Norman Darlo
Today’s lunch fresh off the pan: potato farls with fried egg, onion and kimchi. Potato farls are a kind of potato pancake, made of mashed potato, flour and egg, mixed together, rolled out and fried. Hen’s eggs I don’t need to explain, nor onions, I think. But kimchi (or kimchee) – what’s that? It’s something I make myself, being cabbage fermented in brine with lots of ginger, garlic and chilli. It has a very pleasant sour taste, is full of good bacteria, and adds a touch of exotic excitement to many dishes. It takes about two weeks to mature to a good strong flavour, but only gets better in the weeks ahead 🙂
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Question of
Where does kimchi originate?
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Yes
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No
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China
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Philippines
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Question of
Where do you reckon kimchi originates?
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Japan
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Korea
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It does look appetizing. With potato, it sure is a tasteful food.
If only I was good and patient in cooking. I kind of hurry my cooking dreading going through the process of cooking.
Patience is an important virtue! But it can be hard to be patient when waiting for your food 🙂
What kind of food do you like to eat? I realise I know nothing about east African food. In west Africa I ate a lot of yam and cocoyam (both usually pounded) and sometimes rice – but there were always stones in the rice!
Yah, West Africans like eating yams a lot. When it comes to rice, you’ve to buy either the packaged one or the one that is weighed when you request it at the shop. The second one always contain stones as the rice is usually in an open sack or not many stones were picked out.
In East Africa, we normally eat ugali. Some call it thick porridge but I don’t think that’s a proper English name for it (because I don’t think porridge can be solid like tea unless the temperature is too low). The way ugali is cooked is by boiling water in a pan until it bubbles. Then you add maize flour while mixing it with water by stirring with a wooden stick until it forms like a lump. It is usually white and once ready to be served, it is usually like a mountain – flat on one side, and raised on the other side. One can eat ugali with any stew or simply with leafy vegetables which many people can afford. Actually, maize, specially maize flour is the staple food of East Africans. Ugali and kales is the cheapest food to cook. In fact, kales in Swahili is called sukuma wiki. Sukuma is a Swahili word meaning push and wiki too is a Swahili word meaning week. If you join the two, you’ll get the impression it’s the most eaten food in this region.
We do have chapati. I think this one originated from India. In this case you pour wheat flour in a plastic bowl containing warm water. You mix the two till a lump is formed. Then you make several balls out of them. You flatten the balls with a small wooden roller (don’t know what it’s called but I think you can get an idea) on a circular kind of wooden stool (still don’t know what it’s called) that is the same size as a sauce pan without a handle. Once you flatten it on the circular wooden ‘stool,’ you pour some cooking oil on a sauce pan and then you put it. You can eat chapati with any hot beverage and any stew.
Also rice.
These are the most common foods eaten. Not forgetting fish:)
Don’t forget fish! We already talked bout Tilapia (Nile perch) I think. I enjoyed it a lot. In Italy and Romania, people make something like Ugali from maize, called polenta (Italy) and mamaliga (Romania), but it is usually more yellow than white. They eat it with stew, as you describe. Or if there is some left over, they cut it in squares and fry it – yummy!
Yah, I had forgotten you’d talked about tilapia 😀 Yah, from the yellow maize. I hear the yellow one is better than the white maize.
They have taken it to a high level…sounds yummy indeed:)
I am seeing this first time. But it is looking nice.
I don’t know whether you would like it, Giri, but I enjoyed it a lot. What do you like to eat for lunch?
This dish is making me very hungry. Would love to give it a try.
I make it at least twice a week for lunch!
Kimchi sounds very healthy. And I love potato pancakes. I am sure I would like this one.
This dish looks very tasty. Thanks for sharing the recipe. I love potatoes so I will try the recipe.
Potatoes are great! Although they came originally from America, many Americans call them “Irish potatoes” because the Irish adopted them as their own 🙂
That is funny, we did adopt your Irish potatoes. 🙂
Only after we adopted your American ones 😀
well the poll monster bit your post really hard!!!!
That looks tasty, when I was in Seoul, my host decided that I needed to go see Kimchi being created. I have in my life gone to many things I regretted and have eaten many things that I wish I hadn’t (Cobra is the top of that list).
But the smell of that process nearly knocked me to my knees!
Yeah, dang that monster’s assets! I have no idea how to work around the software problems in the poll maker, but the one I made the other day worked perfectly. Then this 🙁 Should I refresh while creating a poll? – that’s what works in the quiz maker.
Kimchi has a pretty strong smell, even in the small quantities I work with. So I guess a kimchi workshop could really knock you out of your standing! But so you like the taste? I believe the stuff is fairly ubiquitous in Korea. Tell me about the cobra, if you will.
So I was in Vietnam and the team took me to a restaurant (their favorite). We had dinner, i asked what it was and they gave me a funny look.
Five years later I was watching my favorite cooking show (Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern). He was in Vietnam!
He went to the place I had been to. Except he had a translator (this is in the days long before google translate when I went). Translation Snake Palace.
Then he had the same dish I had (translation King Cobra).
I am glad I didn’t know I wouldn’t have tried it. It was really good! I emailed my Vietnamese friend asking if they didn’t tell me the name because it was a snake. He just replied LOL.
Wow that’s crazy finding out so long afterwards! My wife ate snake in Malaysia or Indonesia and said it was pretty good. The strangest thing I ate was field rat, in the form of rat and yam stew in Togo. Sweet meat, and I’d steer well clear of it now, with bubonic plague in the news. (Or maybe the crickets and mealworms were weirder 🙂 )
i wish snake were the strangest food I ate.
we also ate the banana slugs in south America. That was bizarre
I’ve seen those. I don’t know why eating slugs should seem so much yuckier than eating snails, but it does! How were they prepared – were they still soft?
they were still soft, the taste was amazing, but the gag reflex was like eating Durian.
I have no gag reflex with durian – in fact I love the thing. I’m imagining you swallowing the slug whole, like an oyster?
I would have to ask if you have a good or bad sense of smell then!
I swallowed it whole and woke up in the middle of the night convinced it was moving in my stomach.
Seriously, I love the smell and the taste, man! I don’t want to imagine too clearly wwhat that slug felt like in your stomach 🙂
my dad and I cut into one in our kitchen in Thailand. Durian was banished from our apartment permanently after that. Dad and I were lucky we weren’t banished with it.
It’s one of those things you either hate or love, I think. Like Marmite!
my mom hated the smell of durian. We had to open it on the porch. I didn’t like the smell but I love the taste.