Monday, October 29, 2012

Welcome!

 Welcome to a collection of recipes, stories, and photos that have been gathered from around the world! This blog will allow you to share recipes that you have received/learned while on your Cross Cultural journey with the broader community.  We encourage you to post a recipe with pictures (food, people, process of preparing food, etc.)  along with a story of the host family or person you received the recipe from! The sharing of stories, food and culture is a gift that should be expressed and cherished! Encourage your CC mates and others to post recipes too!
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4 comments:

  1. ErinOctober 29, 2012 at 8:33 AM

    This is a recipe for Tres Leches cake that I made with my host mom in Guatemala. Throughout my time there, her and I traded recipes and enjoyed cooking together and for the family. It was a great way to share culture, make memories, and laugh a lot! :)



    Tres Leches
    Cake:
    1 cup/8 oz each: reg., evaporated, sweetened condensed milk
    6 eggs (separated)
    1 cup sugar
    1 T baking powder
    1 c flour

    Preheat the oven to 350°. Beat the whites till fluffy and add sugar little by little. Mix baking powder into the flour and then add to the eggs. Add the yolks. Put in a pan and bake for 30 min @ 350. Take out and let sit 4-5 min be4 adding milks.

    Blend the 3 milks and pour the mixture over the cake while still warm (freshly blend right before). Put in the fridge when pan is cooler.

    Meringue:

    ½ spoonful & (+/-) cream of tarter
    1 ½- 2 cups sugar
    ¼ c water
    1 lime (juice only) if desired
    ½ c Karo
    3 egg whites
    1 T sugar
    Cinnamon (for topping)


    In a pot put the sugar, water, lime juice (if desired), Karo, and cream of tartar. Mix well and cook until boils and is more hard ( A little bit turns into a ball in water or the sugar makes a string from pot to spoon).

    Beat egg whites and add (while beating) 1 T of sugar. Make very fluffy (like a cloud  ).
    While beating eggs add sugar mixture very slowly until right consistency. (when bowl gets cooler, it’s good.) Not too thick.

    Spread on cake and sprinkle with cinnamon if desired. Refrigerate (overnight is better).

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  2. Madelyn CooperOctober 30, 2012 at 8:32 PM

    Thanks so much for your recipe, Erin!!! Tres Leches is one of the best things in the world!

    ReplyDelete
  3. TessaNovember 1, 2012 at 3:49 PM

    "Every time is tea time." This is one of the five basic rules about Indian culture. And you experience it everywhere. Chai wallah's roam the streets and train cars and even among the boats of Ma Ganga in Varanasi with their steaming tea pots and carrier filled with little cups, which they will fill for you for about five rupees. And with a filled steaming cup, you remain in company together so when you finish the chai you can return the cup. It's a perfect system of reusing materials and honoring the sacredness of food and partaking of it in the company of others.

    Some of my first memories of India involve gathering around chai and savoring it's smooth taste. I remember drinking chai after my first rickshaw ride, a bit in disbelief at the whole experience. And in Kolkata, I remember waking up in the early morning to a knock on our door and hearing a monotonous voice saying Chai, and we'd open our room door to receive two small dixie cups (one for each of us) of chai, which we'd sip in bed, cuddled under the blankets. Bed chai. Families and villages would welcome us with with chai and biscuits (and sometimes little bananas too). In India the taste of chai became the taste of hospitality.

    Masala Chai is especially a favorite among Indians-it is spiced Assam that is claimed to have many health benefits. While in South India, I took a cooking class and experimented with making masala chai. See, the thing about Indian culture is there is no such thing as a strict recipe. You add a little bit of this and a generous heap of that. It's about the scents of the spices you like and the flavors you are looking for. So, that being said, I learned how to make chai from watching other Indians and adding some twists of my own, according to the flavors of spices I like. This recipe is a guide and you should feel free to be creative with it too. As our cooking teacher Gautham told us "The kitchen is your laboratory and you are the one making wonderful creations and discoveries. It is your place to experiment."

    So here is a guideline for YOU to be creative with...

    Masala Chai

    In a sauce pan heat to boiling...
    1 c milk
    1 c water
    1 1/2 t assam tea (loose leaf-or any type of black tea)
    2 t brown sugar (more if you like it sweeter)

    Once boiling turn to low heat and simmer for 3-5 min and add

    -approx 0.5-1 inch fresh ginger (peel outer layer off)
    -1 t cinnamon
    -1/4 t cardamom
    -a few grinds of black pepper (maybe like 0.25-0.5 teaspoons)
    -a few whole cloves (or ground cloves)
    -a few fennel seeds

    Strain out tea leaves and ginger root before serving. Goes well with good company and conversation. Biscuits add a nice touch too (but are not necessary. fun fact: due to the British influence in India, any kind of British biscuit will give you a rather authentic experience as we commonly had a shortbread type biscuit with our chai).

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    Replies
    1. UnknownNovember 5, 2012 at 4:42 PM

      A favorite memory (or memories) from Morocco: Sitting in my host family's small apartment living room around 10 p.m, snuggled in a blanket watching some Arabic soap opera or an American chick flick in English with Arabic subtitles, eating hot harira soup. "Harira" is traditional Moroccan soup with spices and ingredients typical of North Africa. This soup was so delicious, especially when made by my wonderful host mother, and it always cured my homesickness. I felt so loved and cared for in those moments; utterly content...a true sign of hospitality. They could not speak or understand English, and I could only speak a few words of Moroccan Arabic (we were taking Arabic classes for those 6 weeks, but still my Arabic was faltering), but I tried to convey to her with the few words I knew how much I loved and appreciated her (and the rest of the family's) incredible hospitality that was particularly shown through food.

      Here is the recipe for harira. My EMU roommate, Ana, and I asked our host mother for the recipe for harira at the end of our stay in Fez--while we managed to figure out what most of the ingredients were, because of the language barrier we could not get the measurements. So this is sort of my version:

      -Several cups of water (maybe 4?)
      -one can diced tomatoes (15 oz. can)
      -small bit of cilantro, chopped
      -one small onion, diced and sauteed
      -one clove of garlic, maybe two if you prefer garlicy-ness
      -one can (15 oz.) or two cups of chickpeas
      -a cup or two of cous cous (can use Moroccan cous cous or Israeli cous cous if you prefer--Israeli is larger)
      -1/2 t. saffron (use Goya brand in grocery store)
      -pinch of salt and pepper

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