While Queens may have the reputation for being the most ethnically diverse area in the United States, our very own borough of Brooklyn is certainly not bereft of global flavors. From the side-by-side Mexican and Chinese neighborhoods of Sunset Park to the century-old Italian areas of Carroll Gardens and Bay Ridge, to the more recently established Caribbean community of Crown Heights, there is rather more than a smattering of diverse flavors available to the curious epicure. Even gentrified Park Slope and Prospect Heights reflect the enduring presence of their Puerto Rican and Dominican populations with a wide selection of places offering “Spanish food”, a phenomenon which took me a while to decipher as it certainly isn’t Spanish in the European sense.

Dishes typical of Spanish-speaking countries, especially those ringing the Caribbean, but which also may be derived from actual Iberian cooking — known predominantly on the east coast as Spanish, or Spanish American — it’s basically a catch-all term that to me connotes delicious, often with tropical ingredients, but always complex and filling food. We’ve made mention of several of these neighborhood eateries in several previous posts – El Viejo Yayo, Los Pollitos, Bogota among them – but our most recent crush is on the wonderful Windsor Terrace institution, Elora’s.

Serving Mexican and Spanish food, whereby you can select from the greatest hits of Mexico as well as these Spanish-speaking Caribbean classics, Elora’s serves all these in such volume that one dish could easily feed a hungry family of four. And it is perhaps because of this, and their consequently narrow profit margins, that our regular server at Elora’s should, by rights, be enjoying the benefits of a comfortable retirement.

Pushing 80 years old, Don Nicolas is without doubt the oldest but also the most charming and interesting waiter we have ever had the good fortune to be served by. Born to Sicilian immigrant parents in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and trained as a tango and opera singer, it is his daughter for whom the restaurant is named. His musical career spanned several decades and took him the length and breadth of the Americas, before he retired from singing, settled in Brooklyn and went into the restaurant business with his marital family.

On our most recent visit while we waited for our heavily-laden plates to arrive, Don Nicolas was explaining to us the secret of his youthfulness – “if I stop moving, I become stiff and I might not get started again! When you are young you don’t think about these things and spend all your time on the couch!” Indeed, many less energetic thirty somethings might have struggled with the amount of food he was charged with lugging from the kitchen. But manage he did, depositing immoderate orders of pernil, bistec encebollado and chicharrones de pollo on our table before returning spritely with sides of beans, rice, and tostones. Still not done, he surveyed the table and in a trice was back with a deep bowl of raw garlic in oil. “Prefieren un poco de salsa de ajo por su tostones, no?” (you’d like a little garlic sauce for your plantains, right?), he asked.

When we congratulated Don Nicolas on his fitness and asked if his health is reflection of his restaurant’s hearty fare, he responded diplomatically that he enjoyed the beans and rice and the pollo guisado (stewed chicken) most weeks, but found the Mexican dishes to be too hot for his Argentine tastes. “No tenemos alimento picante en Argentina,” (we don’t have spicy food where I come from.) he explained.

In fact, chicharrones de pollo, deep fried chicken, or more accurately translated as chicken cracklins’, are a popular Dominican dish, sometimes also claimed by Puerto Ricans as their own — we’ll leave it to them to fight over where it truly originated — in which chunks of chicken are marinaded for a lengthy period in adobe, lime juice, rum and either soy sauce or worcestershire sauce before being lightly dusted in corn starch and tossed into hot oil. If you like fried chicken (and those who don’t must ask themselves some searching questions) then you should try this recipe. It goes perfectly well with the tostones we had at Elora’s or the beans and rice we prepared more recently, but it is just as good on its own with a jigger of hot sauce and a cold bottle of Presidente Dominican beer. And, sure, it won’t necessarily help you live well into your 80s, but it will make the next couple of hours more enjoyable.

Guyana, sitting on the top right of the land mass of South America, is among the least known and most mysterious of that continent’s countries, something that is almost as true today as it was when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used it as the setting for his 1904 novel, The Lost World. Home to the most intact and least spoiled rain forests in South America, Guyana’s biodiversity is simultaneously staggering and largely undocumented, and cascading from its mossy, permanently cloud-topped peaks, fall several of the world’s largest waterfalls. Guyana is also unique on a human-scale, having the distinction of being the only English-speaking nation in South America, and, perhaps because of this, of having been among the world’s largest producers of natural latex for the manufacture of cricket balls

The cricket-loving population is a heterogenous mix of Indian, African, European and native peoples, roughly in that order of volume. However, like much of the English-speaking Caribbean, Guyana also has a tiny, but significant, Cantonese population — a legacy of the same forces at work during the days of the British Empire that also relocated large numbers of Tamil and Gujurati Indians there to work as indentured plantation workers. Numerically insignificant, the lasting impact of these Hong Kong Chinese has been on local commerce and the cementing of certain southern Chinese dishes, the most popular of which is chow mein, in the diverse local cuisine.

Of course, the chow mein enjoyed in Guyana bears only a certain resemblance to that eaten in Canton and other parts of China, I am sure. Indeed, Chinese food all over the western world has been amended to suit local tastes and ingredients, and so it is in Guyana where access to even basic Chinese staples like soy sauce was not always possible. Similarly, the inevitable mixing between local gastronomic cultures, namely the addition of a sly pinch of West Indian curry powder that seems to find its way into all kinds of unlikely dishes across the Caribbean, is what makes this chow mein recipe inherently Guyanese, not to mention the bright yellow noodles, made with soft wheat and plenty of food coloring. Other local variations on the original include the addition of yellow squash and green beans.

We had never eaten this dish before, but we’d experienced it up-close at several West Indian parades both in New York City and London, where it was served in trays with plastic forks as street food, and where the searing perfume of garlic and curry managed to cut right through the ripe fragrance of perspiring dancers. In truth, the flavors, with the combination of curry and soy sauce, aren’t that dissimilar to the popular Singapore noodles found throughout South-East Asia and at many British Chinese restaurants, and they should feel relatively familiar to anyone who has eaten both Chinese and Indian take-out food before. So, while you (or we) may never get to visit exotic Guyana and witness first hand either it’s beautiful landscape or delicious cuisine, you should try making this dish. It only takes about twenty minutes to prepare and will satisfy a host of your ethnic food cravings.

For more authentic Caribbean recipes, check out Cynthia at Tastes Like Home.

Though a resident of Singapore, then a part of Malaysia, during the early 1950s, I doubt very much if my father ever had much of an opportunity to experience its astonishing variety of cuisines. Confined mostly to the Changi district (now better known for its international airport) and the company of other expatriate British military families, his diet hardly differed from that of his older brother, Roger, who stayed in England at boarding school throughout the family’s four year sojourn in the east.

A child of the gastronomic wasteland of post-WWII rationing, when food was extracted from a can and then boiled to the point of annihilation, my Dad is still a picky eater, ever-ready to pull a face if served something strongly flavored. In the broader context of his early years, these culinary proclivities aren’t so surprising. Well into the 1990s (by which time rationing had been over for more than forty years), I remember visiting my paternal grandparents and noticing that their oven was spotless in spite of being nearly twenty years old, having been used exclusively as extra storage space for canned goods.

Widely read, well traveled and knowledgeable about many things, gastronomy is one of the few areas of which my Dad is entirely ignorant. Exposure, at such a tender age, to such perfumed and harmonious dishes as Singapore and Malaysia offer in abundance could have had a profoundly transformative influence on his tastebuds. Instead, the insipid and farty flavors of boiled beef and cabbage became the signature flavors of his youth.

All of which, to me at least, is a great shame since the laksas, curries, stir-fries, biryanis and sambals – culled from an ethnic and religious make-up as varied as any nation – that he could have tasted, are the signatures of a country that for milennia has been the regional cross-roads and melting-pot.

Book Review:
Susheela Raghavan’s family, on the other hand, embraced this tantalizing concoction, and in her new book, The Flavors of Malaysia: A Journey Through Time, Tastes and Traditions, she draws together a collection of recipes from across the full range her country’s diversity into a harmonious whole that is as interesting and educational to read as it is jam-packed with deliciousness. From opening chapters that place her and her family at the heart of Malaysia’s ethnic variety, to much-needed ethnographic and geographic explanations of how it all came to be, to charming anecdotes of recollections and family stories, The Flavors of Malaysia really is a cook book you can read and learn from. In fact, as you read, what you really notice is what a tour de force Raghavan has performed in creating something coherent and comprehensive out of such marvelous diversity.

The Malay fragrant rice that accompanies the lamb peratil (a sort of dry curry) above perfectly encapsulates the depth and complexity of Malaysian cooking (which is why we chose to make it). Using the predominantly Indian spice blend almost as a tea to perfume the cooking liquid, the addition of garlic, ginger, sugar and soy sauce to the rice makes for as cross-cultural a dish as any I can think of. The lamb, on the other hand, is representative of the profound influence south Indian cooking has on Malaysian cuisine, demonstrating that although mixing and borrowing takes place, the country’s resident non-Malay groups have maintained their own traditions too.

If the recipes we made sound exotic, then they should. The food of Malaysia is perhaps the world’s most pungent, combining the abundant spices of Indian cuisine, the fragrance of Thai and Vietnamese herbs and rhizomes, the simplicity of local Malay techniques, the incorporation of Portuguese ingredients and Dutch or British implements, and rounding it out with the balance of sweet, salty, sour and spicy native to Chinese cooking. That this has become a fascinating and unique brew and not a toxic hodgepodge speaks to the generally harmonious philosophy of a country whose moderate Malay Muslim majority lives cheek by jowl with Indian Muslims, Indian Hindus, Eurasian Christians, Chinese and Thai Buddhists and native animist groups.

It would be easy to be intimidated by this exoticism, and certainly, it’s unlikely the average pantry will contain even half the required items – some spice mixes reading like an apothecary’s top shelf – but the spectacular results make it worth persevering. To be fair, though the recipes are remarkably easy to follow, this isn’t really the kind of tome the owner of an average pantry would seek out. One needs to be prepared for an experience quite unlike anything one may have tasted before, and while I would love to suggest this book will fly off the shelves, my feeling is that only the adventurous will seek it out. The fact that not all dishes are pictured convinces me of this (150 recipes, 16 pages of color photographs), as a leap of faith is necessary in making something you have no clue what it looks like. If there were a large Malaysian community in America where one could get accustomed to this kind of food things might be different. For those of us looking for something tantalizingly new for our taste buds though, I can heartily recommend this book. Not only will your house be filled with fascinating aromas, and your stomach filled with astonishing dishes, but your intellect will be stimulated by a country and people of marvelous history, culture and depth.

So much of what we think we know of Haiti is bad – from the massive human suffering and destruction caused by January’s earthquake, to decades of political and social unrest, to blood-curdling tales of voodoo curses and zombies – that one might be forgiven for wondering how the inhabitants of such a benighted country make it through the day. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s often the case that where there is the greatest suffering, there is also the most joyous celebration – think the wildly over the top bedazzled costumes and deafening samba baterias coming out of the most ravaged Rio slum at Carneval – and so it is in Haiti, and nothing says celebration to a Haitian like griyot.

Grillot/griyo/griyot/griot (pronounced gree-oh) and its accompaniments of sauce ti malice (sos ti malice) and rice and beans constitute one of Haiti’s handful of national dishes, and no Haitian party can be considered a real knees-up without it. This is particularly so on January 1, Haiti’s National Day, recalling the country’s 1804 declaration of independence from France and its arrival on the international scene as the first independent nation in the Caribbean and Latin America, as well as the world’s first black republic, and from whence it took the lead among non-English speaking nations of the western hemisphere in promulgating ideas of liberty and equality. This early split from the colonial power and the country’s several subsequent lapses in to chaos have allowed Haitian culture and cuisine to preserve its African heritage and develop in its own distinct way, largely undiluted by external influences. Ways of which we were almost completely ignorant until we ate our first meal at Kombit – a Haitian restaurant we were lucky enough to have in our neighborhood

We quickly became regulars at Kombit, the sheer novelty of having a Haitian eatery close by (not to mention the raft of delicious and completely unknown dishes) took a long while to wear off. Possibly due to the fact that we were consistently among the few non-Haitian diners, or perhaps because we always asked stupid questions about their food, owners Pascale and Marie began to recognize us, and, eventually, took rather a shine to us two inquisitive but entirely ignorant enthusiasts. Each time we visited they would patiently and smilingly respond to our inane inquiries without ever really revealing much about how the dishes we were enjoying griyot, sauce ti malice or their unbelievably special rice and beans, were made.

Ever since that first experience some six or more years ago, we’ve wanted to try to home-make griyot, and after recently getting our hands on one of two Haitian cook books in print in the United States, we reserved most of a weekend and set to work. The weekend reservation was necessary because – like many flavorful and traditional dishes, preparation ahead of time and patience are necessary – griyot is, as you’ll see if you scroll down, one of several dishes that are dependent on each other, and, if you’re not Haitian and, therefore likely to have some of these staples already hanging around, you have make them in a certain order.

Starting with the griyot – a very rustic and filling dish of marinaded, then braised, then fried pork chunks – you must be prepared to wait at least 24 hours after starting the preparation to eat it, but it is well worth the wait. The texture of it, crispy on the outside and soft inside, combined with the myriad tropical flavors filling your mouth, is quite something in itself, but when paired with its natural partner of rice and beans, it transcends its rusticity to become a truly world-class dish. In complete honesty, Haitian rice and beans are, by a margin, the best I have ever eaten. Smoky, savory and satisfying, these rice and beans are so freaking good that you would be perfectly happy to have a plate, by itself, for dinner. Every night.

We wrote way back in the spring about the Burmese national dish, Own-o Kow Swear, and noted that condiments played a crucial role in that country’s cooking. So it is in Haiti, except that there are far fewer condiments, and the few they have, are used with the same regularity as ketchup in America or olive oil in Greece. Rather handily, both of the two principal Haitian condiments, piklis and sos ti malice, work magnificently with griyot, though since the former is a fiery concoction of scotch bonnet peppers, allspice and vinegar, one should demonstrate restraint in its use in order to avoid the obvious pitfalls.

It sounds anything but appetizing, but sos ti malice – a reddish-brown, thinnish gravy, scattered with a few bits of onion and pepper – is served by the bowlful at Kombit, and we almost always have to order extra it is so good. They serve it with all sorts of dishes, but it is most appropriate with griyot because (although Pascale and Marie never revealed this to us) both the marinade and cooking juices from the griyot are used in its preparation, giving it an incredible complexity and satisfying savoriness.

Please don’t be intimidated by the length of preparation time, the seemingly exotic ingredients or the long list of recipes below. All are very easy to make, the ingredients are fairly easy to find even in an average supermarket, and most of the time you can put your feet up or do something else entirely. Out of the 24 hour (36 hour for piklis) preparation time, you’ll probably be only actively cooking for around 3 hours at the absolute most.

So, for your next celebration meal, consider making griyot and its associated dishes. They really are almost indescribably good and after eating them you’ll certainly be thinking about Haiti in a whole new light.

Last week I had off from work for our “midwinter” break.  It wasn’t a very relaxing week but cooking, for me, is very relaxing. Five hours of cooking can actually be quite relaxing as well.  And that’s what happened when I decided to take on the challenge that Joan of Foodalogue put in front of her readers – create a dish from Ethiopia.  I made six Ethiopian dishes and ingredients and, yes, it took me five hours to create all of it.  But, in the end it was all worth it.

Ethiopian cuisine is one that I have only recently become acquainted with and when I first tasted it, I was hooked.  While researching for this post I realized how little is out there on this fabulous cuisine.  Anthonly Bourdain recently said that he believed Ethiopian food would be the next big trend in eating and I have to agree that it should be.  It’s delicious, communal, flavorful, fun to eat and relatively healthy (except the ridiculously high amount of butter used in the dishes).  We’ll see if his prediction is correct.  I mean how can you go wrong when all you have to eat with is your hands and some deliciously sour, sponge and crepe-like bread called injera?

The two biggest staples of Ethiopian food are a spice mixture called berbere and a spiced clarified butter called niter kibbeh (see both recipe below).  Many Ethiopian recipes utilize one or both of these ingredients.  The other staple and accompaniment to Ethiopian food is injera bread which is traditionally made from a specific type of flour called teff and usually takes three days in order for it to ferment causing its sour taste.  I didn’t have teff flour so I utilized Saveur magazine’s recipe which wasn’t as delicious as the authentic type but did the trick.  Brushing lemon on the bread gave it a bit of the sour flavor I was craving.  As mentioned earlier, injera bread is used as your plate, fork, knife and spoon when eating Ethiopian food.  Your food will come in small piles scattered on a a big injera where you will tear off bits of the outside layer in order to get the food in your mouth.  You continue until you eventually have to eat the layer that has sopped up all the flavors of each dish you chose.  These are some of the best bits but you’ve got to get to the end of the meal to savor them.

Ethiopian food is like no other – it borrows ingredients from Portugal (chile peppers), the Orient (ginger) and India (spices) to create a taste that is very, well, Ethiopian and very different to anything you’ve ever eaten.  Most of the recipes found below are based on things found in the cookbook Exotic Ethiopian Cooking and a blend of other website recipes I found.  I recommend you all give Ethiopian a try, whether you have five hours to cook or have always been curious to try that Ethiopian restaurant down the street.  Vegetarians and non-pork eaters will have a field day and even the pickiest of eaters will enjoy this fun and fabulous cuisine.  So thank you, Joan, for pushing me to finally create Ethiopian food at home.  Now that I’ve done it I’ll be doing it again.  Now, I hope you will try your hand at it!

BERBERE (Ethiopian Spice Mix)

• 1/4 cup ground red pepper (about 8 Dried Chiles de Arbol, blitzed in a spice grinder)
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon ground fenugreek
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom (about 6-8 cardamom pods, blitzed in a spice grinder)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon cloves (about 4-6 cloves blitzed in spice grinder)
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 3 tablespoons paprika
• 2 teaspoons dried onions, blitzed in grinder, or 2 tsp. onion powder
• 1 tablespoon salt and 1/2 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper

**Grind chiles in a spice grinder. Toast all seeds for about 3 minutes, allow to cool and add everything to spice grinder and blitz. 

NITER KIBBEH (Ethiopian Spiced Butter) – Makes about 1/3 cup – for the effort you may want to double or triple this recipe

• 1 stick + 1 tablepoon unsalted butter
• 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and then grated on a microplane or grater
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/4 red onion, finely chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon ground fenugreek
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1/2 teaspoon tumeric
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
• pinch of salt

What to do:

1. Melt butter on low heat and skim off the foamy, white layer that that floats to the top as butter melts (this is how you make clarified butter).
2. Add onion, garlic, ginger and spices and allow to cook on low heat for 15 minutes.
3. Turn heat off and allow to rest for 5 minutes.  Strain the butter mixture using a fine sieve or cheesecloth and store in a cool place.

YEKIK ALICHA (Ethiopian Split Peas)

• 1 cup yellow split peas, soaked for 1 hour
• 1 cup of water (or veggie stock)
• 1 cup chopped red onion
• 1 tablespoon ginger (1 inch piece, peeled and grated)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 jalapeno peppers, minced
• 1 tablespoon nitir kibbeh (spiced butter)
• 1/2 teaspoon tumeric
• salt and pepper to taste

What to do:

1. Bring soaked split peas to a boil and then lower to simmer for 30 minutes.
2. Drain if there is extra water and then mash well (they will be very soft and will mash easily with a fork).
3. Add butter  to another pan and stir fry onion and garlic for a few minutes till onion is translucent.  Add ginger and spices and give a quick stir.  Add back the mashed split peas, jalapenos, salt and pepper and a cup of water (or veggie stock).  Reduce for a few minutes until you have a thick puree.  Serve on or with injera.

GOMEN (Stewed Collard Greens and Cottage Cheese)

• 1 lb collard greens, stems removed and chopped
• 1/2 lb of cottage cheese (about 10 ounces), drained
• 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced and smashed to a paste
• 2 tablespoons nitir kibbeh (spiced butter)
• salt and pepper to taste

What to Do:

1. Boil greens until tender.  Drain and press down to get rid of all the excess water. Finely chop greens.
2. Add butter to a pan and cook onions for five minutes then add ginger and garlic and cook for a minute or two. 
3. Add greens and stir. If you find it needs a bit of moisture, add a touch of water or stock.  Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Transfer to a bowl and stir in drained cottage cheese.

ZIGNI WE’T (Ethiopian Spiced Beef Stew)

• 1 lb minced beef
• 1 1/2 cup chopped red onion
• 1/4 cup berbere
• 1/4 cup nitir kibbeh
• 1 tablespoon ground fenugreek
• 1 1/2 tablespoons ginger, peeled and minced
• 1/2 teaspoon cardamom
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup wine (red or white)
• salt and pepper to taste

What to do:

1. Fry onions for a few minutes and add garlic and ginger.  Add berbere plus water, stir.
2. Add nitir kibbeh and sprinkle beef while stirring.  Allow all the beef to cook and all the liquid to be cooked away. 
3. Add rest of spices, stir. Allow to cook until meat is done, about 15 to 20 minutes.  Serve on or with injera.

Juan Camilo took us to the place he feels is the most authentic and best Colombian restaurant in the Colombian section of the incredible ethnic diversity that is the Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Cositas Ricas. In order not to make the podcast redundant, I will not write a lengthy description of our experience that day - only a few important details - but suffice it to say that Amy and I learned a great deal about Colombian food over the course of our meal and now understand that we have barely scratched the surface of an exciting and delicious food-culture.

Naturally, I tried their bandeja paisa, the “super bandeja”, and Amy had the similar, but different, palomilla a la parilla (it comes without chorizo or chicharron), after starting with caldo de castillo or short-rib soup (said to be the perfect cure for a hangover), and several Colombian meat empanadas with aji (a spicy, vinegary condiment) as appetizers. Juan Camilo ordered tiritas de lomo (grilled pork ribs), and one of our companions, Don, in a bid to be different, had an enormous plate of the restaurant’s version of surf & turf: chicken and spicy shrimp.

We must take this opportunity to thank Juan Camilo for generously taking the time to share his country’s food and culture with us that afternoon in Jackson Heights, and for his good humor and forebearance in agreeing to the interview that made this podcast.

Sadly, Cositas Ricas has no website of its own, but you can check out their menu here. If you are ever in the vicinity of Jackson Heights and have a serious hunger (and I mean serious otherwise you probably shouldn’t bother), we strongly encourage you to check this place out, or indeed any of the hundreds of restaurants and food outlets in this neighborhood. The sheer diversity is staggering and the myriad aromas are enough to make anyone salivate.

Note on Colombian Juices
I’m still working on figuring out the English names for some of the fruit we drank as juice at Cositas Ricas, but here are some links that might help you visualize what we are talking about: Coruba; Lulo; Maracuya

We are fortunate enough to live in a city with a ridiculous amount of diversity when it comes to restaurants, and one place we frequent often is a ‘hip’ Colombian restaurant (what the hell, it is Brooklyn). When we go there it’s because of two things: 1) We’re friggin starving and are ready to eat till we drop and 2) we want to get drunk. They have very strong drinks, and the food, shall we say, ain’t exactly light either. Maybe the strong drinks are to help your appetite and enable you to eat more?

One of the favorite menu items is the very popular and typical Colombian dish Bandeja Paisa. Yes, I wasn’t lying when I called it a “gut buster”. There is no way in hell I’m not unbuttoning my jeans when I decide to order this one. Originating from northwestern Colombia (the province of Antioquia), this dish’s name stems from bandeja, meaning tray or platter, and what the people of the region are known as, paisas, or country-folk. The idea is that this mixed platter would be eaten at lunchtime after a hard morning working in the fields and would be followed (like there would be a choice!) by a lengthy siesta before anything resembling work could resume.

In 2005 the Colombian government planned to make bandeja paisa the national dish, but instead with the name of bandeja montañera (mountaineer’s platter). This move was actually faced with widespread opposition, citing that only a small percentage of the population actually eats bandeja (perhaps unsurprisingly, or they’d all be in cardiac arrest and/or 500lbs). However, the government persisted and now you can find all sorts of Colombian tourism paraphernalia advertising bandeja as the national dish – perhaps in a daring bid to encourage obese gringos to head on down for a feast…?

Anyway, like many traditional dishes the exact combination of ingredients/items often differs depending on who you ask, but, again, like many traditional dishes, there are a number of ingredients that all versions contain. Arepa (a thin shallow-fried corn cake), grilled marinated skirt steak, pork chicharron (crispy, deep-fried pork belly cracklins), a fried egg, chorizo, red beans (stewed red beans) and rice. [Note: some versions contain other foods including morcilla (blood sausage), sweet fried plantains, avocado, vinegary shredded red cabbage salad, fried potatoes, tomato sauce, and hogao (aka criollo sauce made with onions, tomatoes, pepper, oregano, cumin, and salt).] We combined our beans with the chorizo, substituted the rice with yucca fries, and cut the richness of the meal with the traditional Colombian condiment, aji.

Estimates vary, but it’s a meal of between 1,500-1,800 calories (that’s most of your daily intake), and yes, that’s right, and it’s all eaten for lunch. I, who can hardly sit up straight at my desk after a sandwich and an apple for my midday repast, find it almost impossible to imagine engaging in manual labor even after only half a plate of this magnitude. Combine this with the nearly year-round equatorial heat that part of Colombia enjoys, and I’d be retiring to my hammock for forty (or more) winks, which is why we tend to save up our bandeja eating for the colder months, and happily for us (but not our cardiologist) those months are on the way. So, get out the largest plate you own, starve yourself for a couple of days ahead of time, consider cancelling your plans for the afternoon, and get stuck into a bandeja paisa - it’s only your waistline at risk!

Bandeja Paisa

So, because this is a meal made up of many constituent parts, and because, with our version, we tinkered with the traditional ingredients a bit, what follows is basically a run-down of recipes starting with the most time-consuming preparations.

Stewed Pinto/Red Beans with Chorizo
See this recipe here we made a while back.

Yucca Fries

• 1 medium sized yucca (cassava), peeled and cut into 1/4inch (1cm) rings or half-moons
• 2 cups vegetable oil, heated to 350-375F
• 1tsp kosher salt
• Fry yucca rings until golden and crispy. Remove to plate covered with paper towels to drain, and sprinkle with salt.
• Keep warm in oven if not eating immediately as they get chewy and tough if left to cool

Skirt Steak

• Sprinkle steak lightly with salt, pepper and rub generously with sliced garlic.
• Marinate in olive oil until ready to grill.
• Heat skillet or grill to screaming hot. Brush marinade off steaks and grill on each side for about 2-3 minutes (depending on thickness – use poke test regularly) for a nice medium-rare.
• Cover with foil and allow to rest for 5-10minutes.

Shredded Red Cabbage Salad

• Shred or finely slice 5-6oz red cabbage after removing tough outer leaves
• Put cabbage in a bowl and mix with 3tbsp granulated sugar, 1tsp kosher salt and 1/2cup white vinegar
• Allow to marinate and grow together for as long as a couple of days.

Colombian Arepas

• 1 cup masa harina (fine cornmeal flour)
• 1/4tsp salt
• 1/2 cup hot water
• 4oz vegetable oil
• combine corn flour, water and salt into a sticky dough
• make a ball out of some of the dough and roll into a circle about 4-5inches across and 1/4 thick
• heat 1tbsp oil at a time, and fry dough circles until golden and crispy
• drain on paper towels, then dress with butter/margarine and serve immediately while still warm

Spicy Colombian Aji

• 1 sweet pepper, finely diced
• 2 jalapenos, finely diced and de-seeded
• 3 small cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1/4 onion, finely diced
• 10-15 stems cilantro, finely diced
• 1/2 cup white vinegar
• 1/2 cup water
• juice of 1/2 lime
• 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
• Combine all these ingredients together and let sit for at least an hour or as long as 2 days for the flavors to improve

Pork Chicharrones
We used the great recipe we found at Nikas Culinaria, and encourage you to do likewise.

Then, combine all this goodness on a plate (we suggest you share it with at least one other person unless you want to drift into a food coma you may never come out of) and enjoy with the latin cocktail of your choice (avoid beer, it makes everything swell up), or perhaps, as the Colombians would, accompany it with a few shots of aguardiente!

Thank you to about.com for featuring this post in their Colombian food section.

Disclaimer: Our dear Colombian friend kindly let us know that our too-styled, “pretty” version of Bandeja Paisa is a bit less authentic because of the way we put things on the plate. Hear our Juan Camilo discuss Bandeja Paisa and all things Colombian in our exclusive podcast interview.

Initially, I was skeptical that it was worth wasting a perfectly beautiful sunny day at some ridiculous-sounding shack in the woods trying to relive someone else’s childhood, but I couldn’t have been more mistaken. I’m here to tell you that the Mystery Spot is a must-see and it would be nothing less than a travesty if it were left out of any travel itinerary to the region.

The story goes that in the early part of the twentieth century (no exact date was given) someone was interested in purchasing the sloping area (now known as the Mystery Spot) from its owner to build a summer house. The owner refused to sell the slope without the adjacent level ground – now the parking lot. Eventually, the newcomers bought the entire property and built a small wood shed on the steeply sloping part (in itself a poor decision from an engineering perspective) and immediately began noticing certain “bizarre phenomena” which science, despite repeated attempts, has never satisfactorily explained. (see campy 1960s advertising paraphernalia showing this phenomena here.)

Our guide around the Mystery Spot was the well-informed and sparky young buck, Carl, who, if I’m honest, was the most unintentionally hilarious person I’ve ever had the good fortune to encounter. From his skinny, disheveled appearence to the way he accidentally dead-panned his delivery of the ironic sections of his schpiel - ”this is no ordinary plank, it is the plank of mystery!” - he was absolutely first-class and had me in virtual paralysis of laughter for the duration of the tour.

Strangely though, no-one else on the tour found him to be so funny. Even after we had left the Mystery Spot I was sitting in the back of the car giggling to myself. What could have caused this outbreak of the mirth, you ask? Well, the Mystery Spot, of course.

Carl had warned us at the beginning of the tour that not only were peculiarly inexplicable reversions of the laws of physics known to occur within the confines of the “spot”, but weird physical symptoms were also commonly experienced by tour-takers, including changes in height, loss of balance and confusion. Clearly, my inner-ear was playing up because I very nearly experienced incontinence on more than one occasion and even Amy reported dizziness and light-headedness. And, as, I think, this (below) photograph demonstrates perfectly, the Mystery Spot can do some terrible and awesome things to one’s coiffure.

Later that day - when I had recovered much of my former composure - I noticed that the madness brought on by the Mystery Spot was spreading throughout our group. I watched transfixed in horror as Amy’s mother and aunt, sporting the hideous grins of the criminally insane, began laying out what they described as “dinner”. Before us lay a motley selection of three-day-old and poorly-kept Chinese food, a few scraps of the previous nights’ pasta that appeared to have been scraped off people’s plates, a greying mess of geriatric cold-cuts, some random bocconcini mozzarella sprawled in an ugly dish, a paper plate of wilting Sun-Chips, and a hollowed-out watermelon.

I have rarely seen a less appetizing spread of food in my life and, at the sight of it, I immediately began to experience those same feelings of light-headedness and vertigo of earlier in the day. I fear what might have become of me had I been forced to eat any of this, for in those who, amazingly began attacking this dreadful buffet with gusto, there developed an almost instantaneous malaise of disappointment and depression that lasted the remainder of the evening and into the following morning, until only stout breakfast of eggs and bacon managed to restore their spirits.

Interestingly, and this phenomenon I must report to the owners of the Mystery Spot one day because I suspect they are blissfully unaware of this perilous and hitherto undocumented reaction, neither my mother-in-law nor Amy’s aunt were with us on the tour that day. In fact, the former had never once even visited the “spot”, so just how they managed to contract this mania may become yet another of the secrets of the Mystery Spot that remain unsolved by science.

We literally just walked in after spending our Labor Day afternoon at the annual WIADP (West Indian American Day Parade) on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, but to describe what we just witnessed as simply a parade would be akin to saying that scotch bonnet peppers are sometimes a little spicy, i.e. an enormous underestimation. The parade is the largest in New York City with upwards of 2million people flocking to it annually.

It was an unbelievable assault on the senses - the sights (thousands upon thousands of dancing people all decorated with their national flags and some astonishing costumes), the sounds (hundreds of different sound systems all turned up to 11 and all competing with one another as they slowly rumbled by on floats, accompanied by the ever-present encouragements for the dancers from some very vocal MCs), the smells (a myriad stalls selling Caribbean favorites, some better known that others), and the atmosphere (it is about 90F here today and there were some enormous smokers pumping out clouds of jerk-scented smoke, as well as many other “personal” smokers pumping out clouds of the other kind of smoke Jamaica is famous for).

Of course, apart from soak up the atmosphere, we did our best to sample the wares from as many of the stalls as possible. Sadly, our eyes were bigger than our bellies, and we frequently had the unfortunate experience of having to walk past many a stall not physically being able to eat anymore. Let’s face it, Caribbean food is not exactly light at the best of times, and on a scorching summer day, goat curry with roti, fish cakes, bake and salt-fish, all smothered in fruity hot pepper sauce, and washed down with spicy ginger beer, then shaken up and down with booming soca and dance-hall, is a recipe for a lot of sweating and the need for shade and a sit-down. Intense. Seriously intense.

My only touchstone for a carnival like this, is, well, carnival – the Notting Hill Carnival in London to be precise. And, not to offend anyone involved with that fun, enormous, crazy and, occasionally, violent Caribbean festival, the WIADP is a major step-up. The food, the sounds, the people, the culture, it’s all as much as you can take and more. It’s as close to being in a foreign country as I’ve ever experienced in America (note that, for me, America is a foreign country). It’s such a radical departure from what the area around the Brooklyn Art Museum usually looks like and where you usually see white couples jogging along behind three-wheel baby-chariots, that at first it takes you aback. Then, and suddenly, it just sucks you in, but, just as quickly, it spits you out again. It’s a lot to take and we had to retire for some shade and cold water, but we’ll be back. You should check it out next year, for once a year is enough to last you a while. That said, we’ll definitely be exploring more of our local Caribbean restaurants and trying to recreate some of their dishes and the ones we ate today now we’ve got a taste for it.