Around the World in the Hetzel Kitchen

Picture from the state of Kerala, India courtesy of user Thangaraj Kumaravel on Flickr . India has an incredibly long and rich history which I could not do justice in this blog. Suffice to say there are a lot of influences in India and it influences the world. It is in Southern Asia and is the seventh biggest country in the world. It is slightly more than a third the size of the US. The World Factbook lists at least 13 spoken languages. It has the second highest population in the world at over 1.2 billion. Read more! India is a country I've been looking forward to since starting this journey. I had some grand plans. Different recipes from different parts of the country! Sharing food with friends! Finding some amazing curries! I got some of this done. I did multiple Indian recipes, but not necessarily from widely varying areas. Instead I asked some people I know that either lived in India for a while or had Indian ties to send me some recipes and I tries some of thos...

Photo of the Aurora in Iceland courtesy of Flickr user Moyan Brenn via Creative Commons Iceland is an island in Northern Europe, northwest of the UK. It has been fully independent since 1944, and also had three hundred years of independence starting in the 900's. It is about the same size as Kentucky and has a population of over 300,000. It has very high literacy, longevity, and social cohesion. Read more at the CIA World Factbook . I knew that Iceland was going to be difficult. An island nation does not mesh well with a fish allergy. When I saw that fermented shark, Hakarl , was the national dish it was off to a bad start. They traditionally made use of all parts of an animal, so I found a number of references to Svio , or boiled lambs head. I had to go in a different direction. After some searching, I found an Icelandic Asparagus Ham Bake . It seemed kinda like making a frittata which was familiar enough but definitely had some new stuff going on too. It claims to be...

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Dennis Jarvis via Creative Commons Hungary is a Central European country about the same size as Indiana. It is landlocked and the capital is Budapest. For more information, see the CIA World Factbook . I knew what I wanted to do for Hungary before I ever got there. Goulash . I remember loving it when my grade school served that for hot lunch (although, in retrospect, it was probably "American Goulash.") My in-laws mentioned it when they visited Hungary. The World Factbook even calls their liberalizing their economy "Goulash Communism." There really was no choice here. Best yet, my in-laws brought some paprika back from Hungary for me, so when the recipe called for Hungarian paprika I could definitively check it off the list. And in Hungarian! Somehow when I put this recipe into my meal planner (Plan To Eat...if you're interested, let me know!) it doubled the recipe, so I double-bought a lot of things. Like parsnips....