Around the World in the Hetzel Kitchen

Guyana is a country in Northern South America between Suriname and Venezuela - one of the smaller ones on the top right corner on the map that people seem to have a hard time remembering.  It is slightly smaller than Idaho.  It has been both a Dutch and British colony.  Three quarters of the population are Afro-Guyanese or Indo-Guyanese.  A lot of indentured laborers came over from India and made a huge cultural and ethnic impact.  Read more in the CIA World Factbook . This Indian influence explains the recipe that stood out to me when I was looking through lots of lists: Chicken Curry .  Yes, a curry recipe that claims to be authentically Guyanese.  This I had to try. The recipe didn't specifically say you had to start with a full chicken, just "3 lb chicken cut up into small pieces."  I decided I had to do this, though.  Despite the fact I've done it a lot, I still don't enjoy it.  I was also highly disappointed at the yield. ...

Kevin and I went to Italy in 2009.  More about that when I actually get to Italy in my regular country cooking.  While we were there we had lots and lots of good food.  Amazing food.  One thing that I particularly remembered was Spaghetti alla Carbonara. Fast forward to our first Valentines Day as a married couple and I wanted to make something delicious.  I looked through my favorite cookbook and found a recipe one for that same Italian dish.  Boom.  Decision made.  It was really good and became a regular item on the menu. (Unfortunately the chocolate cake that Kevin made on that Valentine's Day got knocked off of the counter by the cat.) I highly recommend this cookbook! Before each recipe it has a long description of what the recipe is and how they came to this version.  They try a lot of different things and then taste test them all.  I kinda want that job. Spaghetti alla Carbonara is basically spaghetti noodles in a ...

Writing a post about "authentic" recipes and cooking is a lot harder than I thought it would be.  There is a lot of research and ingredient sourcing fairly complicated recipes.  If you can understand the instructions in the first place. Don't worry, I'm not planning on stopping.  I have multiple posts in progress, and Hungary on the menu plan. It is just that cooking internationally-inspired food does not have to be this hard.  We have lots of dinners that are influenced by international cuisine and we love it.  I'm going to have some posts of these Everyday International foods to both encourage myself and hopefully give you some easier ways to join in the fun. These will be a lot less vetted than other things.  I make no claims about authenticity, just about taste and process. Italy, India, and Mexico will probably be some of the first countries we visit though this, but not the last.

Guinea-Bissau is a small West African country bordering Guinea and Senegal.  There has been a lot of unrest since they gained independence from Portugal in 1974.  Their conveniently-named capital is Bissau.  Read more in the CIA World Factbook . We're catching up to life a little bit here, although this was still about four months ago.  I cannot for the life of me find the original recipe I used.  I did Bolo a Moda da Guine Bissau - basically, Cake in the Style of Guinea-Bissau.   This one is fairly close , but not exactly what I followed. Oh well, we press on anyway. This looks simple.  A five ingredient cake.  I can do this without anything special from the store!  Butter, flour, sugar, eggs, and milk.  Let's do this! Did I not soften the butter ahead of time?  Was I supposed to?  The world may never know. Brendan spent some time as photographer.  I apologize.   Add some flour and milk and we'r...

Guinea is a coastal nation in West Africa.  The official language is French and it is slightly smaller than Oregon.  Read more here ! According to what Google tells me is West Africa, we have already done The Gambia, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Benin, and Burkina Faso.  I have already had a lot of difficulty finding recipes for countries in this region, so I decided to take a different tactic this time.  I got out my trusty International cookbook and found a recipe that said it was from Western Africa.  Do they make it specifically in Guinea?  I don't know.  But I am in the right region. The recipe that caught my eye was Kaklo - Banana and Chile Fritters.  How awesome does that sound?  More of a side dish or appetizer, but I can work with that.  I was originally going to do this in Colorado over Christmas, but things got a LITTLE busy.  Turns out adding seven to nine people to a household of normally two can create some chaos. When ...

Ugh, losing everything you wrote is awesome.  Let's try this again... Guatemala is a Central American nation slightly smaller than the size of Pennsylvania.  There are over 14.5 million people living there, and the capital city is Guatemala City.  Learn more on the CIA World Factbook . I didn't have anything in mind when looking for a recipe to make for Guatemala.  When I saw Guatemalan Tacos (second on the page), however, I figured it was a match made in heaven.  We do Taco Tuesdays almost every week, but these were definitely different than the heavily seasoned meat + flour tortillas we were used to.  Plus there were ingredients I wasn't used to using.  Perfect! This was also the first around the world cooking after the twins were born.  In fact, they were four months old by this time.  Wasn't going to get anything done before that. Amelia left, Emily right Around the time of this dinner So anyway, back to cooking.  Boi...

You know what?  I could write out a bunch of facts about Grenada for you, or I could just l ink to the source .  The CIA Factbook is full of info.  And it is doing stuff like this that gets me so far behind.  So instead, let me summarize. Grenada is in the Caribbean.  It is small, like most islands.  Twice the size of DC, it was "discovered" by Columbus himself.  Oh, and we went there on our honeymoon cruise. It was a Sunday and my brother's birthday, so we took a taxi to a Church and also found a restaurant with WiFi so we could send him a birthday message.  Grenada is known as the "Isle of Spice" because of all of the spices grown and sold there, so we decided to order some stuff at the restaurant.  Kevin wanted to try a "Cheeseburger in Paradise." It was awful. So instead we went and explored and looked for some spice shops and stands.  We know we must have been getting into local flair because people kept asking if we were l...