Venezuela is the last of our South American countries, and, thanks to this T-shaped country, we’re saying goodbye to the continent in style. Let’s toast the 1,700 miles of coastline with a tizana [Recipe], a fruit punch made with tons of cut up fruit. Let’s cheer for the southeastern highlands with a sip of chicha, fermented corn drink. Let’s dance along her northern mountains with a splash of rum. And let’s slip along the northwestern lowlands with a thick and creamy glass of cocada (a.k.a. coconut milkshake). After we’ve drunk our fill, we can gobble up a a few arepas, topped with avocado chicken salad. These are the quintessential snacks of Venezuela, and can be filled with a million other things, too. If you want something more substantial, let’s pull up to a plate of Pabellón Criollo, a platter of black beans, slow cooked beef, rice, and plantains. This is the national dish of Venezuela, a favorite in all regions of the country. Of course, I like the idea of keeping things simple, too. Perhaps …
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This week is a special week. We’re only five countries away from finishing cooking the world. Four years ago, I was afraid I wouldn’t make it to the letter “B,” let alone V! But I’m stubborn. And I love learning. And I’m … stubborn. If all goes according to plan, we’ll be done in less than 2 months! This is an appropriate time to take a pause… to take a week to breath in and settle into the idea of the finish line being so close. For many of us, this is coming much too quickly. In my family, we think this is a great time, though, too. We’ve spent four years celebrating the world. Four years teaching our daughter to love her world. Four years with all of you. As you may have noticed, we’re having a HUGE party at Philbrook Museum this weekend called the Global Table Experience. There’ll be samplings from 175 countries, prepared by 16 chefs and cooking schools in the Tulsa area. Never before has food from so many countries …
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Are there recipes of loved ones long since gone that you continue to make? I asked this question on our Facebook page the other day, and several of you shared touching comments about your family recipes . Valerie keeps her family recipes in a box. Whenever she sees the handwriting of her loved ones who’ve since passed, she says it feels like a “tap on the shoulder.” But, for some of you, it goes beyond the recipes. Theresa says she still uses her husband’s grandmother’s canning supplies. How wonderful it must be to eat jellies out of the same jars grandma did! This week, when we made Cousin Alfred’s meat sauce for the Vatican City, I felt like I could taste the past. Like I was closer to him and those memories of standing in his kitchen, watching him cook. I also felt like I could taste my heritage, even though I’ve never been to Italy, let alone Vatican City. And we were fortunate enough to share the meal with our neighbors. Our neighbors of Scottish and German …
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When I ask my mother how I’m related to Cousin Alfred, the answer usually goes: “Well…” and then there’s a contemplative silence. I can see her running through all our different relations, high up on the family tree, doing mental gymnastics to connect one branch to another. Eventually, she comes out with “I think he’s my mothers, mother’s cousin’s”… and then, either she trails off, or my attention span wanes because, really, all that matters is that he is family, one way or another. Alfred lived until he was 104 years old. I think much of his long life was due to making homemade ravioli and meat sauce. He taught me when I was about Ava’s age, or maybe a little younger. We made his spinach & pork ravioli for Italy and, today, we continue to keep Alfred’s memory alive with this sauce. Mom made sure to write down his recipe for meat sauce. But the title “meat sauce” doesn’t do it justice. This is meat sauce, yes, but it’s also filled with a half dozen …
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Before I knew about Papalina-style noodles, I thought Carbonara was the bees knees. But it turns out that Papalina is the richer version of carbonara. It uses cream, Parmesan, and prosciutto instead of the pancetta or guanciale (pig jowl) from in carbonara. One peppery bite in, and mac and cheese is a bland, happily forgotten memory. Let me be clear. My translation of the Italian is not entirely accurate. Papalina means skullcap, not pope. But I dubbed this recipe the Pope’s Fettuccine because it was literally created for Pope Pius XII in the late 1930’s. And guess what he wore? A skullcap. Anyway, there are many versions of how the recipe was invented. The most common, is that the pope wanted to enjoy a very typical Roman meal. The chef in charge decided that carbonara was very Roman… but he decided that he wanted to make a special version, just for the pope. So Papalina was born. Beautiful, peppery papalina. It makes for a fancy but easy dinner party meal. It truly is the grown-up mac and …
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Ava is the first to tell me what should be dinner. Even growing up with this Global Table Adventure since she was 7 months old, Ava asks for the same thing night after night: noodles. (Interestingly, her second most common request is avocado sushi). This week I got to tell her yes to noodles. Twice. There’s nothing wrong with carb-loading, right? Especially when eating the Vatican… right? I doubled up on pasta so I can share two amazing sauce recipes with you. One I learned from my distant cousin Alfred, another I learned this week thanks to a Pope! The Pope’s Fettuccine | Fettuccine alla Papalina [Recipe] A simple pasta dish invented in the late 1930’s for Pope Pius XII, made with softened onion, prosciutto, a swirl of cream, plenty of good quality parmesan, and as many twists of fresh ground pepper as you can handle. Cousin Alfred’s Meat Sauce [Recipe] Ground beef, sweet Italian sausages, rich mushrooms, and the best Italian tomatoes around. This is the sauce to end all sauces, perfect ladled onto …
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The Vatican City is 0.17 square miles of gilded glory tucked inside Rome, Italy. It’s 0.53 miles by 0.65 miles. How small is that, you ask? Let’s put this in perspective. To walk across the country is like taking two laps around a standard jogging track. Which is why there’s no country smaller. And yet, Elizabeth Gilbert said that, if a country could be summed up in one word, the Vatican’s word would be power. So who exactly is a citizen of Vatican City? Almost all of Vatican City’s 839 (2013 est.) citizens either live inside the Vatican’s walls or serve in the Holy See’s diplomatic service in embassies (called “nunciatures”; a papal ambassador is a “nuncio”) around the world. The Vatican citizenry consists almost entirely of two groups: clergy, most of whom work in the service of the Holy See, and a very few as officials of the state; and the Swiss Guard. (Wikipedia) Peek over her walls, all you’ll find only one restaurant in the Vatican City. I have to admit I love Andrew Zimmern’s bold idea to triple this …
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Last week someone asked me if I was going to cook with rocks because that’s how they cook in Vanuatu. It was a fair question and one that, about two years ago, would have gotten me all sweaty and stressed out. I would have asked myself if I was treating the people of Vanuatu fairly by not digging a pit in my back yard, scavenging large rocks from local hiking trails, then cooking the meal beneath our Oklahoma red dirt. But now, three years and seven months into this Adventure, my answer comes without any regret. No. Over the last years, this blog has helped me figure out who I am and what I am capable of. Right now, I have at my disposition a standard stove/oven combo. When the kitchen gets too hot, I have an old gas grill in the back yard. Once in a while we use my chimnea to roast marshmallows. In Vanuatu, you work with what you have. You celebrate what you have. And that’s no different here, in my little corner of middle …
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What do you do when you’re running low on inspiration? Do you sip a cup of tea, take a walk, paint, write a poem, cook something? Or do you freeze up, unable to create? Writing a book for the last several months has had an interesting effect on my brain-space. The book is incredibly daunting and takes all my creative juices. I find myself sopping through my house like a wrung out rag. I once read that we are only capable of making a certain number of decisions each day. After that time, we’re pretty much worthless. Sometimes, after a particularly long book writing session, I can’t even decide what pajamas I want to curl up in to decompress. Thankfully, the world is a resource. It’s a constant inspiration. Remember, even on those nights you’re too tired to pop popcorn, the world is there, whispering sweet nothings to you. Inviting you to try something different. And so here we are… today, Vanuatu is doing the whispering. Since I spent yesterday grating a mountain range of …
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It only takes five minutes of grating sweet potatoes to make me wax poetic on the brilliance of the food processor. Friends, I certainly don’t have biceps of steel. Most days, I don’t even see my biceps beneath the jiggle. Today’s recipe for Simboro gave them a work out. I first learned about Simboro from a reader named Benjamin who spent some time in Vanuatu. This comforting side dish is made with a grated starch, like cassava, sweet potato, or yam, wrapped in “island cabbage,” then simmered in coconut milk. As much as it pained my muscles… I treated the grating like a ritual – a rite of passage – a way to imagine myself in Vanuatu telling tourists “THIS way to the beach.” Thirty minutes later, only my pride had kept me from pulling out the food processor. Because, the fact of the matter is that the sweet potato could just as easily be run through the grater attachment on your food processor, then ground finer in the processor bowl to achieve similar results… leaving …
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“A woman is like a stick you throw.” Proverb from Vanuatu On the surface, this proverb from Vanuatu does not exactly sound flattering. But it turns out it is. In fact, it’s a term of endearment. In Vanuatu, there’s a plant called nanggalat, which takes root and thrives wherever you throw it – even on the jagged edge of a cliff. Comparing a woman to a thrown stick – in Vanuatu – is saying she can adapt and thrive anywhere. (Source) It’s all about context. This week we’re making two recipes from Vanuatu to learn more about this culture. Enjoy and, when it’s all over, may we all be more like thrown sticks. Recipes and meal review will be posted throughout the week. Simboro [Recipe] Grated sweet potato wrapped in leaves, then boiled in coconut milk. These tidy little dumplings make a lovely side dish in the autumn. Green PawPaw Salad [Recipe] A tropical salad brought to you by Vanuatu’s most popular produce: shredded green papaya, coconut, green onion, and fresh lime juice. Done and done.
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Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. But what about those who live in wood, bamboo, and palm leaf houses? In the 80 islands that make up Vanuatu, the hot, humid weather makes for an entirely different living experience, one where – traditionally speaking – thatched roofs keep out the rain instead of tile. While stones aren’t exactly thrown, in Vanuatu they are heated and piled on top of food. This traditional method is typical of Oceania. Lap lap the most notable of dishes, made with either yam, cassava, plantain, or sweet potato that has been grated, wrapped in banana leaves (with coconut milk), then roasted under hot stones. Reader, Benjamin, who spent some time in Vanuatu, told me more about the dish, how they add chicken on top of the grated starch: …they take a couple of the hot rocks, each about the size of a baseball, rinse them of ashes and then place them in the center of the Laplap. During cooking this creates a well like crater in the center. They …
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