The other night I made a delicious Indonesian stew called “rendang,” but substituted powdered chipotle for the heat. It was definitely different from your standard rendang, but it was delicious.*
This got me to thinking about creating a dish with ingredients that are not just from around the world, but which are truly associated with a wide range of geographic locations. Not just “fusion” cooking, which it seems to me usually blends just a couple of cuisines, but a REALLY international dish. It needs to contain ingredients that are uniquely associated with different parts of the world.
Using the above-described rendang as a starting point for modification, we have SE Asia (laos and coconut milk) and Mexico (chipotle) covered.
What ingredients should I use for other regions/countries? I don’t want to add universally used items; for example, peanuts and cornmeal are commonly used in Africa but are frequently used elsewhere as well, so peanuts don’t really say “Africa” the way “bean paste” says “Chinese” or “miso” says "Japanese.
I’m thinking olive oil might represent southern Europe well enough, although I’ll have to be careful if I’m using both olive oil and coconut milk or I’ll end up with a greasy mess.
Ideas?
*BTW if you use that recipe you can use about 1/2 to 3/4 the coconut milk; the amount listed borders on overkill.
Ah, Beef Rendang, what a treat. I started a thread a while ago about the meal you have most often ordered because I go to a place, Temasek, in Parramatta that makes the best Beef Rendang I have ever had. In fact it is the best dish I have ever had, and my Rendang disciples and I go there to eat it fairly often.
I am a keen amateur cook and have tried probably a dozen recipes over the years trying to replicate the Temasek Rendang. Although they all turn out a joy to eat none is close to the ideal.
Your recipe has two new additions fennel(ground seeds I presume) and whole cloves.
What my best attempts lack is the fragrance of the real article. I have been slowly increasing the ginger and galangal and lemongrass (which is surprisingly absent from your recipe). I am pretty sure there are no cloves in the dish I am trying to make but I will try them.
The recipe has way more fluid than I have ever seen before. It is meant to be pretty dry on serving so I would halve the coconut milk. I think you could double, triple, quadruple the amount of toasted coconut. I just fry it up and add it at serving time to taste. I put each portion in a bowl with the cooking sauce and stir through the toasted coconut until I like the look of it.
And if you are really in Cairo I want a good tagine with lamb and prunes please.
Substitute Ostrich for the beef, and you will have South Africa. I usually substitute ostrich for beef anyway, I like the somewhat more venisony flavour (and no cholesterol, apparently). Just be sure the meat is thouroughly sealed/browned before it goes in with everything else.
…I just let it simmer until all the liquid evaporates. It isn’t too liquid that way, but it IS greasy. I’m not sure why I specified so much, but I’m guessing I relied on a less rich brand of coconut milk that I was sure people could get in Cairo (target audience for the magazine in which that recipe appeared). Oh and yeah, the fennel is ground. Seems to be a pretty common ingredient in a lot of Sumatran food.
Ostrich and root beer! Great ideas. I was not aware that either substance was closely associated with a particular location, but on reflection: I have only ever had ostrich in South Africa; and isn’t the sassafrass plant native to North America?
I’m also thinking, maybe, garam masala to represent India? The Middle East is hard because while the food here uses luscious ingredients, most of them are not unique to the region.
THE RECIPE SO FAR:
Ostrich
Coconut milk
Chipotle peppers
Olive Oil
Garam Masala
(one assumes a few other ingredients, eg salt and onions, that don’t represent a particular location but are essential to flavor)
…cook and serve with root beer.
Trying to think of a food that is specifically, endemically English. Pretty much everything we eat is an import or adoption (even Fish and Chips!), so all I can suggest is turnip.
That probably works … even if it isn’t specifically English, it is northern European as well, or so it seems to me.
If I had to come up with an English ingredient, I’d hazard a guess and say lemon curd. But I don’t really know, having spent very little time in the UK. Also, I don’t think I want to put lemon curd in the stew.
So:
THE RECIPE SO FAR:
Ostrich
Coconut milk
Chipotle peppers
Olive Oil
Garam Masala
Turnips
(one assumes a few other ingredients, eg salt and onions, that don’t represent a particular location but are essential to flavor)
…cook and serve with root beer.
Well, the recipe you linked to actually recommends Tabasco sauce, which is made (and heavily consumed) in my old stomping grounds (Louisiana, USA). It’s tasty stuff.
If you want a more broadly American ingredient, perhaps corn (maize, that is) would be suitable. It should fit in well with the other ingredients listed. Or you could just stick root beer on the side.
Yep, sassafras was brought back to Europe by the Spanish in the late 1500’s. (cite) They were hopeful it would be a great herbal panacea, which it’s not (although it’s a good little herb for all that, it just doesn’t cure everything they thought it did!)
But mostly I mentioned it because it’s brought up in many of the “What foods from other cultures do you find weird?” threads. Apparently Germans have a cold medicine derived from sassafras, so root beer tastes like medicine to them and is roundly despised by people on other continents. Which is just so strange to me, 'cause root beer is so yummy!
Ditto peanut butter and jelly, but that really doesn’t fit into stew at all.
But of course vegemite! That can be the source of the stew’s salty goodness.
For the Middle East, it dawned on me that sumac would be a good choice - for those of you who haven’t had it, it is a maroon-colored herb that tastes lemony, usually sprinkled on bread along with thyme and sesame seeds.
Taro, while not exclusive to the Pacific, is pretty closely associated with it, so lets add some of that.
We’ll save the penguin for dessert, BanBlather – I’m afraid mixing two types of fowl in one recipe might make it difficult for their distinctive flavors to shine through. And Kaylasdad99: since I want this to be suitable for the home kitchen, we may have to forgo the sodium polysorbate etc. I doubt I could obtain bison or choke-cherries, wolfman, although they are interesting ideas (I rejected blueberries for the same reason).
What kind of beans, UncleRojelio, and where specifically do they represent?
THE RECIPE SO FAR:
Ostrich (Southern Africa)
Coconut milk (Southeast Asia)
Chipotle peppers (Mexico)
Olive Oil (Mediterranean)
Garam Masala (India)
Turnips (Northern Europe)
Vegemite (Oz)
Sumac (Middle East)
Fiddleheads (Canada)
Tabasco (US)
Taro (Pacific Islands)
??? Beans, maybe
(one assumes a few other ingredients, eg onions, that don’t represent a particular location but are essential to flavor)
…cook and serve with root beer.
I think we need something to represent the rest of Asia - Japanese miso wouldn’t go too well with the vegemite, nor would Chinese bean paste. Other ideas? Other regions that are absent in the above?
Still, a little fine tuning and we’re almost there, I think.
I have no idea what kind of dish you have, but you could put in a bit of kimchi on the side for some Korea love. Or maybe some sort of red bean? For dessert you could have penguin+팥빙수.
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