Meal 73: Guyana

It's considered Caribbean, though it's on the South American continent. It was first colonized by the Dutch, gained its independence from England, has a notable native population, yet the two largest populations are of (East) Indian and African descent. No doubt, Guyana — pronounced like the first names Guy and Anna together — is quite the blend of cultures, a study in miniature (the population's under one million) of many of the influences of the colonial age on the Americas. And as we've seen time and again, where cultures collide, so do their foods, so it's no surprise that Guyanese food has an intense Indian influence.

Joining us for this week's adventure: Rachel, Eunice, Sarah-Doe, Xindi, Erin, and Valerie! (Also, notice how we've finally put up our scratch-up map in our no-longer-very-new place.)

Limewash | Recipe

It's essentially the lime equivalent of a lemonade, but with small and awesome improvement: a splash of vanilla! That little bit of depth and perfume takes a bit of the edge off the sourness, while also complementing the floral notes of the lime. I also got a bit more depth by using demerara sugar — named after a former Dutch colony that's now part of present-day Guyana — which is a crystallized brown sugar, meaning it's got much of the minerally and tasty molasses from the cane. (You could use the similar, but more finely-grained, turbinado or "sugar in the raw" instead with the same result.) Goes great on its own, or with rum!

Tamarind balls | Recipe

The word tamarind comes from the Arabic tamr hindi, meaning "date of India." They are indeed somewhat like dates in that they're a dark, rich, pitted fruit that grows on a tree and can last a good long while. But tamarind is a whole lot more tart. Sometimes it's used as a savory ingredient, such as in pad thai, and often it's sweetened up, when it's served as a juice. This recipe splits the difference, mixing a in whole lot of sugar (again I used demerara) but also raw garlic and chili, making for a puckery, sweet, intense flavor explosion. It's hard to eat too much of this at once, but even a small bite makes your mouth water, so it's an ideal amuse-bouche.

Fry channa | Crispy chickpeas | Recipe

After fry-tastic Haiti, I wasn't up for plunging more things in hot oil this week, and accordingly we missed out on a wide variety of Guyanese treats, notably a split-pea fritter called pholourie. While there's no way to fake a fritter, fortunately one of the several bloggers offers a fantastic substitute for another dish, fried chickpeas. It's really extremely simple, you just soak them overnight, drain and dry them, add a few spices and a tad of oil, and bake until crispy. In color and crunchiness, they're more than a little reminiscent of CornNuts — these aren't a snack to take along when you need to silently munch. But for a super-healthy and cheap snack that keeps quite a while and is a great pairing for beer or a cocktail, I'd recommend this.

Hassar curry | Recipe

This dish is a perfect example of the blending of East Indian cooking techniques with West Indian ingredients. In this case, it's a coconut milk curry made with a respectable blend of spices you'd find in any respectable kitchen in the Subcontinent — turmeric, coriander, fenugreek, cinnamon, etc. — but the fish you'll find swimming in it is a novel one. The hassar is a catfish with an articulated shell, or what this recipe describes as an "underwater armadillo." If you don't live near a Guyanese or Trinidadian market you just won't find this fish, and while you could substitute with a catfish or tilapia, really so much of the wonder of this dish is the strangeness of the shell. The flesh itself is firmer than you'd expect for a medium-small fish, and pretty tasty although it likes to cling to the bone so it's a bit inconvenient. If you do find the fish, keep in mind that it's best served whole to each diner so they can attack it as they please, rather than trying to shell the fish before serving. Oh, also, serve it with rice to sop up all that curry; roti, as I tried, just didn't do the trick.

Pepperpot | Recipe

There are endless variations on Guyana's national dish — onions or no? one kind of meat, or a variety? is chicken reasonable or sacrilege? — the one point in common is cassareep. The product is as exotic as the name: extract of cassava, boiled with spices until it's turned thicker than molasses and about the same flavor as steak sauce, that somehow acts as a preservative that allows meat to stay for long periods at room temperature. If you can't find cassareep, then you can't make a Guyanese pepperpot. (If you can find cassava, you can make cassareep yourself, but I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader. Even I, an avid make-it-from-scratcher, bought this pre-made, as do most Guyanese.)

For meat, I went with ox tail, lamp chops, and cow feet, all cut into chunks. The recipe I followed is a more basic pepperpot, with little more than meat, spices, and cassareep. (I got the idea for pre-simmered cow feet, as well as to brown the meat, from another recipe, but that one called for onion and thyme and all sorts of fussier stuff.) I cooked it for maybe 3 or 4 hours on a low simmer the night before, left it out on the stove overnight, and re-simmered for about two hours before serving. The result was a rich, semi-sweet stew loaded with umami, that "sixth flavor" evoking protein-y meatiness. Not surprisingly, after all that cooking, the meat totally fell off the bone. I really enjoyed the flavor and texture, but due to the intensity I can't see myself craving this more than once ever few years.

Roti | Flaky flatbread | Recipe

What the Guyanese call roti would be recognizable to a modern-day Indian as a paratha, made of a bunch of flaky layers, kind of like the croissant of flatbreads. The technique actually isn't as hard as I'd feared; it's worth scrubbing through the video in the recipe to see the hardest-to-describe part of the technique, where you take rolled-out dough, generously butter it, cut a line from the center to the edge, and then roll it up into a big cone before stuffing in the ends. Then, when you roll it out again, that's how you get all those layers. So clever.

Two things I did wrong. One, I used whole-wheat flour for half of this recipe. I went with that variation because the item that's called roti in India is made more often than not with whole wheat, but I think that both in terms of flavor and texture it didn't work, tasting kind of flat and not being flaky enough. The other was that neither of the dishes I made are actually made to go with roti — curry goes with rice and a pepperpot is traditionally served with a challah-like braided bread. Oh well, it was still fun to make!

Mango achar | Green mango pickle | Recipe

This is an all-purpose accompaniment to add tartness and spice to any dish. I went through all the motions, but just didn't start it early enough. It tasted too strongly of mustard oil and the spices hadn't yet pervaded, so if you feel the urge to make this, definitely give yourself a few days' head start.

Parsad | Milk and wheat dessert | Recipe

This name is slight variation on prasad, a Hindi word referring to food that is first offered in a religious ceremony and then eaten by people. In Guyana the term has been more narrowly applied to a specific dish of a sweetened and spiced milk and wheat porridge, kind of like a more aromatic cream of wheat. After the intensity of the flavors of the meal, this mild and soothing dish made for a satisfying conclusion.

Meal 72: Haiti

Have you ever pondered what would have happened if something went differently at a given point in history? Compared with the rest of the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is sort of a real-life example of contrarian history. The crux is a slave revolt against French colonial masters that, incredibly, led to independence in 1804. The slave system was ruthless and required a constant influx of slaves, which had the silver-lining consequence of a strong syncretic culture quickly developing that combined French and West African influences — ranging from language (Kreyol is mostly French vocabulary but has strong West African grammatical influence) to cuisine to religion.

Our meal fell directly on fet gede, a Vodou celebration blending the Catholic traditions of All Souls' Day with West African-derived spirits and beliefs. To get into the mood, we made an altar with some of the traditional elements, including an offering of our own ancestors' favorite foods. The meal, while not unique to this holiday, is one that would be appropriate to the festivities, particularly because the spirits related to death love spicy food. To bring a little bit more of Port-au-Prince to Brooklyn, we turned out the lights and ate by candle, since most folks only get electricity a few hours a day, if any.

Joining us for this adventure were Lisa, Alex, Samantha, Johan, CJ, and Rachel. Alex spent a month in Haiti, whereas CJ recently lived there for a year.

Kremas | Rum cream | Recipe

The drink par excellence for fet gede is pikan, hard liquor steeped with scotch bonnets. CJ brought some that she'd made for last year's, so you can imagine how pungent it was — all you need is the tiniest sip of this truly firey water.

For the rest of our Haitian-style drinking, we drank this cordial that's pretty much the opposite — an unctuous, sweet, spiced blend — with the only part in common is the alcoholic strength, thanks to being made with overproof rum. Between the spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg) and the thickness of the liquids (condensed milk, evaporated milk, cream of coconut), this drink was quite reminiscent of eggnog, just a whole lot stronger. While all enjoyed the flavor, some found the thickness too heavy to indulge in more than a glass, but I quite happily managed to have several.

If you choose to follow this recipe, just note two things: you should use more than a quarter-cup of water to make the simple syrup, and this made two liters in total (and I only used a 750 ml bottle of rum, rather than 1L), so be prepared to give plenty of it away. Oh, and it's extremely important to look people in the eye when toasting. Goodness knows you don't want to get on the wrong side of the spirits.

Pikliz | Spicy pickled slaw | Recipe

Growing up in California, taquerias were a core part of my childhood, and at some point my dad taught me the awesome trick of picking out the carrots from amongst the pickled japaleños at the salsa bar, to get the spice infused from the surrounding peppers while also getting more of the vinegar flavor. I feel like pikliz takes this concept to a marvelous extreme, with just a few extremely hot scotch bonnet peppers seasoning a whole jar of shredded cabbage, carrots, and whatever other veggies you throw in, by bathing together in spiced vinegar. And then there's whole cloves thrown in there to add a little more exotic flavor. I threw all the vegetables through the Cuisinart's shredding disc, but next time I would probably use the thin slicer for the cabbage to keep it in larger pieces.

Pikliz is such an essential part of the cuisine that everyone who'd been to Haiti whom I told about this meal asked if I'd be making it, and there's even an expat website called Pikliz.com. So, if you're doing a Haitian meal, don't leave this out, and be sure to start this a few days in advance to let that spice from the peppers migrate over to the vegetables! And then throw it on just about everything, as there's little on the Haitian table that won't go well with some vinegary crunch-n-spice.

Tasso cabrit | Fried goat | Recipe

This was, hands down, the tastiest goat I've eaten in my life. What it's lacking in visual appeal, it way more than makes up in flavor and texture.

It started with a trip to the Fertile Crescent, where the butcher cut stew pieces of meat to order, including the super-tasty rib bits. Then to Bed-Stuy where I had to pop into a few markets to find the elusive sour orange, a green fruit with thick skin, a ton of square-ish seeds, and appropriately named flavor that's just excellent as a marinade. The night before the meal, I squeezed up the oranges, mixed with a bunch of other ingredients including lime, ground clove (there's that spice again!), hot peppers, etc.

Some recipes call for a simple vinegar marinade and then boiling with all the flavors; other call for a rich marinade and then a simple boil. I find it hard to let go of good flavors once you've got 'em, so the next afternoon I dumped the whole bowl, meat and marinade alike, into a pot, added water to cover, and then let that simmer for a good two hours or so. The recipes say to boil, but tough meat always enjoys slow heat, and my tweaks were vindicated by a really tasty and tender meat.

But wait, there's more! Once I finished frying up the plantains, I turned up the heat and threw the goat in the same oil, adding a lovely crisp to all the edges. Once served, these tasty chunks lasted approximately five minutes on the table. The only challenge was successfully navigating all the bones by candlelight!

Sauce Ti-Malice | Tomato and onion sauce | Recipe

This sauce is pretty much soupy sautéed onions with hints of other ingredients. I saw it mentioned on pretty much every site I visited, but I'm not sure I get it. The rest of the cuisine has such vibrant flavors and textures, while this came across as kinda bland and watery. Did I do something wrong?4

Diri ak pwa | Rice and beans | Recipe

Doesn't that look like an exotic, perhaps African, name for this dish? Actually, it's the Kreyol transformation du riz au pois. Highlighting one face of the large American presence in Haiti, this recipe comes by way of a missionary.

I'm fascinated by how many ways there are to cook rice and beans. This one has you boil the beans (which I'd pre-soaked), adding some coconut milk and parsley toward the end, then re-introducing the bean broth and the beans and then finally the rice, with a heavy unlidded boil and then finally a slow simmer with the lid on. It was a lot of work and required a lot of attention, which proved quite worthwhile, with a great semi-moist texture on both the rice and the beans, and a nice richness thanks to the coconut milk. (I actually made coconut milk from scratch, by cracking, prying, and shredding coconuts, adding water to the shreds, and squeezing to extract the milk. Maybe that made a difference, but it was probably hardly worth it.)

I made a whole ton of it, using a pound of little red beans and five cups of rice; three nights of leftovers later and we've still got plenty left! Fortunately, it tastes great when crisped up in the frying pan with the addition of extra veggies and some pikliz!

Banan peze | Twice-fried green plantains | Recipe

For all the fried ripe plantains I've made, this was actually the first time I've fried the unripe version. Known as tostones or patacones in Spanish, these bananes pesées — weighted-down plantains — are fried once, smashed, and fried again. I can't find confirmation online, but my suspicion is that if the edges would burn before you managed to cook it all the way through, so smashing after the heat softens it makes all part of the slice close to the surface. Or maybe it's just that more surface area means more crispiness. Anyway, yum. Even though I have a deep-fryer, I made these in a frying pan so I could get more of these flat things going at a time.

Bonbon siwo | Molasses cake | Recipe

This cake-like dessert can be pretty honestly described as a fluffy brownie, but with molasses and spices instead of chocolate. I thought it was OK, but on the dry side. (The first recipe I found called for a ridiculous four sticks of butter, whereas this one has one stick, perhaps the truth and beauty lies somewhere in between.) However, it was an excellent supporting actor for a scoop of the nutmeg ice cream left over from the Grenada meal!

Post-dinner lingering, by candlelight

Meal 70: Guatemala

Corn, beans, tomatoes, squash, peppers, turkey...if it's a classic New World food, chances are you'll see it in Guatemalan cuisine. While it's incorporated smatterings of good stuff from Europe (note the olives in the tamales), by and large this meal could have been cooked six hundred years ago, before a conquistador set foot on Mayan lands. However so ancient the ingredients may be, the techniques  aren't: I made liberal use of the blender, and really wish I'd had a food mill, since there was a lot of tedious straining of blended sauces. We were fortunate to have some experts on hand: Mica on the left grew up in Guatemala, and Christen on the right met Laura on a human rights delegation in Guatemala. Between them are Alex, Laurel, Diana, Jennifer, Grant, Sophie, and Suzanne.

Tamales colorados | Red tamales | Recipe: Crisco; Lard: Spanish, English

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I find Mexican tamales too dry, and too sparse on filling relative to the mass of corn. Happily, Guatemalan tamales suffer neither of  those challenges. Rice and fat moisten up the masa quite well, and the filling is intended to be generous.

OK, this was a lot of work. Even making the pumpkin-seed-based tomato sauce was the effort of an average dish, what with individually toasting the different seeds in addition to simmering the sauce. Add to that cooking up the pork, roasting the peppers, and especially the forearm-building effort of mixing the masa...and now it's time to trim the banana leaves, and finally to assemble and wrap the tamales before a good 90 minutes of steaming.

The results were well worth it, a tasty bundle of flavor with so many different textures and directions. But I can understand why most Guatemalan families don't make this more than once a year!

Kaq'ik | Turkey and smoked chili soup | Recipe

This soup pre-dates the arrival of the conquistadores, and some consider it the national dish of Guatemala. As with so many ancient recipes, there are as many variations as there are abuelitas, but the important part is to have turkey, chilies (including a smoked variety), and a tomato-rich broth. There are two aspects I particularly liked about this recipe. The first is that you broil all the vegetables, including even the dried chilies, lending a depth you just don't get from sauteeing. The other is that it has you use just turkey legs, rather than the whole bird, and I'm much more a fan of dark meat, especially to go along with those roasted veggies. While not so labor-intensive as the tamales, this certainly isn't the simplest soup to whip together, but I didn't at all mind the work after enjoying the depth of flavor from the roasting combined with the slow simmering of the turkey.

Frijoles negros | Black beans | Recipe

While the tamales and kaq'ik are special-occasion dishes unique to Guatemala in their preparation, it's the black beans that led the folks who'd lived in the country to reminisce. I cooked them in the crock pot, a technique I'm growing to love because it really allows the flavors to meld while also preserving the structural integrity of the bean. This recipe has plenty of vegetables, including a whole head of garlic, plus onion and bell pepper. I didn't add salt at all, because the topping took care of it: the appropriately named queso duro frijolero, or "hard cheese for beans." Saltier even than parmesan, it suits its title so very well. I'm glad I made a double-batch, because we enjoyed the leftovers throughout of the following week.

Ayote en dulce | Squash stewed in sweet sauce | Recipe: Spanish, English

Though we were a month out from the Day of the Dead, Guatemala has such a particular cuisine for that holiday that I felt compelled to make something from it. I chose to make this winter squash simmered in a sugary, gently spiced sauce, which is then boiled until syrupy. I'd say the dish was okay, but didn't quite bring the flavor punch I'd been expecting. I'm pretty sure I got the right kind of green-skinned, fairly smooth squash (thank you, farmers' market!), so either I started with too much water and hence had to boil it too long to thicken it, or maybe this dish is just supposed to be subtle.

Atole de elote | Corn and milk drink | Recipe

This drink, on the other hand, was more of an intense experience than I'd bargained for. You go through a lot of corn -- one ear per cup of drink -- and blend the kernels with milk, then strain it out and sweeten and cinnamon it up. With the nuttiness of the fresh corn plus the richness of milk, this warm beverage is a thick one. Would probably go even better on a chilly day, perhaps even as a breakfast drink.

I'm posting this on World Food Day. That marks one year since we did that epic Democratic Republic of the Congo meal for 75 at the youth hostel. We've now raised just about $16,000, enough for 64,000 meals. Please take a moment to think about the joy of food and the comfort of food security -- it's something we really oughtn't take for granted.

Meal 54: El Salvador

After a three-week trip to India, where our senses were entranced with spices, I was afraid that Salvadorean food would prove mild and uninteresting. While it's true that pupusas are a pretty straightforward food, I was surprised by the creative combination of ingredients, such as aged cheese in dessert, cloves in a soup, and coriander seed in a drink. While the food of this small, dense, Pacific-facing nation shares most of its base ingredients with its Latin American neighbors, a few of the ingredients — namely, morro seeds and loroco flowers — are very particular. I had to ask around at about a half a dozen markets in Sunset Park before I finally was pointed to yet another market with a Mexican flag in front...that had them! The clue was that it was down the street from a Salvadorean restaurant.

Joining us for this first nosh of the year were all couples: Jessica and Alex, Kate and Jason, Michelle and JJ, and Clara and Jesse.

Horchata | Spiced grain drink | Recipe (Spanish)

You've probably encountered horchata as an opaque, milky-white, moderately gritty, cinnamony drink at a Mexican restaurant. Turns out this drink, whose name derives from the Latin word for "barley," has all sorts of variations around the Hispanic world, with pretty much the only thing in common being a starchy base with spices.

The Salvadorean variety is quite distinctive; as you can see in the above photo it has many components, all of which are toasted and ground individually. On the bottom is morro seed, which comes from a very-hard-to-crack fruit. Next come cocoa, nutmeg, peanuts, coriander seed, cinnamon, allspice, sesame seeds, and finally rice flour. This is then mixed with water, allowed to sit for a bit, and strained before sweetening, chilling and drinking.

The flavor is notably more complex and earthier than a Mexican horchata, or at least the kinds I've had; it's mostly the depth and richness from the morro seeds but you also appreciate the complex interplay of so many spices you rarely see at the same time.

Sopa de patas | Hoof and tripe stew | Recipe

I'm not quite sure what Salvadoreños do with the rest of the cow, because this stew, using some of the most humble parts of the animal, is just about the only beef-based recipe I came across. (If you're familiar with the cuisine of this part of the world, you may know this type of dish as mondongo.) As with so many dishes made of odd parts, it's a long and slow process to cook the hooves long enough that the cartilage and other stuff simply falls off the bones. Between this and the sprinkling of tripe, you don't actually end up with much protein to chew on; what really makes this soup is the rich broth and the variety of vegetables that populates it. That, and the relajo spice mix; in my homemade version, I might have used a bit too much clove and not enough of the other ingredients like chili and sesame seed, but I liked it!

Pupusas | Stuffed corn tortillas | Recipes: pupusas and pork filling

The pupusa is certainly the best known Salvadorean food in the US. It uses the same lime-treated corn that's used for tortillas, but instead of being pressed really thin, it's stuffed with a filling, pressed a little thicker, and then griddled for a few minutes. We made two types. Queso con loroco was a mix of melty and hard cheese with a particular type of edible flower bud. Chicharron, or fried pork, was made from a pork butt (aka pernil) that I cooked very slowly on the stovetop with a bit of tomato sauce (see below); when it was fork-tender I shredded it, cooked it until it started frying itself, mixed in a bit more sauce, and ran it through the meat grinder.

I wouldn't call these pupusas the most beautiful or successful thing I've every made. I probably got the water proportion in the dough wrong which led to cracking edges, and they were honestly pretty bland. Maybe I didn't use enough filling but I was already failing at keeping the filling fully inside. Hmph.

Salsa roja | Tomato sauce | Recipe

This simple tomato sauce, on the other hand, was quite tasty. I made it with summer-ripe tomatos I'd cached away in the freezer. It would have been preferable to use a food mill to make it smooth. Absent that, I used my immersion blender, which was convenient but incorporated more air and hence turned the sauce a bit more orange.

Curtido | Cabbage slaw | Recipe

This is the universal Salvadorean condiment, a simple shred of cabbage and carrots seasoned with vinegar and allowed to ferment slightly. It would probably have been rather tastier had I made some homemade pineapple vinegar as is apparently very common; as it was, my substitute attempt with apple cider vinegar fell a bit flat.

Oh, notice also the dollop of cream on that plate. Crema salvadoreña is about as thick as a soured cream could be and still be pourable, and it has a rich and almost funky culture flavor.

Quesadilla | Aged-cheese poundcake | Recipe

Quesadilla is a portmanteau, a mashup of the words queso (cheese) and tortilla. And as there are two types of tortilla — the Mexican flatbread and the Spanish baked omelette — there's a quesadilla that corresponds to each. The former is, of course, essentially the Mexican version of a grilled cheese sandwich. But the latter, which is enjoyed in El Salvador, is in fact a dessert that closely resembles a poundcake, except with cultured cream as well as an aged cheese that closely resembles parmesan in flavor. Despite its status as a dessert, it's not very sweet, and in fact the savoriness and saltiness of the cheese comes through quite clearly.

We're traveling next week, but the weekend after we're zooming to the Red Sea for Eritrean food!

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, which tastes like bubble gum and packs a caffeinated punch. (Spike it with Pisco like we did!) I was surprised to see a lot of annatto, aka achiote, a seed that gushes a saffron-like orange hue when heated in oil. Pretty much everything we had was that color.

Our guests were Kelly, Sarah-Doe, Jon (who just flew in from California and came straight from the airport), Tennessee, Jen, and Kathryn, who's half-Ecuadorian and helped with the menu and prep!

Ceviche de pescado | Fish ceviche | Recipe

Ceviche is surely the most famous seafood dish of South America, and the Ecuadorian version does it great justice. I especially like it because of just how lime-y it is: you first "cook" the fish in one batch of fresh lime juice, then rinse it off and make a second marinade with yet more. That makes it so the marinade has a good but not overpowering fishy flavor. But the craziest part of the Ecuadorian ceviche is that it is commonly eaten with...popcorn! It sounds crazy but makes total sense: the dry puffs with their slightly sweet and nutty flavor provide the perfect foil for the wet, tangy, and fishy flavor of the ceviche.

As far as making the ceviche itself, it's extremely important to start with the freshest fish possible. So I went to Sunset Park's Chinatown and got a live tilapia and a live striped bass. Even though they came to four pounds at the store, once I filleted them (thanks, Knife Skills 201 class!), I had only a pound of flesh left even though the recipe calls for two. I kept going with the full recipe and am glad I did: while it wasn't exactly overflowing with fish, there were plenty of tasty morsels amongst the other bits. (For what it's worth, I couldn't tell the difference between bites of the two fish so you might as well go with the cheaper one.) And, of course, the popcorn helped it all go farther! A single recipe with half the fish provided enough for an appetizer for 8.

Aji criollo | Rustic hot salsa | Recipe

The recipe calls this a hot sauce but it's really more like a Mexican salsa — it doesn't have tomatoes or limes, just chilies, scallions, and cilantro, but it is veggie-rich and is more to be scooped on than applied in dabs.

Locro de papa | Potato and cheese soup | Recipe

I love spices, the way that complex combinations of flavors build together and take over your senses. But sometimes it's just better to cook simply and carefully, letting the inherent characters of the ingredients shine through. This soup, made of little more than onions, potatoes, cheese, cilantro, and a splash of milk is a wonderful reminder of the value and delight of basic ingredients. Though I gotta say the zip and zing from the aji goes well too!

Llapingachos con salsa de maní | Potato-cheese fritters with peanut sauce | Recipe

 

This recipe has almost the same ingredients as above — pretty much the only addition is peanuts for the sauce — but it's amazing what a different dish it turns out to be. Now, I way overcomplicated this one, by using a food strainer attachment for the Kitchen-Aid (score from raiding my parents' basement over Thanksgiving! I also got a meat grinder and a shredder!!) to rice the potatoes, but wow the texture turned out all lovely and fluffy. Note that you want your batter cold and your griddle very hot and sufficiently oiled to make sure the crispy part stays on the potato rather than the griddle.

Not kidding that when I asked Kathryn what to serve with these, she suggested potatoes. (Yes, she knows that's funny.) Also, apparently in her family they just call these tortillas. I did fry up a few chorizos for the meat-eaters, which were surprisingly tasty. (Got them at La Vaquita on 5th Ave in Sunset Park, for the curious.)

Empanada de queso | Cheese and scallion empanada | Recipe

 

We've had some odd ingredients in our Nosh desserts — cornstarch pudding for Afghanistan, lard in the Chilean pastry, even that sweetened and chilled kidney bean soup for Dominican Republic — but it took until the E's to have onions! These empanadas, for which Kathryn channeled her grandmother to roll, stuff, and deep-fry, are filled mostly with cheese but with just enough scallion to give that fresh sharpness. The rustic dusting of granulated sugar leaves no doubt that this is a dessert, and the hot, crispy dough sure contributed to the feeling, but that scallion, well, it's a touch of daring genius.

Canelazo | Spiced, spiked punch | Recipe

What a tasty, and therefore dangerous, number! Nothing more than a few spices and juices, it's really simple to make (though of course I overcomplicated things a bit with fresh-squeezing the orange juice), and so warming and tasty. Very luckily I was able to find Ecuadorian aguardiente. Unlike its anise-flavored and better-known Colombian cousin, it tastes pure as a rich, unfiltered sugarcane, kind of the brown-sugar sibling of cachaça. And it is definitely much more smooth and agreeable than the over-the-top website of its manufacturer.

This meal was also the start of a new tradition, streaming radio from the country! JC Radio La Bruja from Quito had quite the Saturday night mix going.

Next meal takes us back to the Middle East, with Egypt!