Country Dish challenge: Cuisines from around the world.

So I have set myself a new challenge. 

Sat at home, eating whatever was left in the fridge got me thinking. What shall I eat? Thinking about this and watching The Food Network together made me very hungry. Eggs and Potatoes for dinner, just is not good enough. So I needed to set myself a challenge.

So here goes the plan. 
Every week, I will cook a dish from a different country. So from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, here it goes. I have decided to tackle this alphabetically. I have looked at a few lists, and one says there are 195 countries, the others say 240 or 251. I will look towards 200+ and see how it goes.


Week 1: Afghanistan.
Thankfully after some searching and friends input via social media i chose the national dish of Afghanistan. I was happy with the dish and country as it is quite similar to Iranian cooking. The dish was the Afghani Pilau, or Kabuli Pilau, after the capital of the country.
 

Ingredients

The ingredients are all above and the recipe was a slow cooking one, so I started immediately once i got home. Do look at the recipe online, I used this one from SBS and it helped a great deal. Sweet and Savoury this dish was a great start to the challenge.
The ingredients are:

• Rice soaked in water for at least a couple of hours
• Meat (Beef or Lamb preferrably)
• Sugar
• Stock from the cooked Meat
• Cardamom Seeds
• Garam Masala
• Salt
• Onion
• Garlic
• Carrots
• Dried Raisins

From above

Simple instructions too:

1. Fry Onions until golden and then add meat, salt and garlic
2. Once browned cover with water and cook slowly until tender (at least 1 hour)
3. Separately, heat sugar until caramelized, add stock. garam masala and cardamom, once all boiled slightly keep aside
4. Drain rice and cook in boiling water for about 5mins
5. Mix sugary water with rice.
6. Heat carrots with sugar and raisins and then add this to the rice and add the cooked meat too.
7. Heat all together for about 15 mins and you are all done.

Easy. Do it. But follow the instructions on the link and probably not mine.


Next country = Albania

Another view