Meal 60: France
No single country has contributed more to the world of cuisine than France. For sure, folks around the world have figured out how to cook food and serve it, but it’s the French who codified the process and lent us words like chef, sauté, and restaurant. France enjoys a unique physical situation, with both the olive-oil-pressing Mediterranean and the butter-churning north, coastlines teeming with sea life as well as rich interior lands for grazing livestock, and a variety of soils and climates and ...
Meal 58: Fiji
We had been planning this meal with 18 Reasons, a warm and welcoming non-profit community food space in San Francisco, for almost a year. Taking the day off of work to prep and cook with my parents, the larger audience of friends new and old, and the gorgeous organic ingredients from Bi-Rite Market all contributed to a special and gratifying experience. But didn’t really hit me how this meal was operating on an atypical plane until one of the volunteers ...
Meal 57: Estonia
Vikings, Russians, Swedes, Poles, Russians, Germans, Soviets… pretty much, if you were an empire within a few hundred kilometers of Estonia, you probably had dominion over this small country at some point. But things are now going well for the Estonians, who emerged from the USSR with a bang, and now enjoy a strong economy, EU membership, strong civil liberties, and Internet access so pervasive they have online voting. (Thankfully this made finding recipes a lot easier than expected!) Estonia’s ...
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 48: Denmark
Danish cuisine doesn’t exactly have a high reputation, among gastronomes nor dietitians, so I had pretty low expectations for the meal. While Denmark famously produces a whole lot of dairy and pork, it has a historical reputation for sending the best stuff abroad and keeping the remainder to feed the populace. Well, I am happy to report that so long as bold, rich flavors are welcome, Danish food is actually pretty good! For this meal I tried to evoke the ...
Meal 42: Croatia
Thanks to its unique location, Croatia straddles several opposing forces of history and geography, and of course this is reflected in the food. It features a unique shape, a comically long and thin Mediterranean coastline with a big bulb at the north stretching inland toward the heart of the Balkans. Parts or all of it have been subject in turn to Venetian, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, which have lent such influences as pasta, lamb, and strudel. And of course it’s ...
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 ...
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 19: Bhutan
The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is closer linked culturally, ethnically, and culinarily to Tibet than to India with which it shares most of its border. Given its generally high altitudes, the standard way to cook is with slow simmering over a small fire, with lots of yak butter and cheese for energy in the cold climate. The stovetop is a fine substitute for the fire, but for better or for worse (and, given what I’ve read, perhaps for better), yak ...
Week 16: Belarus
(Above: Google Translate into Belarussian of, “Cheers, bitches!”) Belarus is in the heart of Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine, a forested, landlocked country with long, cold winters. It should be no surprise then that potatoes, sour cream, rye bread, pork, and vodka form the core of the cuisine. This was our first United Noshes on the road, back in my former apartment in San Francisco. The big common space and excellently appointed kitchen (save for the ...