After 18 dishes in the last 10 months, we’ve hit a milestone: A repeat dish.
Rice
Qatar: Machboos 🇶🇦
It’s been fun to expand my spice collection – and to use what I have.
We’re all guilty of spice hoarding. Deep in the back of your spice cabinet is something you don’t use – cloves, mace, in my case, cinnamon. And then there’s the stuff you see at specialty markets, thinking you’ll find a day when you need that exotic-named, richly-colored powder you’d never heard of before.
Pakistan: Lamb Nihari 🇵🇰
After spending two weeks in Europe, it was back to the grindstone – with another trip to the Muslim world.
This time, I was cooking Nihari, a national dish of Pakistan, and a contrast from the rice-and-meat heavy influence of most of the Middle East. Hell, in the U.S., we’d call this fusion cuisine – a mix of Indian and Middle Eastern influences.
Haiti: Griots with rice and beans ðŸ‡ðŸ‡¹
One of the most important culinary lessons I’ve learned came from my good friend Lindsey in New Jersey. A few years back, Linz was visiting the Pacific Northwest for a few days and taught me all about cooking the humble bean.
Gabon: Poulet Nyembwe 🇬🇦
One of the unexpected pleasures of this project has been the joy of weekend visits to ethnic markets. Portland is hardly a multicultural utopia, but it has its share of great, friendly ethnic grocers who stock hard-to-find ingredients – usually at prices way lower than I could expect to find online.
Nation Plates 