World Cuisine Tour 2011: South Africa

If you are new to The Mompocalypse, allow me to explain the World Cuisine Tour 2011. To liven up our dinners, we have been picking one day a week to have a dinner based off of cuisine from another country. The kids pick the country and we all have a great time learning something about that country and trying new tastes. I try to link up some resources in these posts in case you are thinking about giving World Cuisine Tour a whirl in your home. Enjoy!

Did you know that South Africa is home to the world’s largest hospital AND the world’s largest wine cellar? I can’t help but think there might be a connection between the two…

I was initially perplexed when the kids picked South Africa for our dining adventure. Some countries are well known for their dishes. South Africa is not so much one of them. (Well, at least for me. Go ahead and call me sheltered. I live in Michigan. I’m used to it.)

But then I discovered Bunny Chow.

Do what now?

Don’t worry. No rabbits were harmed in the making of this dinner. Bunny chow, also known as kota, is a curry dish that is served in a hollowed out loaf of bread. Just curry and bread!

That sounds easy enough, right? Right! And, aside from nearly setting the first loaf of bread on fire, it was pretty easy-peasy.

First I made a loaf of white bread in my Super Pretentious Breadmaker.

It's ultimate AND plus.

I am not going to lie, this is probably my favorite superfluous kitchen gadget. I just love baking bread. Kind of ironic for someone who is gluten intolerant, right?

Then I hollowed it out.

Look at those attractive right angles!

I saved the “bread guts” for bread pudding. It’s not exactly South African, but it’s pretty darn tasty.

Then, I prepared a curry. I muddled together my own recipe for curry (I’ll post it at the end) but, if you want to be a little more authentic, check out this recipe. It sounds delicious!

Curry in a hurry!

I turned on some mood music by making a Pandora station based on Yvonne Chaka Chaka, a popular South African singer.

Dish up the curry and…

Kota!

Traditionally, kota is eaten without forks or spoons. Just fingers. If you are feeling really brave, do dinner sans silverware. My children are gifted and began eating it with their hands before I even suggested it. Wasn’t that thoughtful of them?

Next week: Libya!

Now, for my sorta curry recipe. I am vegan and gluten-free so, every once in a while I indulge myself and force the rest of the household to eat “Tina Food”. This was flavorful enough that no one complained about the lack of meat. Much.

Curry in a Hurry

1C brown rice cous cous

1 can whole tomatoes, sliced

1 can chickpeas

3 tsp curry powder

3C water

salt to taste

Throw it all in a pot and simmer for at least 30 minutes or until the cous cous is fully cooked. Add some chili sauce for a kick or a dollop of plain yogurt to make it a little more South African.

*burp* The Aftermath

World Cuisine Tour 2011: France

Be honest. How many of you caught the Coneheads reference from last week’s Edu-dinner post? France. We come from France. No?

Well, I thought it was funny.

So, yes. We are edu-dining with a French flair today. French cuisine is notoriously difficult to master so, I was not going to be too hard on myself if I didn’t go all Iron Chef on dinner.

First, I printed off some French-themed coloring pages for the kids to make in to placemats. Every fancy French bistro needs fine art placemats, right? (The French boy with the baguette is pretty much how I imagine all French people to look in everyday life.)

For the dinner itself we made Coq au Vin. I cannot say that with a straight face. My husband says that’s because I intentionally mispronounce it. I modified a few recipes to come up with a whole-bird crock pot recipe. I also (probably committed one of the 7 deadly sins of French cooking) omitted the red wine in favor of a white for the sauce. I don’t generally believe in catering to the tastes of small children because it gives them inordinate amounts of control when food is involved, but I had a feeling the red wine sauce would be too strong of a taste for them and I would rather make a less authentic dish and have it get eaten as opposed to going whole hog with the vino and having everyone turn their noses up at it.

Please enjoy!

Crock Coq (hehe)

2 tablespoons butter

1 whole fryer chicken

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 1/4 lbs baby portabella mushrooms, sliced  (I omitted this because the squirts are a bunch of haters when it comes to fungi.)

12 ounces frozen white pearl onions (or 1 regular white onion chopped up, if you are not inclined to go to the store just for a sack of frozen onions)

1/2 cup dry white wine (Make it a good wine, too. It will encourage you to put the kids to bed early so you can finish up the leftovers!)

2 tsp Herbs de Provence  

1 cup chicken broth

1/3 cup flour

Add the wine and dry spices to your crock pot. Combine the flour and chicken broth in a cup and whisk until smooth. Add the broth mixture to the crock. Place you chicken in to the crock and toss in the mushrooms and onions so they can make friends. Place the pat of butter on top of the chicken.

Turn crock on low for 6-7 hours. If the liquid doesn’t completely cover the chicken, roll it over every hour or so. Carve the chicken and serve over rice with the mushrooms, onions, and some of that lovely gravy it has made for itself in the crock.

For dessert I cheated. I could have made crepes, the national dish of France. But, after a horrifying experience with a blini explosion, I decided that setting my kitchen on fire just for thin pancakes was probably not in my best interest. So, I devised a plan to have the children do the work for me! By using store-bought dough I saved time and had an easy baking project that the twins could handle. Do I run the risk of presenting a steaming pile ala Sandra Dee? Heck yes. But, calling something “semi-homemade” is completely valid if you have children under 5. So long as you didn’t set the house on fire and everyone got fed eventually, you deserve a pat on the back and a Clorox Wipe-sponsered show on the Food Network.

Chocolate Croissants

1 tube of crescent rolls

2 tbsp chocolate hazelnut spread (that’s generic code for a honking spoon full of Nutella)

1 tbsp butter, melted

sugar (for dusting)

Unfurl your crescent rolls, separate them in to triangles and place them on a plate or cutting board in an orderly fashion. Spread a small amount of the chocolate hazelnut spread on each triangle. Don’t be too generous with the spread. I know you want to. I do, too. But during baking it will leak all over your cookie sheet and turn in Glue-tella.

Roll up the crescents in to their signature shape and place on a cookie sheet. Brush each roll with butter and sprinkle sugar on top.

Bake as directed.

It’s nothing that will make me the next Julia Child but, it’s really hard to go wrong with a sweet, flaky pastry filled with chocolate – store-bought or not!

Next week, we will be dining South African style. (Lord help me…)

World Cuisine Tour 2011

Now, I am no 5-star chef, nor am I a world-class educator. But, even a broken clock is right twice a day and sometimes I think up a pedagogically superior idea.

A few months ago I started getting bored with the same old dinners. I’ve roasted chicken in every imaginable combination of spices known to man.  The menfolk in this house would be completely on board with eating macaroni and cheese every day for the rest of their lives, but I needed some variety. I love cooking so, I devised a brilliant plan.

I printed off a blank map of the world for the kids to look at. Once a week, I let them pick a country and we learn something interesting about that country and make a dinner based of their national dish or some other dish that is fairly representative of the regional cuisine. We made chorizo and black bean stew for Brazil, Tandoori chicken for India, and blini for Russia. We’re learning geography, facts about other cultures, and we’re sampling new foods/expanding our palates.

I cant wait for the kids to pick Ireland.

This past week, the kids picked China. As exciting as preparing Peking duck would have been, I was not really on board with buying a package of meat that cost more than my vacuum. (Cheap vacuum or expensive duck? You decide.) So, I Tina-ized a few recipes I found online and developed a rather delightful recipe for orange-cashew chicken.

Tina’s Orange-Cashew Chicken

For the chicken:

2 lbs chicken (Any kind of chicken will do. Skinless and boneless thighs will be the cheapest option, breasts cut in to strips will be your low fat option. Just keep in mind that if you choose something that is bone-in, the cook time will be a lot longer!)

1/4 C cornstarch

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 gallon plastic zip-top bag

vegetable, sesame, or peanut oil

Make sure your chicken is completely thawed before starting, says the voice of experience! Take a large saute pan and add about a 1/4-1/2 inch of oil to the pan. Let is heat up on a medium-high burner. (It’s ready when you drop a droplet of water in it and the water pops and boils away rather quickly. If the water goes ape-crazy sizzling, your oil is too hot and you will burn the bejeezus out of yourself when you put the chicken in.) Meanwhile, pour the salt, pepper, and cornstarch in to the zip-top bag and give it a shake to combine. Add all the chicken pieces to the bag, close it, and shake until all the chicken pieces are coated in the spiced cornstarch. (If you have any enthusiastic kitchen helpers, this is a great job for them. They can shake the bag without making too much mess or direct contact with raw meat.)

Now it’s time to cook that chicken! Gently place the pieces in the hot oil. (Make sure your helper isn’t around for this one in case the oil jumps!) If your pieces are boneless and not too thick, try cooking them for three minutes on each side. Use a meat thermometer to check for done-ness!

Once the chicken is done, I like to put the pieces on a plate with some paper towels to soak up any excess grease. As they are sitting, I start the sauce.

Orange-Cashew Sauce:

1/4 C white wine 

1/4 C soy sauce

1-2 tbsp corn starch

2 tbsp sesame oil (or vegetable oil)

2 tbsp vinegar

1/4 brown sugar

1 small can of mandarin oranges packed in their own juice (juice reserved seperately)

2 cloves minced garlic 

1 C cashews, chopped (or peanuts)

1-2 C water (if needed)

In a large saute pan, sweat the minced garlic with the oil for about 5 minutes on medium heat. Add the orange juice, brown sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, and wine. Stir and allow to boil gently. Add the corn starch. Whisk rapidly as the cornstarch will thicken the sauce up pretty quickly. You can decide now if you need to add water to the situation. Once the sauce reaches a good consistency, add the cashews, mandarin oranges, and cooked chicken pieces. (We also chose to add some broccoli florets, baby corn, and water chesnuts as well.) Coat thoroughly. Serve over rice.

Pretend theres a picture of mouth-watering orange-cashew chicken here. My camera decided the pictures of it were so delicious, it ate them.

And if you want to copy-cat my super edu-dinner, here are some of the fun facts we learned about China:

* China is often considered the longest continuous civilization, with some historians marking 6000 B.C. as the dawn of Chinese civilization. It also has the world’s longest continuously used written language.

* Toilet paper was invented in China in the late 1300s. It was for emperors only.

* China invented ice cream, and Marco Polo is rumored to have taken the recipe (along with the recipe for noodles) back with him to Europe!

source: http://facts.randomhistory.com/2009/05/04_china.html  

And here’s a hint about where our dinner will travel next week:

We come from...