I’ve been cooking quite a bit lately (at least for me) and I’ve been making steady progress on my never-ending International Food Project. This is a project I started 22 (yes, you read that right) years ago through which I cook foods from all over the world, alphabetically. In 22 years I’ve only reached the K’s, so this is a project that will never reach the end (I’ll never know what Zimbabwean food tastes like, and probably not even Swedish) but it keeps me entertained.
In the last six months or so I’ve started “K” cuisines, but I’ve also explored cuisines I’d skipped in the first place, usually because I didn’t know about them. For those cuisines, I usually just made one dish. I think now I’ll concentrate on just finishing “K” before catching up on any others.
These are the cuisines I cooked:
K Cuisines
Kabardian: I made a chicken and a beef stew from this Caucasian region.
Kachin: curried chicken and beef from this hill people
Kansan: my favorite finding from this US state were bierocks
Kenyan: a variety of ethnic dishes from this wonderful country
Korean: we had a whole meal with a stew, a main dish and sides
Korean-American: I made the one dish that Koreans invented in America, LA galbi
US States
I had decided against cooking meals from every US state originally, given that most states don’t really have a cuisine of their own. While there are some exceptions (think Hawaii), most states’ cuisines fall within regional culinary traditions. But I changed my mind after cooking Kansan food and realizing that I hadn’t given states enough of a chance to impress me. So I am going back and cooking a single dish from A – I states. So far, I’ve made:
Alabamian Fried Fish: it wasn’t very flavorful
Arizonan Navajo Tacos: taco fixings on fried bread, a winning combination.
Connecticut Lobster Rolls: hubby liked them
Delaware Fried Chicken: did you know Delaware is a chicken state?
Floridian Key Lime Pie: super easy!
And also from Florida, a Cuban-American Cubano sandwich
Idahoan finger steaks and scalloped potatoes
Illinoisan Chicken Vesubio: a delicious Chicago classic
Global Jewish Cuisines
I also caught up on the cuisines of the Jewish diaspora, making:
A layered beef dish from the Jews of Baghdad.
Three dishes from the Jews of Calcutta
A matzo & potato layered dish by Egyptian Jews.
A Georgian Jewish chicken dish
Other Catch-Up Cuisines
From the Caucus, I made a Balkar stuffed flat bread.
From China, I explored Shanghai’s Haipai cuisine by making a Chinese borscht and Hunan cuisine with Chairman Mao’s famous red-braised pork.
And from India, I made a lamb curry from the Bodo people, a chicken curry from Chettinad, and the most delicious lamb curry ever from the Dogra people in Jammu.
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