The 12 Weeks of Christmas-The United States and Canada

Week 3: The United States & Canada

(Source: Britannica.com)

Neither the United States, nor Canada shows up on my DNA tests, of course, as I have no Native blood in me, but these are the countries of origin for my parents and grandparents, so I thought it was appropriate to include them in this project. And it wasn't as easy as you'd think, to find foods for these two countries that aren't too "done" by other countries that will be featured in this project.

Canada's recipe was very easy to decide on. It's one I've heard of a lot over the years but just never tried. And for once, I actually had a recipe card to test out, which means I can share the recipe here!

I have had this recipe in my collection forever, but for some reason, have never tried it. It's old enough that I don't know the source, so I can share it here. Just know, I didn't invent this recipe! This is called a Tourtiere, or Pork Pie.

1lb. ground pork

1tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/8 tsp. mace(this is really hard to find and very expensive. It's part of the nutmeg plant, so if you don't have any on hand, don't go out of your way to get it, just use a smidge extra nutmeg and it'll be fine.)

2 tsp. cornstarch

Pastry for 2-crust 8" pie(I used store bought, and it worked just fine) 

Combine all ingredients, except pastry, with 1 cup water. Blend thoroughly.

Simmer, uncovered, stirring frequently, 30 minutes.

Line an 8" pie pan with pastry, pour in meat mixture.

Cover with remaining pastry. Press edges together and prick with a fork to allow steam to escape during baking. Bake in a 425 degree oven for 10 minutes before reducing temperature to 350 degrees. Bake 35 minutes longer or until top is brown. Serve hot. Makes 6 servings.

 

Here's the final product, just out of the oven. Nice and golden brown!

And here's the final product, cut and presented on the plate! It's a very simple dish, but it's really tasty. I would say it almost borders on too salty for my tastes, and I'd probably cut the salt down to 3/4 tsp. There are fancier versions of this dish you can find online, but I wanted to try this very basic version for the first time I made the dish. 

This was really delicious and I would definitely eat it again. I'll be eating leftovers throughout the week. This might freeze and thaw well, but I would have to test that to know for sure.

The United States was definitely a hard one to find a recipe for. All of our traditions come from other places, so I had to think long and hard about foods and traditions unique to this country. It finally came to me: Jell-o salad. A 60's and 70's classic, and nearly every white family in this nation has the family jell-o salad recipe. Admit it, if you're white, you know this salad. It usually involves lime jell-o and pineapple and some sort of dairy. Admit it, there's nothing to be ashamed of, I promise. So, I went about tracking down a jell-salad that wasn't the same as our family recipe, and ran across one that sounded promising.

This recipe is what I made.

 

I made some changes based on the fact that I didn't notice that the cream cheese layer called for plain gelatin, and I didn't get any from the store. Then I decided the cream cheese layer sounded kind of gross anyway, and it was a happy mistake in the long run. I also thought of a way to keep it cool-looking though.

Instead of doing the cranberry layer all as one, I cut it in half and did a cranberry layer, then the lime layer, then the second cranberry layer, so it still had three layers. This is the strawberry jell-o with the cranberry sauce mixed in.

Here is the lime layer with pineapple juice and the crushed pineapple. I let every layer sit for a couple hours in the fridge before adding the next one, and they managed to be distinct layers.

Here's the lime layer on top of the first cranberry layer.

And the top cranberry layer. You definitely need to start this in the morning in order for it to be fully set up by dinnertime.

Here you can see the three distinct layers on the plate as I get ready to taste it. It actually has a great flavor and if you like pineapple, you'll enjoy this for sure. The cranberry sort of just melts into the jell-o so you don't feel like you're eating cranberries at all. 

I found this incredibly sweet and was unable to finish my serving. I haven't eaten jell-o in so long I honestly can't remember when I had it last, so I had my sister taste it for me. She assured me it wasn't overly sweet, if anything it was less sweet than normal jell-o, so if jell-o's your thing, definitely give this one a try!

I had fun making these two recipes today. After last week's disaster, I really needed a win! I think I got it, and now I'm feeling very happy about this and ready for next week! Happy cooking!

 

 

The 12 Weeks of Christmas: Week 2-Spain

Week 2 was supposed to be the Iberian Peninsula, but Portugal's recipe was a huge and incredibly disappointing fail, so it's been left over and now it's just Spain. I'm not going to bother sharing the recipe that failed spectacularly. I'm not going to share the tale of the week I spent making the candied pears that ended up being cold and slimy, or the candied oranges, which did turn out ok. I will share that recipe down the line, if I end up using them for something else that manages to turn out ok. I'm just disappointed and a little bitter that I spent a week prepping for this and all day working on a recipe that is now currently sitting in the compost pile waiting to be taken out. Sigh...Ok, enough feeling sorry for myself. Let me share the recipe that did work out!

(Source: Britannica.com)

 Spanish Tortilla

This is a very simple, basic, and well-known Spanish recipe. It's called a tortilla, but it's really an omelet. A potato and onion omelet. I've never made one over the years, even though I've always wanted to try it. I decided this was the year to make it.

So, you chop the onions and slice the peeled potatoes and sprinkle them generously with salt. The potatoes need to be sliced really thin.

It's supposed to be all olive oil, but I didn't have enough so I supplemented with vegetable oil for the rest. You're not really frying the potatoes, you're basically boiling them in the oil slowly. When the potatoes are that thin, it doesn't take too long to cook them, which is nice.

Post cooking, removed from the oil with a slotted spoon and left out to cool down. I added more salt at this point, as well. I was left with a lot of leftover oil which I couldn't in good conscience just get rid of, so I'll probably use it to make hash browns until it's all used up.

When the potatoes are cool, you pour in the mixed eggs and stir together well.

Then, into the frying pan it goes, with a little bit of oil. Now, I was supposed to use a clean, large nonstick frying pan, but I chose to use the same pan I cooked the potatoes in, which isn't a non-stick pan, and had potato and onion bits in it still, so I knew pretty much the outcome of this. I did it anyway.

As you can see, the result is more of a scramble after you flip it to cook the other side. The good news is, a scramble and a proper omelet taste exactly the same, so it doesn't really matter in the long run!

This tasted really good and would make a good breakfast or brunch dish. I think the idea of a Christmas brunch sounds amazing and a dish like this would be really easy to throw together on Christmas morning.

This made a lot, and I will be eating the leftovers for dinner tomorrow night and lunch throughout the week! 

Well, hopefully next week's recipes won't fail so badly on me as the first recipe did for me today. At least I have some deliciousness to look forward to this week!

Feliz Navidad!

The 12 Weeks of Christmas-Week 1: Cameroon

Welcome to my 12 Weeks of Christmas blog project! Here I will be trying out foods eaten around the world during the holiday season that I have never made before. I narrowed it down to to the nations that showed up on my Ancestry.com and 23andme DNA test results. Some weeks will be full meals. Some weeks will be all desserts or baked goods, and some will be a mix. I'm really looking forward to trying out the really traditional classics that I've eaten or seen my whole life, but never bothered to make from scratch. 

Week 1 is Cameroon, a nation in Central Africa.

Christmas in Cameroon. 

(Map source: Britannica.com)

I found some really delicious recipes to try and was happy that all of them turned out well! This was originally supposed to be Cameroon and Congo, but the recipes I selected ended up being only Cameroonian, so I decided to just focus on the that country this time.

For my main entree, was a chicken dish called Kati Kati. And for the side and veggie, were Njama Njama and Fufu.

Since these recipes are not mine, I will not be writing them out, but the links will take you to the recipes.

First up, is the Kati Kati. This is a grilled chicken dish that is finished in the sauce. The chicken is marinated in a delicious blend of spices and oil, and the sauce is made from fresh tomatoes and onion. I used the tomatoes from my porch that have finally been ripening and they were really amazing!

The sauce is made in a food processor. You can add a little water if you need to, but my tomatoes were so ripe I didn't need to add any at all. In the bowl next to it is the cornmeal and water for the fufu(more details below).

Post pureeing. It smells so amazing! Because the chicken gets added to the sauce and it's so highly seasoned, you don't need to add more seasoning to the sauce. You put this in a pot on the stove with a Tablespoon of tomato paste and heat well. I did end up having to add more water as it did get a little too dried out, especially when you add the chicken and need to let it cook for a while.

Post-marinating, using my grill pan to get a nice grill on all sides. Super easy this way but you could just as easily do it on a grill outside if that's an option for you.

I think the grill pan worked really well. I highly recommend having one if you don't already have one!

Once it's nicely grilled on all sides, you add it to the sauce and blend well. This is when I added about a half cup of water to allow the sauce to cover the chicken well. Cover the pot and let it cook over low heat till the chicken is cooked through. The recipe I used called for thighs, but I wanted to use up some legs I have in the freezer. I think any cut would work, really.

Next up is the Njama Njama. I used collard greens since turnip greens aren't available here. More fresh tomatoes from my plant, a habanero pepper, and regular onions are the basis for the dish. It calls for smoked turkey, but I wanted it to be meat-free, so I used smoked paprika instead of regular as a trade off.

You start off sauteing the onions in oil before adding the tomatoes and pepper and the recipe calls for Maggi cubes, which are chicken boullion cubes, so I used what I had on hand instead. I have a bottle of powdered bouillon I got when the pandemic started and for some reason chicken broth was hard to find. I wanted some sort of option, so I got that instead. It's not a general go-to for me, but it's not bad. Added to the vegetables like this was a new idea to me, but it turns out it's a great flavor!

This is after it's cooked down. I added the smoked paprika too. I didn't add salt, as the bouillon is salty enough already to not need more.

You blanch the collard greens and drain them well before adding it to the pot and blending well. This turned out to be really tasty! I cut the pepper in half and removed the pith and seeds and kept the halves intact so I could remove them more easily. I'm a spice wimp, but this turned out to be just perfect!

The last element of the dish was the Fufu. Fufu is a really popular and common side dish in West and Central African cooking. It's very simple, just cornmeal and water. You don't even add salt. It's sort of a polenta or like the base for tamales, but without any filling.

When you finish cooking it, you portion into plastic wrap or foil and shape them into balls. I think if I had to do this one over, even if it's not generally done, I would have added some salt. It was really plain. But I mixed some of the sauce from the chicken and stirred the greens into it and it was fine after that. The pictures I've seen online made it look like it was supposed to be firmer than it was. I think it's traditionally eaten with your fingers and you're supposed to shape into a ball. Mine was softer than that, though I did try to eat it with my fingers but it just made a huge mess so I switched to a fork. It's possible I needed to use finer cornmeal than I had, but I just used what I had on hand.

This turned out to be a colorful, flavorful, fun meal to make. It's Christmas colors you get to eat! Just look at it! This was really delicious and I have leftovers to look forward to tomorrow night. I would definitely make this meal again.

I think it does make it extra special to cook foods that you know your ancestors probably ate. Foods that connect you to where they came from. I found myself thinking about them and wondering what life was like for them. My African ancestry comes from my mom's side. We speculate it's all through my mom's dad, but as neither of my grandparents are alive on that side of the family, we're unable to trace our DNA definitively past my mom's generation. It's possible some of it came from my mom's mom, but we'll likely never know for sure.

If you're looking for something really different for a Christmas dinner this year, this would be a great option! I highly recommend this meal!