A Multicultural Feast

Who here loves ethnic food and trying new things? I know I do! I have been absolutely loving being in my Multicultural Foods class for the past week.  I almost wish it were longer than just two weeks! In the first week, we covered Greek, Pakistani, Korean, and Norwegian foods. Every day we get to cook and sample cuisine from other cultures.  I have already learned so much in this class, and the food has been amazing!

The Greek foods we made were Greek Salad, Spanakopita, Hummus, Greek Chicken, Tzatziki, Pita bread, and Baklava.  I am especially fond of Mediterranean food, so I really enjoyed this day.  I had never had Spanakopita or baklava before, and I had no experience with making pita bread.  Spanakopita is a spinach and cheese pie made with either fresh or frozen spinach, feta cheese, and phyllo dough (if you've never had it, you're missing out!).  You layer the phyllo dough at the bottom of a pan and brush it with butter, and then lay in a wilted spinach and cheese mixture, then cover it with more phyllo dough and brush with butter, and bake it.

Spanakopita

Baklava is similar to Spanakopita in that it involves layering phyllo dough and putting a filling in between the layers.  There are many more layers to Baklava, though, and the filling is a mixture of nuts and spices. The Greek version traditionally uses just walnuts, but you could make it with any combination of nuts.  Once the layers are put together for the Baklava, it is cut into small triangles and then baked, and when it is done, you pour a sugar and honey mixture over it.  You really only need one small square because this dessert is so rich!  The last thing I will say about the Greek food was that making the pita bread was a lot of fun.  You make somewhat of a regular yeast bread dough, but you form it into smaller balls and then roll it out with a rolling pin, and bake it flat.  If you do it right, it puffs up like a balloon and then deflates when it cools, but it leaves a large pocket on the inside to stuff other ingredients into it! I won't go into too much detail about the other dishes we made, but I have page with all the recipes listed HERE.

Baklava

The Pakistani foods we made were Rasmalai, Butter Chicken, Chapati, and Mixed Vegetable Pulao.  All of these dishes incorporated many spices, as they are used in their all of their cooking.  A dish without seasonings is seen as a dish without flavor! Rasmalai is a dessert that is normally served cold. Traditionally, you use Indian Cheese (although we used ricotta), mixed with sugar, and form it into balls.  Then you create a mixture of heavy cream, half and half, sugar, and cardamom in a saucepan and bring it to a boil.  The cheese balls are dropped in the boiling mixture to cook and then chilled until serving time.

Ras Malai

Butter Chicken is seasoned with a type of curry that includes Garam Masala, Fenugreek, Tandoori, and many other spices.  It was a flavor that I cannot even describe or compare to anything else I've ever tasted, but it was so good!  Chapati a type of whole wheat flat griddle bread that is eaten every day, and is used to pick up food.  It is made in a similar manner to the pita bread, however it does not use any yeast, and it is fried in a dry pan rather than in the oven.  The Veggie Pulao was also delicious, and it was just a mixture of vegetables with basmati rice and spices and seasonings. All of the recipes we used can be found HERE.

Butter Chicken/

We also made several Korean dishes, including Bi-Bim-Bop (Beef and Mixed Vegetable Rice), Bul-Go-Gi (Marinated Beef), Jap-Chae (Vermicelli Noodles), Dae-Ji Bul-Go-Gi (Marinated Spicy Pork), and Yu-Bu-Cho-Bap (Seasoned Fried Bean Curd Slice).  My favorites were the spicy marinated pork and the marinated beef.  The first four recipes can be found at http://www.trifood.com/ by navigating through the side links, and the Fried Tofu can be found at http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/yubuchobap.

Bul-Go-Gi

Dae-Ji Bul-Go-Gi

Lastly, the only Norwegian food we made was Lefse, and it was something I had never heard of (It seems as if I am in the dark on cultural foods! I definitely need to change that.).  It is basically a type of potato pancake.  You boil your potatoes and then rice them, adding butter, sugar, salt, heavy cream, and flour to form a dough.  You then roll the dough out as thin as possible, while still allowing yourself to be able to handle the rolled dough.  It is then placed on a dry skillet and fried for a minute or two on each side.  It is traditionally served with butter and brown sugar, but other toppings, whether sweet or savory, could be used.  A recipe for Lefse can be found HERE.

Lefse

Nick just showed me a Russian band called Leningrad, and I liked one of their songs (despite the fact that I don't know what they're singing about! :P).  But this song reminded me of Pinocchio for some reason. Haha. Don't ask.  But here it is! "Fish" by Leningrad.

Thanks for stopping by!