Burma/Myanmar

Burmese (or Myanmaran?) fried pork curry =’ed delicious.

It took a long time to make, mostly because of the simmering for an hour part, and Cory didn’t exaaaaaactly understand my way of measuring rice* so he put a tiny bit too little, resulting in slightly al dente rice; but the only other downside was that turmeric turns things yellow. But, it IS curry, so we should have expected that. The only advice I can give you is that if you try this dish, use dark utensils and pots/pans because anything else will become a yellow version of what it once was. Just to show you; we used a wooden spoon to stir… now THIS is our spoon (with reference normal spoon):

Anyway, the most awesome part of this dish to me was that it was curry, but not made-from-cubes-bought-from-the-store-curry. I always love when you can make something like that from scratch. As I said, it is delicious and you should all try it.

*My way of measuring rice is not by using measuring cups and so on. That is too much work for me. Also, I know the secret Asian way, taught to me by my ex-roommate Marisa, who learned it from her mother, who is a very cute and traditional Thai woman. The secret is this: put however much rice you want to be cooked in the pot or rice cooker, make sure it is evenly distributed in the pan, and simply add as much water as comes to the first joint of your pointer finger when you touch the tip of it to the top of the rice. In other words, add some water, completely covering the rice. When you have about an inch over top of the rice level, you can measure with your pointer finger from the top of the water to the top of the rice, and if it is ever so slightly above the first bend in your finger, then it is perfect. (Cory’s problem was that he tried this and put too little, so it was just barely touching that joint… and well, the rice was hard in the middle.)

It may sound weird, but it works and I pride myself on being an expert rice and water ratio measurer.

Also, it works nicely when you want a non-conventional measuring of rice to cook, because the directions for rice are almost always in full or half cup quantities…. and the water is usually 1 1/2 cups or something per cup of rice.. I just hate math and feel that it might get confusing when you wanted to do a different amount than that. Anyway, my rice rant is over. Go eat delicious food.

Tunisian Recipes

Tunisian Couscous

Harisa

As I said before, we cut the couscous recipe in half-ish, because it is obviously too big for two people to eat within even a month.

Also, the harisa recipe makes a little over a cup (from what we saw), and you only use a tablespoon or something ridiculously small in the recipe. However, it is a very spicy tomato-ey paste, so you can use your imagination and put it with whatever you want. (I emphasize the spicy part.. if you need a reason, refer to my notes on how my hands were burning well into the night from cutting and seeding the peppers).

Enjoy

Tunisia

So, this is long overdue, and we’re getting ready for our second culinary attempt, so I figured I’d get my thoughts down, even though the page is still lacking. So.. Tunisian cuisine, it was very good and I would recommend it to anyone who likes spicy food. Here are, directly copied from a word document, my thoughts during the process:

August 13, 08

Tunisian food prep day1:

Harissa: a hot paste apparently used in a lot of Tunisian food. Made the day before to make sure it was ready, because the food takes forever to make as it is. We had to soak dried hot peppers for an hour, and then seed them. They were so hot that the heat got into our throats and noses and we were unable to stop coughing, and sneezing, and afterwards I had to put my fingers in sour cream to try to combat the burn in them that lasted for hours. (I finally just went to sleep, and thankfully it was gone when I woke up).

day2: We put all the stuff together, which took hours, but it was worth it. Delicious. Even with halving the recipe, we had enough for 5 people for a week (I’m not kidding).

Side note: we tried to make a dessert called Palace Bread, in which bread was to be soaked in honey and then baked… but we didnt have a dish the right size for the bread, so the honey cooked out of it and became a hard residue on the outsides of the dish… not fun to clean. Maybe we’ll try it again one day, since we are better prepared for it now.

Recipes and pictures (maybe) to come… I say maybe about the pictures because they were deleted from my camera and I am trying to find software-that is free-to recover them, and they usually cost like $70.

Be ready for another update about our September food from Burma… Sorry, Myanmar. I think we will be making pork curry or something similar.

omnom,

Ashley