Archive for January, 2011

A Platter of Savoury Turkish Delights

Our gastro travels on this week’s culinary tour brings us to Turkey, a country I love for its yogurt – a pot is always on stand-by in our fridge.

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Bucket List #12: Go to Berlin

Vague.  Undefined. Free. At liberty to do anything on arrival.

All I wanted to do was go to Berlin and I did.

It was a last minute trip – new Nigerian legislation called for all citizens, home and abroad to have the new electronic passport. For me, this was critical with business trips planned which would require visas, I knew I had to act fast. The Nigerian embassy in the Netherlands couldn’t issue the passports, don’t ask why, please! The alternative – Paris or Berlin. One phone call later, Berlin was the only option, as there were issues in the Parisian office. So over the weekend, we filled in forms online and got an interview date for a short 7 days away.

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New Year’s Cookfest with the Daring Cooks: Confit & Cassoulet

Nothing prepared me for the deliciousness that would confront me when my cassoulet was done.

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From the very beginning, I celebrated only part of the challenge – the confit. And the cassoulet aka bean bake? I crossed right off my list because I knew, I just knew from the ingredients list that it couldn’t possibly turn out into something even remotely edible. For me, this was one instance when I didn’t sway to all things ‘French’. I decided that I would be a part-timer on this occassion.

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Pan Micha from Panama, Une Miche from France

A bridge
A connection
Worlds. Hopes. Dreams, woven
Destinies united
Over water
Across land
Cultures, cuisines, language & skin
United in humanity
Separated by oceans and seas
Mountains and valleys

The Brief

Welcome to the 2011 Culinary Tour, organised by Joan of Foodalogue.CulinarytourLG_finalTour1

  • Traditional: make one of the country’s national or traditional dishes.
  • Contemporary: take a traditional recipe and contemporize  it.
  • Or, using the flavors and techniques of the country we are visiting, create your own recipe.
  • Today we begin in Panama, a country famous for its canal, its bridge linking North and South America.

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    Nigerian Small Chops: Puff-Puff & Fish

    Welcome to 2011: “Sometimes it’s easier to act your self into a new way of thinking, than it is to think your self into a new way of acting.” {Jo Berry, author}.

    Small chops in Nigeria are all the rage – tiny, tasty bites of jazzed-up traditional recipes, served at parties of every sort. Think of them as the ‘tropical’ version of Hors D’Oeuvres: Dundunfried yam, cooked in a mixture of hot oil and sprinklings of water, Mosa – mashed plantain fritters, Chinese style spring rolls, king prawns, puff-puff and fish, peppered snails and many more dishes.

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    The first time I tasted the combination of puff-puff, round fried balls of nutmeg-scented dough and crisp fried whitebait at a friend’s wedding in Lagos when I was fresh out of university, headstrong and single, I was pleasantly surprised – they went together like a sweet-savoury house on fire. Strange pairing but one I think which can be likened to a fishy sandwich on some European coast, or perhaps a Bajan fish cake, even if deconstructed, lessy fishy and much more tasty.

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    Welcome to 2011!

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