Meal 125: Niger

Niger is Nigeria's much lesser known northern neighbor. To reduce the inevitable confusion, its English pronunciation imitates the French: nee-ZHEHR, and the demonym is Nigerien, with only that second E providing the needed distinction. It's a Sahel nation, meaning it's in the transition zone between the Sahara and the tropical West African coast. Mercy Corps, our fundraising beneficiary, does a lot of work in Niger, including both emergency food relief and helping farmers improve their long-term resilience. Joining us for the meal were Kal, Douglas, Annette, Eric, Robin, Cara and friends. We were also honored to welcome Issa, a recent refugee from Chad, which has a somewhat similar cuisine, so he very kindly pointed out which dishes worked and didn't.

Sugar peanuts | Recipe (scroll down)

Pour peanuts into a pan, stir in a bunch of sugar and some water, and bake until the water evaporates and you're left with caramelized peanuts. What an easy snack to make! It's a great start to a meal.

Masa | Yeasted rice pancakes | Recipe

I can't imagine how tedious it would be to make this dish without an electric blender to grind soaked raw rice into a batter, but I tip my hat in salute to the (most likely) women who've been doing it a long time, because the result is really tasty and satisfying. The yeast gives a little tang and volume, and the rice is thick enough that once the outside of the pancake gets crisp from the griddle, the inside is still soft, so it's got a lot of texture and flavor going on. Issa said it reminded him a whole lot of the ones he ate growing up!

Greens with handmade couscous

I can't find the recipe I used to make this, but I wouldn't recommend it anyway. While it instructive to make couscous from scratch from millet flour, it took a long time and a lot of work and the result was hardly distinguishable from a decent pre-made couscous. Enough people talk about the wonder of fresh-made couscous that I have to figure it was some failure on my part. And anyway, once mixed with the greens, it was just kinda dry and disappointing. As Issa said, "I'm not really sure what you were trying to do here."

Mo & dungiri | Rice and black-eyed peas | Recipe

This dish is a great way to fill up, and on its own it's not terribly flavorful. The real star of the show is the peanut-bouillon spice powder in the recipe, which frankly went great on everything in the meal.

Tukasu | Lamb in date sauce | Recipe

I cooked just about the same dish for Mali, but it was so good I couldn't help doing it again. I love lamb, I love dates, and I love spices, and it turns out the three of them together with some vegetables to make a rich sauce is a super winner. The only major change from last time is that I left out the steamed bread balls, because there was quite enough starch from the rest of the meal.

Fruit salad

Used what tropical fruits were good at the market: pineapple, blood orange, and mango.

Meal 122: New Zealand

A little over two years ago, when our now-good-friend Deena did an NPR piece about United Noshes, someone in New Zealand noticed and I did a phone interview on Radio NZ. I promised that when we got to their country, I'd get back in touch. And I did! We did a fun bit where they had listeners send in advice through social media of what to cook, which we chatted through live on the radio. So what do Kiwis eat? Well, lamb, of course, since that's what they raise a ton of for wool and meat alike. Otherwise it's in large part based on traditional English foods like sweet and savory pastries, with a growing influence of fresher Mediterranean flavors, blended with some indigenous influences like sweet potato.

Joining us on a cold winter's night for a taste of the other hemisphere were Estel, Sarah, Laura, Patrick, Kal, Julie, Levi, Martha, Karen, and Red. (Oh, and Reba!)

Kiwi dip

While we Americans love our convenience, one thing we really haven't gotten into is canned milk products, so we suffer the inconvenience of a perishable product as the base for our otherwise dead-simple French onion dip (recipe: mix one packet of onion mix into sour cream; serve). Well, Kiwis have no such aversion, and their reward is no temporal constraint on their ability to whip up the equivalent dip, using a can of what they call reduced cream and what we can find in the States in Hispanic markets or supermarket aisles as media crema. They even gussy it up a bit with a dash of malt vinegar, but since any self-respecting NZer would have that on hand anyway, the extra effort is still less.

It's really tasty. Eat with thick or wavy potato chips, or veggies if you want to pretend you're being at least a little healthy.

Along with the dip, we had ray oysters on the halfshell. They were in homage to, but certainly no replica of, Bluff oysters, a particular species that's found at the southern tip of the South Island. Equally fatty, but much classier.

Mince and cheese pie | Recipe

One Radio NZ listener wrote in that the national dish is really a "$2 mince and cheese pie from the dairy," which in American English means "$1.40 ground beef and cheese hot pocket from the convenience store." So I made one! The all-butter puff pastry crust probably made this a bit fancier than the grab-n-go version, and of course as a whole pie the crust-to-filling ratio was surely off, but otherwise I think this turned out to be a fairly accurate and tasty replica. Speaking of, "tasty cheese" is apparently what Aussies and Kiwis call what we'd think of as sharp cheddar cheese, to the extent that you can refer to "tasty and crackers" and people will apparently know what you mean.

Watties sauce | Recipes

It seems that Watties is to NZ what Heinz is to the US, the universal tomato condiment. Watties is apparently a little runnier, a little sweeter, and a little more spiced — it's known as tomato sauce, not ketchup. Not finding any here, I made my own, with frozen pureed tomatoes from last year's harvest. The recipe I followed had a shocking amount of allspice, so I cut back quite a bit and even then it was pretty strong. It was pretty good, but unless you have a strong reason to recreate the flavor of the original (like, if you have an around-the-world cooking project or are really trying to impress a Kiwi), you may as well just make do with ketchup.

Lamb with mint sauce | Recipe for mint sauce

There's about seven sheep for every New Zealander — and that's down from twenty a few decades ago! — and accordingly, those Radio NZ listeners made very clear that lamb was required on our table. It seems that the classic version, fit for a feast, is a roast leg, whether in a classic austere British style, or enlivened by garlic and herbs; the latter's what I chose to do. I got a whole leg (bone in, including the shank), studded it with garlic and rosemary, and let it cook for hours. I also whipped up some mint sauce with a splash of malt vinegar, two ingredients that contrast nicely.

The lamb was good, but not great, kind of a disappointment given the quality and expense of the meat. I mean, we all enjoyed it, but I was hoping it'd be something more.

Minty peas | Recipe

Mint again! Green peas, green onions, and mint made for a vibrant hint of sunnier days. Easy to throw together, tasty, and decently healthy.

Kaanga waru | Steamed sweet potato and corn pudding |Recipe

To properly represent the cuisine of the Māori, the indigenous Polynesians who predated the British, I ought to have done a hangi. But that would have required digging a pit in the yard, superheating rocks in an adjacent fire, quickly moving said rocks into the pit, lowering in sackcloth-enrobed bunch of meat plus veggies, and covering the whole thing with soil for several hours. Even if I had all the space and time, it seems that watching a few YouTube videos isn't enough, that without having learned from others you risk making a muddy, undercooked mess of it all. Time for plan B.

Several listeners suggested that our meal include kumara, which as the sound of the name suggests is also a Māori food; Americans know it as sweet potato. While kumara is quite common around NZ, this dish is Māori through and through, though the cooking technique and most of the ingredients come from the British! It's a dense loaf of shredded kumara, cornmeal, flour, sugar, milk and butter, steamed in a cheesecloth. It's dense, and it's really pretty tasty.

Pavlova | Baked meringue with fruit | Recipe

Aussies and Kiwis may argue about who owns the "pav," but history is on New Zealand's side; while it grew very popular in Australia, it first took form in Wellington during the tour of the ballerina Anna Pavlova, who was described as dancing as if she were lighter than air.

A pav is a marvel of kitchen chemistry, starting with the goop of some egg whites and ending with a magical, etherial mass that's crisp on the outside and chewy like a marshmallow on the inside, all thanks to a ton of beating and strategic addition of sugar, cornstarch, and an acid. Once the science is over, the art begins: the pavlova is a blank canvas for decoration with fruit to your heart's and eye's desire. Of course, ours had kiwifruit!

Meal 118: Namibia

Namibia is a dry place. Most of it is desert, the best-known of which being the Kalahari, with a little strip classified as "semi-arid." In such an environment, few vegetables grow, so for thousands of years people living in this part of the world have relied on animals to turn meager grasses and shrubs into edible food. Accordingly, everyone, including the poor, makes meat a large portion of their diet, so naturally this meal featured meat in several forms.  It was hard to find any recipes that were truly Namibian, so I mostly went with South African recipes that seemed most in line with what I could gather is eaten in Namibia. (Perhaps we can blame the fact that the land was administered by South Africa as "South-West Africa" from 1915 through 1990.) Since Laura and I went to South Africa the previous winter, we had a decent frame of reference for the food.

While Namibia is a sparsely populated country, our backyard was packed for this meal, since 25 of our neighbors showed up to a block-wide Nosh invite! It was a grand time, with old-timers and newcomers alike, and many neighbors who'd never gotten beyond "Hi" finally getting to know each other. We'll surely do it again.

Biltong | Air-dried beef strips | Recipe

Biltong is like jerky, except with vinegar in place of salt, and deeply intertwined into the culture and soul of a whole region rather than a mere convenience-store snack. While it's better-known globally as being a South African food, many South Africans will tell you that the best biltong comes from Namibian meat. While it can be made from many kinds of animal, particularly game, in this case I used beef.

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With the right setup and a good butcher, making biltong is really simple. From your butcher, you'll want meat from the back of the hind legs, something low in fat and rather tough, that either you or they slice into fairly thin steaks. All it takes is an overnight marinade in vinegar, coriander, and salt, dry it off, and — here's where the right setup comes in — hang it to cure in a dry, ventilated environment. You could use a dehydrator at a low temperature or even use a purpose-built biltong dryer, but I went with the traditional method: hanging in the basement. (Not pictured: a mosquito net I used to keep flies away, and a table lined with paper towel to catch the dripping.) After about a week, the meat had shrunk a fair deal and was quite firm.

Against all odds and expectations, it was a huge success. The biltong had a great texture, firm enough to resist but not a chore to chew. And the flavor! Truly beefy, highlighted by the vinegar's tang and the nutty mustiness of the coriander. It's good snacking on its own, and just perfect with a beer.

Braai | Barbecue

I did a lot of research to see if there was anything specific to a braai that made it substantially different from, say, an American backyard barbecue; as far as I could tell, there isn't, but it was imperative to do one given how important it is to the food culture. I'd brought back a bag of opaquely labeled "Braai Spice" from our trip to South Africa, so I just rubbed that on some pieces of steak and threw it all over the coals. It was delicious.

Potjiekos | Spiced stew | Recipe: Lamb, Chicken (minus the couscous)

This "little pot food," as it literally translates, reminds me somewhat of the Southwestern chili con carne. It's a meal in a pot that you can cook over an outdoor fire, applying spices from afar — in this case, curry powder — to modest homegrown ingredients. One big difference, though, is that while chili is a true stew, a potjie isn't as liquid. It's also worth noting that it's stirred very infrequently, the idea is that although everything cooks in the same pot, the ingredients retain their individual flavors.

A few hours of slow cooking, combined with restrained seasoning, led to dishes that were on the mild, "comfort food" side. Despite how lamb is a more strongly flavored meat, the chicken one had a more developed flavor, perhaps due to the sly "Coke cola" lending sugar and some more spice.

Chakalaka | Tomato and bean relish |Recipe

Certainly one of the most fun dish names to say! It's also a tangy, (optionally) spicy, warm and stew-y complement to grilled meat. If you're missing one ingredient or want to adjust the proportions, by all means; this is definitely the sort of dish that's more of a throw-it-all-together rather than a strict recipe.

Mealie pap | Corn mush

Indulge me in a bit of etymological sleuthing: looking into why corn is called "mealie," it turns out it comes from the Portuguese word for corn, milho, which itself comes from the Latin milium, for millet. (For what it's worth, the term "maize" comes directly from a native Caribbean word.)

Anyway, pap is like fufu or ugali or any of those other mushes: a bland, dense starch to accompany the meal. After having cooked probably two dozen meals of this kind of food, I think I'm finally grasping that it has to be thick enough to hold, something with no runniness to it. The tough part is that you start with a pot of water and then add the grain to it, so the only way to deal with a too-thin pap is to add more grain. We probably got the texture right, but my goodness we had a lot of leftover pap.

Amarula ice cream

Just about the only liqueur from southern Africa that's internationally distributed is Amarula, a sweet, creamy drink made with marula fruit. (You may have seen the video of elephants getting drunk off the fruit; turns out it's a fake using footage from tranquilizations.) It's a bit similar to an Irish cream, but with a subtle tropical-fruit vibe. So I got it in my head to make an ice cream of it, adapting a recipe for Irish cream and simply substituting Amarula (any decent recipe, such as this one, will do). It turned out great: a lovely light brown color, a fantastic texture thanks to the alcohol, and a lovely smooth flavor that's far from overpowering. The perfect conclusion to a summer braai!

Meal 116: Morocco

I love spices. I love meats cooked with sweet flavors. I love Moroccan food. This was one of our very most anticipated meals, and I went pretty overboard with all the dishes and condiments. But with all the meats and flavors, how could I have cut back? The house smelled fantastic, we all got super full, and there was so much food going on that I even left one whole dish uncooked to be enjoyed later. Thank goodness for mint tea that helped our digestion.

Our guests for a lovely summer evening were Andrew, Laura, Craig, Laura, Tennessee, Alley, Amos, Nik, Deena, Bengt, Tim, Kristine, Haley and Mary.

Baghrir | Pancakes | Recipe

A semolina-heavy pancake that puffs up quite similarly to an American-style pancake, but this one you don't flip over. We had it with two toppings: goat cheese with honey (yumm) and fermented butter (yumm to some).

Smen | Fermented butter | Article

I've read that in some families, it's tradition to bury a container of smen when a daughter is born, to be unearthed and eaten for her wedding. By comparison, the version I made hung out in my cupboard for about a month. Even still, it had a distinctive, but not unpleasant, funkiness, which made for a really intense sensation in combination with all that butterfat. If you're intrigued, read the article! And if you make some, enjoy it with those pancakes.

Harira | Lentil stew | Recipe

This stew is classically made with lamb, but I went the vegan route due to some guests' dietary needs, as well as the abundance of meat on offer in other dishes. We hardly missed the meat, as it was plenty rich in terms of flavor, heft, and mouthfeel, but also bright with fresh herbs and a squeeze of lemon. A great simple, healthy dish for a cold evening.

Seafood bisteeya | Savory seafood pie | Recipe

Bisteeya is Morocco's contribution to that great list of foods that includes empanadas, pierogi, bao, and börek best summarized as savory pies. The crust is fillo dough, the filling is typically based around poultry, and it's topped off with powdered sugar. Sugar with chicken? You bet.

Anyway, as with the harira, to make the meal more accessible to more people I went with this seafood-based version. I made the rookie mistake of not defrosting the fillo overnight, and my rushed method led to the sheets breaking in half. Worry not, because I just made two smaller ones.

In the rush of all the cooking and the huge excess of food, I didn't end up baking off these pies for the dinner. But my goodness, they were so delicious later! Also, they freeze really well, just throw them straight into the oven without defrosting.

Couscous | Preparation

That little pasta's really easy to cook, right? Just a bit of boiling water, a few minutes, and ready to go? Sure, but how about adding a lot more effort and an hour more for a moderately improved texture? If you want to do it right, which involves three separate rounds of steaming interspersed with breaking up clumps by hand, then follow the link above. The cool thing is that this is efficient with energy and stovetop space: you do it right on top of the tagine!

I suppose if I were from the region and grew up with couscous made this way, I'd appreciate it being done right. But frankly, I didn't feel like the improvement was worth all the effort. Unless somehow we messed up.

Lamb with prunes | Recipe

As far as I'm concerned, this is the Platonic ideal of Moroccan food. Rich meat, sweet fruit, haunting spices, and a long slow simmer combine to make the sort of food that you just can't stop eating. I'm practically smelling the dish as I type. You should cook it so you can smell it too. Make a lot, freeze the leftovers, and enjoy them many times.

Chicken tagine with preserved lemon and olives | Recipe

This dish covers the other direction of Moroccan meats: brighter and tangy. The meal will still be great if you make it with fresh lemons, but it just won't convey the appropriate depth and intrigue unless you use preserved lemons. (I anticipated the meal several months prior, and made them myself from Meyer lemons from my parents' tree. It takes like five minutes to make them, but you do have to wait at least a few weeks for them to mature.)

Vegetable tagine with tfaya | Stewed vegetables with caramelized onion and raisins | Recipes: Tagine andsauce

We made this the vegetarian way, and it was still quite tasty. Make sure to cut the veggies big enough that they hold up, both for presentation and texture.

The real star of the dish was the topping. It has nearly as much of that rich savory-sweet-aromatic as the lamb tagine, but to me the real high point is the floral note from the sprinkle of orange blossom water at the end. I'd really better make this tfaya again.

Khobs kesra | Bread | Recipe

It looks pretty, but was kind of disappointing, just not very flavorful and a weak crumb. I'm going to assume it was our own failure, but all the same I'd maybe seek out a different recipe, or just buy the fluffiest pita you can find.

Harissa | Spicy paste | Recipe

There are many harissa recipes in English, but it's worth running this obnoxious all-caps Courier-font French one through Google Translate for this one. The secret is the mint, which adds a lovely second sort of tingle to the predominant fiery chili one. (Also, consider cutting this recipe in half or even a quarter, unless you plan on going through a lot of it in a month or two.

Ghoriba | Almond cookies cake | Recipe

An accident that turned out great! These are intended to be cookies, but when we put everything together the batter was just too slack. So instead of dolloping

Meal 115: Montenegro

While the language, culture, and some of the food of this little seaside country are definitely Slavic, the food of Montenegro evinces a strong Italian influence. It's the consequence of centuries under Venetian rule and influence, plus the lingering effect of being a hop across the Adriatic from the boot of Italy. The result is a cuisine that is both high in milkfat but that also has a place for delicate flavors. Really, it was quite delicious. Ellenby Ellenby Ellenby Ellenby Elizabeth Elizabeth +1 Tink Tink +1 Kristin Winslow Ana DLR Ana DLR +1 Anna Marti Anna Marti +1 Anna Sagatelova

Our guests were the Ellenby family, Elizabeth, Tink, Kristin, Miguel, Ana, Anna, Anna, and friends.

Sok od Šipka | Pomegranate juice

Across much of Montenegro, wild pomegranates grow abundantly, and families press the juice and boil it down to syrup for use all year long.

Pomegranate juice is a fantastic example of the huge price differential you can find when shopping at an ethnic market. I found a three liter jar of the pure juice for $9 at the Russian market; you’d be lucky to buy a liter for that price at your local supermarket. Since it was already at drinking strength, it seemed silly to boil it down just to reconstitute it, so we enjoyed it straight.

Appetizer spread

In browsing various descriptions of Montenegrin food, just about all of them talked of a good meal starting with preserved meats and various cheeses. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t find the specific meat items they called for (in particular, a local variation of prosciutto), and the descriptions of the cheeses were quite vague. So I did my best and bought some stuff that looked good from the counter of the Russian market. Surprisingly, the most popular component was a generic-looking cheese that was sliced as a wedge from a hefty round; it was kind of in the direction of a queso fresco, but a bit firmer, and a bit squeaky on the tongue.

Pogača | Rustic bread | Recipe

A rich bread for a rich meal! Note how all the liquid comes from animal products, there’s not a drop of water in the dough. With all that lactose, it’s a quick riser, so there’s not a ton of flavor development from the yeast. But this bread has a solid crumb that’s equally good with cold cuts as well as soup.

Raštan | Collards | Recipe

With all the heavy meat and dairy in the rest of the meal, thank goodness there's a common dish of greens to provide a bit of balance. I made them without the pork because we had some non-red-meat eaters, but it was still nice. I like the bit of flour in there to make it a bit saucy, too.

Brav u Mlijeku | Lamb in milk | Recipe

What a happy accident! Since I ran out of stovetop space, I put the pot of lamb chunks in a milk bath into a low oven, left it uncovered, and then kinda forgot about it until the smell was irresistible. The milk got really thick, and the lamb got really soft, so it was all one great, smooth mess of a really dense and spectacularly tasty dish. Delicious as it was, I'm not confident I actually made it Montenegrin-style — while I heard many mentions of lamb in milk, details on the preparation were few, so I turned to this recipe from nearby Italy instead. Any leads, my friends?

Riblja čorba | Fish soup | Recipe

So simple, so tasty. It hardly requires a recipe: simmer fish with some vegetables and garlic, strain it and remove fish, cook rice with olive oil in the broth, put fish back in. Despite the lack of any exotic ingredients or flavor combinations, as long as you’ve got good fish (in this case, rockfish and black cod from the farmers market), you’ve got a great soup.

Smočani kačamak | Fatty porridge | Recipe

Can’t decide between polenta and mashed potatoes? Well, how about both, mixed with a hefty dose of sour cream plus some cheese! It was really tasty and extremely unnecessary given how much other rich food we had. Everyone ate it anyway, because it’s as yummy as it sounds.

Pomegranate sorbet | Recipe

Probably the most appropriate way to enjoy Montenegro’s most representative fruit would have been to simply peel and eat, but they were out of season. Given the Italian culinary influence, I figured a sorbet would be appropriate. It’s hard to tell if this is something they’d actually eat in Montenegro, but it was a delicious and light conclusion to an otherwise heavy meal.