Korea!!! (NEVER AGAIN WILL I COOK KOREAN FOOD)

Both The Republic of Korea (South) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North) joined the UN on September 17th, 1991.

FINALLY!!!  A meal in a different region of the world!  We were SO excited.  Also, it's Korean food, heeeeeeeeey!

I had trouble deciding, so I chose a couple easy dishes.  Unlike Amber, who chose one RIDICULOUS recipe.

Though the recipes were simple, finding the ingredients was a challenge.  It took me 3 days and 4 grocery stores to find what I needed.

I decided to prep the toasted walnuts in apricots a day early.  First, I decided to shell my own walnuts.  Don't do what I did.  Go to the store, and buy pre-shelled walnut halves like the lazy American you are, because... What A Pain.  How does anyone extract an intact walnut half from the laberyth that is a walnut shell is beyond me.  After shelling 30 walnuts, this is how many halves (and "almost" halves) I got.

Then (Mother Almighty) I had to roll them up in dried apricot.  Doesn't sound hard, but IT IS.  First you have to get those sticky things to lay flat, then cut them square and lay them together despite their best efforts to stay adhered to your hands, then somehow roll that sticky mess up.

It was MISERABLE!  Two ingredients and several hours later I completed the following:

NEVER AGAIN WILL I WRAP WALNUTS IN APRICOTS.

While I was peeling apricots off myself Amber was kind enough to call to ask how much spicy was too spicy for me.  My friends know I'm a spicy wimp, so I appreciated her asking.  The peppers she held up to the screen didn't look too intense, so I gave the go ahead to follow the recipe.

Day of, packed up, and headed over.

I had bought way too much sweet potato, so I ask how much I should prepare, to which Jenny responded, "ALL OF IT!"  Why did I listen?

I chop it up and started frying... and frying... and still frying.  Finally I had to let my sous-chef (Bryan) take over so I could get to work on my other tasks.

Meanwhile, Amber and Jenny are stirring up a zillion small dished for the bibop?  bimbobap?  Bibimbap.  I watched her taste the dish I had permitted peppers to be added to the day before, and listened to her yell, "WOW that's hot".  The peppers didn't look that crazy on my tiny cellphone screen.  Based on her reaching, I steered clear of that dish.

So next I made the sugar coating for the Candied Sweet Potato.

WTF.

So there's a VERY short period of time between when the sugar is soft enough to coat your potato in, and when it hardens in to a ROCK HARD piece of caramel.  Did I know this?  No.  But I found out pretty quick when it hardened in the pan and on the spoon, and NOT mind you, on the potato.  Not fully understanding what was happening, I turned around and begged for help, but it was too late.  I thought about trying again, but everyone agreed that we would be happy just eating un-candied deep fried sweet potato.

Though it was fun to take turns breaking off pieces of some delicious caramel, I never what to try to candy coating anything again.

Cooking has been a bit of a struggle so far but the last thing to do was to fry the rice patties.  How hard could that be?  I mix the batter, pat it into a disk and fry it.  The recipe says "press down" so I take my spatula and press.  When I lift it up again my pan is empty.  It's empty because the rice patty is now adhered surprisingly well to the back of the spatula.

<sigh>

Never again will I try to make these stupid little rice patties.

I'm usually pretty good at reigning in my tornado-like cooking style of getting everything everywhere, but not this time.  With all the speed bumps in my recipes I was at the end of my rope, and I felt like I needed to buy my friends a new kitchen because I destroyed theirs.

Finally got it done, and it was dinner time!

Master Rice Fluffer

Master of Rice-Colored Fluffness

In addition to all that food there were a few Korean alcoholic beverages available.  I brought Makgeolli (MAHK-oh-lee), which is a rice liquor, which lead me to Korean drinking etiquette:

"Each diner is expected to face away from the eldest male and cover his mouth when drinking alcohol. According to Hyang Eum Ju Rye, the drinking etiquette established in Choseon Dynasty, it is impolite for a king and his vassal, a father and his son, or a teacher and his student to drink face to face. Also, a guest should not refuse the first drink offered by host, and in the most formal situations, the diner should politely refuse twice a drink offered by the eldest male or a host. When the host offers for the third time, then finally the guest can receive it. If the guest refuses three times, drink is not to be offered any more."

Suffice to say, for the rest of the evening everyone was covering their mouth and looking away form Bryan (the oldest, and only male at the dinner).

Hilarious.

After dinner was dessert.  It was weird.  Bean paste filled doughnuts and baked sweet rice somethings.  I rather enjoyed the weirdness, but opinions were across the board.

Everything was delicious.  If you've never had Korean food, you should try it.  However, I, personally, will be walking to the nearest Korean restaurant because I WILL NEVER COOK KOREAN FOOD AGAIN.

(Celebrated January 6th, 2018)

Micronesia & Marshall Islands (Here Comes the Airplane!)

Like Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia & Estonia, Micronesia & Marshall Islands joined the UN on September 17th, 1991.

I think we all agree that this was our worst dinner to date.

I managed to scrap my ingredients together after 2+ visited to the grocery store.  The pumpkin and rice porridge went quickly.  The pie I made was crazy wet when I "finished" baking it, so I decided to leave it in for another few minutes.  I promptly forgot all about it and remembered a half an hour later.  It actually didn't look burnt, just extra toasty.

Packed up all my dishes and headed over.

When I arrived some there was a beautiful array of papaya, tangerine, and pomelo cut and on display.

Amber and I played with Bob as Jenny got the final dish ready.

Bob it a beachball, and it got a little out of hand, ending with me running for the bathroom because I was laughing too hard.

Dinner is served!

I found it quite enjoyable to see the nessie ladle swimming through a sea of pumpkin/rice mash.

And the miracle of smart phones really brought the scene to life.

This was the blandest meal I've ever had, and I've had some pretty bland meals.  The only dish that had any flavor was sweet bananas/sweet potatoes.  So all the seasonings came out, salt, pepper, sugar.  It turned into a seasoning party, adding a little of this, a little of that.  We eventually gave up and pulled out the flavor tripping pills.  It didn't help.  The the fruit tasted sweeter (except the papaya, which tasted worse), but it otherwise had little/no effect of the flavors of the food.  Probably because there were no flavors to enhance.  It wasn't bad, it was just like eating really bland textureless baby food.  Perfect for the day we all loose our teeth, because chewing was definitely not necessary.  We even started making little trains and airplanes out of our spoonfuls of food, but it didn't really help.

We wrapped up dinner and finished our Phase 10 game to let the pills wear off.  The pie was cooked perfectly (thank goodness) but even it was somewhat mild in flavor.  I had brought heavy cream and coconut cream to make coconut whipped cream for the pie, but completely forgot.  I think those creams are still sitting in Jenny's fridge.

When it came to divvying out the leftovers it turned into a,"you take it", "no you take it" kind of a situation.  So odd, since for 2 years we have eagerly dishing ourselves as much left overs as possible.  Jenny bravely accepted all the pumpkin rice stew and planned to attempt to turn it into a curry or a soup.

(Celebrated December 3rd, 2017)

Latvia & Estonia (RIP Sourdough Starter)

Like Belarus & Lithuania, Latvia & Estonia joined the UN on September 17th, 1991.

Confession.  I can't remember much about this dinner.  I remember it being delicious, but I can't remember anything else.  I guess that's what happens when you decide to go on a 2 week vacation before you start the blog post.

Ah, it's coming back to me.  I started cooking a month before the dinner.

WUUUUUH?  A month?  Yes.  A month.  that's what happens when you need to establish a sourdough starter for a dinner.  I seem to be earning to read my recipes ahead of making them, which is a miracle in of itself.

Never made sourdough starter before.  Turns out, you should choose a container much bigger than the volume of the ingredients as it expands.  and if your container is too small, it will expand right out of the container and all over your oven.  You'll just have to take my word on this.

The other recipe I chose was a potato/carrot tart.  I wasn't sure about this, not a big fan of cooked carrots, but it looked like fun to make so I went for it.

It was too early to finish my cook when I got there, so the bar tender (aka Bryan, aka best host ever) served me the most amazing Gin & soda with lemon as I waited. Suffice it to say, I was drinking gin sodas, gin & tonics, gins & whatever for the two weeks I was vacationing.

I also brought some treats from Portugal (Port) and Amsterdam (Cheese) that we sampled as we waited.

My strategy for the cheese selection was to find the weirdest looking cheese I could.  I think I did a pretty good job of this.

By my second drink it was time to finish our dishes, so I pull out my ingredients, Amber preheated the oven, and Jenny proceeded to chop up the most ridiculous amount of mushrooms.  Like, if you attempted to measure the quantity of the multiple types of mushrooms she had the scale would say "WTF".

The dinner was DELICIOUS.  And surprise, surprise, my favorite was the potato/carrot tart!  If you ask me though, I still will not admit to liking cooked carrots.

Dinner, dessert, some kicking of butt in canasta, and another successful diner had past.

RIP Sourdough starter: FYI, you can kill your starter very effectively if you leave it in the oven when you leave for a 2 week vacation.  It got it's revenge by suicide bombing my oven.  Yuck.

(Celebrated October 21st, 2017)

Belarus & Lithuania (Trust me, it's tasty)

Belarus and Lithuania joined the UN on September 17th, 1991.

I know what you're thinking. What happened to the Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan post?  Well, a 101 degree fever happened, that's what.  While everyone was enjoying a delicious meal I was curled up on my couch dying a little inside.  They sent me this photo just to rub it in:

Anywhoo, when scheduling this dinner I got confused because I kept finding a different joining date than Jenny.  Turns out the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist joined much earlier, but then changed their name to Belarus and joined again.  I'm sure you'll agree that the new name is an improvement.

This one ended up being pretty low key, just Jenny, Amber, and I.  The food looked weird, but boy it was delicious.

I chose 2 dishes, one complicated that I wasn't sure about, the other simple that I know I could do, both I had to start the days before the dinner.

The one I wasn't sure about was called "Apple Cheese".  Not what you're thinking, just apples and sugar.  But, in order to make it I had to dice the apples, mix with sugar, then let sit for 2 days...

... drain the juices, reduce the juices...

 ... add the apples and cook until they're soft... 

 ... weigh down and press for 2 more days...

... and then pray that it didn't go bad in that time, since it's not refrigerated at all.

My other recipes used wheatberries, which I never experienced or hear of before.  Soak, cook, mix, and serve, piece of cake.  And I felt even more confident when a co-worker told me he had the dish for breakfast, and his description of it matched the recipe to a T.

In the meantime Amber is giving us updates on the soup.  The pink soup...

... that keeps getting pinker...

Oh, man.

There was the cooking going on and still some cooking left to do when I arrived at Jenny's.

 Happy pink soup dance:

Jenny made these stuffed potato cakes that were pretty much the winner of the dinner, and Amber make a beet soup that looked like something the Teletubbies would eat.  It had dill in it.  More dill!!! :D

Weird looking, but tasted awesome.

After dinner we decided to go to the pool.  It wasn't that warm, and a little overcast, so Amber had a little trepidation about getting in, but after some skillful peer pressure she ended up joining us.  A charitable somebody also left us a beach ball for us to play with, which we immediately named Bob.

After the pool we walked to the local grocery store for some ice cream to add to the two desserts waiting for us.  You wouldn't think it would take very long but deciding between french vanilla, vanilla bean, and just plain old vanilla wasn't that easy.

The Apple Cheese looked NOTHING like the recipe photo.  Jenny hypothesized that I didn't chop the apples small enough, and that I need to shred it.  Maybe I will try again sometime.

What it's supposed to look like:

Nope.  Definitely didn't look like that.

All the food looked pretty odd, and I got some remarks from people when I showed them the photo, but trust me, it's tasty.  If you don't believe me, just look at those smiling faces!

(Celebrated 8/12/2017)

Moldova (Going DEEP)

Like San Marino, Azerbajian, Armenia, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan... Moldova joined the UN on March 2nd, 1992.

There was a longer than usual gap between this dinner and the last one.  6 weeks instead of the usual 4, and while I appreciated not having to worry about my next recipe for a while I was definitely itching for a UN Dinner fix by the time it rolled around.  (I also didn't choose a recipe until 2 days before the dinner).

With an estimated 7-8 people attending, I didn't feel bad about choosing a super simple recipe that I new wouldn't take much time.  Little did I know...

Jenny texts me asking for a ride a few hours before, and on the way to her place I find out that I will also need to pick up Steven.  Carpool!

Travis was hosting this dinner, and he now lived in Maple Valley.  On the way Jenny explained that one of her friends found out where we were going to for this dinner, and her reaction was to tell Jenny that Maple Valley is "deep".  We laughed a little, not really understanding what it meant, but it soon became clear as we continued to drive out of the city.  At one point we turned off the highway onto a road bordered by trees and little else, and the GPS chimed, "stay on this road for 10 miles".  Maple Valley is DEEP.

When we arrived it became clear that the menu for this meal was not going to be as I expected.  Jenny and I made some really simple (yet delicious) dishes, and Amber did her usual stuffed flatbread, but I didn't see much else going out.  There were 4 reasons for this:

1. Travis' roomies forgot about the dinner, so we were down to 6.
2. Steven only brought wine (because he also forgot about the dinner?)
3. Bryan didn't cook anything, no surprise there, he also brought wine.
4. Travis noted that there was a dinner and just decided not to cook (WTF bro?)  So he brought... you guessed it... wine.

6 people, 3 dishes, 5 bottles of wine.  And I was DD.  We had always had a rule that if you didn't cook you brought an adult drink to share, but this is a little ridiculous.

I decided to prep my dish, so all I had to do was fry it up when it came time.  Not much to do, cut tomatoes in half, chop garlic and dill, mix topping together.  That's pretty much it.  Well I guess people REALLY SHOULD HAVE COOKED SOMETHING because as soon as I got started people were asking if they could help.  It seemed a little crazy with how little I had to do, but ok.  Fyi, super excited about getting to use dill again. Definitely added twice what I needed to.  Did that with the garlic too.

Amber had pre-prepared her dish as usual, and the raw flatbreads were all stacked nicely in some tupperware.  When it came time to fry up her flatbreads they were all stuck together.  She managed to get two unstuck, but the others shredded as she pulled them apart.  Poor Amber, learning the hard way.  Somebody came up with the solution to just mash the cheesy filling and the dough together, so instead of "stuffed" it was more integrated into the dough.

Turns out, having a simple UN dinner without a ton of dishes or leftovers was just what the doctor ordered.  And Amber's dish tasted perfect.  I liked it even better because the cheesy crush gave it a little texture.

After dinner someone suggested a friendly game of baseball.  BASEBALL!?!?!?!  WHEN I'M D.D.!?!?!?!?!  GAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!  You may be wondering why being sober mattered in baseball.  Well, our baseball involves solo cups, ping pong balls, and lots of cheap beer, and I hadn't played in a while, so I was a little bummed.  We tried subbing this terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE lemonade, but it wasn't the same.

Action shot.

In case you couldn't tell, there was also a lot of dancing.

There was break between games for dessert, but when it got late it was time to head out.  It was a long drive to get out of Maple Valley (DEEP).

(Celebrated June 10th, 2017)
(Don't judge)

Uzbekistan & Turkmenistan (aka, "The Yogurt Experiment") (aka, DILL-icious!!!)

Like San Marino, Azerbajian, and Armenia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan joined the UN on March 2nd, 1992.  I hope you have a few minutes, because this one is going to be a big post!

The first recipe that caught my eye was the Gurt, aka yogurt balls.  It really intrigued me, and I made up my mind pretty quickly that I wanted to make them.  The more I read about it though, the more I understood that this was intended as a way to preserve yogurt in a desert region, and the reviews indicated that they weren't the tastiest.  To make Gurt, I had to make Suzme, which lead me to a spread and a drink also made from Suzme, also intriguing, also I had to make them.  And if I made the spread I have to make a flatbread to spread it on, of course.  None of which helped me with a real dish that I could bring to a meal others would actually enjoy, so I kept looking for more recipes.

I narrowed it down to vegetable stew and potato boats, and after hemming and hawing I finally gave up and decided to make both.

So what's the count now?  1, 2, 3... 6 recipes?  Seven if you include the "pre-recipe" recipe for Suzme.  I guess I was a little over excited for this dinner.

I actually read the recipes the week before, so I actually had the time to make Gurt (which takes 5 days to air dry)!  If you remember the injera debacle, I have a bad habit of not reading the full recipe until the day of.  If the recipe takes more than a day to complete I end up screwing myself over.  But not this time!

Even getting one recipe out of the way early, the amount of work I volunteered for was a little ridiculous.  This didn't really sink in until the morning of the dinner when I laid out all the ingredients on my counter to check I had everything.

Don't get me wrong, all those fresh veggies looked so good, but there was so much!

3 hours and one injured finger later...

Now I could finally start cooking.  After 3 hours of work.  What was I thinking?!?!

4 hours after that I finished cooking.

Side note, everything had dill in it.  And the more dill I chopped, and the more I smelt it, the more I decided I like dill.  After I was done with everything I could still smell it on my skin and it was like... mmmmmmmmmmm.

Even after spending, literally, all day cooking six dishes, I am still of an opinion that having done just one dumpling recipe would have been more work.

The first thing opened up at Amber's was the Gurt.  Hilariousness ensued.  I didn't think they were nearly as sour-yogurty as I thought they would be based on the reviews I read, but others had other opinions.  I wish I had a good photo of Bryan and Jenny's reactions to it.  Their faces were like they just cleaned their floor with their tongue.  The best I can do it the post-post-Gurt photo of them guzzling whatever liquid they could get their hands on to cleanse the taste from their mouth.

The Gurt was more commonly referred to as yogurt balls, unfortunate for me since I seemed to be incapable of enunciating the "-rt" in "yogurt" which meant every time I said it I ended up saying "yoga balls".  I was pleasantly surprised at how little heckling I had to take for this, and it actually seemed to be accepted at one point.

Now that it was established that these balls were not a form of nourishment, they quickly transitioned in to science experiment.  Out of curiosity I offered one to Jack (the CUTEST witty poochy-pooch-pooch EVER!) and to all our surprise he actually ate it.  So they could be used a dog treats at least.

Next up, the microwave.  I thought that they would get dryer and harder then they already were, Jenny thought they might melt, but to our surprise and delight it started growing in size.  It jumped around a bit and puffed up until it started to brown which is when we his the stop button.

 
Of course the next question was who's going to try it.

Bryan bravely volunteered as taste tester, and after a bite, and to our shock, declared an improvement on the taste.  Nobody believed him, so I took a nibble.  It's true!  It tasted better.  It was airier and chewier, and had more of a burnt-cheese, pizza-crusty flavor.  Almost palatable!

Having ignited some appetites, or just the need to get the taste out of our mouths, Bryan pulled out a ginormous can of dolmas. Apparently, Amber and Jenny went halvsies in this ridiculously sized can, and the phrase, "such a good deal", was used multiple times.

Trying to get a photo of Bryan's ever so skilled dolma plating technique, Amber just had to add her own flair.  At this point, I no longer question why Amber does what she does. I just embrace it, and then post it online.

I had been waiting for our final guest, Travis, to arrive, determined to get a good photo of someone making a sour face after eating one of those sour Gurts.  When he finally got here we subtly offered his a tasty yogurt treat.  I had the camera ready as he popped one in his mouth and...

He liked them?!?!?  That doesn't make for a good photo!  I guess I already have him crying on this blog, so it's only fair that I don't also have one of him making a stank face.

By then it was about time for Jenny, Amber, and I to finish our dishes (no I'm not done cooking yet).  Amber got the kebabs going, Jenny started on her rice, and I heated up some oil to do some deep frying!

Note: as Amber was getting ready to start grilling, Bryan agreed to start the grill for her but insisted multiple times that she will be doing all the actual grilling herself.  We will revisit this story line shortly, pay attention folks.

My oil almost hot enough, I peer into Jenny's pot on the stove top next to mine.  As I did so, Jenny confidently, with a hint of aggression, plopped/threw two whole, unpeeled heads of garlic into the pot and looked up at me into my eyes, possibly into my soul, with an expression on her face as if to say, "DARE NOT CHALLENGE ME!"

I just stared back in shock, my emotions running wild.  So many thoughts passed through my head...
What the hell is she doing?
Is this some sort of joke?
No, there's no hint of her reaching to fish them out, she is definitely serious about this.
Why is she staring at me like that?
She did that very confidently.
Since she was so intentional about this she must know what shes doing.
Right?

Though only a faction of a second passed she was already giggling uncontrollably at my dumbfounded reaction.  Still, she managed to get enough words out to reassure me that, yes, this was what the recipe called for, and yes, we all agree that it was weird.  Accept it and move on.

Though my oil hot enough, it was clear that Jenny's dish was going to take a little longer than expected.  Deep fry a yogurt ball to pass the time?  Why not?  It was in the oil only for a few second before we pulled it out, now brown. Most of us had the same thought and started yelling, "Bryan!" Reluctantly our taste tester took a bite and reported that it was worst deep fried. The inside had remained unchanged, now just surrounded in a thin layer of burnt. Bleh.

Amber an Bryan away grilling, and Jenny and I at the stove, Steven pull out his salad to mix all the ingredients together. When we next turned around to look what Steven was doing, he was vigorously shaking the salad container. Jenny and I both watched for about a second before yelling together, "Shake that salad!" Great minds, am I right?  Opposite of our sentiment, our outburst immediately caused Steven to stop shaking the salad, place the container down, and stare back at us bashfully. After a short while Jenny and I lost interest in making Steven super self-conscious and we returned to our own dishes. Little does Steven know, I snuck a video of his mad shaking skills after he returned to his work.

I finished with the oil, so of course we were going to deep fry a dolma. It really spit and danced in the oil, and we only pulled it out when it seemed to start to unwrap. After we pulled it out we searched for our trusty taste tester, but he was busy at the grill and out of ear shot.

I say again, Bryan, not Amber, was busy grilling.  HA.

Table set, most of the food on the table, it was a perfect time to try the yogurt drink I made. After our experience with the balls, everyone looked less than enthused.  We decided to do shots of the drink, as nobody wanted to commit to much (or any) of it.  The plain version was plain.  I had also made one with cucumber, parsley, and dill (DILL!!!), so I pour that one out for a select few that didn't find the plain one totally off-putting.  This version, I actively enjoyed.  I did not, however, strain the herbs, which was a mistake.  After downing it, I had a tongue full of green and had to spit it out.  So I borrowed a strainer and filtered out a glass of the drink to enjoy with dinner.  So good.  Still have some in my fridge.

Bryan, too lazy to put in the effort for a selfie, took a nice group shot before we got going.

That was lie.  I had already started eating.

This dinner was beautiful with the rainbow of colors.  It also looked, dare I say it, healthy.

Included was the spread I made with the suzme, one of my personal favorites.  I'm so amazed that the balls, drink, and spread was all made from the same tub of yogurt, but they all tasted so different.

We ate until bursting, per the usual. I think most agreed that it was the best meal yet.

(Celebrated April 29th, 2017)