Thursday, July 12, 2012

BURMA

The cuisine of Burma, now known as Myanmar, is a delightful blending of Chinese and Indian. You may wonder, at first, how the spices of these very different foods will blend. Let me tell you...wonderfully! Bring on the ginger powder and masalas...there's a party in the kitchen! The special guest is beef and okra, Burmese style!

I began with some vegetable oil heating on medium heat. I chopped up a sweet onion and added this with a lot of minced garlic, some ginger powder, turmeric. hot Hungarian paprika, chili powder garam masala, sesame oil, cumin and chopped chives. Saute the spices until the neighbors pound on the front door, drooling like zombies to get in. Then, add a couple of cups of beef stock, some cubed beef and a cup of rice and trimmed okra. Bring to a boil. Then, simmer with the lid on the skillet. I let this simmer for about 20 minutes. Just long enough to board up the windows.

The result? Intestinal happiness! As usual feel free to experiment with how much spice you use. I tend to use a lot.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Western Africa

My next stop was to Burkina Faso. This is a Western African country. Rather than trying to come up with something specific to Burkina Faso, I decided to cook food that would represent Western Africa. There are differences between the countries; but, with enough similarity for me to find something I liked. I decided to make peanut soup.

While I prepared the rice, I diced 2 large onions, a green bell pepper and a red bell pepper. Also a large sweet potato was peeled, and diced. A couple inches of ginger root was peeled and sliced. I used a can of crushed tomatoes, with the juice. All of this was cooked with a little oil in a large soup pan. After 5 minutes, I added a couple tablespoons of crushed garlic. This was cooked for 5 more minutes. Then, I put in 4 cups of water.

The above was cooked for 25 minutes. Then, I added about 4 tablespoons of creamy peanut butter. You can put in more or less. I prefer more. While this was cooking, I threw in some salt, freshly ground black pepper and cayenne pepper. I don't generally make exact measurements when cooking this type of food. personally, I like hot food; so, I put a lot in...stirred it...tasted it...and put more in. The amount you use is purely a matter of taste. About this time, the rice was done; so, I threw that in there too. If you want, you can throw in a cake of soft tofu and green onions. I did not. You will find that the more peanut butter you use, the thicker will be your soup. Mine ended up being a thick stew. In fact, I could have put on a plate instead of a bowl.

I ate this with lamb that was spiced hot, using salt, pepper, cayenne and minced garlic. I put about half a teaspoon of garlic on each lamb chop. This was broiled for about seven minutes. The inside was very red, and warm.

I love...love...LOVE the peanut soup. I think you will too.