steamed fish chinese-style: another ethnic trick

As part of the foodbuzz project food blog contest,  my first challenge is to define myself as a food blogger, and to do that, there’s no easier way than to share how and why I started this adventure into ethnic cuisine!

the spice is right: Southern African potjiekos

This dish (pronounced poy-key-kose) is another variation of slow cooked stew, the fruits, nuts and spices adding a bit more flavour than what you may find in the West.

It is named after the three-legged iron potjie pot, originating in South Africa, but popular today in most of the southern countries. The pot retains a lot of heat, ideal for low maintenance cooking over a number of hours.

Every restaurant and home has their own recipe, most of them today using prepackaged spice mixes for this dish. You could do it with any type of curry spice, but when creating it for a restaurant in Namibia, the chef and I made this house recipe from scratch.

Crispy fish or chicken in African onion mustard sauce

While preparing to create a new menu for a restaurant in Namibia, I saw that they regularly used mustard with some common packaged spices to flavour their meats. I immediately recalled a delicious meal I learned to make with a family in Dakar, Senegal, and decided to adapt it to give the restaurant an original dish in this part of the continent.

In French, the dish is known as ‘poisson trop cuit’, meaning overcooked fish. It gives it a super crispy texture, and the way the body is scored with little squares, you can easily pick them off one at a time, enjoying them with the savoury carmelized onion sauce, the mustard enhancing its sweetness.

okonomiyaki: savoury Japanese pancakes, any way you like them!

This will be a quick post, much like the dish, which can be thrown together in a matter of minutes.

The only ingredients that I would say are standard for this recipe are flour, egg, and chopped cabbage; after that, you can go nuts throwing in leftover vegetables, pieces of meat, seafood, etc., and if you want it to taste Japanese, at least one ingredient with a Japanese flavour (such as dashi instead of water, bonito shavings (katsuobushi), or nori flakes). These items are super cheap in Japan, and can often be found in Chinese or other Asian supermarkets.

borrowing from britain: japanese niku jaga

“In coming to Japan, I was really looking forward to catching up with my friend Kyle (he moved here from Toronto years ago). I had little expectations for learning opportunities, as it was very difficult to get anything organized in advance. But now that I’m here, everything has changed. After meeting me face to face, the same people who were apprehensive about planning things online are proud to take me into their homes and restaurants to share their cooking and culture! Each day has been full of lessons and learning, scurrying from one city to another. I’ve even had to turn people’s offers down after being double and triple-booked! It’s been more than three weeks here, and I’m wishing that I had more time. Here are a few of the highlights from my stay:

Chiguinha: Mozambican sweet potato peanut puree

For Africa Day, I thought I’d post a recipe using one of the most common forms of cooking vegetables, roots, and pulses in Africa: the puree. I learned this variation of chiguinha from Lucia in Maputo, for which cassava (mandioca) root can also be used in place of the sweet potato (in Southern Africa, the common sweet potato has a pinkish skin, while the inside is white).

Korean cucumber kimchi made quick

“I asked a Korean friend what a typical food day is like here. He said it would usually be similar for all three meals at home: it may include a meat dish like bulgogi (thin slices of beef and onion marinated in a mixture of garlic, sugar, soy sauce and sesame oil), but it’s always served with soup and rice as the main course, and kimchi on the side.

Spicy Sichuan ‘boiled meat’ from Chengdu, China

I arrived in Chengdu, Sichuan province, only a couple days after the big earthquake in 2008. I was expecting the place to be a mess, but was surprised to find so much in the city already running as usual (aside from moments when we’d feel a big aftershock, and people would scurry in a panic, down the apartment stairs and outside). I only mention the food briefly in my novel, mainly because I was fortunate enough to find a bible of a book on the cuisine, and after leafing through it a number of times, I spent most of my energy eating, rather than recording recipes (this is an exception).