Meal 56: Equatorial Guinea
Despite its name, none of the country lies on the Equator. Most of its land mass is on the African mainland, but the capital’s on an island. Its colonial language is Spanish, but French and Portuguese are official languages too. It’s the richest country per capita in the continent, thanks to a recent oil discovery, but most of the population lives in poverty. That’s a lot of contradiction for a very small country — its population is barely 700,000. But ...
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 ...
Week 6: Antigua and Barbuda
Our first Caribbean country! With so many little islands with a lot of culinary and cultural overlap, I’m trying to pick out what’s really distinctive about the cuisine of each. My prep-work was made really easy this time: I found the recipes for the entire meal on just one page! Big thanks to Cordy for that, especially the photos which helped me make sure I did it right. This was our first meal on a weeknight, thanks to Irene. Our ...
Week 4: Andorra
Andorra’s cuisine is built around the sorts of things that go well in its high mountainous environment: meat and winter-hardy vegetables in stews. In other words, exactly the wrong thing for a humid New York summer. But the weather tried its best to comply: it’s been raining sheets all day. Precious little of neighboring France or Spain’s spectacular culinary traditions rubbed off on mountain-ringed Andorra over the centuries. The food is, dare I say it, pretty bland: you won’t find ...