Mauritania is a west African country bordered to the south by Senegal and to the north by…

(checks notes)

You know what, never mind.

It is presently in a period of democrac-ish, which is good, but still has an uncomfortable amount of slavery, which is very, very bad..

Let’s just get to the food, shall we?

We struggled to find a dish that wasn’t more identified with either Morocco or Senegal, and we eventually settled on Leksour, which is a lamb stew served over millet flour pancakes.

Rather than buy millet flour, I used our spice grinder to make it from some millet we had left over from a previous recipe.  (I’m NOT going to back and try to identify which one, because then I’ll have to admit how long that millet has been in the cupboard.)

The flours are mixed together with water and a bit of salt, and that batter rests for a bit as you get to work on the stew.  Which, to be fair, is pretty straightforward.  Brown some stewing lamb.

Chop up some vegetables and toss them in with salt, pepper and a bay leaf.

Then stew for an hour.

The pancakes were interesting – the dough was substantially stiffer than normal pancake batter, but given that the ratios for flour to water I found online were all over the map, I’m not sure if it was supposed to be or not.  None of them seemed to either burn, or be too undercooked, at any rate.  I think they may have been a little under, but it’s hard to say – there’s also a variety of colors of the millet itself out there to choose from.

And once the pancakes are ready, you just put the stew on the pancakes and eat it.

And it was fine.  There’s nothing wrong with a basic lamb stew, and the flatbread was good to soak up the juices.  But it was also… pretty basic.  The research for African countries is frequently difficult, as we’ve discussed earlier, and I’m sure there’s more interesting things that could be done with this if we had a better sense of what the normal range was.

But as it was, we had a nice Thursday night dinner and leftovers for several days.

Next up, we’re off to a country whose name could easily be mistaken for Mauritania, but isn’t.

Recipe:
Leksour (Mauritanian-style Pancakes with Sauce)

After doing the Maldives a few meals ago, we’re back out in the ocean for a country with an even higher ratio of water to land – the Marshall Islands. This time it’s not the Indian Ocean – we’re going to be a bit more Pacific than that.

Sorry.  However, if I’m going to say anything much about the history of the Marshall Islands, that’s the last bit of levity we’re getting for a while.  You see, the most famous of these Islands is Bikini Atoll, where the good ‘ol USA decided to set off the first hydrogen bomb.  And then the second one.

In time, the US would detonate 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands at Bikini and Enewetak atolls. The health impacts of the tests are still felt today, and likely will continue to be a serious issue right up until the likely destruction of the entire country due to climate change.

Woof.

OK, let’s talk about some food now, please?

The Marshall Islands have at various times been inhabited and / or governed by aboriginal populations from Australia and elsewhere, Germany, Japan, and the United States.  They’ve been independent since 1979, although they still depend on the US for things like (checks notes) bank insurance?  Huh.

At any rate, that’s a lot of influences.  As one might expect, fish is quite common, and as we’ve seen in other oceanic countries, pumpkin also comes up a lot.  Although rice isn’t native to the islands, a glutinous rice ball is a very common side dish, and finally the arguable national dish is a macadamia nut pie, despite the fact that macadamia nuts AREN’T originally native to these atolls.

We’ll get to the pie, but let’s make our main dishes first.  While most authentic would likely be to wrap the fish in banana leaves and grill it, I found a recipe for baked fish with a coconut milk sauce that sounded amazing (spoiler: it was), so we decided to go with that one.

First you make a sauce with coconut cream, onion, chilis, lemon juice, and a little corn starch for thickener.

Next, you shake the fish in a container with a coating made of flour, salt, and white pepper. Barramundi would probably be the most common fish, but the store had black cod on sale, so black cod it was. Plus, black cod is delicious.

The fish gets lightly browned in oil, and then baked in the sauce with a layer of tomato slices on top.  I definitely think we’ve probably wandered a bit from traditional Marshallese food here, but here it is.

While the fish bakes, we had a go at two more dishes, a pumpkin rice porridge, and chuck chuck.

Chuck chuck is simplicity itself: make some sticky rice, roll it into balls with a little sugar and salt, roll said balls in coconut.  One problem – our sticky rice, for once, turned out not at all sticky, so we ended up with rice piles, rather than balls.

The pumpkin rice dish had recipes that were more vibes than anything else – “Boil the pumpkin until tender, add rice, cook until done, add coconut milk, and cook until absorbed.”  But since all the sources agreed that a) these were, in fact, the steps in the process and b) sweating the details was likely not critical, we went with it.

Pumpkin:

Pumpkin + rice:
[photo missing]

Pumpkin + rice + coconut milk:

Well, we didn’t take a photo specifically of that step either, so here’s the whole meal on a plate.

Isn’t that yellow color pretty?  It’s entirely from the pumpkin.

For all the various hiccups, this meal goes hard. The rice, er, piles may not have ended up as finger food, but the sweet and salty flavor with the coconut was excellent.  May have to try this one again as a weeknight side.

The pumpkin rice porridge was hearty and delicious.

And finally the fish.  My heavens, the fish.  The ingredients weren’t all that complicated, but as mentioned earlier – black cod is delicious, and the sauce fused the chilis, coconut, and lemon juice together brilliantly.  The tomatoes, in particular, were so tasty when infused with the sauce, that I frankly do not care if they are remotely authentic.

And now, let’s make a macadamia nut pie.  At least, once we recover from the sticker shock.

I will point out that these two small bags of nuts constituted half the cost of the entire meal.  And black cod ain’t cheap, either.

But it’s the national dish, so let’s do this.  First off – scratch pie crust. Pulse dry stuff in blender, then add wet until it coheres. Wrap in plastic, rest in fridge.

We’ve watched lots of Bake Off – how hard can this be?

Oh wait. We’ve watched lots of Bake Off – we know EXACTLY how hard this can be.  But the dough rolled out nicely, and rather than a blind bake the recipe we found called for dusting the bottom of the crust with coconut.

The filling is a sugared coating for the nuts, similar to a pecan pie.  It consists of either corn syrup or honey, (the former is likely more common, but for obvious reasons we went with the latter) butter, coconut milk, light brown sugar (which is apparently “golden” sugar here in Canada), and eggs.

You just mix those ingredients together, fold in the nuts, pour that into the shell, and bake.

Then 30 seconds later, you realize you left out one bag of your absurdly expensive nuts, yank the thing out of the oven, and toss those in to keep baking.

Honestly, I don’t think that was the issue – rather, I suspect blind baking WOULD have helped the crust be a little less doughy at the end.  Still, you can’t see that in the picture, can you?

There was one more minor hiccup before serving – you’re supposed to make a coconut whipped cream to go on top, but I didn’t realize you have to whip the cream BEFORE you add the coconut milk, or it won’t set up.  Lesson learned.

A quick nip over to the grocery store, and it turned out they HAD coconut whipped cream on the shelf, pre made an ready for topping.

Which we did.  And it was good. As was the pie itself.  I mean – macadamia nuts in sugar and honey – how can you go wrong?

The Marshall Islands may have a depressing past and future, but their present seems to be delicious.

Next up – Mauritania!

Recipes:
Coconut Fish
Chuk Chuk
Pumpkin Rice Porridge
Macadamia Nut Pie

Hooray Malta!

(Checks notes)

OK, I am informed that Maltesers have nothing to do with Malta.  Dammit.

OK, what DOES have to do with Malta?

Well, lets see – the island has at various times been ruled by Phoenicia, Carthage, Greece, Rome, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, Knights Hospitalier, France, and Britain.  It became independent in 1964, and is so small and densely populated that the entire country is essentially considered one big urban region. Its capital city, Valletta, is the smallest capital in the EU by both population and area.

Also, it’s real pretty:

Like last week, I’ll point you to an Overly Sarcastic video for more information.

But let’s talk food.  The most commonly named option for the national dish of Malta is Stuffat tal-Fenek, a rabbit stew made with red wine.  Well that sounds tasty – lets get us a rabbit.  That’ll be photogenic, right?  Sure would have been, if I had remembered to take a picture BEFORE dismembering it.

A bowl of rabbit parts with some bay leaves and garlic is less impressive, but trust me, it was a whole rabbit before I got started.  Thanks to Jamie Oliver for the instructional video on the deconstruction. This got marinated for most of the day in “cheap and cheerful” red wine.

But before we get on to dinner, there’s another rabbit bit to talk about:

This is the rabbit liver, and it’s considered a delicacy in many quarters.  A traditional thing to do with it is to scoop it out of the stew and use it to make a pasta sauce which is served over noodles as a first course.  That sounded like a LOT to do all at once, so instead I made a pasta sauce with it that we had for lunch.

First you sweat some onions while the pasta is boiling:

Then you brown the livers, and use this as the base of a tomato pasta sauce.  This sauce calls for a number of ingredients for which we had to make substitutions.  For example, it calls for a “Maltese Cheeslet.”

I am informed that I am no longer allowed to use that as a pet name for Leigh.

So failing that, I just got some feta cheese.

It also calls for a fancy sounding ingredient called “Cucina d’Oro Cooking Sauce.” I can find LOTS of hyperbolic language describing this product online (largely from the manufacturer) but very little about what it is actually intended to DO in a dish. It appears to be powdered buttermilk in a matrix of palm oil and starch.

I just used heavy cream.

There’s also some chili powder and fennel seed in here.  It’s actually quite a delicious sauce when you get done making it.

And that was lunch.

Moving on to dinner, the first step is to take the rabbit out of the marinade and sear it on all sides.

That accomplished you then, (what else?) sweat an onion with some garlic and bay leaves.

This being a stew, the cooking process from this point forward is “put stuff in the pot, cook it for a while, put more stuff in the pot.”  That included the marinade (which, recall, is basically just red wine), carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, more bay leaves, and salt and pepper.  Then it just… stews for a while.

Despite the fact that this stew CONTAINS potatoes, the suggested side dish for the recipe we found was… potatoes.

So – slice the potatoes medium thick, layer with onions and olive oil, and cover with foil. (Foil not pictured)

The idea is that you steam them for about 45 minutes in the foil to get them nice and soft, then take the foil off and let them crisp up on top.  The former happened, and they did crisp up some but we were hungry and the stew was done, so we popped them out when they looked like this.

They were pretty good, but for leftovers I’m going to add some cheese.

And here’s the final spread:

Not bad, right?  The rabbit was nicely cooked without being tough, and the stew was quite flavourful.  That flavour being basically “red wine,” but we LIKE red wine.  The potatoes on the side had quite a different texture than the potatoes in the stew, so they didn’t feel redundant.

And it was good!  The rabbit was a bit pricey, but we got a TON of leftovers out of this meal, so no worries there.

Next up – The Marshall Islands.

Recipes:
Stuffat tal-Fenek (Maltese Rabbit Stew)
Patata fil-fom (Maltese style potaotes)
Rabbit Liver Pappardelle

I feel a little bad about this one.

There’s a dish that’s mentioned on a lot of sites as the national dish of Mali, which is a stew called Tiguadege Na.  I found a recipe with a reasonably promising looking source.

But – I feel like we just didn’t quite DO enough.

Also, it’s remarkably similar to the dishes we made for Chad, the Gambia, and the Central African Republic, so I wonder if we should have tried harder to find something a bit more unique?  There’s lots of reasons why the African countries are frequently challenging, and also somewhat problematic, which I talk about a bit on the CAR page.

So anyway, Mali.  Fascinating country with a lot of really interesting history.  Timbuktu is in Mali.  You can learn more about that in this video. 

All that said, here’s the dish.

Brown some meat, then add onions and garlic until they’ve softened.  Our local Save On Foods had some wildly varying sizes of stew meat on offer, but since we were going to braise it forever, it didn’t really matter.

Add tomatoes, broth, peanut butter, and Herbes de Province. I’m assuming the latter is due to the fact that France was the colonial aggressor in this part of Africa.

Finally, toss in carrots and potatoes and stew forever.

It ended up being tasty, but much more watery than in the recipe photos.  If you try this one, I might consider doubling the peanut butter at least.

And that’s Mali.  They can’t all be huge production numbers, I suppose.  Next up, Malta!

Recipe:
Tiguadege Na

It’s been a few months since we did one of these meals.  Can’t imagine why.

Oh wait – see the preceding 24 entries on this blog for the reason why.

But we’re back, and it’s time to get back on our nonsense.  Heretofore unfamiliar specialty ingredient?

Chec… oh no wait, that’s tuna.  OK, as I said – unknown specialty ingredient?

Chec… no, hang on, also tuna. One more try.

OK, this is ALSO tuna, but it is, nonetheless, a heretofore unfamiliar specialty ingredient.  Specifically, it’s dried tuna flakes.

I’m sensing a theme here – where IS this country?

Ah.  That explains all the tuna.

The Maldives have a population of half a million people, concentrated on a surface area the size of Fresno, making it the second most densely populated country in Asia. (after Singapore.) On the other hand, that surface area is spread out over a region the size of Maine, making it one of the most spatially dispersed countries in the world.  So that’s neat.

Also, they apparently eat a lot of tuna, because the two plausible dishes I could find as the most iconic are (checks notes) a tuna soup, and a cold tuna salad.

Good thing we LIKE tuna, then, innit?

OK, let’s make the salad, which is called Mas Huni. It is frequently eaten as a breakfast dish. You can find a bunch of different versions of it online, but some of them are so simple it didn’t feel like we’d be putting in sufficient effort. This one at least meant I had to get in the car to go get the dried tuna flakes.  (While I was at it, I also got some South Asian spices I’d been meaning to pick up, and then I went across the street and got donuts.)

And even for this, maximally complicated version, the process is “put everything in a bowl and mix it up.”  Everything in this case being canned tuna, tuna flakes, coconut, grated onion, green chilis, coconut milk, and some cilantro.

Bam. Done.  What next?

The tuna soup is called Garudhiya, and there’s basically no difference in the recipes I found online.  First you poach the tuna for a bit, then you toss in some onions and curry leaves and poach it some more.

Salt to taste.  Is that all?

Well, we did one more thing, and it was the most time-consuming, but only because it’s a flatbread, so you have to cook them one at a time.  To make these Huni Roshi, you make a simple dough of flour, water, coconut milk, and shredded coconut, and then you just cook them in a pan.

Like any batch cooking item (looking at you, pancakes) the first couple didn’t turn out so great, but they got better as we went along.  And that was it.  Here’s the full spread.

Tuna, tuna, and bread for eating tuna.  And you know what?  It was pretty good.  The tuna soup was subtle, but that meant the tuna and curry leaves got to speak for themselves.  And the Mas Huni was extremely flavorful – the lime juice, coconut, and chilis really perked up the tuna to make something really tasty.  The leftovers got polished off for lunch on the next two days, which says something.

And that’s the Maldives!  They were tuna-riffic.

Next up, Mali!

Recipes:
Mas Huni and Huni Roshi
Garudhiya