Country 17 - Belgium.

Belgium is a country in Western Europe bordered by Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France and the North Sea. It is densely populated and made up from Dutch speaking Flemish people and French speaking Walloons - native Belgians.

Belgium has many Michelin starred restaurants and is famous for beer, chocolate, waffles and fries with mayonnaise. The national dishes of Belgium are steak and fries with salad and mussels and chips.

What a relief to travel to Belgium for this weeks meal. A country that we have visited and partaken of its traditional food and drink! What could go wrong?

So for our meal this week we made Tomate aux Crevettes and Moules Frites. Somehow we forgot the chocolate! 😮 We did find a disappointingly small selection of Belgian beer in our local liquor store - seriously only 2 types and one of them was Stella!

The tomate aux crevettes was  crazily easy to make - just hollow out some tomatoes and fill them with tiny prawns tossed in the mayonnaise, serve and eat with crusty French bread! 

The hardest bit was carrying the plates to the table without 

the tomatoes falling over and the prawns falling out!

We have made Moules so may times that Gary didn't actually need a recipe. Simply saute the onions and garlic, toss in the mussels with white wine and herbs, toss for a few minutes and Voila! (as they say in French speaking Belgium)

                                                    

                                           

                                      

Fries or chips really don't need a recipe do they?

Our finished meal with a side of mayonnaise to dip the chips in - delicious!

The beer - Stella for Gary and strawberry beer for 

Charlotte and me (because we are girls and like pink!!!! )

Mmmmmmmmmmm!

Verdict - I wish we had remembered to buy Belgian chocolate!!!!!!!

Country 16 - Belarus

Belarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe.

It is bordered by Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania. Until the 20th century it was part of many different states including  the Principality of Polotsky, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire.

Most people are Belarussian but there are also many people from the neighbouring countries as well as Jews and 'Tatars' - Turkic speaking people who live in Europe apparently!

Belarusian food is predominantly based on meat and vegetable dishes seen in all countries in this part of Europe. It has Slavic roots but is also influenced by Polish and Lithuanian food. Dranki is the national dish - a type of potato pancake.

We really struggled to choose recipes this week - while we enjoy trying different foods there was nothing at all which sounded tasty and made us want to cook it. In the end we looked at some other bloggers choices and worked from there.

Finally we decided to make Belarus' Borscht Soup, Kotleta Pokrestyansky, Mushroom stuffed Dranki, and for dessert, Baked apples with honey.

For reasons that will become clear this is a very brief blog. For a start Gary cooked as I was shelling peas - thousands of peas.

A Belarus Borscht differs from a Russian one because it has a lot of chunky vegetables in it.

                                

I'm not a great lover of beetroot but it is a pretty colour.

                                

Bob helpfully guarding the recipes 

- we should have left them there and gone out for dinner!!!!

                                

Everything keeps getting pinker and then redder.

                               

The finished dish.

Actually not that bad - Gary liked it enough to eat his and then finish off mine!

Pork chops!!!

                             

Now onto the main course and making the Draniki.

You had to grate the potatoes and combine them with egg, milk and flour.

                              

Then put flattened spoonfuls in the pan and add the mushroom mixture on top then another layer of potato - so the mushroom is sandwiched in the middle. 

                               

Flipping them to cook the other side was an interesting experience.

                               

The finished meal.

Ok, I'm struggling to write this now!

We have a freezer full of pork. A friend of ours raised pigs last year and so we have half a pig in our freezer. When Gary went to take out pork chops he spotted some wrapped in brown paper - not from our friends pig! Thinking that that pork needed eating first we decided to use that. 

It looked and smelt fine!

Now, as I said, nothing about any of these recipes excited us - but Belarus was the next country on our list and we were prepared to be eating a memorable meal!

It will be a memorable meal!

The meat must have gone off!!!!! 

It smelt fine while it was cooking but when we each took our first bite it was immediately apparent that this meat wasn't ok at all!

eeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!! Why can I not get rid of that taste even 4 days laterrrrrrr!

In conclusion - never eat unidentified meat from the depths of the freezer!

And other than the Borshch, I have no idea what Belarusian food tastes like!

Oh yes desert. We never make desert! But luckily this week we did.

Baked apples with honey. So easy to make. Cut out the core and fill with honey and put in the oven to cook while you remove all traces of pork and mushroom product from the house!
Then eat with vanilla ice cream - mmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Oh yes Belarusian drink! 😁

              

Country 15 - Barbados

Barbados is an island in the Lesser Antilles region of the Caribbean. It is 21 miles long and 14 miles wide and the nearest island is the Windward Island which is 104 miles away.                                                 

Barbados was inhabited by the Kalinago people in the thirteenth century and before that by Amerindians. It was visited by Spanish explorers in the 15th century and claimed by the Spanish crown but then British settlers arrived in the 1600's and it became a British colony. It became an independent state in 1966.

The culture of Barbados is a blend of African, Creole, Indian and British. The national dish is cou-cou and flying fish with a spicy gravy.

We were unable to find flying fish locally so we made Myrna Taylor's Bajan fishcakes with Barbadian Pickled Cucumbers and 'Fancy Coleslaw'.

I made the pickled cucumber first so that it had time to marinade. I used a potato peeler to thinly slice the cucumber and then mixed it with grated onion, lime juice, salt, parsley and a small amount of scotch bonnet chilli. A quick observation here - in our local supermarkets you can only buy chillies in sealed packets. This week I needed one scotch bonnet chilli but I had to buy 5 million (well 8 anyway) - seriously who eats that many scotch bonnet chillies!!!!???? 😳

                             

The finished pickled cucumber dish.

Next onto making the Fancy Coleslaw. I was struggling to find vegetable dishes to go with the fishcakes and then I remembered we had bought this cookery book whilst on holiday in Jamaica. It has dishes from the many different countries in the Caribbean. The coleslaw is meant to be a Carribbean standard recipe so it fit well here.

                         

You use 1 cup shredded cabbage, 1 cup grated carrot, 1/2 cup shredded fresh coconut 😁, a chopped onion (I used spring onions), 1/2 cup chopped pineapple, 2 tbsp raisins (you can also add 1/2 tsp of Scotch Bonnet, I didn't) all of this is dressed with 2 tbsp of brown sugar (I used honey instead and just 1 tbsp), 1 tbsp of white wine vinegar and about 1 cup of mayonnaise. It then needs to be chilled and stays crunchy for a couple of days.

The coleslaw ready to be chilled in the fridge.

                    

I haven't used salt cod before although it is very popular locally so I was excited to use it for this recipe. It was so hard and salty I was convinced the fish cakes were going to be too salty. It had to be boiled for 20 minutes and then rinsed in cold water. Of course I let it boil over and my cooker hob became very salty - I am still washing it off!

       

Into a large bowl I put flour, baking powder, chopped spring onions, thyme. some chopped Scotch Bonnet and garlic.

              

Then I flaked the unsalted salt cod over the top. 

Then I added one egg, cooked diced potato and 1/2 cup of water and stirred everything together to make a lumpy batter. 

This was a totally new way of making fishcakes and I was sure a recipe for a sticky burnt mess in the frying pan!

I heated some oil in the pan and dropped tablespoons of

 the mixture into the oil.

LOOK!!!! They didn't stick! 

We made two dipping sauces; Mary Rose or thousand island and a mixture of mayonnaise and sriracha. The recipe suggested ketchup, hot sauce, tamarind sauce or mayonnaise.

The finished fishcakes.

I forgot to take a photo of the meal before we started eating so here is a photo of when I had nearly finished eating!

It might have been only Tuesday but the sun was shining and we had ginger beer and coconut rum so what were we to do?

Verdict? MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM! The fishcakes were very light and airy and with just enough chilli for it to give subtle heat and the coleslaw is my new favourite slaw. Not so sure about the cucumber. I am not a lover of cucumber and Gary doesn't like it at all - this recipe didn't change our minds. 
I think I may try making 'normal' fishcakes using this recipe but adding bits of bacon instead of chilli.