Around the World in 80 Plates

As if the CD Project isn't enough for me, I've decided to use this blog to document another project for 2012 (and probably beyond).

The BF and I don't necessarily see each other every day, but we talk several times a day and we always make time for each other on the weekends. Weekends usually revolve around food for us, either cooking or occasionally going out to eat. (We're still on a tight budget because he is still without job.)

Wednesday or Thursday of each week, we have the same conversation: "What are we going to eat this weekend?" Inevitably, because we can both cook pretty well (thankfully) and have such varied tastes, we often cook from a different style of cuisine every week. The BF had the great idea recently to just pick a different country every week to cook from. Our method of choosing countries? See that jar above with the slips of paper in it? That's it. We sat down and thought of every country/region we could come up with that had viable cuisine and wrote them down. We also referenced the Frugal Gourmet's "Our Immigrant Ancestors" cookbook (an EXCELLENT one to have if you can find it) and the international foods section at Kroger. Before cutting them up, I counted, and I think we have well over 70 countries and styles of cuisine in there. For some regions, such as China, we broke it down into the different types of Chinese cuisine. There are some countries in there that I don't know anything about. It will be an adventure learning how to cook recipes native to that area.

This past weekend, we drew our first pick. I was more than a little thankful that it was something relatively easy: San Francisco/Pacific Northwest. The BF didn't think it was as easy at first so he suggested we draw a backup, but when it was Hawaii we realized we were going to be eating seafood either way. I think we put Hawaii back - I hope so, because I do think that one stands on its own (and we discussed having some kind of Spam-related dish because of its prevalence in Hawaii!).

Here's what we came up with:

Clockwise, from top: wild rice, spicy teriyaki-glazed salmon, quinoa crusted scallops, and mixed green salad with dried apples, pecans and a gorgonzola vinaigrette.

We figured haute cuisine with lots of fresh ingredients was pretty representative of the Pacific NW. The quinoa-crusted scallops I copied from a dish I had at a restaurant called Andina in Portland a few years ago. It was so good I've been trying to re-create it ever since. The last time I tried it, I couldn't get the quinoa to stick. This time I coated the scallops in cornstarch, then egg, then cooked quinoa, and pan-fried them. The coating stuck on a little better and was more crunchy, but still not quite like what I had at Andina. I'm not complaining, though, because the scallops were tasty and huge.

The salmon was divine and I could have eaten a lot more of it, but as you can see that's a lot of food on that plate so I was really full. The salad was also delicious - the dressing was a vinaigrette that tasted something like a mix of honey-mustard and that ginger dressing you get at Japanese restaurants. You'd think blue cheese would have no business getting all up in there, but it was super delicious.

The rice? Well, of course we couldn't do San Fran/Pacific NW without the San Francisco treat!
It was actually pretty tasty, although these box mixes always have too much sodium.

I am excited about this adventure! It nearly solves the "what's for dinner" question for at least the next year of weekends, and gives us one more reason to be excited about the weekend. Can't wait to see what comes out of the jar next time!