Gandana Bolani

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I love, love, love garlic chives. In reading the Parwana cookbook, I learned that in Afghanistan, there is a type of leek called gandana that is often used as a filling for bolani, and that outside Afghanistan, it's often substituted with garlic chives (similar taste and texture). That sounded delicious. I had made bolani once before for the 52 week cooking challenge, and since we already revisited one dish for the AtWCC from this cookbook, why not do another (and another and another)? In addition to the gandana bolani, I also decided to do kachaloo bolani, which was bolani stuffed with potato.

The first step for bolani was to make the dough. This version consisted of flour, yeast, water, oil, and salt. This was different from the last version which was not a yeast dough. After proofing twice, the dough is rolled out into circles, then filled and sealed. Unlike the last time, where I got mostly strips and ovals, I did get a few circles this time and other almost-circles or shapes that somewhat resembled circles. I guess over that two year span, I got a little bit better at that.

For the filling last time, I made mashed potatoes and mixed them with scallions, spinach, and seasonings. For the potato one this time, I added onions (from the recipe) and scallions (because I had extra), and I will confess that I used instant mashed potatoes. There was enough to do with the dough rolling and making two fillings that I just didn't think I had the time to peel and mash potatoes too. (I was right.) The filling was fine with instant. Instant mashed potatoes are so underrated.

The chive filling was the one I was most excited about. It called for 2 cups of finely chopped garlic chives, along with a bunch of cilantro, scallions, onion, and seasonings, so lots of chopping, lots of time-consuming prep. This filling was fantastic, even eaten alone by the spoonful, so I was at least relieved that even if the bolani didn't turn out that well, the filling would be good. Our bunch of garlic chives was gigantic (wish I had taken an ingredients picture, but I was short on time and space), but it was far more than 2 cups of garlic chives. I guess I should have found a second recipe to use them in, but instead I used them all here. The leftover filling was amazing mixed into oatmeal for breakfast. I could eat that all the time if I had a daily-replenishing bowl of chive filling.

The last time I made bolani, I baked them, but this time, they went into the air fryer. That process took a little longer since the air fryer could only fit two or three at a time, but I think we liked the results better. The last time, the outside was crispy like a cracker, and everything was kind of bland, which was not the case here. It still didn't look like a thin flatbread, but it was just like eating a stuffed bread roll. The potato filling here was also a little on the blander side, but the chives one was wonderful. I have no idea how the bolani in the recipe photo (or what we had at the restaurant) were so flat while ours were huge, but at least these were tasty.

The last component was a chutney for dipping. A few days before I made these, Eater had published an article about bolani (talk about timing). In it, they profiled a refugee in Albania (funny coincidence, we were in the Albania part of the AtWCC as well when we made this) who started an Afghan restaurant that served bolani. I didn't want to make two days of bolani, so I decided to try the chutney recipe from the article even if I didn't make the bolani itself. The chutney was a blend of tomatoes, jalapeño, garlic, vinegar, salt, and sugar.

Usually, we would try to tone down the spice of these dishes for B, but he hadn't been very into dipping or sauces, so we just made it the same way but with one jalapeño instead of two and removing all the seeds. We were right in our prediction, and he had no interest in the chutney, but we really liked it. It was such a good match for the bolani. It reminded us a little bit of the salad dressing at our favorite Yemeni spot which we have always loved, and now we have the recipe for something close to that!

Even though they didn't turn out looking like the photo, we deemed our second Parwana experiment a success, and couldn't wait to see what else was in the cookbook!

Parwana

I've mentioned the Parwana cookbook here before, and besides the pizza, it was a big reason why we revisited our exploration of Afghan cuisine. The cookbook existed back when we cooked the first time in 2020, but somehow, in all my googling, I never found out about it until early 2022. I usually like including recipes from a cookbook in the challenge when I can, so it didn't feel right to leave it out just because I didn't find it in time. Looking through the cookbook, I found a recipe for a meat kofta sauce which accompanies aushak, and it sounded remarkably similar to the one we had tried at Ariana. I wondered, even though that was meant to go with the aushak, if I put it over noodles, would that actually get a little closer to what we remembered about aushe burida?

The first thing I noticed about the Parwana recipe was that the meat sauce included chana dal, a component that I remembered from Ariana but didn't have in our previous version. It also included pureed tomatoes, onion, garlic, ground lamb (which I substituted with Impossible), turmeric, curry powder, crushed coriander seeds (I used ground), tomato paste, and white vinegar. The spices were a little different from the first time, but the general flavor profile was very similar.

The third component to the dish, after the noodles and the meat sauce, was the yogurt topping. I had forgotten when I made this that the Ariana description specifically included mint in the yogurt sauce, so I decided to try out a yogurt dressing in the Parwana cookbook that just consisted of plain yogurt and garlic powder. This came from a recipe for aush, a thick soup with hand-rolled, knife-cut noodles and seasonal vegetables. That also reminded me a lot of the dish from Ariana since it included the noodles, the same meat kofta sauce, and the yogurt dressing, but it was in more of a soup form with additional vegetables. Could it be that this dish is more common in this form, and maybe that's why I couldn't find any recipes for the dish we got at Ariana itself? B doesn't really eat soup still, so I stuck with just trying to replicate the noodle dish by itself, but I was certainly intrigued by the (possible) connection.

The sauce was wonderful. At the time we had this, it had been even more years since we had the original dish, so it was even harder to compare, but we were very happy with this kofta sauce over some fettuccine (because I still didn't have time or space to add on a pasta-making project to this one). The yogurt sauce didn't add as much as the last one with the fresh garlic and the mint, so I think in the future, we'll probably mesh the two recipes together and make the meat kofta sauce from here plus the yogurt sauce that we had before. Whether or not that's authentic, and even close to what we tried originally that made us fall in love with this sauce, we're happy with what we have now!

Week 8 - Flu Remedies

They just announced Week 8 of the 2023 challenge, so I better start getting these 2022 posts done...

Khichdi is one of those comforting dishes, kind of like congee, that are so soothing when you're sick. I am so slow at recapping that I made this almost a year ago now, and as a result, my memories, other than what I wrote in our cookbook, are a little hazy. One of my resolutions this year is to be better about these recaps and catching up, because otherwise I won't remember what I liked and how I made it! (Note: I wrote that in the beginning of January, and I have been better about this year's posts but just haven't put them up yet.\ because I'm not done with 2022!)

I found this recipe for dal khichdi on Indian Healthy Recipes, and liked that it was a quick Instant Pot recipe. The ingredient list was long, including rice, moong dal, lots of spices and seasonings, and vegetables (tomato, green beans, potatoes, and spinach for us). We had most things in the pantry already, just not the moong dal and the asafoetida (I had recently gotten rid of our old one, since we bought it in London back in 2015), so it was also a convenient meal to make.

Gathering the ingredients and measuring things was probably the hardest part of this recipe, and even that wasn't very difficult. For prep, the rice and dal soaked for a little bit, the only thing I had to chop was an onion since I used a bunch of cans, and then it was just measuring things out. Ingredients got added to the Instant Pot a little at a time while sautéing, and then once the water went in, that was it. Set the Instant Pot to go, let it cook on high pressure for about 8 minutes, release, and done. I love easy meals like that.

The khichdi was really warming, comforting, and tasty. It was also great timing for this challenge, as I was actually sick when I made this. Seemed to help!

Qorma-e-Sabzi

The last component of our Afghan dinner, accompanying the chapli kebab and the naan and tomatoes, was qorma-e-sabzi, a slow-cooked, stewed spinach. I had been trying hard, despite the pandemic, to make sure we got enough vegetables in our diet, and a bowl of tomatoes just didn't feel like it would be enough to offset all that "meat" and bread. I wasn't sure how B would like it, since it's a little harder to eat spinach with your hands or rudimentary fork skills (wrote this post in 2020 too...), but at least it would be good for the adults. I liked the recipe I found on Mom's Kitchen Handbook because it looked simple and because it could be made in a pot without any extra equipment like a slow cooker.

The ingredients for our adapted version were:

- 1 tbsp olive oil ($0.20)
- 1/2 of a big bunch of scallions ($0.64)
- 1/2 of a small bunch of cilantro ($1)
- 1 bag frozen spinach ($1.49)
- 1 tbsp dried dill ($0.10)
- 2 tsp ground coriander ($0.25)
- a couple dashes of cayenne pepper ($0.03)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.03)
- about 1.5 tbsp lemon juice ($0.29)
- water ($0)

The total amount of the spinach recipe was approximately $4.03, which when added to the other components (chapli kebab - $11.72, naan - $1.97, and a box of grape tomatoes - $2.69), resulted in a grand total of $20.41.

The recipe said that prep time would take 4 minutes and cook time 36 minutes, so it seemed like a simple enough recipe. I know I take a long time with prep, possibly longer than most amateur cooks, but I don't understand how 4 minutes is enough time to wash scallions, chop scallions, wash cilantro, pull cilantro leaves off the stems, and chop the cilantro, even for an experienced chef. What am I missing in terms of technique? We didn't even have the scallions and cilantro washed in 4 minutes. Anyway, the steps for our version of the spinach were:

1. Prep - chop scallions and cilantro.

2. Heat olive oil in a pot over medium heat. [I used too big of a pot for one bag of spinach. Learn from my mistake!]

3. Add the scallions, and cook for a few minutes until softened.

4. Add the frozen spinach, and let it cook until you can break up all the frozen chunks.

5. Add the dill, coriander, cayenne, and about 1/4 cup of water. Stir together and cook for 20 minutes on medium low heat. Keep stirring regularly, and add water, a tbsp or so at a time, to keep it from drying out. [This worked well until my focus shifted to rolling out the naan, and the spinach dried out a little while it was neglected. Didn't seem to hurt it that much though.]

6. Add the cilantro, salt, pepper, and lemon juice, stir, and let cook for another 10 minutes.

The recipe was fairly straightforward and simple, other than the need to keep monitoring the spinach to make sure it didn't dry out. It seems like a good recipe to make if you're actively cooking something else on the stove for that half-hour and can just give it a good stir and water replenishment every so often. That said, for a spinach side dish, the prep time for us with the scallions and cilantro (really, the cilantro more than anything) took too long to make this very often. I did like the flavors a lot, and it was delicious with the naan. But as predicted, B was not much of a fan, and got a little frustrated by it even after we helped him eat some of it. Maybe we'll revisit this when he's a little bit older because the flavors are great. (2023 note: Spinach is one of the few green vegetables B eats now, but only contained in other things, like spinach pie.) Maybe we'll also be faster at prepping cilantro by then (but probably not).

Week 3 - Turkish

Happy new year! I've already cooked week 3 for the 2023 challenge, so I really need to catch up and post these single-digit challenge weeks from the 2022 challenge ASAP!

Week 3 was Turkish, and I decided to give one of my favorite Turkish dishes, mercimek koftesi, another try. I did it the last time Turkish came up in the challenge back in 2014, but it had been a long time since I last made it, definitely before B came along. This time, I found some new (to me) recipes at 196 Flavors and Vidar Bergum, combined elements of those with the one I came up with last time, and hoped for the best after about six hours of chilling them in the fridge.

The recipe I posted back in 2014 is still fairly close to what I ended up doing after consulting with the other two recipes, except that the pastes and seasonings were added to the onions first, then the lentils, bulgur, and onions were mixed in a mixing bowl and not on the stove, and then the scallions and parsley were added at the very end once the flavors had been adjusted. So, the ingredients were similar, the order of operations was a little different, but the general idea of mixing them together was the same. I did notice that I used far more of each paste than the recipes did in order to get the color and flavor to our liking and what we remembered from our favorite restaurant versions (and it was not because the biber salcasi got old and lost flavor; it was new), but we were happy with how it turned out.

The mercimek koftesi may not have been the most attractive dish (I couldn't get them shaped as well as the professionals), but it was definitely tasty. I still love this vegetarian kofta as much as the first time I tried it, and now that I have fresh pepper paste and bulgur (well, almost a year opened now...), I think I should make it more often!

Afghan Potato Salad

When trying to figure out what should accompany our chicken kebabs, I chose not to go with bread or rice. I had already slotted in the bread for a different Afghan meal, and it's hard for B to eat a ton of rice since he's a little toddler (wrote this post in June 2020; now he just likes to make rice "rain" so it's still not the easiest), so I try not to make rice every single day. (I try to look at it from his perspective. If I was working on my spoon skills and rice were difficult and sometimes frustrating to eat, would I want someone to make it every single day instead of also giving me something easier to eat?) After looking around at more recipes on Afghan Culture Unveiled, I found the answer - potato salad! The Afghan potato salad, shor nakhod, was egg-free and mayo-free, and it seemed like something our family would really enjoy. I don't know if it's remotely traditional to pair potato salad with chicken kebabs in Afghanistan, but grilled chicken and potato salad do make for a quintessential American BBQ, which is probably why it was so easy for my brain to accept the pairing.

The ingredients for the potato salad were:

- 3 large Russet potatoes ($2.37)
- 2 cans of chickpeas ($1.75)
- 1 bunch of scallions ($1.29)
- 1 bunch of cilantro ($1.99)
- about 1/2 cup white wine vinegar ($0.54)
- salt and pepper to taste ($0.03)

The cost for the potato salad was about $7.97, which isn't that much considering it was half of our dinner and it did make enough to have a bowl left over for lunch.

The steps for making the potato salad were:

1. Prep potatoes. Wash, peel, and chop the potatoes into bite-size pieces. Put in large pot, bring to a boil, and cook until fork tender. Drain potatoes and allow to cool. [I was busy doing other things, and the potatoes cooked too long. They were beyond fork tender.]

2. Prep scallions and cilantro. Chop both as finely as possible. [The original recipe makes the dressing in a blender or food processor. I really hate lugging those out, plus the noise, plus the lack of space for it on the counter while making other things, plus the noisy mini food processor scares B, so I just chopped them by hand. Took a little longer, and not as fine as a blender would get it, but it worked out just fine. Probably didn't even need to be as finely chopped as it was, although in the recipe photo, the food-processed version pretty much turns the potatoes green instead of seeing the herbs themselves. Much harder to do that without the processor.]

3. Make dressing. Combine scallions and cilantro with white wine vinegar, salt, and pepper. Season to taste. [Given that I used more potatoes and chickpeas and scallions than the original recipe, I needed more vinegar than the recipe, and probably could have used even more S&P.]

4. Drain chickpeas and rinse. Add to large bowl with the potatoes and the dressing. Mix well and season to taste.

The potato salad could be served warm or chilled. We had no room in our fridge to chill it, and I didn't make it far in advance, so I just left it under a fan for as long as it took to make the chicken kebabs. It tasted good, but so many salads work even better once the flavors have time to meld together and chill. We did have leftovers though, which I ate for lunch the next day, and the flavor of the dressing came through much more, which I really liked.

Overall, the salad was good, even if it was 75% of the way to mashed potatoes given how long I boiled the potatoes. Since it was vinegar-based, the sour flavors were predominant in the dressing, along with the strong bite of the herbs. I personally liked that a lot, but not sure B was that into it since he would normally eat more potatoes than he did. Despite being full of heavier ingredients like potatoes and chickpeas, the dressing gave the salad a lightness that I really liked. I would make this again, although I have a very long list of potato salads to try first!

Borani Banjan

This post is almost exactly as written back in June 2020, which explains why the recipe is written and priced out, something I've stopped doing in the interests of time these days...

My initial plan for the Afghanistan section of the AtWCC was just the three dishes we previously posted about - aushe burida, kidney bean curry, and bolani. I was researching our next destination (Alabama, since I decided to mix the states in), but found I kept coming back to Afghanistan. I didn't feel done with it, especially since I didn't attempt even a simplified version of the national dish, kabuli pulao. (There will be some countries, I already know, where our style of cooking or dietary requirements aren't going to work with some of the national dishes, but that wasn't the case here.) As I kept reading, I kept finding more and more things I wanted to try to make, so I expanded our list for Afghanistan, planning out an entire week's worth of new recipes. Of course, the grocery store didn't cooperate and didn't have in stock very basic things like cilantro, so a lot of the recipes got postponed.

The one thing we were still able to make with what we got at the grocery store was borani banjan, a dish of Afghan eggplant with yogurt sauce. I modeled ours after the version I found on Honey & Dates, mostly because the eggplant there was baked and not fried. (We've already covered how I feel about frying.) The ingredients for our modified version were:

- 2 large eggplants ($10.25) *
- olive oil (probably at least 1/2 cup) ($1)
- 1 onion ($0.94)
- small bunch of fresh mint ($0.95)
- 28 oz can of diced tomatoes ($2.29)
- ground ginger ($0.10)
- ground turmeric ($0.10)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)
- garlic powder ($0.05)
- small spoonful of minced garlic ($0.10)
- about 1 cup of plain yogurt ($1.48)
- rice ($0.50)

* The eggplants should have only cost $5.11, but Fairway charged us for some organic Italian eggplants instead of the plain basic eggplants we got. We had mostly stayed at home before the day we went there, but decided to combine a grocery trip with some dentist appointments. Being in the store with their poor social distancing enforcement and lack of any visible ongoing sanitizing (compared to other stores that will do things like cleaning your cart - remember, this was June 2020) was the least safe we felt all day, and we just wanted to get out, plus the only place the prices were listed was on the screen behind the cashier and we were keeping our distance, so we didn't notice the massive overcharge until it was too late. They also charged us for the wrong onions, but that was far less egregious of an error. On top of having to scrap 70% of our shopping list/meal plan because the store selection had gone way downhill, this was very aggravating.

The total cost for dinner was approximately $17.81, almost entirely due to the ridiculous cost of those eggplants. It did not feel like great value for the money, since we know how much it should have cost. Thanks, Fairway.


The steps for making our modified version of the dish were:

1. Prep the eggplant. Wash and slice into rounds (not too thick but not paper thin either; the recipe said 1/4 inch but I didn't measure). Line baking sheets with aluminum foil and spray with canola oil spray. Lay eggplant rounds flat on the baking sheets and brush with olive oil so the tops and sides are coated. Bake for 30 min at 350 degrees and flip halfway through.

2. While the eggplant is baking (or in our case, since the eggplant didn't fit on two baking sheets, and I had to fill a third while the first two were already in the oven, leading to some delayed and scattered timing), start prep on the tomato sauce and the yogurt sauce by chopping the onion and the mint.

3. Heat olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until softened. Add the diced tomatoes (with only a little of the juices), ginger, turmeric, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and minced garlic. (I didn't measure any of the spices, so maybe a tsp of ginger and turmeric, a few grinds of S&P, and a lot of garlic? Season to taste, of course.) Mix well and cook (occasionally stirring) until the sauce has thickened. Add about 1/3 of the chopped mint, cook for another minute, and then remove from heat.


4. Add yogurt to a bowl with the remaining 2/3 of the chopped mint, a little salt, and a liberal amount of garlic powder. Mix well, and let sit until the rest of the components are finished.

[Side note on the yogurt sauce: This is basically the same yogurt sauce I've now made three times for our exploration of Afghan food, but we love it. This time, we used plain yogurt instead of plain Greek yogurt because it was what we had, but we prefer it with the Greek yogurt. The first time we made it with some fresh garlic added was, of course, the best. Many of the recipes talk about using dried mint, but we've used fresh because we haven't found any dried mint yet. One day, we'll find out which one we like better, because I doubt this will be the last time we make this yogurt sauce.]

[Also, a prep note: If the eggplant is finished baking (so that they're soft enough to eat) but nothing else is done (which was, of course, our situation), put the eggplant on a plate under aluminum foil to keep it warm and let it soften some more.]

5. Layer the dish with the eggplant on the bottom, the tomato sauce in the middle, and the yogurt sauce on top. Serve with rice on the side.


I don't actually remember if we ever tried this at the local Afghan restaurant in our old neighborhood, so I can't really compare, but overall it turned out okay. The tomato sauce and yogurt sauce were really tasty, and they worked well together, but the weakest part of the dish was the eggplant. I haven't made much eggplant before (I actually didn't remember ever using the big eggplants before, only Japanese eggplant or baby eggplants, but reading old posts, I was wrong about that, having made it very differently for escalivada), and I'm not sure if I baked them for too little time, too much time, or with too little oil, or what, but they were just not as soft and juicy as I would have liked them to be. I think if the eggplant texture had come out to what I envisioned in my head, that combined with the tomato sauce and yogurt sauce would have been delicious. We'll definitely keep this dish in mind if we ever see good (and affordable) eggplant at the store, and it'll give me another chance to get it right!

Kidney Bean Curry

I wrote at least part of almost every single post about our exploration through Afghanistan back in 2020 except for this one. The second dish we tried was a kidney bean curry since we had gotten a variety of curries during our orders from Ariana and they were all delicious. I have no idea what recipe I followed or what adaptations I made because I didn't take any notes. I don't even know exactly what went into the curry because I didn't take an ingredients picture.

Edit (May 2023): I found my notes for this dish! Apparently the curry included 2 cans of kidney beans, onion, garlic, zucchini, mint, ground coriander, turmeric, ground cumin, and tomato sauce. I still don't remember much about this, but at least it's no longer a mystery as to what was in it.

What I do remember is that we thought the curry was fine, but not very memorable. It had nice flavors, but was also kind of boring. That's probably reflected by the fact that I never wrote about it and remember nothing about it almost two years later. I would have skipped this post entirely since I don't remember anything, but it was our second dish for the AtWCC and I want to record it all.

I remember our next stop a little better - making the bolani, which was also for the 52 week cooking challenge - which was fine but also a little disappointing. I had made all three of our Afghan dishes for the challenge three days in a row, jumping straight into the challenge, and I thought I was done there, but the challenge was going to take another turn...

Week 51 - South Indian

I was thrilled when I saw that the Week 51 theme was South Indian, because as a family, we love South Indian cuisine. I was also a little intimidated though, because some of those recipes are a lot of work! Making dosas can take hours sometimes. In the end, I decided on rava dosa (adapted from a recipe on Indian Healthy Recipes) with some aloo masala from the same site. Did I pick rava dosa because it looked doable and wasn't an hours-long process? Maybe...

The first step was making the batter out of semolina, rice flour, all-purpose flour, salt, cumin seeds, black pepper, finely chopped onion, finely chopped curry leaves, finely chopped cilantro leaves, and ginger, with enough water to make it runny. The batter only needed to rest for 20 minutes before cooking, which was great. I had never bought fresh curry leaves before, but I made a special trip for them so I could make this (and some other Indian dishes), and I think I'm going to need them whenever I make South Indian food in the future. There really is just no comparable ingredient (that I know of).

The recipe instructions said to start with a hot pan, and to add just a few drops of oil and grease it with a sliced onion. I feel like I've seen them do something similar at restaurants, but had never tried it at home. Wow, that was a revelation. I used so little oil to make each one of these dosa, but they came off the pan so easily thanks to this onion trick!

The batter gets poured into the pan starting from the edges and then filling in the gaps. That reminded me of banh xeo, and it hadn't occurred to me before making this that they are both thin, crispy pancakes, so why wouldn't they be made similarly? The dosa toasts on low until the edges come off the pan and it's cooked through. I did flip them to finish cooking them, but might not be necessary. The one thing I didn't plan on was that each dosa takes a long time to cook (again, I wish I had thought of the banh xeo connection earlier, because it's the same thing there), like maybe even 10 minutes type of long. For multiple dosa, I hadn't budgeted in that type of time, and it made for a very late, kind of stressful dinner rush. The dosa were excellent though, and I would make them again. I would just budget more time than I did for them.

I followed the aloo masala recipe fairly closely, other than leaving out the chilies because of little B, and they were delicious. Not sure what more to say here about well-seasoned mashed potatoes, but I would make this again too.

With all the work going into the dosa and the potatoes, I didn't make any of the other sides that you normally get with dosa at restaurants, but I just didn't have the capacity to. Maybe next time, I'll buy some pre-made chutneys at the store when I get the curry leaves for a more full experience, but we were still really satisfied with this!

Week 46 - Seeds

I wasn't thrilled when I saw that the Week 46 challenge was seeds, because a lot of seeds are still choking hazards for little kids. But after reading some discussion about it and learning that beans are in fact seeds, I decided to try a new recipe for a bean-based salad from Once Upon a Chef.

The seeds part of the challenge was met with kidney beans, black beans, and chickpeas. I also topped the salad with some avocado. Although not using the seed itself, it does have a very large seed in the middle, so somewhat on theme!

Even though it was fall, I'm often looking for salads to lighten things up, and this one definitely worked for that. I would make this again!

Week 35 - Kenyan

I love the challenge weeks that focus on different countries or regions of the world, because they can really push me out of my comfort zone to try something new (sort of like the whole AtWCC). I had zero familiarity with Kenyan food when this challenge came around other than a tilapia dish I made in a cooking class, so I blindly searched around until I found something that sounded both doable and delicious. I decided to try something called irio, following a recipe from Eat Well Abi. The site notes that the word irio means food and originates from the Kikuyu and Meru tribes in Kenya, and that the same dish of mashed food is sometimes called mukimo.

Irio is basically potatoes mashed with corn and green beans, and this recipe also added caramelized onions (instead of fried), which I love. It was pretty straightforward to make. We ate it along with some chicken tenders and grape tomatoes. I'm sure that's not traditional, but we always try to make sure we have some familiar foods on the plate for B when we try something new.

This was a really hearty and filling dish, and I think I would make this again, maybe next time alongside some other Kenyan dishes. I don't know how long it's going to take to get to Kenya since we're still doing countries starting with A, but someday!

Week 47 - Tunisian

Tunisian restaurants here in NYC are rare, and I don't think we've ever been to one. Our only exposure to Tunisian food specifically was on our visit to London back in 2015 (which we never finished recapping), where we found a Tunisian restaurant and had a lovely dinner (that will show up in a WorldEats post someday). With such limited knowledge of Tunisian dishes, nothing immediately jumped out at me for the Week 47 Tunisian challenge, but after reading through some recipes, I decided on lablabi (chickpea soup) and kesra bread (which often turns up online as Algerian, so I will probably be making it again whenever we get there).

For the lablabi, I followed a recipe from Serious Eats, which was itself from Mollie Katzen's The Heart of the Plate. It seemed fairly easy to make (with my convenience modifications), starting with cooking onion and cumin in olive oil, then adding some carrots (used baby carrots) and garlic, and eventually a couple cans of chickpeas. Dried probably would have tasted better, but didn't have the time for that. The rest of the ingredients were a few spoonfuls of lemon juice, two cups of vegetable broth, more cumin, a little salt, and lots of black pepper. It tasted really healthy and hearty.

To go along with the lablabi, I followed a recipe from Our Tunisian Table for kesra bread. I halved the original recipe, so I mixed 2.5 cups flour, 1/2 tbsp salt, and 1/4 cup olive oil, and then slowly added in water while mixing it all together. It had been a while since I'd made bread, but somehow the water amount (about 3/4 cup) ended up being just right for a dough that was smooth but also firm enough to stay together. A little bit of kneading and then I split the dough into four balls, sprayed them with olive oil, and let them rest about 20 minutes.

After that, it was time to roll them out into circles (not perfect, but the closest to circles I've ever gotten), poke them with a toothpick to prevent air bubbles, and cook them in a greased pan. All four came out a little differently, and I have no idea if the texture was right since I've never had this bread before, but it was tasty.

This was my first time cooking Tunisian food, so this will count for the AtWCC too. Looking forward to trying more!

Week 22 - Across the Border

When the theme for Week 22 came up as across the border, my initial thought was to cook something Mexican. But as I thought about it more, I realized our closest border was really the one with New Jersey, so why not make something representing New Jersey? Disco fries for dinner!

If you've never had disco fries before, they're similar to poutine - fries covered in gravy and cheese. Although this is usually done with homemade brown gravy and lots of mozzarella cheese, I decided to experiment and make it a vegan night. So our disco fries were made with mushroom gravy (mostly because we already had it in the pantry, thanks to a bizarre Whole Foods grocery delivery substitution; I think we had been trying to get a vegan roast) and vegan mozzarella shreds, and we ate them with mushroom risotto burgers and green beans.

The fries were okay. I don't think the mushroom gravy and vegan shreds worked as well as the usual disco fries ingredients, and I probably needed to add some extra flavor in somewhere to compensate, but maybe we'll try it again whenever we get to our exploration of New Jersey foods!

Week 17 - One Bite

A challenge theme like "one bite" is a bit tough, because what exactly qualifies as one bite? The size of one bite for each member of our family is so different, so I decided that anything small enough for finger food should work, and found a recipe for spicy mini meatloafs on the Impossible Burger website.

I mostly followed the recipe, with the following changes:

- did the vegan variation with flax egg instead of regular egg

- adjusted seasonings using garlic powder, oregano, paprika instead of oregano, thyme, basil, or other fresh herbs

- swapped sambal oelek for sriracha bc I had a lot and didn't (and still don't) know what else to do with it

- used less brown sugar

- used a mini muffin pan

The mini meatloafs were delicious! Not one bite for me, but they could be one bite for someone because they were small enough. We ate them with some green beans and Ritz crackers, and it was a very satisfying meal.

Week 48 - Ketchup

Have you ever heard of banana ketchup? I didn't know much about it until this ketchup theme came up, because apparently a lot of people really dislike tomato ketchup and needed alternatives. (Didn't know that either!) It's very popular in the Philippines, which made it not only a good choice for the ketchup challenge but also for another entry for the Philippines in our AtWCC.

I followed the recipe at Curious Cuisiniere for making the ketchup, and it was super easy. Onion, garlic, ginger, a couple of mashed bananas, tomato paste, brown sugar, white vinegar, water, and cayenne. Some time on the stove to thicken, then a little cooling, and then blend it all up. Banana ketchup! Super easy.

I didn't really know what to use the banana ketchup for, but on Curious Cuisiniere, they suggested tortang giniling, a Filipino beef omelette, which they also had a recipe for. If you've been reading here for a while, you might think that wasn't going to happen since I don't really cook much red meat at home, plus B has an egg allergy, but we made it work with Impossible Burger and Just Egg, two vegan products that I'm incredibly grateful exist.

In addition to those, the omelette included onion, garlic, diced tomatoes, and some vegetables. It was supposed to be peas, but in prepping the meal, I discovered we were actually out of frozen peas (forgot to update our freezer inventory!), so we ended up using a corn, carrot, and asparagus medley, from which I picked out all the stalks of asparagus because they wouldn't have matched texturally. Next time, hopefully we can use peas as intended.

The banana ketchup was delicious. It added similar flavors to tomato ketchup, but much sweeter and less acidic. It was fantastic with the omelettes. The plate usually also contains some garlic fried rice, but I didn't have time to make that. I tried to fake it by putting some minced garlic over rice, but not the same. Hopefully whenever we make this next (and we do intend to make it again), we can not only remember to get some peas, but also make some yummy garlic fried rice. I love discovering new meals from these challenges, and this was something we'd never had before in our visits to Filipino restaurants. I used up the rest of the banana ketchup making Filipino spaghetti, but that's a post for another time!

Brussels Sprouts with Parmesan Cheese

Trader Joe's recently started carrying these roasted seasoned Brussels sprouts with parmesan cheese. Not sure if they're here for good or seasonal, but they were an interesting addition to the frozen section on a recent trip.

Ingredients were fairly straightforward - grilled Brussels sprouts halves, parmesan, olive oil, salt and pepper, and garlic. They were easy to make on the stovetop - less than 10 minutes in a skillet. We were really excited to try them, but our excitement quickly turned to disappointment. They were so, so salty. I didn't look at the nutritional facts when we bought them, but if I had, I would have noticed that the entire package had 1560mg of sodium. That doesn't sound that terrible in the realm of prepared foods, but even portioned out, that's a good amount of your recommended daily intake when you consider that it's not even that many sprouts in the package, so you would be eating other food (and sodium) alongside it. Flavor was okay, some hits of parm here and there, but mostly just salty.

Buy again? No, too salty for us. Prefer just taking the frozen petite Brussels sprouts and seasoning them ourselves, even though it takes more time and effort.