Cooking the national dish of every country

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tipplej

Assistant Cook
Joined
Feb 4, 2015
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26
Location
Milton Keynes
:chef:
As said in my personal introduction, a friend and I are attempting to cook the national dish of every country in the world and recording our journey "Cuisine and Country" on video for that well known video website.

We are both absolute amateurs and what we know about cooking between us would barely cover the surface of a small cracker.

Each week we intend to select a country and cook its national dish! We have done 2 out of about 196 so far! So far we have done Succotash from Equitorial Guinea and Stamppot from Netherlands.

We are here for all the advice, guidance, suggesions and experience we can gain from this fantastic community.
 
Please can I extend thanks to Dawgluver, Cooking4to, Addie, jennyema,CWS4322, CherylJ and Josie1945 for your kind welcome.

To answer some of your reponses to my introduction:

Yes I hope it will be a lot of fun, a great learning experience and a culinary adventure. We did indeed do a couple of easy countries first but really want to tackle a challenging one as soon as possible. I would hate to do 40 easy ones and find that everything else was really hard. I feel we need to get a really tough one under our belt as soon as possible. Suggestions welcome! Indonesia I think was suggested by Cooking4to. Now we are set up and comfortable documenting it, we should be able to take on bigger challenge.

Addie, we are doing Canada this week (Poutine) at the request of someone. And I also have family there.

jennyema, there are countries that seem to have more than one national dish, so we will look to pick the one that has the consensus as being the most imprtant. Or we will do the most interesting and mention the other ones. We can always go back and cook the others in an additional episode.

Cooking4to, I do know someone who supplies lamb but Im not sure I could stomach doing Lamb's head for Jordan. It looks disgusting! But it would be... an interesting one.

Luckily my kitchen has a well stocked but un-used spice rack, but I sense we may be looking around in some odd places for foreign ingredients!

Thanks for all your support so far.

Any tips on making poutine for Canada welcome. But I won't be making my own cheese curds this time round. Not sure the best way to make my own french fries. And I don't have a deep fat fryer.
 
Cooking4to, I do know someone who supplies lamb but Im not sure I could stomach doing Lamb's head for Jordan. It looks disgusting! But it would be... an interesting one.

That is the beauty of making a dish in your kitchen, it is for you to interpret and make your own, for instance with jordan and that specific dish, I would use this recipe, which uses cubed lamb... Jordanian Mansaf Recipe - Food.com actually sounds good when I read through it...
 
Please can I extend thanks to Dawgluver, Cooking4to, Addie, jennyema,CWS4322, CherylJ and Josie1945 for your kind welcome.

To answer some of your reponses to my introduction:

Yes I hope it will be a lot of fun, a great learning experience and a culinary adventure. We did indeed do a couple of easy countries first but really want to tackle a challenging one as soon as possible. I would hate to do 40 easy ones and find that everything else was really hard. I feel we need to get a really tough one under our belt as soon as possible. Suggestions welcome! Indonesia I think was suggested by Cooking4to. Now we are set up and comfortable documenting it, we should be able to take on bigger challenge.

Addie, we are doing Canada this week (Poutine) at the request of someone. And I also have family there.

jennyema, there are countries that seem to have more than one national dish, so we will look to pick the one that has the consensus as being the most imprtant. Or we will do the most interesting and mention the other ones. We can always go back and cook the others in an additional episode.

Cooking4to, I do know someone who supplies lamb but Im not sure I could stomach doing Lamb's head for Jordan. It looks disgusting! But it would be... an interesting one.

Luckily my kitchen has a well stocked but un-used spice rack, but I sense we may be looking around in some odd places for foreign ingredients!

Thanks for all your support so far.

Any tips on making poutine for Canada welcome. But I won't be making my own cheese curds this time round. Not sure the best way to make my own french fries. And I don't have a deep fat fryer.
I don't know that poutine is Canada's national dish...definitely it is one of Quebec's dishes.

1. You don't need a deep-fryer to make the fries, a pan will do.
2. I believe we have discussed poutine a few times. I don't have time to search, but I know I always post about poutine:yum:. There are many varieties of poutine. The basic is brown gravy (which is, I think, 1/2 chicken and 1/2 beef gravy), French fries, curds. It is not uncommon to ask for vinegar (white) halfway up, and then top with S&P, ketchup, more vinegar. Or, my favorite at a chip wagon is ask for hot peppers 1/2 up, and then more hot peppers on top.When I make poutine at home, I tend to use turkey gravy (to which I've added grated gjetost), add left over turkey, cranberry (or lingonberry) sauce, and curds. This is not one of the numerous "flavours" you'd find at a poutine shop or chip wagon (yes, there are places that specialize in just poutine).
 
Welcome to DC. Definitely interesting challenge. How do you even decide what that National Dish really is?
I am from Ukraine, so I am sitting here and thinking to myself, wow, what would be the truly National Dish of Ukraine? Good luck.
 
I was thinking the same. The United States is too large and diverse to have a national dish, and many other countries have a diverse ethnic heritage, with diverse cuisines as well. Even that list of state dishes that I saw somewhere a while back was pretty bogus. THIS list is more reasonable than the last one I saw, but it just emphasizes the difficulty of the project that the OP has taken on.

For the world, here's another one: 270 Really Delicious National Food Of The World. This list does not even include all countries.

However, I don't want to rain on your picnic. It sounds like a fun opportunity for a couple of friends to share some time together and if it results in good eating along the way, then that's better yet. If you have any difficulties along the way, this is a great place to come and ask questions. :chef:
 
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I was thinking the same. The United States is too large and diverse to have a national dish, and many other countries have a diverse ethnic heritage, with diverse cuisines as well. Even that list of state dishes that I saw somewhere a while back was pretty bogus. THIS list is more reasonable than the last one I saw, but it just emphasizes the difficulty of the project that the OP has taken on.

For the world, here's another one: 270 Really Delicious National Food Of The World. This list does not even include all countries.

However, I don't want to rain on your picnic. It sounds like a fun opportunity for a couple of friends to share some time together and if it results in good eating along the way, then that's better yet. If you have any difficulties along the way, this is a great place to come and ask questions. :chef:

Absolutely correct! There is no dish that the OP could possibly "represent" as a national dish that will not be disputed in these countries.
 
I was thinking the same. The United States is too large and diverse to have a national dish, and many other countries have a diverse ethnic heritage, with diverse cuisines as well. Even that list of state dishes that I saw somewhere a while back was pretty bogus. THIS list is more reasonable than the last one I saw, but it just emphasizes the difficulty of the project that the OP has taken on.

For the world, here's another one: 270 Really Delicious National Food Of The World. This list does not even include all countries.

However, I don't want to rain on your picnic. It sounds like a fun opportunity for a couple of friends to share some time together and if it results in good eating along the way, then that's better yet. If you have any difficulties along the way, this is a great place to come and ask questions. :chef:

What a find that link is Rick! Foodie that I am, I've spent more than an hour there and googling the recipes.
 
Addie, we are doing Canada this week (Poutine) at the request of someone. And I also have family there...

Any tips on making poutine for Canada welcome. But I won't be making my own cheese curds this time round. Not sure the best way to make my own french fries. And I don't have a deep fat fryer.

Making cheese curds is actually very easy and takes about 45 minutes. They're very different from any you can buy. Here's one recipe: http://www.cheesemaking.com/Recipe_CheeseCurds.html

And you don't need a deep fryer to make French fries. A Dutch oven or heavy soup pot will work fine. You only need a few inches of oil and space for it to expand when you put the fries in.
 
I was thinking the same. The United States is too large and diverse to have a national dish, and many other countries have a diverse ethnic heritage, with diverse cuisines as well. Even that list of state dishes that I saw somewhere a while back was pretty bogus. THIS list is more reasonable than the last one I saw, but it just emphasizes the difficulty of the project that the OP has taken on.

For the world, here's another one: 270 Really Delicious National Food Of The World. This list does not even include all countries.

However, I don't want to rain on your picnic. It sounds like a fun opportunity for a couple of friends to share some time together and if it results in good eating along the way, then that's better yet. If you have any difficulties along the way, this is a great place to come and ask questions. :chef:

Of course there's the old standby, "as American as apple pie."

It would teach making a pie crust which would be a great learning experience for newbies.
 
That is the beauty of making a dish in your kitchen, it is for you to interpret and make your own, for instance with jordan and that specific dish, I would use this recipe, which uses cubed lamb... Jordanian Mansaf Recipe - Food.com actually sounds good when I read through it...

Yes, mansaf looks very nice. I had that one down as Jordan's dish. Looks a good recipe thanks. I like to try and adapt a few recipes and maybe add a thing or two ourselves to make it original but still authentic.
 
It is not uncommon to ask for vinegar (white) halfway up, and then top with S&P, ketchup, more vinegar.

I was about to ask what S&P was... I was thinking it was some special Canadian sauce...! And then I realised how dumb I was!!!! Thanks for the poutine tips.
 
Definitely interesting challenge. How do you even decide what that National Dish really is?
I am from Ukraine, so I am sitting here and thinking to myself, wow, what would be the truly National Dish of Ukraine? Good luck.

My research into the 205 countries I chose before starting this project, leads me to believe that the ND of Ukraine is Borscht / Borsch. Does that sound right? I've no idea from memory what it is though!
 
I don't know if you have a list you're working from, and I'm sure there are many out there and everyone will have an opinion regarding what's "right," but here's one: List of National Dishes Around the World

Great link, I will bookmark that!
We're planning to make the dish based on as many recipes as we can find, but kind of design our own version. Still keeping authentic though, but for instance in episode one we added chilli powder to the Equatorial Guinean Succotash. Saying that, we also ate raw lima beans on camera, so maybe we're not so smart!
 
I was thinking the same. The United States is too large and diverse to have a national dish, and many other countries have a diverse ethnic heritage, with diverse cuisines as well. Even that list of state dishes that I saw somewhere a while back was pretty bogus. THIS list is more reasonable than the last one I saw, but it just emphasizes the difficulty of the project that the OP has taken on.

Thanks for the encouragement and link. We're much obliged. I'm not too worried about some debate on the ND of each country. To be honest, it it goes well and people enjoy following the journey, I could also cook multiple dishes from some countries, or even do regional variants. I certainly won't always claim we cooked the exact ND if there is a choice, but we will probably mention the others. For USA I might just do Burger, Mac N Cheese and Apple Pie in the same episode!
 
My research into the 205 countries I chose before starting this project, leads me to believe that the ND of Ukraine is Borscht / Borsch. Does that sound right? I've no idea from memory what it is though!

Borscht is indeed one thing that would be on the very top of the list. It is a soup made using meat, beets, potato, carrots, onion, tomato (or tomato sauce) and cabbage.

Good luck. You're going to needed. :yum:
 
Making cheese curds is actually very easy and takes about 45 minutes. They're very different from any you can buy. Here's one recipe: A Recipe for making Cheese Curds

That looks fantastic and is really clear to follow with the pics. I would love to try that but it looks more like 5 hours than 45 minutes! The first bit is an hour and a half. The first two episodes took 5 or 6 hours to film so it's tricky for me to make the curds for the poutine. But the recipe looks fantastic so I really may just have to set a day aside to make them and record it. Brilliant link GotGarlic. I really want to make those curds!
 
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