WCEC 2018 #1 - Spain

Spain is one of my favorite countries food wise. I've been there twice and I'm obsessed with the tapas and the wine and don't even get me started on Iberico ham. I've done Spain a couple of times now and I feel like I always do Paella. I LOVE Paella but the point of this challenge has always been to step outside the box and try something new.

My original plan was to try to make something completely different that I hadn't done before, but I ended up making empanadas. I have made these before but I was really compelled to do it again.

You see, my mom was an amazing cook. She also tried to make new things and experiment a lot. When I was at my dad's house a couple of weeks ago, my brother encouraged me to go through the freezer and see if anything was in there that I could use for my cooking.... and I found a few packages of empanada wrappers. It felt like a sign that is what I should make.

Like I said, I've made empanadas before, but usually I've just thrown together whatever I wanted for the filling. I decided to find a more authentic recipe this time. Empanadas are kind of a funny dish. Almost every country has some form of them from gyoza in Japan to potstickers in China, from empanadas in Latin countries to pastels in Brazil... they're all over the place (there are actually several dishes that are like this and I'm always more amazed by the country to country similarities rather than the differences when I do this project).

This means that in looking up authentic recipes, I found a lot from other countries as well. I finally landed on a recipe that felt more Spanish. I'm going to ignore that it's from notoriously famous English chef Gordon Ramsey and just trust that he's international enough to know a Spanish empanada from an Argentinian one.

Here is the recipe if you'd like to try it. 

I made a few changes though. First, I ground my own beef. I really wanted to add another level to this since I was using pre-made dough so... I made my own meat. I actually got an meat grinder as a wedding gift and it's something I haven't used enough. So when I had a big roast, I decided to cut off the end of it and grind it up for the filling. It ended up being 3x the amount of meat in the recipe so I tripled everything.

In the end, I found the filling as it was to be a little bland. I didn't put in as many onions or chili flakes as the recipe would have needed (because Dan doesn't like those things) which probably contributed that. I ended up adding some chili powder and paprika to bring up the flavor profile and it made a great difference. I don't know if that's authentic but I know how important seasoning is to food and I'd rather have something taste great than be 100% accurate.

I love that this recipe included chimichurri too. It's one of my favorite sauces and it's just perfect to add some brightness and acid to heavy things like meat and empanadas.

If you end up using this recipe, you may want to get a kitchen scale. They're not very expensive but they're the best for accurate baking or if you're using a recipe from all the enlightened countries that use the metric system. Grams just make sense in general though because measuring cups can be hard to read but the scale doesn't lie. It keeps the recipe spot on - just be sure to tare out any measuring devices.

And that's the start of the World Cup Eating Challenge! It wasn't very complicated but any sort of pastry is a labor of love and assembling these guys took longer than I expected. I still have more wrappers and filling so I plan on making another batch for the weekend. They're great for a quick lunch or easy protein snack.

The New World Cup Eating Challenge 2018

And so begins a series of blog posts! I've been bad at posting this year, mostly because I didn't have a lot to say. When things are good and I'm not chasing any specific blog series, it's hard to just write.

That is about to change. 4 years later, I'm revisiting one of my favorite projects.... the World Cup Eating Challenge! I started this for the 2014 World Cup and loved it. The idea was to eat or cook something from a country that was playing on any given day. It was challenging but fulfilling. I had a lot of failures and some successes and all in all I left the challenge with a few things: a bigger knowledge of global cuisine, a better idea of what works and doesn't in the kitchen, and a whole lot of content for my blog.

But Nikki the World Cup has already started and I've seen nothing from you! What's going on?

I know, I'm totally failing this year. 

I went into this year with the most ambitious plans. I created a crazy spreadsheet over a month ago and mapped out where I was going to focus on the countries that I was least familiar with or totally failed at last time around. I had a great plan... and then it all fell apart for a few reasons.

Life! 

Just after I got this plan all put together, I got a great surprise. I got a promotion at work! It was definitely some good news but with it, came more work. I got sidetracked by my new responsibilities and kept figuring that I still had a lot of time until the World Cup to organize my project.

Dan and I also went on an amazing vacation! I have no complaints there but we all know how vacations go - in addition to the time you're away, you're also getting work ready for your leave and then when you get back you have a lot to do to catch up. Throw in things like laundry and packing/unpacking and there's definitely extra to do. Once I was all settled in from this, I realized the games were starting the next day. That's definitely not enough time to plan out the variety of meals I wanted to do. 

On top of all that, I was turning right around to head out for a family/work combo trip that would keep me out of my kitchen for several days. There would be options to eat out of course but I really had wanted to cook the meals and going out of my way to find places that worked, didn't seem ideal.

Diversity 

You'd think that with all the countries in the World Cup, diversity would be a non-issue. However, my plan to start with the countries I was least familiar with, led to a list of African and Eastern European countries. In my initial searches for dishes, I started to notice a pattern. Many of the countries signature dishes were very similar to each other. While I'm sure there are noticeable differences in the seasonings and ingredients when you compare them all side by side, it would still have been a lot of stews, fried pastries, and rice dishes in a short amount of time.

I really wanted to focus on the really key dishes instead of picking something smaller just to change it up. I was trying to map out ways to change up the order I did the countries to space it out, but to keep with trying to eat the dishes on the day they played, it was hard to make it work.

Time, Money, and Waste

The last issue was just out of practicality. As much as I loved this project - I kept running into an issue in the past. If I'm cooking a different dish every day for 3 weeks, I'm going to be making more food than Dan and I can possibly eat.

I've dealt with this before by inviting people over for dinner but the reality is that I still end up with too much food. Add this in with the fact that some of these dishes are time intensive, and it all becomes really impractical.

While, in general, I have more time and money than I did four years ago - I still have the overall goal of wasting less, and I like to use my free time for other hobbies, particularly my fitness.

So... What Does This Mean for the Challenge?

After thinking about how to deal with these obstacles without just trashing the whole project, I came up with a good solution:

Cook a dish from each country, but remove the constraint of cooking it on the day they play.

Obviously, if I can plan it that way, it would be more fun to eat a dish while watching a game and I want to try for that as much as possible. However, I have no intention of cooking these dishes every day in a row. My new plan is to give myself the whole summer to try something from the 32 countries. That gives me 2-3 days in between each to each leftovers, buy groceries, and just spread out the project.

Making this change has given me new excitement for this challenge and I'm excited to get to it!


In the meantime, here are some of my favorite posts from past challenges:
http://nikkilinc.blogspot.com/2014/06/world-cup-eating-challenge-day-4.html
http://nikkilinc.blogspot.com/2014/06/day-12-spain-world-cup-eating-challenge.html
http://nikkilinc.blogspot.com/2014/07/semifinals-day-1-brazilian-feijoada-and.html
http://nikkilinc.blogspot.com/2015/06/day-9-australia-world-cup-eating.html

Third Place & Finals - England & USA - World Cup Eating Challenge 2015

I'm going to take a quick break from Whole30 to close out this World Cup Eating Challenge. I've been slacking so hard on it. Honestly, when I found out in the middle of the challenge that my aunt only had a few weeks to live, it really make it hard to finish this out. I was so close to just quitting it. But my aunt has always encouraged and inspired my creative side. Lately, I've been painting and sculpting less, but I've been showing my creativity through cooking. If that's the gift she gave me in her lifetime, then I wanted to finish it out. So, I still cooked all the things and made sure to show up each day with something for the challenge, but I'm really glad it's done.

For the Semi-Finals and Finals, I decided to just designate all four countries to a day. I got the days of the games wrong though and thought the last two games were 7/3 and 7/4 (they were actually 7/4 and 7/5). Since I was visiting my aunt on 7/3, I decided just to do the last two countries on 7/4 as a big 4th of July party. Once I figured out my mistake on timing, I was already committed and decided just to roll with it and finish a day early. I needed it.

England

English food really doesn't translate to BBQ very well. It's heavy, usually fried. It's the kind of food that's great in a pub to soak up your beers and cheer on your team. I was pretty stumped on what to do...

And then I thought about drinks. Beer would have been an easy go to but I wanted to make something. I remembered about the Pimm's cup cocktail and when I looked it up was surprised just how close to sangria it was.

A Pimm's cup is Pimm's liqour, fizzy lemonade (I didn't know what that was so I used soda water and Simply Lemonade), and a bunch of fruits. I used strawberries, oranges, and cucumber.

It turned out beautiful and was a great addition to the BBQ. It was also really low in alcohol so you could drink a bunch of it and feel totally fine. It actually got quite interesting later in the day when other groups at the pool were pretty far down the rabbit hole and we were fine. Plus, it didn't take away from the main event...

USA

I was really hoping from the start that USA would make it to the finals. Since I thought they were on July 4th, I thought it would be amazing for USA to play on such a big national holiday for the national holiday. The original reports I saw had USA vs. Brazil so all along I'd been planning this amazing mix of both countries and then Brazil lost really early and ruined it for me. 

For USA, I just wanted to do American BBQ. I wanted some classic tastes but also a California twist to it all. 

I started with a marinade for my chicken. I used lime, avocado oil, cilantro, and a ton of garlic. Like a whole packet of garlic. I put it all in the food processor until it was a liquidy paste. 

I put that all in a bag with the chicken and let it marinade in the fridge for a few hours. 

Next up is ribs. Ribs can be so inexpensive at the market sometimes and they are WAY easier than you think they are. There are really two steps. First, season your ribs and bake them at about 300 for an hour. This is to ensure the pork is cooked all the way because you do not want to eat raw pork. I seasoned mine with garlic salt, garlic powder, paprika, chipotle, and sometimes red pepper or chili pepper if you want it spicy.

Once they are baked, brush the ribs with sauce. If you aren't paleo, Sweet Baby Ray's is amazing. It's the best BBQ sauce I've had and it's like $2 for a giant bottle. However, it's basically made of 100% non-natural ingredients. This time around, I tied making my own sauce. I used diced tomatoes, seasonings (similar to the rub), maple syrup, tamari, and balsamic vinegar. I pulsed it in the food processor. It basically tasted like spicy ketchup. It wasn't bad but it wasn't the BBQ flavor I was hoping for. I think some jam may have helped. I have some more recipes for BBQ sauce that I want to try as well though so I'm not giving up yet.

I also made a little side salad and some sweet potato fries as part of my "California" touch. The salad was mixed greens, avocado, and goat cheese with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette. The fries actually ended up more like baked sweet potato strips. Some friends brought some deviled eggs as well.

It was all so good! We made a ton of food too so we got to celebrate USA in our stomachs for a couple of days until we went on vacation.

We also found a beautiful spot on the bay to watch the fireworks from. It was a great first Fourth in San Diego!

Now back to Whole 30... maybe I could do some Whole30 BBQ? I'm feeling inspired.

Semi-Finals - Germany & Japan - World Cup Eating Challenge 2015

For the last four days of the challenge, I decided to just tackle each of the last four teams. It seemed the most fair to just give each of them a day instead of hoping that the results worked out in the best way for me. For the semi-finals, I decided to re-visit Germany and Japan.

Germany

Originally for Germany, I wanted to do jager schnitzel and spatzel. I ended up doing pretzels and brats. The pretzels had turned out so bad though that I felt they needed a redemption. I also didn't see a good way to make spatzel based on my earlier failures. I decided to split the difference... still do my schnitzel but re-do the pretzels.

This time I went with a recipe from a Paleo bread book called Every Last Crumb. I wanted use this recipe last time but it required some ingredients I didn't have. No really - there are about 5 different flours in here including both potato flour and potato starch. I had originally thought they were the same thing but the front material says that potato flour absolutely can't be substituted for anything... and that's the one I didn't have. I had to go to 3 stores to find it too. 

Anyways, the picture above kind of demonstrates all of the dry ingredients that were in here. You can kind of see the different colors and textures to get an idea of just how many components there were here. 

I mixed them all together and then put them in the my secret weapon... yes, my food processor! I got one that had an additional plastic blade for kneading. I figured I would never use it but I use it all the time for paleo breads and even mixing things like ground meats. It's so helpful and I really recommend it.

Next, I got my little bundles of dough ready for shaping.

After that the magic happened. I would try to describe the process but it required difficult shaping, two different oven sessions, and some seasoning. This was the result though. Aren't they beautiful? They tasted like awesome and were way closer to pretzel flavors than the last attempt. 

I just noticed that I didn't have any pictures of the steps for the schnitzel. For this, I got a bunch of thin pork chops. I luckily found some that were super thin on their own so I didn't have to do much to them. I just used the tenderizer on them a little bit to thin them further. 

From there, I dipped them in eggs and then my special "breading" which consisted of tapioca flour, almond flour, salt, and seasonings. I fried them all in avocado oil

For the "jager" sauce, I loosely followed this recipe. Jagerschnitzel is just schnitzel with a mushroom cream sauce on it but the name is really awesome and mushrooms are delicious so I was all in. The sauce was basically beef broth, sour cream, mushrooms, and xantham gum.  I didn't love the sauce - I think the cream broke and I wished I'd used coconut cream instead. Otherwise, the dish was awesome!

Japan

Since I'd already done sushi, I wanted my second attempt at Japan to focus on different dishes. I'd heard a lot about Japanese bbq and seen beautiful pictures of thin meat grilling on stones or wire racks and I wanted to try it as well as some other side dishes that I'm sure you've seen around.

Step one was to find some amazing high quality meat. I only added a light amount of salt to this because I wanted the meat to shine. The key to this is a meat that has good marbilization of fats without being fatty. I trimmed any huge chunks of fat to achieve this.

How beautiful is that? I loved the idea of just self grilling meats over a tiny flame. The problem is that my setup was useless at it. I tried a couple more things while Dan stood in the corner hoping I didn't set the apartment on fire. 

And finally I just ended up with this. It was a really good idea at first but eventually the fat dripping onto the burner started cooking and our apartment was just filling with smoke.

The meat was really delicious but the cooking process was not practical for an apartment. I really want to go out and try some in a restaurant now though!

My next dish was Yakitori, aka chicken skewers. For these, I skewered some chicken thighs and then brushed them with a mix of tamari sauce, fish sauce, and avocado oil and let them marinade in the fridge for a little while.

When I was ready to cook them, I placed them in the grill pan and rotated and necessary. 

Lastly, I wanted to try tempura. Originally, I was going to do shrimp. However, my meal was already very meat heavy so I decided to do veggie tempura again. I got some green beans and mushrooms. I dredged them all in egg and then a tapioca/almond flour/ salt mixture.

After that I fried them all in avocado oil.

In the end, it all turned out delicious. I also made a little beef broth/ soy sauce dipping sauce which was delicious. The meat was AMAZING. It just shows that when you have high quality beef, you don't have to do much to make it shine. The chicken and veggies were great too.

All in all, these dishes were fantastic, but they also marked an important end to the challenge for me - the end of forced Paleo dishes. By that, I mean dishes that are not Paleo by nature but made so with alternative flours and oils. Even Paleo, tempura or fried pork or pretzels aren't that healthy. I was happy that for my final posts, I was going to go with better more natural foods and less Paleo crazy scientist foods. 

Quarter-Finals - France and England - World Cup Eating Challenge 2015

On the same note from yesterday, since I was having a hard time, I needed to find easier options for the challenge so that it didn't feel like one more burden. I was lucky to be able to find some good options that helped me make some delicious dinners that didn't add to my stress. 

France

The first time I went to France, I knew much less about food and was looking through a travel book when I found steak frites. Steak frites are exactly how they sound... steak and fries. I was determined to have this dish in France and I did. It was all I hoped and dreamed it would be and I knew it would be a good pick for my challenge.

There is one secret to perfect steaks. It's butter. 

Once the butter is heated up, put your steaks in and then just listen to the beautiful noise of them sizzling to perfection. I normally season the steaks but I wanted the meat to shine so I only added sea salt this time.

While my steaks were cooking I baked my fries. I added salt and garlic and paprika to them as well. 

When the steak was done, I added them to the plate with the fries and topped it with some garlic and herb butter. Butter really was the VIP here.

I also bought a Cotes du Rhone wine. Rhone is my favorite wine region and I wanted to get a true French Rhone for the challenge.

The wine had a beautiful color and was the perfect balance to this rich meal.

 Fin

England

For England, I wanted to go with another easy classic. I decided to go with bangers and mash.

Bangers are just a wacky English word for sausage. Despite the impression the name might give, the term actually came from the pockets of oil that build up under the sausage casing and tend to pop while cooking. If you've ever been near a sausage when it's does this, you know they're no joke.

The mash is, as you'd expect, mashed potatoes.

There really wasn't too much complicated here. I just made my mashed potatoes with some almond milk, butter, and salt. I then served it with the bangers and let the sausage impart some natural flavor.

On an unrelated note, that night started a serious of ridiculously beautiful sunsets so I thought I would just share this one with you. 

Round of 16, Day 4 - Japan - World Cup Eating Challenge 2015

So I obviously am super behind on Eating Challenge posts. Life has been happening really hard over here and this just hasn't been my priority. Without going into detail, my family has been going through a loss so I've been visiting them as much as possible. I also was preparing for my own trip to be a bridesmaid in a long time friend's wedding meaning that I had a lot of work to do before leaving. Life was definitely at it's hardest for a couple of weeks there and it took all of my remaining energy to just keep doing the challenge. I didn't have any extra for words. However, I'm back from my trip and I've been able refresh and get back some of my inspiration. I also have a new challenge on deck so there's a lot to look forward to.

But right now - let's talk about sushi. Sushi is just super pretty and the ingredients speak for themselves so how about a picture post? Great? Great.

The only thing keeping me from doing sushi before was the fish. I've always been nervous about the quality being good enough to eat the fish raw. I went to a specialty fish market and asked about which fish was sushi quality. I decided to go with some ahi tuna and salmon.

I wanted to do a hand roll along with sashimi. I had done a sushi class before and remembered some of what to do.

I put in some rice, cucumber, avocado, and then my fish.

For the sashmini, I wanted to get a little creative so I arranged them into flowers with cucumber and avocado stems. I also bought a nice sake to pair with it. 

But that's not all... I ended up buying way too much fish. This is one of those amazing problems that I'm all too happy to have. I decided to try to change it up a little and sear the tuna. 

I then cut up the tuna, salmon, and some avocado slices. It's hard to see but it's all on sheets of nori (seaweed). I called it a de-constructed sushi roll.

I ended up just eating little pieces on the slices of seaweed and it was amazing.

This ended up being a really easy day where the quality of the ingredients spoke for themselves and didn't need me messing them up. I would love to go back to the fish store and get more salmon and just slice it up and enjoy it like this again.

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!