Round of 16, Day 3 - Colombia - World Cup Eating Challenge 2015

Colombia was another repeat. I decided to give arepas another shot. Unlike some of my repeats, these didn't turn out so well. I have a lot of trouble with arepas, pupusas... basically any Latin American bread-like products. This was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to tackle again and see how my skills have improved.

I used a different but similar recipe this time. My only issue with it was the cheese. It says "queso blanco" which I assumed was "queso fresco" when I made my shopping list. I think they actually meant more of a monterey jack kind of cheese. Queso fresco is more of a salty high fat cheese that makes a good topping. It added a lot of salt to my arepas and wasn't quite as melty as other cheeses would have been. 

Otherwise, they turned out was better. I used wax paper to flatten out my dough and I just shaped them by hand. I was able to cook two at a time and the mixture, even though I only did about 2/3 of the amount, made a lot of arepas so it kept me occupied for a good hour.

For toppings, I had carnitas, guacamole, salsa, the extra queso fresco, and some jalapeno. I was planning on making the carnitas but I didn't think to take my 8 pound pork roast out of the freezer until about 11am so that wasn't going to cut it. I know that the Del Real Foods carnitas are actually really high quality (local meat and gluten free) so I went with that as a quick fix. I'll still make our pork roast later this week when I have some free days with no games.

It all came together so well. It's basically a little gluten free sandwich. The flour is corn and there is also cheese so it's not paleo but it's not the worst thing for you either. We have lots of extra arepas too so I'm set for a few lunches this week. That's definitely been a nice bonus to this challenge!

Round of 16, Day 2 - Switzerland and Canada - World Cup Eating Challenge

I spent most of Sunday morning debating between doing Canada or Switzerland. I ended up deciding on Canada. I knew I was going to be making Poutine and since I was going to be out with my friends, it seemed like a good post-drinking food.

I ran to the market to pick up fries and cheese curds... and then couldn't find cheese curds. I checked between the three cheese sections and couldn't find them anywhere.

Side note: do you ever notice how most markets these days have not one, not two, but THREE cheese sections??? THREE. It's pretty consistent too. You have the packaged cheeses (Kraft, Lucerne, etc), cooking/ salad/ snacking cheeses (mozzarellas, fetas, and bleus), and then the gourmet cheeses (Kerrygold, bries, etc). The sorting kind of varies from store to store, but the point is that when you can't find the cheese you're looking for, you have THREE places to look.

Anyways, in the process of looking for cheese curds, I ended up finding Swiss fondue cheese. I decided just to do both. I'd get some veggies for dipping in the fondue and then make the poutine as the main course with some high end Kerrygold cheddar instead of cheese curds.

The fondue mix was ok. I probably would just try to make my own next time but as I mentioned yesterday, I've had a hard week and I wanted to find ways to do the challenge without adding any un-needed stress. 

For dipping, I got cherry tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms, and I heated up some leftover lamb. I bought some apples as well but totally forgot to cut them up. 

The poutine was a really easy and awesome dish as well. I baked some ready made fries, covered them in grated cheese, and then poured gravy on top. It was the perfect post drinking food and I'm really happy I bought extra fries so I can make these again some day.

Speaking of poutine - I had been joking with some friends that it was the only Canadian dish I could think of. They found this Wikipedia article... which proved that I wasn't too far off. To summarize, here are the top Canadian foods according to an informal survey:

1. Poutine (51%)
2. Montreal-style bagels (14%)
3. Salmon jerky (dried smoked salmon) (11%)
4. Perogy (10%)
5. Ketchup chips (7%)
6. Nova Scotian Donair (4%)
7. California roll (1%)

Looks like I picked a good dish to represent that country.

 Tomorrow we get back on track to more paleoish/ gluten free food and less getting by. 

Round of 16, Day 1 - Germany - World Cup Eating Challenge 2015

I kind of love how things don't always play out the way you want. I was really hoping for an easy day Saturday. Instead I was choosing between Germany and Cameroon - a county I had really ambitious plans for and one I knew nothing about it. Saturday Dan and I were going to be at the County Fair since we were doing a race there so I was really hoping to get USA. On top of all of that, I had to take an unexpected trip out of town the two days before and couldn't plan any shopping.

All of that really just took it out of me. Part of me kind of wanted to skip this day or round or maybe just quit the challenge all together. But that's the thing about challenges - when things are the most challenging, that's when you need to keep going. 

So I decided to go with an easy option that would allow me to get this done without causing anymore trouble than I could handle. I knew I had some brats in the freezer. While Dan drove us home from the fair, I looked up pretzel recipes. I found one that used ingredients I already had. I already had bought a German beer so I knew I had enough to make a basic Bavarian meal.

I also have a paleo bread cookbook that I knew would have a pretzel recipe. The book is amazing for making breads that taste like the real thing. The only problem is this usually requires a crazy mix of flours. I have A LOT of paleo ingredients in my pantry but I just didn't have all of the flours needed for the pretzels.

I'm going to be totally honest here. I did not like the pretzels at all. Dan liked them but admitted they didn't taste at all like pretzels. I think we agreed they were more like pretzel shaped coconut flour poop. Sounds awesome, right? But yea - I'm not a huge fan of the coconut flour texture. These just seemed to take all of the extra dry and graininess of the coconut flour and magnify it. 

The brats and beer were great though! I really like Johnsonville brats and we get the big box of them from Costco. I'm not sure if they are actually Paleo but they make a great breakfast or dinner in a pinch.

I really wanted to get a nice German wine but I didn't see any Reisling or Gewurztraminer from Germany at Bevmo. These wines are pretty common but the style is really different in the US and Germany so I didn't think it would be authentic to get an alternative one. 

I opted instead for beer. 

There are tons of German beers but I decided to go with the Hacker-Pschorr because that was the most fun tent when I went to Oktoberfest. Speaking of - it wouldn't be German beer if I didn't enjoy it in my Oktoberfest mug!!

Mmmm beeerrrrr

Day 10 - Spain - World Cup Eating Challenge 2015

This one might look a little familiar. Last year, I did Paella for Spain as well. I had been meaning to make it again all year so when I decided to do the challenge again, I knew Spain would be a full repeat. I even used the same recipe. The only changes were that I didn't use clams this year (they weren't very popular last year and don't keep well) and I topped it with some parsley since that was in a lot of the pictures and would be a nice note of freshness.

First things first, I laid out my ingredients. I also used chicken, peas, and parsley which aren't shown here. 

I don't have an actual paella pan but I have a very large frying pan and it does the job really well. 

After I cooked my chicken, I put in my bell pepper and chorizo.

When those were done, I added my tomatoes and chicken stock.  After that came to a boil, I added the rice and put the chicken back and let it simmer. Once you add the rice, mix it once and then not again. Add the shrimp in and when the shrimp turns pink, remove them.

When there is very little liquid left, put in the peas. It probably should have had a little less liquid but I'm impatient and was hungry.

Once the rice looks totally cooked, add back your shrimp and some parsley.

Then enjoy!! Paella feeds a lot so it's a great food for hosting. I invited over my neighbors and it was enough for 6 people to have heaping plate fulls and a little left over for my lunch. 

I also picked up some of this Reserve Rioja at Bevmo. It had great smokiness and was a good pairing with the strong flavors of the paella. I'm happy it was one of the 5 cent wines because it was an amazing wine. So good, in fact, that I might be drinking the second bottle while writing this....

Day 9 - Australia - World Cup Eating Challenge 2015

For Australia, I was in a really similar boat as New Zealand. I had already picked up some Shiraz (their most well known wine), but I wasn't too sure on food. I had figured with a lot of livestock, that some sort of roast would be nice.

I decided to check out this article on Australian foods. I saw roast lamb on there and was happy I could stick with that idea. I also saw a dessert called a Pavlova. I had listened to some Australian audio books a couple of months ago. Pavlova was a dessert a character kept mentioning bringing for Easter. I had looked up what it was but still didn't have a good grasp. I thought it would be fun to also make this dish that I was already curious about.

Roast Lamb

I love roasts. I think they are the easiest and most delicious things. For some reason they always seem more complicated than they are, but the only hard part is putting it in the oven early enough for it to cook low and slow.

I usually get my lamb at Costco. I was excited to see that it was actually from Australia. I love those little additions of authenticity that pop up on my challenge sometimes. I was kind of surprised too - it seems like a really long way for some meat to come.

To prep the lamb, I just rubbed it with paprika, garlic, and salt. I then stuck some sprigs of rosemary in it as well. I then put it in the oven at 400 for 1.5 hours. After not too long, I could tell the rosemary was burning. It made me wonder if the lamb would dry out. I remembered I had some Kerrygold garlic herb butter and decided to put a few pats of butter on top.

I've made a few roasts before but this was the first time I added butter. Dan doesn't really like lamb but he told me this one was way better than other ones I've made. Butter is just the best.

We decided to invite some friends over for dinner as well. Roasts are so much food, I knew it would be way more fun to share dinner with friends. We got an expandable dining table just for this reason and it was fun to pull it out and get it all set up.

The Shiraz I picked up was also surprisingly good. Normally, I find Shiraz to be too bold and intense but this one was lighter and smoother. It went great with our lamb and I would definitely get it again!

Pavlova 

And don't think I forgot about dessert! Let's start with the burning question - what a pavlova? It's a dessert that has a meringue base, whipped cream, and then can be topped with a variety of other items. Fruit and honey seem to be the most popular. 

Sometimes for more obscure recipes, finding a paleo version can be hard. A lot of times, I'll just substitute in things. This kind of baking is so precise though that it doesn't translate really well to just swap something out. Instead, I decided to piece together recipes. While I didn't get a recipe for paleo pavlova, it wasn't too hard to find some for meringue and coconut whipped cream.

I was especially excited about the meringue. It's the bast of another recipe I want to try down the road so getting to test it out here was great. It only had two ingredients - maple syrup and egg whites too which are both things that are always on hand in my house. The one mistake I made though was the temperature of my pot. I didn't see it had it set to low so after the meringue was whipped, it started cooking a little bit. I was still able to pipe them a little bit but they definitely turned out a little uglier than expected. Or maybe I just suck at piping.

Side note: a pavlova is usually a big cake sized dessert. I saw some pictures of little bite sized ones though and loved that idea so I opted for that instead.

For the coconut cream, I threw a can of whole fat coconut milk in the freezer. When I took it out, I separated the cream from the water. I used a hand mixed to mix the cream and then put it in the fridge until I needed it. I then just re-whipped it when I was ready to serve. I also added some honey since it had no sweetness on its own. I wasn't able to get it quite as whipped as I'd hoped though. The recipe said that the coconut milk could not have guar gum as an ingredient. I had three different brands which all had it in there. I'm guessing that made the difference of being able get it properly whipped.

I then put the coconut whipped cream on top as well as some fresh strawberries. It was such a light and tasty dessert. It was a great contrast from the heaviness of the roast lamb and they were all eaten up between the four of us!

Day 8 - Thailand - World Cup Eating Challenge 2015

Thailand is one of the countries I made last year when I tried to spin off the World Cup Eating Challenge. It's actually a very easy cuisine to do Paleo as it usually uses fresh ingredients and coconut milk. Noodles are really the only obstacle but they are pretty easy to substitute for.

Last year, I made my favorite Thai dishes - red curry and spring rolls. As much as I wanted to create those tasty items again, I knew there were a lot of other great options. My first favorite Thai dish was Pad Thai so that seemed like one good option. A friend also suggested larb which is like a lettuce wrap. They seemed like they would complement each other well.

Zoodle Pad Thai

A friend of mine had actually posted this many months ago. I thought about asking her for the recipe but it was kind of last minute and her birthday so I figured I could just find it easily online. I was super totally wrong. I found some zoodle pad thai recipes that would turn out to use lots of sugar or not have a sauce. I'd find paleo recipes that looked terrible. I'd also find (and I get this a lot actually) "paleo" recipes that would actually be completely regular recipes. I decided I was going to have to do a combination of recipes to make this work. I normally don't mind an odd substitution but for this the substitutions weren't for a flour or bread product (I don't consider zoodles a substition for noodles here because it's something I'm very familiar with) - they'd be core ingredients of the sauce... and I hadn't had Pad Thai in many years.

But isn't that the fun of a challenge?

I used two core recipes - one paleo and one not. I took the ingredients for the paleo version's sauce (4 tbsp almond butter, 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar, 2 tbsp fish sauce , 1-2 tbsp sriracha sauce, 1 tbsp ginger, fresh or ground, 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar, 2 tbsp soy sauce or coconut aminos). This tasted terrible. It was really clearly lacking. I referenced the non paleo version and realized it needed a couple of limes and a tablespoon of honey. That added the necessary acidity and sweetness.

Now it was time to start cooking. I browned my chicken and set it aside. While that was cooking, I julienned some carrots and bell peppers. It said to "matchstick" them. I'm clearly some sort of pyro because my matchsticks were 4 inches long...

When the chicken was ready, I took it out of the pan, added some coconut oil, and sauteed the bell pepper and carrots. I then used a spiralizer to turn my zucchini into zoodles. I added the sauce and zoodles to the pan and then reintroduced the chicken as well as some pre-cooked frozen shrimp.

Spiralizer and/or vegetable torture device

I let that all simmer together and had some beautiful zoodle pad thai. I love the way it turned out and my only suggestion would be for your matchstick peppers and carrots to actually be matchstick size. Mine were kind of out of control and almost seemed like another alternative noodle. I also got a little crazy with my spiralizer and had super long zoodles. If that happens, just cut them every six inches or so. Longer isn't always better.

Larb

The larb was also a mix of two recipes. I basically threw the ground pork into the frying pan while I figured out what I wanted to do. I loved the color of one but the ingredients of the other. I ended up going with fish sauce, lime, shallots, green onions, red onions, lemon grass, chili garlic sauce (which I found!!!), garlic, and cilantro. I chopped all of that up and added it to the cooked pork and let that all simmer together. When it was done, I topped it with some mint and served it on ice berg lettuce leaves.

Seriously - it was all that simple. Thai food is so much about the flavor and fresh ingredients that it's easy to forget how simple it is. Italian food is very similar in that way. It's a big joke how easy it is but really amazing Italian food is spectacular, usually because it hones in on fresh, sharp flavors.

I've been able to have Thai leftovers for a few days now and it makes me want to keep exploring this awesome cuisine! Dan may abstain though. The spice level was definitely a little high for him and he didn't love this dinner as much as others.

Days 6 & 7 - Nigeria and Costa Rica - World Cup Eating Challenge 2015

You might be wondering why I decided to do a post on two countries at once. Well, it's pretty simple.

For Nigeria, I was planning on making these:

They are Nigerian puff puffs and are supposed to be similar to donuts. I found the recipe here and thought it would be easy to substitute out the flour for tapioca starch. It was hard for me to get the right consistency but I was hopeful when they mixture rose from the yeast.

However, when I tried to fry it, this was the best I could do:

I learned my lesson and was sure to get real donuts here:

So basically Nigeria didn't work out so it was off to the next day!

And thank goodness, I had a pretty safe plan for Costa Rica. Costa Rica is one of the countries I had done last year. It's crazy how far my cooking has come since then. A recipe for Cauliflower arroz con pollo I was a little intimidated by last year seemed really easy this time around and I thought it would make a great dinner. 

I started by cleaning some chicken thighs and then rubbing them in minced garlic and salt. I used.. a lot.. of minced garlic. I'd say it was about two heaping spoonfuls. 

I then put it in a pot to brown. I probably should have used some oil. I knew I would need some so it wouldn't stick to the pan but the instructions didn't say it so I skipped it. I really should have known better. After the chicken was browned I removed it from the pot.

I then added a can of diced tomatoes and a bell pepper. The recipe said to use green but I don't like the taste of green so much so I sent Dan to the store and told him to pick whatever color he wanted. That way if he picked something different, it wasn't directly me disobeying directions. Lucky for me, he likes orange a lot so orange we got. I also threw in some herbs such as cumin, oregano, and thyme.

While those cooked a bit, I put a head of cauliflower into the food processor and pulsed it until they were cut into rice sized pieces. 

I then added the cauliflower and chicken to the pot. The recipe kept mentioning to monitor how much liquid you add but never actually says to add any liquid explicitly and compared it to making risotto. I figured they forgot to mention that you needed some chicken broth or something. I noticed everything was really dry so I added a few splashes of chicken stock.

Of course, after all those warnings, it was too much liquid. Oh well... I covered the pot and let it cook for 25 minutes.

While that was going, I heated up a few cans of black beans with more garlic and salt. I also made some mango salsa by processing some tomatoes, a mango, cilantro, lime, and jalapeno. It wasn't quite as good as my favorite mango salsa but it was close. I think the tomatoes or jalapeno could use some roasting to develop the flavors more.

It turned out so good! While beans aren't paleo, I just love them. Being Brazilian, I grew up eating black beans all the time. It's just not something I could ever really give up.

I had a friend in town as well. We invited her to join for dinner but she wasn't hungry so she said she'd just try a little bit. She ended up getting seconds. This is definitely a dish I would make again. It was straight forward and delicious. I would love to try adding even more veggies to the "rice" as well!

After dinner, we hung around Padres stadium to try to see the fireworks show. I think we succeeded!

And then I got to come home to some amazing leftovers...