Food Around the World

1. Southern's Chicken and Waffle

By that I meant chicken on top of a waffle with cream on the side. I first tasted this unique dish at Dames Chicken & Waffles in Durham, North Carolina. Surprisingly, it's very good! My favorite is the classy version with Vanilla & Almond shmear.

While the chicken tasted salty and is rich with seasonings, the waffle balances out with it's sweetness. Finally, the almond shmear gives sweet buttery taste and you can eat it however you like!

2. New Orleans' Sweet Beignet

My sister and I went to New Orleans in summer 2014 and tasted the dish at Cafe du Monde. It is located across Jackson Square and was filled with many tourists. You can call Beignet as a pastry, and it's essentially deep-fried dough with powdered sugar. Cafe du Monde offers coffee to drink while consuming Beignets.

3. Nigerian Meat Pie!

I love this food! Onyinye, my room mate came from Nigeria and she spoiled me with fantastic dishes from Nigeria! I ate Jeloff Rice, fried Plantain, Puff Puff, Fufu, Ogbono soup, and the meat pie. I'm featuring the meat pie now because I helped her make some at one time.

How do you make it?

1. First, you make the dough by mixing flour, egg, sugar, and salt in a bowl. While you mix them you add water little by little. Then the dough starts to thicken to a giant ball. Next, you scoop some of the dough and use a roller to flatten it. You can cut the dough into a circular shape (as shown on the far left picture). Do this to the remaining of the dough.
2. You can cook the pie's filling in the mean time. Mix oil, ground beef, slices of carrots, and slices of potatoes in the frying pan (see the picture in the middle).
3. For each shaped dough, you can smear egg yolk on the surface. Then put sufficient filling on top of it, fold it to shape as a half moon. Press the edges with the tip of the fork so the pie closes. In the middle, make air holes with fork (see picture on far right). Finally, smear the pie with egg yolk again.
   

Put the meat pies on an aluminum foil and inside an oven. Then voila!

4. Mexican's Quesadilla

I ate Quesadilla at Toreros, a Mexican American restaurant in Durham, North Carolina.

A quesadilla is a wheat tortilla folded in half and forms a half moon shape. Inside, there can be grilled chicken, beef steak, or other fillings. On the side, you usually see tomato salad, guacamole, sour cream, Mexican rice, and Rancho beans.

At the end of my visit, my friend and I also ordered Churros as our dessert. It's a fried-dough pastry with sugar on the top.

5. Alligator Salad

Yes. Alligator salad. Isn't that interesting for an appetizer?

My room mates and I went to Charleston, South Carolina during a break. We decided to stop by at Poogan's Porch to taste the Alligator Salad. Poogan's Porch is located at 72 Queen St, Charleston. At first, it seems that you're eating chicken meat the aftertaste is like fish.

6. Chinese Szechuan Tai An Yu Pian

There are many different type of Chinese food. The northern part for example, has different taste then the central. The southern part of China has even more different taste. Szechuan is a Chinese cuisine style from the southwestern part of China. It usually have strong spicy taste and has a lot of ingredients particularly garlic, chili peppers, and Sichuan pepper.

The tasty and spicy soup above is called Tai An Yu Pian from Gourmet Kingdom at East Main Street, Carborro, North Carolina. It has a lot of Mala sauce, which is oily, spicy, and gives a numbing taste in your mouth.

7. Japanese Octopus Takoyaki

This is one of my favorite Japanese dishes. "Tako" means octopus and "yaki" means fried. Hence, Takoyaki (たこ焼き) is fried octopus. The street vendor snack is usually served with Japanese Worcester sauce, mayonaise, dried green seaweed 'aonori', and shavings of dried bonito 'katsuobushi' (source: Wikipedia).

Japanese usually made them using a special frying pan called Takoyakiki. Much like cupcakes pan, Takoyakiki has holes to be filled with the batter.

8. Indonesian Sambal Hot Sauce

I know it sounds unfair to compare everything else with some hot sauce. But it's true that Indonesian Sambal are the best when compared to any kind of food (may it be grilled chicken, fried fish, lettuce, anything!). "Sambal" is our traditional chili sauce made with stone pestle and mortar. As you crush the chili peppers, you would add garlic, shallot, and other spices according to what you need. Below are the 9 main Sambal we have in Indonesia.

I'll explain clockwise, starting from the top.

• "Sambal Kecap" is made of sweet soy sauce, lime juice, red Thai chilies, lime leaves, and shallots. It's the perfect pair for Indonesian Chicken Satay.

• Next on the right is "Sambal Matah". It is raw Balinese Sambal made of shallots, garlic, fresh lime juice, roasted shrimp paste, and bird's-eye chilies (or what we call 'cabe rawit'). I think Sambal Matah is my favorite because it's very spicy and fresh.

• A lot of Javanese like "Sambal Terasi". It is made of red chilies, shallots, garlic, sugar, salt, and Terasi sauce. We usually eat it with fried Tempeh, fish, fried chicken, and other food.

• "Sambal Goreng Bali" is another Balinese Sambal. It has similar ingridient with Sambal Matah, but also contains Terasi sauce. Sambal Goreng Bali is fried, much like Sambal Terasi.

• "Sambal Manis" is made of garlic, chilies, tomatoes, vinegar, and other spices.

• "Sambal Tomat" mainly has tomatoes, red chilies, bird-eye's chilies (or Indonesian cabe rawit), shallots, garlic, and sometimes fried Terasi sauce.
• Finally, at the center is "Sambal Cabe Ijo". It is originally from Padang, West Sumatra. Sambal Cabe Ijo is made of green chilies, bird-eye's chilies, shallots, garlic, green tomatoes, lime juice, sugar, and salt.
  

Now as you can see above, we can eat the many different Sambal with a variety of dishes. For example, with fried shrimp mayonnaise sauce, fried fish, crab with soysauce, or water spinach with Belacan sauce. Of course, you would eat them with rice and maybe fresh coconut water!