This week, we randomly selected Italy! I did my master’s in Bologna and I had a great time eating pizza, pasta and gelato. In the past, I’ve only tried cooking pasta dishes like tagliatelle al ragu, pesto and carbonara. We decided to cook dishes I haven’t tried making myself in the past:

• Lasagne – lasagna refers to just one sheet and the plural is lasagne. Apparently, there is a debate whether it is better to use bechamel or ricotta. In the end, we used ricotta. following the “World’s Best Lasagna” recipe from AllRecipes.com which has gotten around 19,000 reviews averaging 4.8. It tasted amazing! 9/10.
• Tiramisu – this one was much easier to make than I thought. We followed this 10 minute recipe and I couldn’t even differentiate it from others that I have tasted. 8/10.

So far, this week’s cooking experiment has been the most liked by Miriam’s family. Not surprising as it’s Italy which is universally liked and this country is practically our neighbour.

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This week, the country we randomly picked was Samoa. I found this website SamoaFood.com listing some recipes from this island nation. Some of the prominent recipes required taro leaves which we didn’t know how to source in Barcelona. There was also a dish similar to ceviche but Miriam’s family were not really accustomed to raw fish. In the end, we settled on these two dishes using coconut milk:

• Kale moa – Basically, chicken curry. The recipe is very similar to the curry version we have in the Philippines. It’s light and not spicy. 7/10. Recipe here.
• Suafa’i – It’s a dessert banana soup containing tapioca balls. 8/10. Recipe here. We enjoyed it but the problem was we bought the wrong type of tapioca balls so it took a long time to cook. It’s also very similar to a dish in the Philippines called ginataan. The main difference is that the banana pieces are typically still whole and we typically add jackfruit.

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This week we randomly chose Sao Tome and Principe. The only thing I knew about this country before was that it’s the least known country in Africa. People normally confuse that it’s from the Caribbean because of its name. We cooked two recipes here:

• Calulu de Peixe – It’s a fish stew with okra. 9/10. Recipe here.
• Sonhos de Banana – Basically beignets made with banana. 8/10. Recipe here. This didn’t really turn out like balls in the photos but it tasted wonderful.

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This week, the first country we randomly picked was Brunei. After doing research about their cuisine, we found two that we wanted to try.

• Nasi Katok – fried chicken with sambal and rice. Youtube recipe here. We made our own sambal. It was spicy and I was the only one who was able to eat it. 6/10.
• Sticky rice with mango – A Thai dish that apparently is also popular in Brunei. 9/10. Recipe here.