Togo

Togo

Moving along in Africa and we're going to Togo next. I have a friend from university who lived in Togo for awhile and I meant to email him to get his perspective on these dishes (or Togian? food in general) but just haven't gotten around to it.

Papaya Salad

So as I mentioned before, I've been doing regular trips to the Avondale market. Primarily for unripe papaya's to use in making Som Tam (a Thai papaya salad). However, the last few I got have been ripe, despite being green and having a bit of a hollow sound when you tap them. Not being a huge papaya fan, they have sat in the fridge and it could not be more serendipitous that they were needed for a recipe as I hate to waste food.

This was a great salad - all ingredients worked well and the mint made it very refreshing to eat.

Togo Tofu with Baked Ugali

By the authors own admission this dish is more Togo inspired than truly authentic. Which is a little disappointing.

While the recipe says you can marinate overnight, I didn't and only had the tofu in the broth for about an hour and a half.

While the tofu was marinating, I made the sauce and left it to simmer quite awhile and ultimately left the tofu chunks in there for a good while to pick up any extra sauce and taste before I fried them.

This was delicious. In fact, Matt said it is the best tofu dish he has ever eaten. That's definitely a compliment! The tofu had just the right amount of crunch and the tomato paste in the polenta gave it a subtle addition of flavour.

With the papaya salad

Black Baked Bananas

Given there was only 2 of us, I halved the recipe ingredients. I liked the idea of assembling your own and so put all the ingredients into soup spoons on the plate.

Wow! This is probably the simplest dish with the nicest flavour for the smallest amount of effort you need to do. The lime and sugar with the cream were beautiful on the warm banana and again the nuts added nice texture. I loved this so much I sent the recipe to 2 colleagues the next day. Since one of them couldn't have peanuts due to a mild allergy, I suggested she substitute chopped almonds instead.





Overall a great combo of dishes for Togo and one of Matt's all time favourites!

Ghana

Ghana


And across we go to Africa.


Having only been to Morocco I had no idea what to expect with these dishes.


Avocado with peanut dressing


This country would be hard for anyone with a nut allergy or on a low fat diet.


While avocados have lots of the good fat (aka monounsaturated). But, in my opinion (which is just that and based off no study or knowledge in this area) you can have too much of a good thing which is why I only used half an avocado in this recipe since it was just Matt and I having dinner.


Paprika and cinnamon are an interesting combo and I was afraid I would not like it, but this was nice. I'm not sure I could eat a large amount of this salad (it's really just avocado and nuts) but it tasted good. The nuts added a nice crunch (might be interesting to add some chopped almonds in the mix) and the creamy-ness of the avocado was a nice complement to the warm stew.





Nkate nkwan (peanut soup)


To make the peanut soup, I used my favourite peanut butter - Pic's. If you ever get a chance to taste or try it, I'm sure you will want to buy it.


The soup itself was quite straight forward and really easy to make. I wasn't sure how tomatoes and peanut would work, but you couldn't really taste the tomato by the end and the peanut was not over powering.

Omo tuo (rice balls)

If you can recall my last entry, I mentioned my skills (or lack thereof) with rice. I used the white rice we had in the house which was a combination of jasmine and some other medium grain one. Surprisingly the rice balls came out alright and were relatively easy to roll.

The would definitely have to be in the stew / soup above (otherwise it's just a ball of rice with no real flavorings) so I'm not sure why these are separate recipes. Together those this was definitely up there in terms of my favourite dishes in the cookbook so far. It was perfect for the cold winter nights we have been having and the simplicity of the dish seemed in keeping with the country we were cooking.

Muhallabia (ground rice pudding


When I read saw this dish, I was quite surprised. I have seen this before but have always thought of it as a middle eastern dish, not an African one.


I had a look around my local shops for rosewater with no luck. I know there are some Persian shops on Dominion Road that would have likely had it (again being what I know to be as a middle eastern ingredient).


So when like gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or in this case, when life doesn't give you rosewater, make your own!


To make the rosewater, I went and picked a bowl full of rose petals from the roses in the garden. Knowing I wanted a nice color I used a combination of pink petals and white petals from 2 different varieties of rose. I have no idea what kind of roses we have in our garden - the pink ones are smallish and more bushy. They're currently growing along our fence. The white ones are the more traditional (English?) rose variety.


I then poured boiling water over the petals and let it infuse while on a low heat for about 15-20 minutes. I then strained the petals off and voila - rosewater!

I also tried to find ground rice. I saw lots of "rice flour" but in the absence of knowing whether it was what I needed I didn't get it. In the end, I took a blend of rices from the house (brown, medium grain white and jasmine) and ground them myself in my Vitamix.

This recipe of Muhallabia was quite thick and very filling. Interestingly a neighbour of ours who used to live in Dubai came over the next night. He tasted it and said while it was good, it was nothing like the one he knows of from Dubai, so perhaps it is truly an African version.

Brasilia

Brazil


I'm back in full swing and even though it's almost winter and the Belgium winter stew would fit in well, I'm going to continue on and go back to it later.


Up next is a bit of a zig-zag down to Brazil, before we go to Africa.


I'm not sure what I think of when I think of Brazilian food. Other parts of South America, like Argentina, remind me of big meat fests. I think the only Brazilian thing I could name would be a Caprihiana, which is a cocktail made which sugar and muddled limes (not all that dis-similar to a mojito).


I went back to the Avondale market again to get the lovely leafy vegetables that are in the tart and I thought I would get creative with the sorbet.


Let's skip to the dessert first because that was one I had a lot of fun making.


Guava Sorbet with pomegranate syrup


I had decided that rather than try and buy guavas, I would take advantage of those growing in my backyard. For those that know NZ it's feijoa season right now. A feijoa is of the guava family (other wise known as a pineapple guava) and thrive here. But, they are not the only guava relative that we have.


Before the house next door to us was demolished, they used to have this huge tree which would drop these little red fruits onto our driveway. It would get a bit crazy due to the quantity and for a short period, it was almost as though there was a small area of red carpet we drove over.


Sadly, the house (and trees) next door were demolished. But last year I noticed we had a new tree growing in with the cactuses and succulents that line our driveway. It had the same fruits as that tree and some of the fruit must have made its way into the garden bed and grown. I still at this point had no idea what it was though (or even if it was edible). Red fruits in my mind seem to scream POISON! In any event, with the help of my friend Google, I found out this plant was a Chilean Guava, or otherwise known as a Strawberry Guava, and was definitely edible.


With this in mind, I knew I had to use the guavas from the garden for this sorbet.


This is what the strawberry guavas look like

Since the recipe had mentioned using juice, I found a recipe on the internet on how to make a juice from these (ideal for a jelly).

Basically you cut the flower end off, cover with water and boil.

I added in a feijoa for extra taste/flavour and then after it had had long enough to infuse, used a plunger to squeeze and other flavour out of the fruit.

Oh my gosh! This juice is AMAZING! Even without putting any sugar or anything in it, it tastes wonderful. Kind of tart and warm (is that a flavour?) all at the same time. Oh yum.

Having not actually paid much attention to the recipe (thinking that I only needed guavas) I hadn't realised orange juice was required. Lindsay's garden to the rescue and I picked a few almost ripe mandarins to juice and then added some honey for a bit of sweetness.

I had spent awhile trying to find pomegranate syrup at the market with no luck and so had to settle for putting seeds on top of the sorbet.

It was my first time making sugar baskets (and using demerera sugar). Unfortunately I think I had it too hot and the sugar wound up tasting a bit burnt.

But, it looked good and the sorbet was fresh and delicious.

Vegetable maionese salad

Rather than go the vegan route with this one, I opted for convenience and used real mayo. And the other secret I used here was garlic stuff olives. I've never had olives (or artichoke hearts) in a potato salad before but this was really good. The garlic seemed to give things a bit of a pizazz. For easiness and yum factor I think this ranks up there.

Brown Rice Tart

I've never heard of a rice tart. I also have a secret confession here. I'm not good at making rice. There's something about it that I just seem to struggle with. Mine always winds up too wet, or sticky or underdone. We don't have a rice maker and it is not something I make very frequently. So it's not something I have ever even thought about mashing or blending together.

For the leafy bits on top I used;

-Beetroot (with 2 different varieties (one with purple leaves and one with green)

-Broccoli rabe (aka rapini)

-Carrots (I used a peeler to get super thin slice bits

-Red onion

-Yellow capsicum

-Spinach

As the recipe talks about herbs and edible flowers, I put some of my favourite staples from the garden on there - nasturtiums, rosemary, and oregano. The nasturtiums were only added after I cooked it.

In my tin

When it came time to pull this from the tin, the dish was nowhere near as firm as the picture looked. It kind of sagged in the middle and I suspect this was due to my rice being too wet when I added water and blended it.

Despite this, it was delicious and I could see this pairing great with a nice glass of wine for a special lunch.

And...I'm back (with Jerusalem artichokes!)

Hello again.

 

Things have gone quiet on this front. I realised after I cooked France that I had skipped Belgium (whoops). I went back to do it, but again, I was confronted with missing ingredients (Gah! More chicory!). That combined with Belgium featuring a stew just when the weather was getting warmer meant this all seemed a bit too hard.

 

So over the past few months I've been cooking (just not this challenge) and traveling. While in Thailand I took a fabulous class at the Time For Lime cooking school on Koh Lanta. Desperate to authentically recreate the dishes I learned there, I have been on something of a hunt for un-ripened papaya. I tried the Otara market, the French market and on the hunch of a friend, the Avondale market (which is at the Avondale Racecourse on Sunday mornings). Bingo! While I found the papaya I was searching for, I also stumbled across Jerusalem Artichokes which I had been looking for almost 6 months ago when cooking the dishes for Denmark.

 

When that's brought me back into the proverbial fold and the cooking challenge is back on.

 

So here's the Jerusalem artichoke soup that I was supposed to have cooked in Denmark.

 

 

Pretty simple huh? Well the artichokes were quite a pain to peel. I contemplated not peeling them, but was worried that I might have a dirty looking soup.

 

Those worries could have been skipped as I wound up with a bigger problem due to an error in the cookbook. Living in New Zealand I now try and live the in the metric world and so followed the recipe under the metric instructions. Which called for 2 litres of stock. After I poured the first litre in, I couldn't help looking at the pot thinking...this is a lot of water. So I added only another half litre in. Which was still too much as the conversion of 2 pints / 2 litres was incorrect. It should be 2 pints / 1 litre. While it tasted nice it was WAY too watery. It lost all thickness from the potatoes/artichokes. I ended up adding the soup to another 2 potatoes and 1 artichoke to get it to the desired consistency.

 

Watery-ness and consistency aside, I liked this soup and Matt enjoyed it as well. I froze the leftovers (after I added the extra ingredients above to thicken it) and it was just as good re-heated. I'm not sure if it would be a regular feature at our house with the difficulty in both finding Jerusalem artichokes and then peeling them.

France

Vive La France

 

And up next, we go to France.

 

To help me get inspired (and the required items) I went to the local "French style" farmers market at La Cigale. This is a market every Saturday and Sunday outside the La Cigale restaurant in Parnell, Auckland which has fresh seasonal produce and other yummy things (think paella, fresh bread, crepes, etc..!). Information on the market can be found at : http://www.lacigale.co.nz/french-market/

Again, I've run into problems of sourcing ingredients. This time it was chicory. Which for a "chicory and walnut salad" it's a bit hard to substitute the main ingredient. I tried asking with it's more common name "endive" but again no luck. While rocket (aka argula) fits the "bitter lettuce" bill, it didn't seem quite right and so I've left this dish off the menu this week. Seems I'm going to have to do a re-visit to France if I ever manage to find some!

Mushrooms & Béchamel in puff pastry

The market was a great place to pick up fresh ingredients. I used a nice mix of mushrooms (including portabellos) and picked up beautiful vine ripened tomatoes to use.

 

 

I roasted the tomatoes with a nice amount of EVOO and fresh ground salt and pepper. My mom recently gave me some flavoured olive oils and the basil infused oil would have been a great addition here.



The element I was most excited to learn here though was the béchamel sauce. Considered by many one of the key sauces to have under your belt, I have never made one. Lasagna? Nope, instead of the traditional béchamel I use ricotta cheese as a healthier ingredient. And you can see why with the amounts of butter and milk. No way this one could be decently veganised.

 

Doesn't this look good? So I won't lie. I cheated here and used store bought puff pastry. This was delicious meal and would made a great lunch. I would pair it with a fresh white wine (maybe a nice sauv blanc or pinot gris) and in the oh-so-French way, with a cheese plate for dessert.

Tofu with mustard sauce

I used pre-fried/packaged tofu here so that all that was required was re-frying it.

The mustard sauce was so simple and (again) went for a non-vegan option using real sour cream in the recipe. This will be a new favourite sauce of mine and can so easily be whipped up to serve overtop a dish (I could see this on top of chicken if you didn't want to go down a veggie route).

Chives were fresh picked from my garden. Garlic chives would work great on top of this as would parsley as an alternative.



Tarte aux pommes

I redeemed myself from my earlier store bought pastry efforts and made my own for the tarte as per the recipe. Someone shared with me the tip of rolling out dough between 2 pieces of baking paper and I haven't looked back. It makes rolling so much easier (no sticky bits sticking to the rolling pin) and allows for you to easily drape the dough into the pan.

 

I ended up slightly baking this blind as I was concerned that it wasn't going to stay down and again, un-veganised it by using real milk/cream.

 

It looked amazing in the pan.

 

 

I found the cream filling not quite as set as I had hoped for in the final product. I expected it to have the consistency of the vanilla/custard filling in a vanilla or custard slice, but this seemed a bit more runny. Not so runny that it went to bits when you cut into it, definitely drooped a bit as opposed to holding firm. Next time I might see about mixing in some agar agar as a substitute for gelatin.

 

 

Ireland

Ire-land! Ire-land!

Ireland is another country on this list that is special to me. In fact, of the 30 countries on this list I have lived in 4 of them! I lived in Cork, Ireland for a year in 2006! 

In thinking back to my time in Ireland, I have fond memories of the beer and a great local pizzeria in Cork, but generally no particular food dishes which stood out. To be fair I don't recall Ireland as being a difficult place for vegetarians. Having all the great Quorn branded meat subsitutes was always useful and while I occasionally got a strange look, I always felt there was something on the menu I could eat. It could be though that I was more focused on the beers there tho....

In looking at the menu for Ireland, I got very excited. This was a good hearty wholesome menu which was perfect on this slightly chilly night.

Entree/Side: Spinach and Potato Bake

Of course there was a potato dish,  being Ireland, it would have to be in there.

Up first on the menu was the potato and spinach dish. The thing I loved most about this dish is that 99% of it came directly out of my garden. The potatoes, garlic, spinach and herbs were about as fresh as they could be.

Once again I opted to un-veganise this dish and used cream and butter.

I used a red potato (heather?) variety which helped to make this super creamy. 

Saying mixed herbs in a recipe always feels so ambigous so to clairfy, I used italian parsley, thyme and rosemary in my dish which were super yum. This was full of flavor and really delicious.

Main/Entree: Irish Stew

I mentioned above that this was a bit of a cooler evening and so having a hearty soup/stew was just the ticket. I made a few minor changes and substitued swede for turnips and also split the potatoes called for in half and used kumara (purple/golden variety) for the remainder.

I also used olive oil instead of sunflower. It was a light version so wasn't too heavy in terms of changing the taste.

Side: Soda bread

I love making breads but always worry that mine come out too dense, but I don't think that is a concern when it's a soda bread you are making.

Again, I opted to un-veganise this recipe and used a regular unsweetned, probiotic yogurt for the moisture component. I also did a lightly brushed wash of milk over the top to help make a lovely golden crust.

Main: Blueberry pancakes

Ok, I have to say I don't get this recipe. Not literally - I mean I understand the recipe itself but I'm not sure how blueberry pancakes fit into Ireland. I remember when I lived there we made pancakes for shrove Tuesday which is a Catholic holiday (I think). While it was a fun thing to do, I'm not sure it's very Irish - but what do I know?

Anyways, I found searching for buckwheat a suprising challenge. Maybe it is because I once again left my shopping to the last minute. Countdown has a suprising variety of flours but no buckwheat. In any event, I found this LSA mixture which has buckwheat in it and so thought it would be a great subsitute.

It was only when I went to cook that I again realised this was a vegan recipe. Vegan pancakes? While it's not a lack of milk that's the challenge here, I was unsure how these would go sans eggs.

Again, I unveganized it and used normal yogurt and everything looked ok in the pan. Except when i went to flip these it was a disaster. It just didn't work - they fell apart. I eventually gave up, scraped everything back into the bowl, mixed 2 eggs and then added them in. Once eggs were back in the mix they came together lovely. While you could taste/tell that these were healthy, I quite liked the mix of LSA in there and would be inclined to do a 50/50 combination of flour / LSA with all my future pancake recipes.

As the pancakes were sweet, we had these as a bit of a dessert. They were a lovely way to cap off the meal. Since I continue to break the vegan feel, I used whipped cream (from a can too!) as a topping with the pancakes. It took me back to being a kid and loving whipped cream on my waffles in the morning. Yum oh yum!

So, that's Ireland. Dinner is served....

England

England!

So across to England we go. It came time to cook Sunday dinner and you know what, I was exhausted. Earlier that morning I was up to do the Auckland half marathon and when it came time to cook dinner, cooking was the last thing on my mind. 

So I skipped the Sunday dinner. 

That week, it was Guy Fawkes day. Why the English celebrate this who knows, but given the date it seemed timely to make up for the delay with cooking England that night.

Entree: Curried Parsnip Soup

This soup was super easy to make. In fact I was surprised at how easy it was to make. 

It has a good spicy curry hit and would be a great started for an Indian meal.

The cream dash at the end was a great tip - it cut through was finished it off perfectly.

Main: Crispy Beer-Battered Tofu

Ok, so I'm sure you can tell this from the picture but.....i cheated. I've had this beer batter in my cabinet for years (well close to 2 years) and thought now was as good as a time as any to try it. Considering it was just the flour mixture I consider this only a minor cheat.

The recipe called for dulse flakes in the marinade. I had to look these up and after reading they were a sea lettuce I decided to subsitute them with roasted nori (seaweed). A lovely vegan paella recipe by Tal Ronnen uses them and so I was quitely confident they would work well to give that salty-from-the-sea taste.

For the beer I convinced Matt to open a bottle of beer (hard sell) but as all we had was Moa's Pale Ale, I was briefly concerned that it might be too strong a flavor, but it ended up great.

Given that this dish was essentially meant to be fish, what's more English than Fish and Chips. So I made some chips to go along side the peas. My recipe was:

Lindsay's chips/wedges

3 potatoes

Olive Oil

Salt and pepper

1. Heat the oven to 180 C

2. Cut the potatoes into wedges (half, and then quarters).

3. Liberally spray/cover in olive oil and salt and pepper

4. Cook until golden and cooked through - for me this was around 40 minutes

Side: Crushed minted peas

I've never made peas like this before and had some strange looks from Matt and the father in law when  I was crushing them with a rolling pin. I used a lemon infused olive oil and lemon and mint straight from the garden. Rather than straight salt and pepper I seasoned with lemon pepper seasoning (the kind usually used for steak). Yum.

Dessert: Trifle

I have a big issue with this one.

1. It uses jelly. Trifle should not have jelly!

2. It has no sponge cake? Trifle should have sponge

I realise these are highly contreversial statements and I know my friend Victoria and I used to have many a debate on this topic. In any event, I'll do it as per the recipe (well, sort of).

I luckily had some strawberry jelly from a vegetarian stand at the food show (or Green living show) still in the cupboard. The picture below is quite useful in case anyone else finds themselves looking for this brand.

The trifle was supposed to be vegan, but well, yea....that's just not me.

So the custard was made with milk and for the cream, I just used cream. Although I will be keen to try her vegan cream at some point.

To serve this I used small whiskey glasses which were the perfect size for individual servings and I think looked quite elegant (I originally wanted to use martini glasses but couldn't find 3 of the same size around our house)

While I may disagree with the lack of sponge, I can't argue that this was simple and tasty and a refreshing end to our meal.