Meal 52: Ecuador
Ecuador is kind of on the small side — a bit larger than the UK, a bit smaller than Nevada — but its borders contain three distinct zones: seaside, Andes, and Amazon. Hence, there’s quite a lot of variety in the foods available. (There’s also Galápagos way out in the Pacific, but we’re not eating any of their rare wildlife.) Some of the major themes are shared with its Andean neighbors: abundant potatoes, warming foods, and the ubiquitous Inca Kola, ...
Meal 50: Dominica
Dominica is a tiny little island country, in the middle of that north-south string of Caribbean islands. You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s the Spanish-speaking half of Hispaniola, but no, that’s the Dominican Republic. They both use the adjective Dominican; to assert that you mean this beautiful, actively volcanic, lush-in-parts island, place the stress on the third syllable, domiNIcan. The national Dominican dish is the so-called Mountain Chicken, which is actually a species of giant frog, so tasty and easy to ...
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 ...
Meal 31: Cameroon
For our first Nosh in DC, we teamed up with WFP USA to host the biggest yet, with over 25 people — just about none of whom Laura or I had ever met! — coming to experience a Cameroonean feast meal. It was quite the affair, with a buffet line, speeches before and after, a Q&A with our guests, a slideshow of prior Noshes, and a really powerful video about the amazing work WFP does that we hope to put ...
Meal 30: Canada
Laura is Canadian, Monday was her birthday, and we’re at the beginning of the C’s. That’s a recipe for a Canadian blowout party! For eight hours we fried, drank, and sang our way through the Great White North. We went through the better part of twenty pounds of potatoes, five pounds of cheese curds, a gallon of gravy, and every last bottle of wine in the house. Let’s be honest, this isn’t a collection of dishes you’d likely find on ...
Meal 28: Burkina Faso
Our plans took us to Cambridge, MA this weekend, so for the third time, we took United Noshes on the road. This week was Burkina Faso, a landlocked West African former French colony, and I was not terribly confident that we’d find the proper ingredients in the Boston area, given that it’s not very easy in New York. But lo and behold, the Tropical Foods market in Roxbury had just about everything, including sumbala seeds and fermented cornflour. Heck, they ...
Meal 27: Burundi
Starting with Burundi, six of the next eight countries alphabetically are African. I suspect I’m going to get to know some of the shop owners up around Franklin and Fulton, which is the best area I’ve found for the various starches, oils, greens, and other distinctly African ingredients that you just don’t find in the supermarket. That said, it’s amazing what you can find in supermarkets in Brooklyn, such as goat! But the one thing I couldn’t find anywhere was ...
Week 21: Bolivia
Laura and I went to Bolivia for part of our honeymoon. It is telling of our unremarkable culinary experience that I can’t find any representative photos of the food there, but we did take our favorite photo ever at the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat: The one food that we do remember distinctly is pique macho, which is essentially meat and hot dogs on top of french fries. But that would require frying. Again. Much as I ...
Week 10: Austria
Laura learned early in our relationship that I’d never seen The Sound of Music. (That’s around the same time I learned that she’d never seen Star Wars.) Turns out this musical classic, set in Salzburg, Austria, was the movie of her childhood household, so much so that the two VHSes had worn out. (And now I’ve seen it, while she still hasn’t watched Star Wars. Too bad Tatooine isn’t a UN country or that would be a surefire way to obligate her.) Needless to ...