Andorra (I bread your pardon?!?!?!?)

On July 28th, 1993 Andorra joined the United Nations.

Andorra (aka, the Principality of Andorra) is located between Spain and France.  It is the sixth smallest nation in Europe, covering an area a little over 180 square miles, and has a population of a little over 85,000 people.  The cuisine there is primarily Catalan (Catalonia is a part of Spain), but has French influences as well for obvious reasons.

I was interested in making two dishes which was forcefully reduced to one as Amber tried to steal them from me, but I managed to hold onto pa amb tomàquet which is bread, primarily peasant bread, smeared with tomato and oil, and sometimes garlic.

I have made many pastries before, including breads, but the recipe I chose threw me off as the dough turned out a lot wetter and stickier than I expected it, even with all the extra flour I added.  Anyways, I poured it into some pie dishes (bad choice, which I regrettably did not lubricate beforehand) and packed them to go.  As you can see, unwrapping it was a bit challenging.



Actually, now that I think about it maybe the consistency was fine.  Shoot.  I don't know, it was all tasty in the end!

I baked it once I got to Amber and Bryan's (nothing is better than the smell of fresh baked bread!), and after that I popped in the garlic to roast (nothing is better than the smell of garlic roasting in the over except for fresh baked bread!).  It smelt good!  My goal was to have the pa amb tomaquet as a sort of appetizer, but the rest of the dinner was ready soon after.

I really enjoyed this meal.  Simple and delicious!  As proof I offer you the following:

Before:

After:

After scraping our plates clean, Amber put the finishing touches on the dessert which was a sweet berry Coco.

The crust was crispy on the edges and doughy in the middle and was a little tart, not overly sweet like some desserts.  Nice job Amber!

Compared to previous meals, Jenny and I agreed we had it easy.  The recipes we chose didn't take much effort.  Meanwhile, the entire time we are cooking Amber is talking about "Bryan's dish", and what "Bryan was making".  In reality, Bryan was busy shooting things on his TV as Amber finished prepping and cooking two dishes!

It's okay Bryan, I'm not giving you a hard time.  Really.  Quite the opposite.

ALL HAIL BRYAN!
KING OF CLEAN UP!
LORD OF KITCHEN TIDINESS!
WE ARE BUT INSECTS IN THE VAST SHADOW THAT IS YOUR CLEANLINESS!!!

As the rest of us ladies proceeded to enjoying some drawing games Bryan spent the next hour?... hour and a half?... cleaning up after our kitchen Armageddon.  Thanks Bryan!

(Celebrated March 7th, 2016)