Meal 112: Monaco

Another beachside birthday party, another meal from a tiny, rich European country! The principality of Monaco is a Central Park–sized nugget on the French Riviera, whose Italian-sounding name is a giveaway of a linguistic, cultural, and culinary heritage that’s more closely connected to northern Italy than southern France.

For such a small place, there’s a surprisingly thorough culinary heritage, which is far better documented online than those of countries several orders of magnitude larger. Of course, it’s squarely within the Mediterranean flavor realm, though with its own twist.

Barbagiuan | Chard turnovers | Recipe

Nobody knows why these are called “Uncle John” in the Monégasque language, but these tasty, stuffed-dough, fried nuggets are the national dish. They’re stuffed with chard, which almost makes you think they’re healthy. Quite tasty, a great accompaniment to sparkling wine or rosé. Thanks to Ellen for prepping and folding the dough!

Oignons monégasques | Stewed baby onions | Recipe

This one was the crowd favorite. Small onions — you should probably use pearl onions but all I could find were little cipollini, which seemed to work too — are first sautéed, then gussied up with tomato paste, vinegar, and, intriguingly, raisins. A delicious sweet-and-sour appetizer.

Socca | Chickpea flatbread | Recipe

I’m figuring it’s a North African influence that brought chickpea flour to this corner of the world. With it,street vendors in the area whip up a sort of crêpe that’s eaten as a snack. Frankly, I found it pretty bland and thin, and I clearly did something wrong because I then had it at a restaurant and it was thicker and fluffier and a whole lot better. Also, I left the big heavy round skillet I used to bake them at the rental house, so it was frankly a doubly disappointing dish. (Maybe choose a different recipe to avoid my fate, but even that won't help you keep track of your cookware.)

Fougasse | Focaccia bread | Recipe

The fougasse for which Monaco is known is actually a dessert covered with sprinkles and studded with various dried fruits and spices like fennel. I didn't make that. Instead, I made this lovely herb-y bread, which all went very quickly toward sopping up the onion sauce.

Stocafi | Salt cod stew | Recipe (scroll to "Le Stockfish")

I saw a few different variations on the name, but all are local adaptations of the English work stockfish, which itself is a misinterpretation of the Scandinavian term for white fish dried on a stick. It’s not even true stockfish that’s used, but rather bacalao, or salt cod. (Stockfish traditionally has no salt, it’s purely the passing wind that dries the fish-on-a-stick into eternal preservation.)

Anyway, stocafi is a seafood stew with a very Provençal assortment of ingredients: tomatoes, olives, potatoes, plenty of garlic, and a generous dose of olive oil. The dish was nice, though nothing special. We didn’t do the optional anchovy-garlic-basil puree at the end, perhaps we ought to have.

Pogne au fruits | Fruit cake | Recipe (scroll to "Le pogne au fruits")

Laura wanted cherries, so cherries she got. This is a fairly simple dessert, just fruits pressed into a fairly rich flat yeasted dough. And tasty!

Meal 111: Micronesia

At 1 million square miles with only 100,000-ish people, the Federated States of Micronesia is both huge and tiny. (Obviously, almost all of that square mileage is ocean.) As with much of the rest of the Pacific islands, the traditional bland starches and simply cooked fish aren't the most stimulating cuisine. Micronesians have swung the pendulum far to the other side, with some really intense and novel uses of imported flavors. (Read below for what they do with ramen and Kool-Aid.)

There's precious little about Micronesian cuisine online. The two most useful sources I found were a few posts from this teacher's blog for traditional foods, and this astonishing account of some of the uses of modern foods on the island of Chuuk.

Along for the adventure were Emily, Jens, Molly, Will, Caitlin, Trish, Amy, Jordana, David, Michele, Emily, and guests.

Ramen snack | "Recipe"

When I first saw that a common snack in Micronesia is dry ramen with its seasoning packet plus Kool-Aid, I thought it might have just been one person's crazy idea. But I read plenty more about the abundance of Kool-Aid, especially consumed in dry form, well, we had to try it. We tried various combinations: pork ramen with cherry Kool-Aid was best, and shrimp with tropical fruit was definitely the worst.

Kosrae soup

The island of Kosrae, where our friend Nathan did Peace Corps, is famous, at least throughout Micronesia, for its Sunday Soup. Below is a recipe, as given by LeiviaChenisa Situl in response to a Facebook post of Nathan's. You'll note from the photo that I included crab, because I saw clarified elsewhere that shellfish would work, and the crab was fresh at the market. Despite the simplicity, it was really quite flavorful.

Simple recipe. Boil your h2o first,bring up to boil then add the fish more better with bone for flavor for about 10-15 minutes and take fish out,make sure no bones in the stock and add on your uncooked rice cook all the way till rice cook and add on onions and salt and pepper and the last thing is coconut milk.

Recipe

Half pot Fill 3/4 of the pot Fish- half fish or any meat 2 can coconut milk 1 onion salt n pepper with taste

Yapese taro salad

Picture a mayonnaise-based potato salad, but instead of potatoes, it's chunks of boiled purple taro. Pretty tasty, and the taro has a fun texture.

Rohtamah and kon | Pounded taro and pounded breadfruit with coconut milk | Description

The pounded taro with sugar and coconut milk, not pictured, was fine. The pounded breadfruit, pictured before being covered with coconut milk, was not. Never having had fresh breadfruit, I don't know if the overwhelmind blandness and mouth-drying texture came from being deep-frozen and potentially mishandled en route, or if breadfruit really is that unappealing. In any event, no more frozen breadfruit for me.

Sukusuk | Pounded banana with coconut milk

Straightforward and tasty, though yes, it's yet another mushy thing covered in coconut milk. The banana leaf made for a little variety in presentation.

Meal 110: Mexico

Just like other great cuisines like Chinese and French, there's plenty of regional variety in Mexico's food. And just like rice with Chinese and bread with French food, there's a ubiquitous starch tying it all together, in this case tortillas. This meal's menu is an attempt at a sample of regional foods, all while trying to get good variety at the table. From the oven-baked, olivey-sauced huachinango a la veracruzana representing the Caribbean coast's fish and heavy colonial influence, to the annatto-coated and banana-leaf-enrobed cochinita pibil demonstrating the Yucatan's tropical direction, to a beefy salad called salpicón that reflects the livestock and temperature of the North, this meal drew from the many reaches of the country.

We had a pretty full house, with friends including Alondra, Derek, Jen, Quinn, Katia, Sarah, Estel, Julie, Levi, Kaely, Brett, and Mayra and family.

Tortillas

These humble corn flatbreads are a battleground of authenticity, at least in my world. When I pronounce the name with the best Mexican accent I can muster, with a trilled R and a slight affrication on the LL, Laura critiques me for putting on airs. (Don’t even get us started on the pronunciation of bruschetta.) And I’d blithely figured that homemade tortillas would be far more “authentic” than store-bought, until I read this fascinating article making the point that most people in Mexico buy their tortillas out of the house, so in many ways doing the same would best replicate how people eat today.

But, darnit, homemade tortillas just taste better, so we made them. In a nod to practicality and acknowledging the reality of how most tortillas are made in the Mexican kitchen, we used the ubiquitous Maseca flour rather than seeking the more flavorful, rarer, and far more expensive freshly-nixtamalized masa. We got a mini tortilleria going in the kitchen for an hour, passing from mixing to balling to pressing to toasting on the griddle. They were simply delicious.

Salpicón | Shredded beef salad | Recipe

Just as with the Southwest and West Texas across the border, cattle is king in the north of Mexico, so I went about looking for beef recipes from this region. The search ended when I arrived at this dish of cold shredded beef with citrus, onion, scallion, cilantro, and chilies, kind of like a bizarro land-lubber ceviche where the base ingredient is cooked forever rather than not at all. Then again, there was also cheese, so maybe this metaphor falls apart.

Anyway, this was a really yummy dish. If you've got the time, it'd make for a great potluck dish: easy to scale, interesting enough to raise an eyebrow, tasty enough to satisfy, and no need to reheat. What with how hot it is in that part of the world, it being cold is perhaps the best part.

Birria tatemada | Roasted goat | Recipe

Birria comes in two variations. The more common one is as a rich soup, but since this was a meal built to have an abundance of bites on a plate, I went for the roasted version, known as tatemada from a native word related to roasting, one of the treasures of the state of Jalisco. I do not regret the decision.

Usually I decide what dishes to cook for these meals, but sometimes the dishes find me. For the Mauritania meal I had bought and defrosted two goat legs, but it became evident that that was one leg too many, even for a crowd of 15. The day after that meal I got to researching how goat would work into a Mexican meal, and this dish soon showed itself to be the obvious choice.

The overnight marinade is a beautiful blend of worlds: toasted dried chilies and allspice from the New World, and cloves, oregano, and cumin from the old. From there, it's as simple as roasting until the meat is falling apart, perfect for its role as party food.

Mole verde de pollo | Green mole with chicken | Recipe

The name comes from either the Spanish moler, to grind, or the native word molcajete for the three-legged stone bowl in which ingredients are traditionally ground. The “seven moles of Oaxaca” are thoroughly codified, and I chose this one for two reasons: to demonstrate how not all moles are made with chocolate, and to represent the tomatillo, an important if lesser-used native vegetable. (Yes, it's actually a fruit, I know that.) In fact, I used the last of these tart green fruits from the collection I froze the prior summer. (Confusingly, the recipe calls for "tomate verde," or green tomato, but rest assured that it's tomatillos you should use.) Pumpkin seeds add some thickness and texture when tossed with the tomatillos in the blender, which is way easier than grinding in the traditional way. Even though I forgot to add the cactus thanks to all the commotion in the kitchen, and the ingredients and technique are fairly simple, this was a tastier dish than I expected. Once this year's tomatillos come in, I very well might make this again.

Cochinita pibil | Annatto-rubbed roast pork | Recipe

If the Yucatan Peninsula had a national dish, I’m pretty sure this would be it. (A heads-up from a friend though: apparently it’s considered a breakfast food there, so don’t expect to find it for lunch or dinner!)

While traditionally made with a baby pig, hence the name, it’s more common to use a hunk of tougher pig, such as shoulder. A generous coating of a deep red annatto, garlic, and citrus rub penetrates the meat overnight and then through the course of a long, slow roast on the grill, with banana leaves holding in the flavor and generating steam. Both because I’m an overachiever and ran out of cooking space, I did this one on the grill, with lump charcoal and mesquite chunks. The result is irresistible for any carnivore: meat tender enough to pick apart with your fingers, with a tangy flavor that runs all the way through, and of course that smokiness from the grill dancing with a slight musky flavor from the banana leaves. Assuming you’ve got the time to make it — and it’s definitely worth making in the oven if you don’t have the equipment or the will to grill — taco night will never be the same.

Huachinango a la veracruzana | Snapper in tomato sauce | Recipe

On a group trip to Mexico in high school, we went to a nicer restaurant one night. Orders got mixed up and our dean of students ended up with my order of huachinango a la veracruzana. Upon discovery of the error, Dean Dean (yes, he was Mr. Dean) refused to give me my dish, claiming that he liked it so much he couldn’t stand to give it up.

What dish could cause an authority figure to swindle a student? A baked dish of snapper in a sauce of tomatoes, capers, olives, chilies, and herbs. The Caribbean coast is where the Spanish launched their conquest of what’s now Mexico, leaving a legacy of a local cuisine with a higher degree of European influence, hence several ingredients that are more often seen in the Mediterranean.

Snapper’s both an environmentally iffy choice and wasn’t available when I was looking, and the fishmonger accidentally sold the somewhat similar rockfish I’d ordered, so I ended up with a black cod. What an unexpectedly great substitute this flaky yet soft fish made, melting in the mouth along with that tangy, almost marinara-like sauce.

Arroz a la mexicana | Tomato rice | Recipe

Either this recipe, or my preparation, failed. Perhaps it was the fault of the “sauté then simmer” function of my rice cooker, but it came out pretty flavorless and quite mushy. To be safe, look for another recipe, and make sure to do this one on the stovetop.

Frijoles de la olla | Black beans |Recipe

I made these with the classic recipe, and it turned out just right: beans that are tender yet retain their shape, and with enough flavor to stay interesting but not so much that they overpower. If you can find epazote, a sort of razor-toothed herb that’s somewhere between mint and basil with an earthy overtone, it adds a subtle depth and apparently also improves the beans’ digestibility.

Agua de tamarindo | Tamarind drink | Recipe

You’ve likely seen them: those big, pale brown pods, some of which are broken, exposing haphazard strings coated in a darker brown goop. Maybe you’ve even tasted one and recoiled from the tartness. Well, with some hot water and a lot of sugar, you can turn tamarind into a tasty, refreshing drink. Also works great as a mixer for margaritas!

Flan | Custard | Recipe

One of the region’s preferred desserts is torta de tres leches, “three milks cake,” made with a can each of evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, and light cream. Another is flan, that cold, jiggly custard with a caramel sauce, just as they enjoy in Spain and France. So what a delight to see that you could make a tres leches flan!

The hardest part of the recipe is making and pouring the caramel, it requires particular attention to avoid burning the sugar or yourself. The second hardest part is setting up a bain marie for even cooking in the oven. Other than that it's as simple as opening cans and blending the contents. The result is a flan that’s thicker and milkier than the traditional custard. It was a hit!

Meal 109: Mauritania

Writ large, Mauritania is where two larger regions converge in the far west of the African continent. The north is the southwesternmost portion of the Maghreb, bordering Algeria and the disputed Western Sahara which is occupied by Morocco. The south is where the Sahel, the semi-arid strip south of the Sahara but north of the rainforests of West Africa, meets the sea; it borders Mali and Senegal. The population, and thus the food, reflects this division. To generalize over the complexities, it's people of North African descent who speak a dialect of Arabic in the North, and sub-Saharan Africans in the south. There isn't a ton of documentation of Mauritanian cuisine online, so I was lucky to have plenty of help. Marion worked at the American Embassy in Nouakchott, the capital, and introduced me to her friend Sarah who still lives there. Rachel was a Peace Corps volunteer in the south. And the Jones family, who lived there for several years, led a very special end-of-meal experience.

Our guests were Rachel, David, Scott and wife, Eric, Melia, Chelsea, Sarah, Estel, Douglas, and our guests of honor the Joneses, who lived in Mauritania for six years.

Méchoui | Roast meat

A week prior, I saw whole frozen goat legs at the Vietnamese supermarket. In a mildly misguided assumption that it would be the appropriate meat, I bought one for this meal, and started defrosted it. Then Sarah told me that when such a roast is done, it's typically lamb; since goats are prized for their milk, they're not as frequently eaten. But in a sort of Plan B for "doing it as they'd do," we agreed that most important is to use what you have.

While Mauritanians and neighbors to the north use the same name for roasted meat, "if you want to make it real Mauritanian way then yes keep it very simple, however spices and influence from the maghreb are more and more changing the Mauritanian cuisine." Much as I like cinnamon and cumin and all that good stuff, I restrained myself and followed Sarah's advice to simply use generous doses of butter, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, cutting slits in the meat to let the seasoning penetrate. I happened to see goat butter at the store, so I used it, figuring that'd be appropriate. From there, I simply put it in a roasting pan, tented with foil, and baked for a few hours on a relatively low heat.

The verdict? Our guests who'd lived in the country proclaimed it better than what they'd eaten there, but missing "the Mauritanian spice": sand.

Thiéboudienne | Spiced rice with fish and vegetables | Recipe

It's got about as many spellings as "baba ghannoush," but call it "cheb" or "thieb" and someone from the region ought to know what it means. While this rich and complex dish is best known as Senegal's national dish, it's also enjoyed — when scarce resources allow — in the south of Mauritania.

My translation of the name glosses over the complexity. There's fish in two forms, both in whole pieces as well as mixed with spices and fried in little balls. There's a flavoring base, plus a bunch of other vegetables with spices. You steam the rice, and then you boil it in the broth in which the vegetables and fish cooked. And then there's tamarind. That's a lot of ingredients and textures!

This is the sort of labor-intensive dish you serve for a big group, not just a meal for one or two. Despite getting a few parts of the technique wrong (probably because I only printed up the text and forgot to review the highly instructive photos right before cooking), this was probably the richest dish, with the most complex flavors and textures, I've cooked so far of Africa's many Atlantic-coast countries.

Haako | Greens with peanuts and millet (recipe below)

From the same region, but on the more humble side of the spectrum, is this basic sauce, similar to many we've cooked from various African countries. According to Rachel, the opportunity to eat this dish doesn't come around all too often for some, who may go days on end subsisting on simply rice and oil. This recipe comes from one of her friends.

Serves 6

6 Pounds of Greens (About a pound of greens per person – spinach, collards, broccoli rabe all work well) ground peanuts One medium onion 2-3 cloves of garlic 1 smallish/medium red chilli Oil Salt About 50 ml of millet per person

First, wash the greens. If they are really dirty, do it in the bathtub or another large tub. Several times, til all of the dirt is off. Once washed, grab a handful and ball it up, cut it into thin strips, as thin as possible. Discard stems. Put shredded greens into boiling lightly salted water for 15 minutes or so. Drain most of the water, leaving a little bit at the bottom. In a pan, heat oil and add diced onion and garlic. Add chilli – you can use fresh chilli or cheat like me and use sambal olek. Put a bit of the spinach mixture into the pan, return to large pot, all together. Let simmer over very low heat for 20-30 minutes. In the meantime, cook the millet (read directions on the package, it’s like making rice).

When ready to eat, spoon millet into one large bowl. Add the spinach sauce over the top, but only in the middle. Make sure everyone has washed hands and dig in... after it’s had a chance to cool down.

Thiakry | Thickened milk and grain dessert

A refreshing, sweet, filling, and fairly nutritious dessert, enjoyed by many here and across the region sucked out of the corner of a plastic bag purchased from a street vendor. Also from Rachel, the recipe:

Millet, Raisins, Sugar, Butter, Vanilla sugar (or extract), Lait caillé OR yogurt (lait caillé is a fermented milk similar to yogurt that I've never found in the US, so the latter is a perfectly reasonable substitute)

Steam the millet until it is soft. Add butter, raisin, vanilla sugar, sugar. Add lait caillé or yogurt, chill and serve.

No quantities given because what makes a good thiakry is highly subjective, but fortunately it's easy enough to tweak.

Atai | Tea ritual | Video

The Joneses gave us a real treat: a proper Mauritanian tea service, on the living room rug. My concern that they'd brought four cups for a crowd of sixteen proved unnecessary, as the the tradition is to pass the cups among as many people who are present without concern for, you know, sanitation. (Apparently this extends to public settings too, including the arrivals hall at the airport!) With a crowd, a small teapot, and a ritual that involves rinsing, discarding, and adjusting, it takes a while, but what's the rush? The full treatment involves three little cups: the saying goes that the first one is bitter like life, the second sweet like love, and the third gentle like death.

The tea itself is what's known as gunpowder, a Chinese green tea where each leaf is rolled into a little pellet, along with sprigs of fresh mint. For the sweet-as-love glass, it's indeed very sweet. To the extent that your talent allows, pour the tea between glasses to at once dissolve the sugar, cool the drink down, and develop a foamy head.

Dattes au crème | Dates and cream

Marion and Sarah advised that a wonderful, and traditional, snack was to dip dates in cream. I had trouble ascertaining the specific type of each, so I erred on the side of delicious, with fresh (not dried) Medjool dates, and crème fraîche. If you dislike either dates or crème fraîche, you won't like this. Otherwise, you'll wonder why don't eat this, like, all the time. A beautifully rich and indulgent dish. I just reread Sarah's email that said to serve this at the start of the email, but goodness, this went well as a dessert with tea at the end of the meal.

Meal 108: Mauritius

What happens when an uninhabited tropical island in the Indian Ocean suddenly gets people of various backgrounds showing up? Well, aside from other things including the extinction of the dodo, a complex and delicious cuisine emerged in Mauritius. French, Indian, and Chinese cuisines, plus rich soils, waters, and a longstanding sugarcane industry, make for an abundant cuisine whose variety far outpaces the island's modest population. Mauritians are also enthusiastic about their cuisine to the extent that there are a lot of recipes out there, so it was tough to pick out what to cook!

The evening's guests included: Julie, Julie's mom, Levi, the Tenenbaum/Ellenby family, Marguerite, Kristin, Rene, Kerri, and their companions.

Alooda | Fruity chewy milk | Recipe

If you think plain ol' milk could use a little more flavor and a lot more texture, then this is the drink for you. This recipe is essentially the same in name and recipe to the South Indian falooda, with fruit syrup adding color and flavor, and various confections adding texture, in this case basil seeds and diced agar-agar. The basil seeds (on the right) in particular are crazy: one tablespoon soaked in warm water can grow to close to a cup in size, with those tiny black seeds absorbing a nearly unbelievable amount of water.

As far as the fruit, I couldn't find the sort of commercially-produced fruit syrup that's commonly used for this sort of thing these days, so I made one from scratch with frozen strawberries.

The result of the concoction was as you might imagine: tasty flavor, really odd texture.

Rougaille | Tomato sauce | Recipe

This is a really simple dish, just some tomatoes simmered with some pungent veggies and gentle herbs, that plays an outsized role in Mauritian cuisine. It's so versatile as a side dish, a condiment, or a simmer sauce. As with so many simple yet fundamental dishes, the quality of ingredients, as well as the choice to add or remove an ingredient, makes a big difference in the result. I particularly enjoyed the addition of curry leaves, which added an exotic flavor to a dish composed of otherwise familiar ingredients.

Gateaux piments | Spicy split pea fritters | Recipe

While the name means "pepper cakes," the bulk of these little fried balls is yellow split peas. But instead of being really mushy as we've come to expect from cooked peas, these are instead merely soaked before being ground. The result is a somewhat grainy texture that makes for a great frying surface on the outside, and an interior that holds together while still having a bit of cornmeal-style grit. If I were in Mauritius I'd eat these things from street stalls all the darn time. Perhaps wrapped up in a...

Dholl puri | Yellow split pea flatbreads | Recipe

Another dish, another novel use for split peas. This time, it's as a part of flatbreads. The name is a bit deceiving: puri is a pan-Indian term for a puffy, fried bread made of a simple wheat dough, but these are cooked dry more like chapati. These were quite flavorful, with the cooked and ground peas contributing color, flavor, and texture, a great all-purpose protein-and-starch powerhouse to accompany the rest of the meal. Big thanks to Deena for her excellent stuffing, rolling, and pan-toasting skills.

Achards | Pickles | Recipe

Crisp, tangy vegetables make a nice contrast to the generally soft foods of this meal. Gotta say, though, that mine turned out pretty boring and I'm not quite sure why. Maybe I didn't let them marinate long enough?

Cari poisson | Fish curry | Recipe

Often, fusion food is delightfully brash: a Korean taco, for instance, is a tastebud-jarring collision of two very different culinary traditions. A Mauritian curry is of the subtler cross-cultural variety. Picture a standard tomato-onion-curry powder sauce, with some sort of protein in it...yet also with fresh herbs! I've never seen thyme and parsley in an Indian dish, let alone fresh, but once you consider what a French cook would add to a tomato-and-onion base, it makes sense. The fresh herbs and powdered spices blend in a complex yet complementary manner. This was a darn good dish, spooned into some of that dholl puri!

Gateau la cire | Chinese New Year cake |Recipe

Mauritius has a small, but culinarily influential, Chinese population. This meal fell right in the middle of Chinese New Year celebrations, the perfect time to try out this dessert. While I've seen hints of versions with other additions such as dried fruits, I stuck with what as far as I can tell is the traditional version, flavored with nothing but sugar. Luckily, I was able to find real Mauritian sugar, the "dark muscovado" type with the full molasses content, and a quite complex flavor with hints of various spices, retained. (Weirdly, most of what we know as "brown sugar" is actually white sugar with a bit of molasses added back in.)

The direct translation of the French name "wax cake," and that's a pretty close description of the texture, which is not a surprise given that it's sticky rice flour steamed for hours. It was acceptably tasty, thanks to the proper sugar, but really interesting enough to want to try again.