Curacao-ian Stuffed Cheese

Curacao: It's actually part of the Netherland Antilles, but I'm counting it as its own country because I can.

I found this on Recipe Island - it was either stuffed cheese or iguana stew, and I'm all out of iguana.

The recipe said the cheese would keep its shape. It didn't.

But it was delicious - sweet and rich and perfect with some fried plantains:

Keshi Yena (Stuffed Cheese)

1 sliced onions
2 garlic cloves
1/2 chopped green pepper
4 small Edam cheeses
3 tomatoes, chopped and peeled
1/4 cup sliced olives
1 tablespoon capers
1 tablespoon parsley
1/2 cup raisins and cranberries
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoons mustard
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons butter
3 eggs

Slice the top off the cheese and reserve. Gently scoop out the inside, leaving a 1/4 to 1/2 inch shell. The cheese should resemble a hollowed out pumpkin.

Sauté the remaining ingredients, except the eggs, in the butter.

Beat the eggs and stir into the mixture. Spoon it into the cheese shell, replace the top.

Grease a shallow baking dish and fill it with about 1 inch of water; set the cheese in the dish and bake at 350° F for ~1 hour, or until the cheese starts to brown on the top.
Serve hot with fried plantains.

Cambodia: Wait, what spices can we use?

We started making coconut rice and red bean soup. Upon realizing the recipe called for no spices, Kevin dispatched me to find what spices are commonly used in Cambodia (tamarind, tumeric, ginger, lemongrass, and lime, apparently).

These, it turns out, were a poor addition to the coconut rice and red bean soup, so I am reproducing the original recipe here and strongly recommending the reader not add tumeric, ginger, lemongrass, and lime.

Cambodian Coconut Rice and Red Bean Soup

Simmer:

• 1 can coconut milk


• 1/2 Tbsp sugar


• 1 Tbs cornstarch


• 1/4 tsp salt

In separate saucepan, cook:

• 1/2 cup rice


• 5 cups water


• 1 can red beans

Until rice is tender

Poor coconut sauce over rice, eat.

Laos: Khao Sangkhaya (Coconut Rice)

This is delicious – one of the best rice puddings I’ve had.

Recipe: Khao Sangkhaya
Serves 2

1 cups rice
1/3 cup coconut milk
30 g sugar
1 tsp salt
30 g coconut cream milk

For Sangkhaya:
1 eggs
30 g sugar
30 g coconut cream milk
1/3 tsp cornflour
1 Tbsp water of bay teui leaves

Soak rice 2 hours, drain, steam for 20 minutes over high heat. Mix coconut milk and sugar, add to rice and steam for 25 minutes.

Make the Sangkhaya: Beat eggs with sugar and coconut, then add salt and cornflour. Mix with the rice, stir, and steam for 5-10 minutes over high heat.

Ethiopian Yams - Yum.

Saute in olive oil (until yam is crisp):

• 1/2 sliced onion
• 3 minced garlic cloves
• 1 tsp fresh minced ginger
• 1 small sliced yam

Then add 1/4 sliced red bell pepper, saute another minute or so.

Add:

• 2 Tbs split red lentils
• 2 tsp tomato paste
• 1 cup water

Bring to a boil.
Then add:

• 3/4 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp coriander
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp fenugreek
• 1/4 tsk ginger

Cook ~20 minutes, until lentils are tender.

Add salt, serve. Yum. :-)

Bhutan - The Only Mild Dish in the Country

After much searching, I found a Bhutanese dish that did not include yak by-products or chili peppers hot enough to melt lead: Veggies Over Rice.

I think it's a winner. Kevin poured hot chili sauce on it first.

Bhutanese Veggies Over Rice

The Rices

Cook together

• 1 cup rice

  
  
  

  1 tsp oil

  
  
  

  cardamom

In a separate pot, cook together:

• 1/2 cup rice



• 4 whole cloves



• 1/4 tsp tumeric

When they're done, mix them together.

The Veggies

Saute in a little oil: green peas

Saute in a little oil:

• 1 onion, sliced
  


• 5 cloves, whole
  


• 1/4 bunch coriander greens
  


• 1/4 ginger, ground up with a mortar
  


• 1/2 garlic, ground up with mortar
  


• cardamom



• Eggplant, sliced into bitsized chunks



• Broccoli, bitesized chunks

Remove eggplant and broccoli when they look done. Add potatoes (sliced,
boiled, peeled). Fry until they look brown.

Add into the potato pot:

• The fried eggplant



• The fried broccoli



• The fried peas

Serve veggies over the rice mix.

Comoronian Rice Pudding with Pineapple

Comoros is a group of four islands off the east coast of Africa, north of Madagascar. They have bizarre animals. The coelacanth, a fish thought to have been extinct for millions of years, but still living in Comoros. The four-foot-long “flying fox” fruit bat. The islands were once a major supply stop for ships traveling around the tip of Africa, and their mixed African-Asian-European-Malagasy population reflects that. Most of the population farm bananas, rice, coconuts, ylang-ylang, and pineapples.

This recipe is from a UN book on rice recipes from around the world.

Comoronian Rice Pudding with Pineapple
Serves 6

4 1/4 cups milk
1 can pineapple slices (including juice)
3/4 cup rice
Pad of butter
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup cream
1 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Boil the milk, add the rice and cook on very low heat for 1 hour. (Stir occasionally to make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan). Then stir in the cream, pineapple juice, and sugar. Pour into a baking dish, cover with pineapple slices, sprinkle with brown sugar, and add butter.

Bake for 30 minutes & serve warm.

Oops - Back to the Tour: Burkina Faso

Sorry about that. Moved to St. Louis and forgot to blog for eight months. Still going around the world, though. Here’s Burkina Faso:

Peanut Butter Millet from Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso is classified as one of the hungriest countries in the world. Almost 40 percent of the population is chronically malnourished. Their infant mortality rate is 91%.

For perhaps all these reasons, I couldn’t actually find any recipes from Burkina Faso. They eat a lot of millet, sorghum, yams, peanuts, and a kind of pounded peanut butter millet mash called Tô (rhymes with dough). So I cooked some Tô and counted my lucky stars.

It was tasty, if odd. It tasted like peanut butter and millet.

Peanut Butter Millet from Burkina Faso

1/2 cup dry millet
1 cup water
1/4 cup peanut butter

Boil the water, stir in millet, reduce heat, simmer (covered) for ~20 minutes, until the millet has absorbed all the water. Stir in the peanut butter.