Last weekend, we cooked food from Serbia. We followed these two recipes:

• Sarma – meat wrapped in cabbage. I found the fermented cabbage to be too sour / overpowering. 6/10. Recipe here.
• Palacinke – pancakes / crepes with cheese filling. The pancakes are baked after filling them with cheese and topping them with sour cream. Personally, I recommend not baking anymore to have a less dry final product. 8/10. Recipe here.

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The first country for 2021 was Panama. We cooked two dishes:

• Sancocho – chicken soup. Good like all chicken soups. 7/10. Recipe here.
• Sopa Borracha – rum cake. This was perfect for the new year. 8/10. Recipe here.

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This week was Lebanon. Miriam’s family were excited since they love Arabic food. We cooked the following:

• Hashweh – Rice with beef with various aromatics like cinammon, raisins and almonds. I liked it a lot. 9/10. Recipe here.
• Baba Ganoush (or Mutabbal?) – both are eggplant-based dips. From searching online, it seems like mutabbal uses tahini while baba ganoush does not. Nonetheless, I used this recipe which used tahini. 8/10.
• Tabbouleh – It’s a salad. 7/10. Recipe here.
• Kishk el Foukara – Milk pudding with nuts. 7/10. Recipe here.

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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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