Brazil: Comida

We've been looking forward to Brazil ever since starting this challenge. James's sister, Faith lived in Fortaleza for 5 years and was keen to see whether London could offer anything close to the real deal.

There were a couple of restaurants to choose from, but we settled on Comida, a Churrascaria restaurant in South Molton Street and booked ourselves a table for Friday night. It was an unseasonably warm evening for April, people were sitting outside, but we took our table inside. The decor was nothing to write home about, fairly basic with small formica tables for 4 and a buffet along one side.

But at the heart of the restaurant, what we'd really come to experience - the flaming grill, chock full of skewers of meat.

We started with a round of drinks - Brahma beers, Caipirinha cocktails and a fizzy Guarana drink, popular in Brazil:

We unanimously opted for the "all you can eat" buffet, the waiter took our order and then wandered off. It wasn't immediately obvious what to do next, but after a few minutes trying to work out where to get the plates from, caught sight of another table starting to help themselves to the BBQ accompaniments - various carbs: rice, beans, potatoes and some limp salad leaves. Faith warned us not to load up too much on the buffet sides. It turned out to be good advice.....as the meat had started to arrive.

Let's start gently, with a couple of chicken legs and some chorizo style Brazilian sausage. So far, so good. Tasty with a very distinctive BBQ taste. Then our waiter started bringing out the big guns....large skewers with beef and lamb joints, which he sliced onto our plates at the table.

 

                                 

   

By this stage of the meal, the waiters had worked out that Faith can speak fluent Portuguese and this broke the ice for some high jinks. I'm sure he was joking with that knife....

You really can get your money's worth at a Churrascaria. The meat just kept coming until we couldn't face another morsel. Next time I go to one of these...I probably won't bother with any of the side dishes, and also make sure I'm ravenous. That steak was gooooooooood.

Now for some scoring:

Food: ****

Value for money:****

Atmosphere: ***

Botswana: lourobbo's kitchen

James and I spent a lovely week in St Ives and I was all set to catch up on the Eating the A to Z of London project having some time on our hands, we'd been on a go slow recently. Botswana was next and no restaurants readily available to try their cuisine. Then James reminded me of one of the key points of the challenge....it was supposed to be within the boundaries of the M25. Doh!

So I cooked a bolognese instead.

Home from holiday,  I wanted to crack on with Botswana. I had another scout around for restaurants, but to no avail, so then back to some favourite sites that I've been using so far to source the recipes.

On the menu, Botswanan Chicken Groundnut Stew. It sounded revolting - chicken casseroled in a sauce of peanut butter, tomato puree, ginger, sugar and chilli flakes. With some fried onion and peppers in the mix. Served on a bed of mashed rice, shaped into balls.

But how wrong could I be, it was scrumptious and definitely one for the recipe book. Here's the preparation and cooking:

The sauce can only be described as a salmony pink colour. The chicken was browned with the onions and green pepper and, and then covered with the sauce, brought up to a simmer and allowed to cook away for an hour. I served it with rice balls - rice "overcooked" mashed and shaped into balls.

The whole thing was really quite good. A rich sweet nutty sauce, warming comfort food.

Bosnia and Herzegovina: lourobbo's kitchen

Hello foodies...taken me a little while to get round to writing up Bosnia. It's a couple of weeks ago now, I've almost forgotten what I cooked.

Let's look back at the photos:

 

To put it simply, Bosnia is about pies! Filo pastry pies. I made two types - Burek (spiced mince meat) and Krompirusa (potato, carrot and onion) served with a simple feta salad. They were quite straightforward to make, although I think I might have overfilled the rolls and the filo can be a little temperamental to roll into the "snail" shapes. A tasty meal however, and I'd do this one again.

Bolivia: El Rincon Quiteno

This was actually our second attempt at a Bolivian night out. Last week, we took the 21 bus from London Bridge down the Old Kent Road to search out Parrilladas del Sur. We found it. It looks like it's still in business, but that rainy Tuesday night, it was most definitely shut.

There was a second restaurant choice coming up on search, El Rincon Quiteno, on the Holloway Road. We decided to give this place a try, handy for meeting up with Sara as it's North of the river (shudder). The plan was to meet early and then head to the cinema afterwards. One slight drawback, it's actually an Ecuadorian/South American restaurant, so we've already knocked this place out as an option for Ecuador (when we get there!)

A fairly unassuming place from the outside, El Rincon Quiteno is about 100 yards from Holloway Road tube, a stone's throw away from Arsenal's Emirates stadium. The lights were blazing when we got there, a fair few people standing outside smoking and it certainly had the feel of a greasy spoon.

But a warm welcome by the friendly maitre d', we sat down and ordered the obligatory beer. Ecuadorian beer, Biela, but at least we're in the right vicinity.

 

Using our trusty smartphones, we managed to pick out the Bolivian dishes from the menu. James had the one starter we could identify as definitely Bolivian, a South American take on the Cornish Pasty - Saltenas. This was a pastry, slighty sweet soft texture with a chicken and pea filling. It was served with a punchy tomato salsa.

Tasty and a generous portion for a starter. Sara had a sizeable slab of spanish omelette, Suzanne had delicious beef empanadas. And I had a cheese melted on bananas (ok, plantains). Surprisingly good.

Our host turned the lights down at this point, add to the dining atmosphere and turned up the tunes. I'd hazard a guess at Ecuadorian music and we did manage to pick out a cover of  "Don't mess with my Toot Toot". Marvellous. Complete with trumpets and maracas.

For main, three of us opted for silpancho. This was a beef escalope, fried in breadcrumbs, served with rice, salsa, saute potatoes and topped with two fried eggs. And banana. Sorry, plantain.

Hugely filling and although it looked an odd combination and heavy on the carbs, again it was good eating.

Finished up with some strong coffee and then staggered out of the restaurant, feeling very full. We binned the cinema, we would probably have missed the start of the film. But no loss, Bolivia a successful night out, second time round

Ooo, don't feel like I've done ratings for a while has there has been a spate of country cooking. But here are the scores on the doors for El Rincon Quiteno:

Food ***

Atmosphere ***

Value for money ***

(Blow your head off) Bhutan: lourobbo's kitchen

The main ingredient in any Bhutani meal is chili. I like hot....but this was at the blow your head off end of the scale.

I chose two recipes for dinner tonight, Ema Datshi is the national dish of Bhutan. A strange concoction of sheep's cheese, tomato and chili. You can't get the real deal cheese over here, so most recipes suggest feta as a suitable substitute.

This was surprisingly tasty (once the roof of your mouth had calmed somewhat). I didn't put nearly enough jabaneros in, as per the traditional recipes....but it was plenty hot enough.

For "main", I cooked spicy pork with potatoes, kewa phagsha. And yep, it was spicy. Look at the chillies!

Stew the pork in some salty water for about 20 minutes and then add potato slices, onions, chillies, garlic, ginger, lots of chili powder and coriander. Bob's yer uncle, a tasty, if hot "curry". Goes well with beer too.

Despite it looking pretty unappetising, it was actually not a bad meal. Suzanne had seconds, it can't have been too awful. I've got a lot of time for the Bhutanese, they are trying to provide a safe corridor for endangered tiger species. And now I've sampled the food, maybe it's somewhere to add to the travel destination list.



Bermuda: lourobbo's kitchen

What do you associate with Bermuda? Blue skies, turquoise seas, big boats and rich leathery sunseekers? The mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle?

I would hazard a guess that it's probably not "Poor man's kedgeree".

But that's what I decided to cook for Bermuda. I may come back and add to this country if I manage to find some Gosling's black seal rum to make dark 'n' stormys (Santa's suggestion, thanks!).

Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to source some nice fresh ingredients for a chowder, the more traditionally recognised recipe from this island. But a quick search of the internet came up with a few other common dishes....and kedgeree seemed to hit the spot for our Sunday brunch.

 

The main components - rice, peas, smoked haddock and eggs. It was extremely simple to cook and assemble. Overall,  this was a lovely hearty filling dish and I'd definitely make this again.

Benin: lourobbo's kitchen

I hate to admit it but I'd never even heard of Benin (pronounced buh-NIN), geography was never my strong point. And so it wasn't an enormous surprise that finding a Beninoise restaurant in London proved fruitless.

We had a short hiatus over Christmas, but now into 2011, let's get back on track with eating the A to Z. Benin's cuisine certainly has some French influence, I used this great website, Celtnet Recipes again to choose 3 dishes.

For main, Crabe Beninoise - a hot spicy gratin of crab, served with rice and hot sauce.

 

It had quite a strange texture, almost a bit too dry with the breadcrumbs. However, if you like spicy food, this is one for you, the dish itself had a heap of chili, and then topped with hot sauce (I didn't have any African sauce, but used Mexican as a stand-in), it certainly cleared the sinuses.

For pudding, we had Flan au citron. Effectively, a creme caramel with a tinge of lemon. And here the saga begins. It took me 3 attempts to get this right. The recipe calls for the mixture to be baked in a flan dish in a bain marie. So I merrily poured the creamy eggy soup into what I would consider to be a flan dish. Put it on the hob, in my biggest pan and poured some boiling water round the edge, bain marie stylee!

And then the loose flan dish bottom floated up and the boiling water flowed in. Disaster.

I'd also used up all the milk in the house, so had to leave it for the evening. I'd try again on Sunday.

Sunday morning - thought about the usual creme caramels you often come across in family run Italian restaurants (and trust me, I've eaten a few of these), and went for the pyrex bowl option.

Mixed up the creme, poured into the pyrex bowl and on the hob (liked a steamed pudding I thought) for 45 minutes. Made myself a cup of tea and sat down to see if flan au citron take 2 would be any better.

An hour later, still liquid. Two hours later, still liquid. I give up.

I was determined to get this right and not to waste the lovely creamy mixture. This time, turned to the internet and looked at various creme caramel recipes. Consensus seemed to be to cook in the oven, in ramekins.

And here we have the results. Third time lucky! Tasted good too.

One more Benin recipe was on the menu for last weekend - Confit d'Arachide, a sweet snack of candied peanuts (I'd call it peanut brittle). Not healthy or good for your teeth in the slightest. But when was eating the A to Z ever about being good?

Benin, a mixed bag really. I learnt some things - how to pronounce Benin, and what not to do with bain maries. And we had a pretty decent meal.....eventually.

Next week, Bermuda!