Last Saturday, we cooked food from Togo. Did not really know what to expect but we were pleasantly surprised. These were the recipes we tried:

• Grilled chicken – we don’t have a grill so we roasted it. What tasted a little different from the typical roasted chicken was the red palm oil. 8/10. Recipe here.
• Ablo – typical meal accompaniment made from cornmeal. Kind of similar to bao. 7/10. Recipe here
• Lime cake – not really sure if this is from Togo but when you google dessert recipes from Togo, this West African lime cake is the top recommended. 7/10. Recipe here.

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We cooked Montenegro cuisine this week. The recipes I found were mostly seafood and lamb in milk. I did not find lamb this week in the supermarket so we just decided to cook these dishes:

• Black risotto – a recipe listed in many blogs about Montegro food. It is similar to the Paella negra. The recipe we followed in the end was from Croatia but I hope they are similar. 7/10. Recipe here.
• Krempita – a custard cake similar to Bled cake I remember eating in Slovenia. We had a lot of disasters in the kitchen. We burned the puff pastry. We then burned the egg milk mixture. In the end, we still had something edible. Theoretically I imagine 9/10 but what we had was 4/10. Recipe here.

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This week’s country was Curacao, a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. We cooked the following dishes:

• Keshi Yena – cheese stuffed with meat. We used edam and gouda. 8/10. Recipe here.
• Fried fish – we were originally planning to cook okra soup called Giambo. The market where we always bought okra from did not have okra unfortunately. Thus, we just cooked fried fish with a Curacao style sauce. 7/10. Recipe here.
• Pumpkin pancake – pancake made with boiled pumpkin. The pumpkin taste was so subtle though. 6/10. Recipe here.

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This week, we cooked food from Cuba. Here are the recipes we followed:

• Ropa vieja – Translates to old clothes. It is shredded beef. We should have probably cooked our beef more until it has really disintegrated but we were getting hungry already. Reminded me of other beef stews back home. 8/10. Recipe here
• Black beans – I’ve never really cooked beans before. I never ate beans either as a dish on its own. I liked it in the end. 7/10. We followed the recipe from NYT.
• Fried plantains – The easiest recipe so far. It’s literally just frying plantains. Still do not know what is the difference between this and bananas. 7/10
• Arroz con leche – Rice pudding. It’s also a common dish here in Spain. 8/10. Recipe here. Miriam’s family says that their grandma’s version is still the best.

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This week, we attempted to cook recipes from Albania. We decided on these three dishes:

• Fergese – cheese with pepper and tomatoes. 8/10. Recipe here
• Byrek – their streetfood made with filo pastry. We filled it with spinach and cheese. 7/10. Recipe here
• Shendetlie – honey and nut cake. 7/10. It was great but we overcooked it (still need to improve my baking skills). Recipe here

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We cooked cuisine from Madagascar this weekend. Interesting fact about Madagascar is that like Filipinos, they are Austronesian. This group spread from Taiwan to other parts of South East Asia, Oceania and Madagascar through boats. We share the same language too. Here are the recipes we tried:

• Romazava – beef stew with greens. It reminded me of the Philippine food sinigang without the tamarind. 7/10. Recipe here
• Koba akondro – rice cake with bananas and peanuts. It was our first time to cook with banana leaves too. That was a cool experience. 7/10. Recipe here

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This week, we tried Bahamas cuisine. Here were the dishes we cooked:

• Conch fritters – I’ve not eaten conch before. It’s sea snail. We made fritters through this recipe. Miriam’s family loved it. For me, it was too rubbery. 6/10.
• Rice and peas -This was easy to cook. We followed this recipe. In theory, it should be with pigeon peas. Since there was none in the supermarket, I substituted it with green peas. Apparently, lentils or beans would have been a better substitute. It tasted great. 9/10.
• Guava duff – a pastry with guava. Instead of being baked in the oven, it is steamed. Recipe here. It tasted wonderful. 9/10.

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This week, we randomly selected Iceland to try out cooking some recipes from. We didn’t really know a lot about Iceland except for the recent parody movie about Eurovision. We didn’t really have a lot of expectations before going into their cuisine. But, we were pleasantly surprised in the end with what we ended up cooking:

• Hotdog – quite funny that if you search for food you need to try in Iceland, hotdog seems to be one of the top ones. We braised it in beer as in this recipe. 6/10.
• Plokkfiskur – fish stew. This reminded me of the Portuguese dish Bacalhau com natas. We left the potatoes as larger chunks as we preferred it like that. 8/10. Recipe here
• Skyrterta – Skyr is an icelandic dairy product. Since we couldn’t find one here, we replaced it with Greek Yoghurt as it was recommended as a substitute. The cake was not too sweet. 8/10. Recipe here

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This week, we cooked food from Turkey. I’ve been to Istanbul before and I loved the city. It was so beautiful and the food was great. Miriam’s family were also excited to for this week’s country because they love Mediterranean food. This week, we decided to cook three dishes:

• Menemen – typical breakfast food. It is egg with tomatoes and peppers. 8/10. Youtube recipe here.
• Lahmacun – also called as Turkish pizza. I’ve eaten this in the Netherlands before but it tasted normal. We made it but used dough from the supermarket and it tasted wonderful. 8/10. Recipe here.
• Kunefe – dessert, common in the Middle East, made with cheese. So far, it’s the best sweet we’ve made. 10/10. Recipe here

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We randomly picked Botswana this week. I only knew two things about Botswana before this week. One is that this country is lauded as a success story in Africa for having good institutions. Another one is that the king of Spain went to a hunting trip in this country amidst the financial crisis. This week, we ended up making the following dishes:

• Seswaa – said to be their national dish. It is one of the simplest recipes we’ve done. It is beef that is cooked until it is tender. 6/10. Recipe here.
• Pap – their dishes are served with a maize flour porridge. From what I understand this is similar to the Italian polenta. Since we still had this from our previous cook-offs, we just used it. 5/10. We served it with spinach following this Youtube video.
• Magwinya – our dessert was this fried dough. It is similar to the Dutch oliebol. 6/10. Recipe here.

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