International Night A Father and Daughter Cook Their Way Around the World PDF
Preview International Night A Father and Daughter Cook Their Way Around the World
To Marian—there’s nobody with whom we would rather have dinner CONTENTS Introduction: The Family Ritual Talia’s Introduction On Recipes On Cooking with Children On Drinks On Fats and Oils On Sugar and Spice Equipment A Slightly Nutty Way to Open a Coconut On Salt Cod On Vegetables On Desserts Basic Recipes On Cooking Temperature Philippines Night Provence Night Kazakhstan Night Sweden Night Niger Night China Night Hawaii Night Saudi Arabia Night Mexico Night Brazil Night Sicily Night Japan Night Afghanistan Night Morocco Night Greece Night Cuba Night Naples Night Iran Night Egypt Night Romania Night Andalusia Night Algeria Night Brittany Night Tanzania Night Quebec Night Norway Night Cornwall Night Hungary Night New Orleans Night Senegal Night Aquitaine Night Korea Night Haiti Night Newfoundland Night India Night French Guiana Night Germany Night Mongolia Night Peru Night Switzerland Night Ireland Night Argentina Night Portugal Night Nicaragua Night Russia Night Jamaica Night Sri Lanka Night Belgium Night Ethiopia Night Austria Night Turkey Night Emilia-Romagna Night Acknowledgments Bibliography Index of Recipes INTRODUCTION THE FAMILY RITUAL Before it was a book, International Night started as a family game. Our daughter, Talia, who has a far better memory than mine, says that she originated it. I don’t remember what the starting idea was because so many elements have been added since then that it is truly a collaborative concept. Our idea was to spin the globe once a week, and wherever Talia’s finger landed, we would cook a meal from that place on Friday night. Sometimes, though, between deciding on the recipes, shopping for the ingredients, and preparing the food, we needed more time, and Saturday or Sunday worked better. Some weeks the weekend was too packed for an International Night. Some weeks we were traveling, and more weeks I was traveling. But we enjoyed the game so much that we persisted, and eventually we had fifty-two International Nights, one for every week of the year. Talia and I cooked the meals together, and I carefully recorded the menus and recipes for each. The dinners led to discussions about the places and their cultures, with the dialogue always beginning with geography at the globe. Occasionally Talia’s finger would land on a place I had never been—ten times out of fifty-two—and then we would learn together. Of course Talia, Marian, and I enjoyed some dishes more than others. There was never a night in which there wasn’t at least one dish that pleased all of us. But I suppose that is like traveling. Some nights you eat better than others. Some nights we ate wonderfully. I tried to accommodate certain food prejudices of Talia’s, and unlike what is commonly believed by adults, all kids have their own tastes. So some kids may love things Talia hated, and the reverse. The one consistent taste is that kids like food that they grow themselves, harvest themselves, and make themselves. Talia inexplicably loves marinated anchovies and fresh sardines, so we use them whenever possible. She usually does not care for soup, but, for example, how can you go to Quebec without potage Saint-Germain? And some soups she loved. As I overheard a teenager in Manhattan saying to his friend, “I really like soup if it’s a soup I really like.” Certainly not all the recipes will appeal to everyone, but like Talia, Marian, and me, most anyone will find dishes in every meal that they enjoy. Occasionally we offer alternative dishes if we suspect that our choices will not be popular. And if there was a dish that we didn’t like, we reworked it another night or found a substitute. But it is always difficult to guess the tastes of others. All you can do is make good food. We cooked wherever Talia’s finger landed. If it landed on a country with widely varied regional cuisines, we tried to cook from the region on which she landed. This has led us to two very different Canadian nights, three very different French ones, and three Italian ones. We could have done more than one English, Spanish, or German night, but on those countries she landed only once. We did not do places she landed in the US because the idea was to be international. We made an exception when she landed on New Orleans and Hawaii because those places have such distinct cuisines that it tasted like going to another country. If she landed somewhere we had already been, we would spin again. For some reason she kept landing on Kazakhstan. Well, it’s large and in central latitudes. But Russia is even larger and it was only after forty-seven nights that she finally landed there. It became Marian’s task before dinner to guess the country to which we were going. Since she had a whole globe’s worth of countries and regions to choose from, we gave hints, small facts—when possible, geographic facts—about the country to guide her along. She guessed some countries fairly quickly, although I think she is still working on Tanzania. You will find the hints we gave for each country at the beginning of each night. You can use ours, or you can make up your own if you would like to play this game with your family too. We tried to make each International Night an occasion. Talia would enter the dining room to announce the night, and we liked to have some music. She announced Jamaica Night to Jimmy Cliff’s “Miss Jamaica,” and could there have been a better accompaniment than Prokofiev’s theme from the great Eisenstein film Alexander Nevsky when she announced Russia Night in peasant costume? If Nevsky’s triumphant march into Pskov with a bass-voice chorus swearing to defend Mother Russia doesn’t get you in the mood for borscht and Stroganoff, what will? You can also create your own customs. I tried to make this both fun and an educational experience. Food is the best way to teach history and geography and most everything else. —Mark Kurlansky TALIA’S INTRODUCTION “Introducing International Night!” That was my line. Before the meal was served I would march out to announce that night’s country. I would be wearing an outfit designed by me to match a traditional style from that country and it was made entirely out of stuff in the house. I had an advantage—my father has traveled to most of these countries. So for Mongolia Night I could borrow a traditional hat he had brought back from Mongolia. For Ireland Night I had a leprechaun hat and red beard I got when I visited Ireland. But for other nights, like Switzerland Night, I just put together some things on my own: a straw fedora, a white shirt, my father’s suspenders, shorts, and a plastic yodeling pickle that a friend had given me at a birthday party. For Argentina Night I wore a long dress, a flower in my teeth, and I danced the tango. On Hawaii Night I wore a fake hula skirt that I found in my old dress-up clothing box and a bikini top. On Senegal Night I wrapped a cotton flower print on my head. Then the meal would begin. As each dish was about to be served, my father would tell me how to pronounce it and I would walk out introducing the food. Although sometimes my father wouldn’t know how to pronounce the dish, and we would fake it. One place kids sometimes get a chance to experience food from different countries is in a restaurant. But restaurants often give children a “kids’ ” menu. Is that because children cannot enjoy sophisticated cuisine? No. They can. It’s adults who think they can’t! Not to say that a lot of kids don’t love the (in my opinion) bland and one-dimensional food on a kids’ menu; they love it because they haven’t truly gotten a taste of sophisticated cuisine. It frustrates me when a waiter places a kids’ menu in front of me. WHY CAN’T THE WORLD JUST ACCEPT THAT CHILDREN JUST WANT TO EAT GOOD FOOD? One of my hopes for this book is that while kids are learning about all these different cuisines and cultures, they are getting a chance to taste these foods too. Maybe they’ll sometimes prefer the more complicated flavors that come with a variety of cuisines and agree with me that international dishes can add up to some really delicious family meals. —Talia Kurlansky
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