaely, and Brett. The first four arrived a half hour early, due to an error in my email, but they proved super helpful in the kitchen, as I'd once again misestimated the prep time in the dishes and was relieved to have a small army of choppers, stirrers, and washers appear! Thanks, folks!

And extra-special thanks to my buddy Walter, who lived in Kenya for several years, and gave me some excellent and very useful advice on what to serve. I love it when someone can distill the essence of a country's foodways and the culture around it — I still do plenty of research to support and understand, but the guidance and structure is invaluable.

Dawa | Vodka and lime with honey swizzle | Recipe

Dawa is the Swahili word for medicine. In this case, it's got the spoonful of sugar built right in, as this drink is essentially a caipiroska (vodka-lime-sugar) taken to the next level with a swizzle-stick dipped in honey. It's tart, it's sweet, it's boozy. And it's in my hand in the above photo!

Ugali | Cornmeal porridge | Recipe

Just about all of sub-Saharan Africa has some sort of mush as the bedrock of a meal. Kenya's no different. I read in a few places that a meal is considered incomplete without this simple mix of cornmeal and water, mixed so thick that you can stand a spoon in it, and then tear off clumps with your hand to use as a vessel for scooping whatever else is on the plate.

Sukuma wiki | Collard greens | Recipe

If you're the average Kenyan on an average day, that other thing on your plate is probably the humble, tasty, nutritious collard greens, simmered for a long time with maybe some onions, tomato, and a bouillon cube. The name means "to stretch the week," as in, it's the food you can afford to eat when your money's running out before you're next paid.

I was afraid I'd find it pretty bland, given that it wouldn't have the benefit of ham or bacon as done in Southern cooking. Maybe it's because this was some super fresh (and enormous! the leaves were like two feet long!) farmers-market collards, or maybe it's really that easy to bring good flavor with a few hours of simmering, or maybe the MSG in the bouillon saved the day. Whatever the reason, the greens were tasty and popular.

Nyama choma | Grilled goat

Some cultures, such as Chinese, bring romance and storytelling to the names of their dishes. So too with parts of Africa: Cameroon has a dish Poulet D-G, standing for directeur général, since the dish is considered so fancy and tasty it's fit for the boss. Not so much with nyama choma, which literally means "burn the meat." To be fair, that's pretty much all you do: once the meat's on the skewers, all you do is slather it with warm salted water every few minutes while letting the flames sear the outside and seal the tasty juices on the inside.

The meat in question here is goat. Several months ago, someone who I wish I could remember so I could give them the credit said, "Goat is like soccer: popular in most of the world, but not the U.S." Fortunately, it's not too hard to find in Portland. I biked in the rain to a Somali market up on Killingsworth, which offered me a choice of leg or shoulder — and we agreed that the latter is the better choice for kabobs. $5/pound including cutting into kabob size. In Kenya, the sale price would have also included free grilling with a place to sit in the back!

But who cares about what it's called or where I got it. The suckers were scrumptious, embarrassingly so given how little I had to do in terms of cheffing to get them on the table. I'm certainly doing this one again on a warm weeknight.

Kachumbari | Tomato "salsa" | Recipe

Mexican pico de gallo is a great foil for the rich meat on a taco. The East Africans pair their grilled meats with almost exactly the same condiment — fresh tomatoes, onions, cilantro, lime, chili — but it came to them via a completely independent and unlikely source: the English! Just as, in the Egypt nosh, we saw how they introduced a rice-and-lentil dish from India that transformed into the national food, they also brought an onion-and-tomato salad that became ubiquitous on the other side of the Indian Ocean. No point in reviewing: this really was exactly the same as how I'd make a pico de gallo.

Mchuzi wa samaki | Swahili fish curry | Recipe

Whereas the grilled goat was the essence of simplicity, likely borne of the necessity of a nomadic lifestyle, this coastal curry shows off what you can do when you're in a tropical setting on the sea, with both the fish and the trading it entails. It gets its name from the coastal Swahili people, whose Kiswahili language has become the common language of much of East Africa. The dish was quite tasty, with a double-dose of turmeric imparting a pleasing color and a haunting flavor that brought zing to an otherwise simply flavored meal.

Muthokoi | Cracked corn and pigeon pea stew | Recipe

This dish of cracked corn and pigeon peas takes us back inland to the Akamba tribe of Eastern Kenya, and we're back to simple, earthy foods. I wasn't planning on making it, but at Mama Pauline's African Market, I got the two ingredients on a hunch that I'd find something to make with them. As you'd guess, this was a hearty and filling dish, with the flavor again coming from store-bought seasoning, a specific brand name called Royco. It's not even listed in the ingredients, and it's even written in lower-case in the recipe, that's how common the spice blend is. (Should you want to make this dish, you could use a bouillon cube, or look up "homemade royco" to find several variants. I can't remember which I used!)

Tea and cake

Walter, my buddy who'd lived several years in Kenya, gave me all sorts of specific and useful advice on the other dishes. But what he said about dessert cracked me up: "You MUST serve Bad Cake. It's effectively the national dish and national pastime. Kenyans love cake more than any people I've ever known, and they make cake worse than any people I've ever known also." This proved quite a challenge: how to make a cake that'd be intentionally bad? And bad in what way? Well, since I had a few gluten-free folks coming, I took advantage of the opportunity, and simply made a gluten-free yellow cake. Maybe it wasn't bad-to-Walter's-taste in the way Kenyans do it, but it definitely was, well, a gluten-free cake. To make the cake more Kenyan, I decorated it like the flag, which was easier and more fun than I expected.

A surprisingly nice start to East Africa, let's see how things go as we explore farther down the coast.