Larb Nua

The recipe below is for a Thai dish called larb nua. This is the first Thai dish I ever had, though it has now been a couple of decades since my brother first took me to the Thai Room on Western for my birthday—back when there were only a few Thai restaurants in Chicago. He [...]

Cebollas Encuridas

In Mexico’s Yucatan, pickled red onions—cebollas encuridas— are served at almost every meal, appearing as soon as you sit down, along with the salsa. They are a delightful and delicious way to enhance foods, from simply piling them on tortilla chips to using them to enhance a dish. I came to be fairly addicted to [...]

Llapingachos

As I traveled around Ecuador, the food I saw most often, from Otavalo’s street markets (where I first tried one) to the restaurants of Quito, was the llapingacho (yop-in-GAH-cho), a potato and cheese cake with as many variations as there are people making them. It was common to see llapingachos on griddles next to fried [...]

Icelandic Fish Soup

One chilly afternoon in Reykjavik, a couple of us decided to stop at a local café for lunch. Icelandic Fish Soup sounded like the right thing to order. It was thick, delicious, and, with a hunk of good bread, made a fine meal. I had discovered that, in Iceland, curry is a common seasoning for [...]

Salade de Patates Douces

This recipe comes from Chad—or République du Tchad—a country in west central Africa that was an important cultural and trading crossroads for many centuries. Notice that the word used for sweet potato is fairly close to the original batatas, and is a completely different word from the French for white potato (pomme de terre).
This dish [...]

Tortilla Española

Back in April of last year (April 23, to be exact), I wrote a bit about tapas and offered a recipe for datiles con tocino, a very popular tapa. There have been so many searches for this recipe that I thought perhaps another classic tapa might be in order—just in case you’re all throwing tapas [...]

Tagen Bamya

Last year, while traveling in southern Egypt, we visited an area largely occupied by Nubians. Nubia used to exist between Aswan (the first cataract in the Nile) and Khartoum (the fifth cataract), but Nubia has been absorbed by Egypt in the north and Sudan in the south. The Nubians were further displaced when the Aswan [...]

Mongolian Huushuur

Our introduction to the meat-filled Mongolian fried pastry called huushuur was during a picnic in the Gobi. We also had huushuur in restaurants and during the Naadam Festival, where it was prepared by vendors in open-air stalls. Huushuur can be eaten out of hand, as a hearty snack, or it can be turned into a [...]

Newfie Cod Cakes

Cod cakes are a traditional Newfoundland dish that many Newfies still eat weekly. The ingredients are not perishable, so this dish would see people through a long, ice-bound winter.
The summer savory is not absolutely required, but it does add a nice flavor, and savory is pretty much the “official” herb of Newfoundland. Wherever you [...]

Gyudon

I’m about to head to Japan for a couple of weeks, so I thought I’d leave you with a recipe I picked up during my first trip to the Land of the Rising Sun.
I first had gyudon at a little donburi shop not far from the Philosopher’s Path in Kyoto. Donburi means “rice bowl,” though [...]