Cooking Adventures

We've been trying out some multi-cultural foods lately, mostly to assuage the boredom of the same black beans and rice several times a week. We talk about the country the food is from and the boys seem much more open to trying new tastes after looking at pictures of a different culture and finding the country on our globe.

Earlier this week we made onigiri, a Japanese food that is basically a ball of rice with a little salty filling in the center. I think some of the most common fillings are Japanese pickles. Not having any of these handy we used another common filling--salty canned salmon. We also added chopped red bell pepper (and mama had cooked mushrooms, too). Sadly, our rice balls did not stick together and we ended up dumping the leftover fillings onto our plates and eating the rice with a spoon. :)

Today we tried some recipes from India. We have cumin rice, curried lentils, and mixed vegetable dumplings(deep fried). I've never tried curry before. My mom doesn't like it, so I guess I grew up with a prejudice against it:) I smelled curry powder in the grocery store and thought it smelled yummy, so I decided to get a little and try it. At home we can add a much or as little spice as we like and I felt fairly safe trying something new.

The boys gobbled up the rice and lentils(a first for the lentils, they usually turn up their noses). The vegetable dumplings were too strongly flavored for the kiddos but papa and I gobbled those up! The veggies didn't start out with too much spice and lime juice but once they cooked down the concentrated flavor was quite strong.

I'm looking forward to posting more of our new food adventures in the near future.