Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Some people have a passion for international cuisine and try their best to cook foreign dishes.
Do you have any preference? Is there any foreign dish you can cook (or you wish you could cook) as well as a native? How did you learn it?
I always cook a tajine for my husband and me. We eat that twice a week or more. The actual tajine is a clay pot with a ventilation for steam and whatever is inside cooks quickly and thouroughly, but tajine when referring to a food is basically a spicy stew of various vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, carrots, onions, garlic, peas, potatoes and others if you like) and a piece of meat (chicken, beef, or goat). It's all boiled together for a while, sometimes 2 hours or more and it is eaten with bread (I'm good at making the bread now too). You eat the tajine with a piece of bread rather than with forks or hands. I used to make spinach with garbanzos quite often, but not lately. It's good but it has a strong smell as you can guess.
I learned by watching my husband do make the tajine stew and bread, and then I tried it myself. It took a little while for him to say I can make that stuff just as well as anyone.
Last edited by A_Gazela; 07-27-2010 at 07:50 AM..
Reason: How I learned...
How does one know if it is cooked "really well"? I make quite a few "foreign" dishes, that turn out the way I like them with allowance for my short cuts and simplifications, but what's to say they are authentic? I once made avgolemono for a dinner guest who was from Cyprus and he said it was perfect, but maybe he was just being polite.
I once made an omelet according to Julia Child's instructions, fastidiously attending to every detail, and it was unbelievably good. But it almost requires a dedicated omelet pan to do it correctly. so it's not something I can repeat consistently.
I make Hungarian nokedli noodles a lot, but I skip some steps to simplify the process. I love them, but a Hungarian would probably just roll his eyes.
Swedish meatballs. I have a recipe in my mother's handwriting (she died 39 years ago, when I was a kid), and she got the recipe from her great-aunt from Sweden.
I enjoy making Italian Risotto, Indian style Tandoori Chicken and Thai Curries. I research quite a bit. I have a lot of good cookbooks and seek authorities on the subject of food. I have visited many countries and trust my palate when it comes to what food should taste like. Some dishes are less about the ingredients and more about the process, such as risotto and aioli.
Sometimes it can be a challenge to get certain ingredients, like Kaffir Lime Leaves, which is essential to a good Thai Curry.
Then again, I watch a lot of cooking shows. One of the best Thai Curries I ever made was a Brit's recipe. Jamie Oliver (when he was still the Naked Chef) makes a very good thai green curry.
I like to cook and do cook "well" several foreign dishes, but I agree with jtur88 ...it is hard to tell how good, or how authentic they are. Even in one country, people living in different regions tend to cook the same dish different ways. Which way is authentic?
Example: I do how to cook Polish food, and I think I know how to do it well. When I try to cook a dish here using exactly the same ingredients - it never taste the same as when I cook it in Poland. Go figure...
I like to cook and do cook "well" several foreign dishes, but I agree with jtur88 ...it is hard to tell how good, or how authentic they are. Even in one country, people living in different regions tend to cook the same dish different ways. Which way is authentic?
Example: I do how to cook Polish food, and I think I know how to do it well. When I try to cook a dish here using exactly the same ingredients - it never taste the same as when I cook it in Poland. Go figure...
So true. Technique can trump ingredients and vice versa.
Slightly off topic, but the more I travel, I find that food is more and more homogenized. Great traditions in food seem to be at risk all over the world. Authenticity seems to be an illusive quality, especially when your concept of a certain food culture is Americanized.
When I visited China, I found a lot of American style Chinese food.
> Enchiladas verdes
> Salsa - Chunky, Mexican style w/ Cilantro, tomatoes, lime, salt and onions.
> Caribbean pumpkin fritters and banana fritters. I also made up one: applesauce fritters. YUM
> Caribbean curried chicken
> Egyptian meat and potato casserole - I am sure this is a big part of how the man and I gained so much weight! Egyptian food is so good and this is my favorite Masri dish of all time. It's POTATOES, BUTTER and MEAT baked to death in the oven. You parboil potatoes, onions and meat and then you put it in the oven in a tomato sauce for a couple of hours. Then you eat it and die from happiness. LOL
> Sesame Peanut Noodles
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
