Hector

Appearantly only the berry is edible on the whole berberis-bush.. the rest of the bush is filled with poison!

the best falafel is moist inside and served in thin fresh khobz or liba-bread, with cucumbers, pickled whole chillies, chopped cilantro, chopped tomatoes, pickled sliced cucumbers, a pickled purple middle-eastern bitter vegetable that I've never knew what it was, some kind of yogurt-garlic sauce, some kind of chile-sauce, some kind of houmous with tahini. Arabic feta-style cheese is good too, as a nice addition... this is the great falafel that I purchase at the middle eastern immigrant's vendors in the suburbs of the swedish city of Malmö very often - there's always almost a mayonaise sauce in the falafel here to, but I'll guess it's there because the falafel has to reach the scandinavian tastebuds. Döner-Kebab, Börek, French Fries, Ayran, is sold at these little places too.

I've once had a kebab made of the opossum rats! you know those three climbing possums that live in australia. It was just meat on a stick without any kind of seasoning.... And it tasted goddamn dirt!!!!! It tasted disgusting and was so stiff it was barely chewable. you need lots of chilli to even get a bite of it.

This isn't entirely Thai, but anyway! What's wrong with home made curry pastes? I've always make them in a pestle and mortar or with a blender if I ain't got time, and they're really really good! It depends what I have at home, and what sort of curry you wanna make for what kinds of ingridient but this is the ingridients I use, and make variations on. Always fry the curry paste in vegetable oil before adding liquid or meat to the pot. the basics: Buah Kelahs = lots of minced malaysian shallotts some fresh garlic loads of fresh chilies (red, green, blue, yellow, doesn't matter what colour) (use dried chilies as a substitute, or ground ones if you really doesn't have any choice) a big bit of fresh peeled root ginger. fresh tumeric or ground dried, depending on availbility (leave out if you don't want any yellow colour) additions: coriander, whole seeds preferably cumin (for "moslem" meat dishes like lamb curry) Blacan paste = paste made of shrimp that needs frying either within the paste, or before on it's own. fennel seeds = indian addition to fish dishes. a nice big piece of galangal root. some teaspoons of gula melaka = palmsugar a single big fresh kaffir lime leave = gives lots of flavour if added directly to the paste. ground mehdi (fenugreek seeds) some star anisseeds (for birds or meat stews) some fresh cardamoms ( for meat curries) Any more suggestions?

Looks like peeled Nisperos (a spanish fruit)

I don't think it's so common that the Spanish cook with cheese, not as much as French or Italians.. For one: there is steak with cabrales. A real classic. And the ussual pintxo/tapas style goat cheese with something else (like anchovies) on a stick, and then theres the tortilla with cheese, the croquets.. etcetra.. loads of ways to serve cheese as a tapa.

I thought that they where called Berberis in Persian, guess I was wrong.. I don't get it, but is it the same berry that you use when you make sumac..

I can imagine, The Minnesotanslike that stuff. Here in Sweden we eat Lutfisk (lyefish) as lunch with melted butter, 'tatoes and mustardsauce every christmas eve.. There's bad and not so bad lutfisk. some is quite ok some is quite disgusting, depending on how you've treated it.. but plain boiled salt cod is always better! I believe Lipeäkala (or Lutfisk) is pretty popular in MN and they even have an anual festival celebrating it. ←

Here in Sweden, bagels isn't traditional jewish so the only ones we have here is american copycats, "beigels" which is cooked in a steam-oven but doesn't tastes like bagels at all.. They aren't boiled you know.. they're just done like every other bread! We got all kinds of bagel crimes around here, you can imagine. Toasted bagels (yes It's a crime!!), quatered, bagel halfs, ciabattas with a hole in them that's sold as bagel bagels! No good at all.. but there are a few good bagels found at good bakeries, but most is found at Starbucks-copy-cat-cafés.

I'm glad they didn't. By the way, did they bring Lipeäkala (or Lutfisk) with them to the New World? which is salt cod that has been put in lye to make it taste nothing and get a slimey gelatinous consistency. Ussually it's consumed as christmas-lunch! Haha! no cheating.. Yup! you're all almost right.. It's Kalakukko which is a Finnish dish were you wrap up cured and smoked pork with whole riverfish and dill in a bread dough made of rye! Next! ← ←

Haha! no cheating.. Yup! you're all almost right.. It's Kalakukko which is a Finnish dish were you wrap up cured and smoked pork with whole riverfish and dill in a bread dough made of rye! Next!

Do you know what dishes are traditionally served for Nourouz? ← That's what I'm trying to find out! My iranian friends isn't interested in food at all.. when I ask them they just say: we eat this and that..

What's this then?

Any Iranian in here who can tell what they ate for the Iranian new years eve. It would be nice with some recipes.. if you have some.

One really great thing about algerian cooking! the fabulous spicy fresh merguez-sausages.. love them.

Fact on Mangosteens: Queen Victoria of England once offered an award of 50 million pounds to the one who could bring her a fresh mangosteen back to England. Now that is some effort to get some fruit! Durians are so scary!!!!

"According to Scandinavian traditions, if a boy and girl eat from the same loaf of bread, they are bound to fall in love. " I'm Scandinavian and has never heard about this!! Must be strange to believe in it though, then I've must have been falling in love with loads of girls in the lunch cafeteria at high school.. (but to think about it, that was actually true - I was) We had a tradition in sweden though, that if you get "the almond" (there always was just one) in your bowl of christmas rice-pudding, you're about to get married or filthy rich within the next year. (what would you choose). In the past they've had a coin instead of an almond.

This is such an inspiration, I want to do american style fried chicken right now! But anyway? what is Buttermilk? I have no idea, i'm not american..

Looks lovely Ejebud.. Tonight I made classic swedish fried herring for me and my brother, different kinds of sallad, and a pasta dish with loads of cheese.

The Culinaria Series is great.. I've got every culinaria book I've seen..

This summer I'm going to Darwin in the north you know! it's a city and then there's loooooads of bush.. I've been there before (thinking of going to queensland and the reef too) I love the wild meat. So when I was there the first time I went for tasting every kind of "exotic" meat (i'm swedish) available; crocodile, 'roo, emu, water buffalo, camel, barramundi etcetra.. I even went for one of those Possum Kebabs which tasted more like mud than meat, unsurprisingly. It was disgusting! Ok.. the spices and berries is the sort of thing I'm into.

Kropoek of palm heart?

Okay, gonna take a wild guess here.... it's a blue and white umbrella. I hear umbrellas are a good source of iron. Okay, another wild guess... rotten icelandic shark meat? ← Correctomundo!!! Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner.. ´ It's Icelandic "Ishaj" but it's not rotten, it's fermented

I use "East End's Garam Masala" which is a whole lot of whole spices mixed to perfection, and it tastes and smells so much. Really really good. I ground the spices in an old coffe bean grinder. It really gets that special smell out of them.

Try the clam and pork stew.. and the wonderfull Caldo Verde.. WOW!