A bit more than 32 days ago, I started this thing, where I decided I would prepare a dish from each of the 32 countries competing in the World Cup within the 32 days during which the tournament is held. Whenever I have mentioned this to people, most people have commented on what a cool idea they thought it was, either immediately before or after they point out that 32 dishes are quite a lot, and, for that matter, so are 32 days. I was aware of that, funnily enough. That's why it's called a challenge, though isn't it? If it were easy, it would be just something you do. Or not bother to do, as it were. And a challenge, it was indeed, but not as hard a one as I expected it to be. I must admit that in the early days of the challenge, I was not sure that I would manage. After three or four days, it seems a chore to have to decide on a specific menu each day. Without my realising it, the days then began to slide past. I found my stride and it stopped being a chore. Before I knew it, I had hit the halfway mark. And now, it is over.
It helped that I like to cook, and that I am, if I do say so myself, not a bad cook. I am quite happy experimenting out of my cooking comfort zone, following strange recipes and working with strange ingredients. I am also quite happy improvising; adding, removing or replacing ingredients which I like, do not like, cannot find, or have in the fridge and need to use before it goes off (so any excuse will do) as I see fit. More than that, I think it particularly helped that I am perfectly happy sitting around googling recipes, which I think, was actually the bigger part of the challenge.
The dishes
Being a self-imposed challenge, I was quite relaxed about how I chose my dishes. I did not set strict rules like cooking the national dish or anything like that. The idea of cooking a national dish had never occurred to me. The same cannot be said for the people around me though. So many people have asked me how I know what the national dish for a certain country was, which led me to conclude that they were expecting me to be cooking "the national dish" of the countries. I am not even sure how one defines a "national dish". Whatever it was, I was not out to find the essence of a country on a plate. My choices were really no more than what I felt like making on the day. To make that choice, I had a vague method which I followed. I generally started with two main reference points. In the beginning of the Challenge, I came across an article on the Culinary World Cup, as they called it, which presented a summary of the traditions and food each of the 32 World Cup countries. The article generally picked one dish for each country, which is said to be the one which represents the country, or which one must try if in the country. When faced with preparing a dish for a country of which I had no "food knowledge" whatsoever, or for which I had not had a random conversation with someone from that country and asked for recommendations, I generally referred to that article as a starting point. Wikipedia or About.com were also good for giving an overview of popular or typical food in the countries, although Google did sometimes lead me to other websites with a similar purportedly all encompassing list which, if nothing else, was good for a general description or lists of foods for the particular country. At times, I had also just looked for images of food from a particular country and see if anything looked particularly yummy. I would type in, for example "Honduras food" and search for images. From there, I picked those which I thought looked and sounded good and looked up recipes.
The recipes
This part of the process took the most time. I often had to go back to the general lists to look for alternative options because I could not find a recipe which I thought worked, either due to unavailability of ingredients or too much time required (some recipes called for hours and hours of preparation and actual cooking, hours which I, at times, did not have). I often also ruled out certain dishes because I could not find a recipe which sounded good - in a language I could understand, that is. I found one recipe which, according to Google Translate, instructed me to allow the dish to simmer for a certain number of minutes at the end of the process, then to thicken the sauce with flour, and finally "finish with the Chinese." Err... what??? just to be clear, this was not a Chinese meal, China being not, after all, in the World Cup, nor did the meal have anything Chinese about it! I often ended up following more than one recipe; I generally used one as the "main recipe" but add ingredients or used methods from other recipes, which I thought would add something to the dish. In this four weeks, I have read hundreds of recipes, reviews, and looked at a thousand photos of food. However, aside from one or two very rare exceptions, I did not actually follow any recipe to the letter. Often, it all worked out well enough. Not always though. Sometimes, you live and learn.
The ingredients
Once I decided on a recipe, I set off in search of ingredients. It was not as difficult as I thought it would be to find what I needed. In the beginning of the challenge, I took more time and looked up most food of the African and South American countries, being the ones which I had the least knowledge of and which I anticipated having greatest difficulty acquiring ingredients. From just generally looking at descriptions of food and random recipes, I got an idea of what sort of ingredients are commonly used, which I would not be able to get in the regular supermarkets. For the last few weeks, I always had an item or two in the back of my mind which might come in handy for a future dish, which I would check to see if it was available every time I was at the supermarket. If not, then I made a trip to one of the speciality stores and bought all that I thought I might need for a number of different dishes at one go. This way, I managed the 32 days with two trips to the African store and one to the Asian store. And of course, I cheated with a few of the ingredients.
Time
As many have guessed, this has been very time consuming. I have been repeatedly mentioning to all who were interested, and many who probably weren't, that the World Cup had taken over my life. It had. It seems like for four whole weeks, I did nothing other than watch football, research food and cook, and write about it. Or at least I tried to write about it; keeping the blog up to date was ultimately the hardest part of this challenge, though it was not actually a part of the challenge. As far as I was concerned, the blog was the least important aspect of the three (the football, the food, and the blog). When pressed for time, it was football over the food; football and food over all else. So there were a few occasions when I did not prepare the dish on the actual day, simply because between work and heading off to watch the football after, I did not have time to cook. I made up for it as soon as I could though, so I decided that was fair enough. I spilled over onto 33 days in the end. I skipped cooking on one of the semi final days, and was sufficiently busy on all of the following evenings that although I managed to make the dish of the day, I did not have time to catch up until after the final. In a way, I was glad. It felt a bit like I could stretch the World Cup for one more day, before having to face the long empty football-less evenings.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please share anything. I would love to know what you think.