{"id":1910,"date":"2024-02-04T21:43:26","date_gmt":"2024-02-05T05:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=1910"},"modified":"2024-02-07T22:16:47","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T06:16:47","slug":"international-meals-kiribati","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=1910","title":{"rendered":"International Meals – Kiribati"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the struggles of this project is to not simply cut and paste our recipes from other bloggers who have taken on this task.\u00a0 Especially since they’re mostly doing a better job.<\/p>\n

In particular, United Noshes<\/a> is doing a really exceptional job.\u00a0 They have dinner parties.\u00a0 They donate to charity.\u00a0 They’ve been on NPR.\u00a0 Have WE been on NPR?\u00a0 No we have not.\u00a0 Are we doing nearly a careful or accurate enough job to WARRANT being on NPR?\u00a0 Also no.<\/p>\n

But when United Noshes says they are unable to identify much, if any, of a distinct food culture for a country, we know we’re not going to do any better.\u00a0 In order to avoid just copying them, I will generally do quite a bit of Googling, as well as checking actual cookbooks.\u00a0 But in this case?<\/p>\n

Nope – we’re just copying them.<\/p>\n

To get a few things out of the way:<\/p>\n

Kiribati is an island nation in the middle of the Pacific ocean. It is the 172nd largest country in the world by surface area, putting it between Sao Tome and Principe, and Bahrain.\u00a0 By population, it is 178th. On the other hand, they have bent time and space to their will.<\/p>\n

By which I mean there’s a big diversion in the international date line which Kiribati unilaterally declared in order to have the entire country be on the same day of the week as their major trading partner, Australia.<\/p>\n

\"International<\/a>
\nCan you guess where Kiribati is in this picture?<\/p>\n

Two more facts before we get onto the food.\u00a0 1) The name of this country is pronounced “Kiribass”. 2) Kiribati is very likely to be the first country we lose entirely to climate change.<\/p>\n

OK, so before that happens, what are we making?\u00a0 Two dishes – fried parrotfish, and pumpkin simmered in coconut milk.<\/p>\n

Both are VERY simple, as befits a country with very little land area for cultivation of herbs and spices.\u00a0 Let’s start with the fish.\u00a0 Parrotfish are actually found all over the world, but since they are also found in the freezer at my local Supermarket 88, we decided to ape United Noshes and go with that.\u00a0 After all, we can’t argue with this irrefutable evidence:<\/p>\n

\"Kiribati<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s more or less exactly what the frozen one looked like.<\/p>\n

\"Parrotfish\"<\/a>
\nUncanny, isn’t it?\u00a0 I am NOT good at gutting, scaling, or filleting fish, as has already been established in this project, but fortunately, parrotfish have BIG scales, so it’s easy to tell when you’ve gotten them all.\u00a0 A great deal of utterly terrible knife work later, and we had this.
\n\"Parrotfish<\/a><\/p>\n

And a quick fry in oil later, we had this.
\n\"Fried<\/a>
\nThat would appear to be fried fish, all right. To be clear, I used absolutely no seasoning or breading of any kind.\u00a0 Just patted them dry with paper towels and hurled them into the oil.<\/p>\n

For our other dish, we made\u00a0Te bwaukin,\u00a0<\/em>or pumpkin simmered in coconut milk with pandan leaf.\u00a0 And there’s really not much more to it than that.\u00a0 There’s literally only one ingredient (sugar) that isn’t listed in the title of the recipe.<\/p>\n

Chop up pumpkin. (shown here mid chop)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Put in a pot with coconut milk, sugar, and some pandan leaves.<\/p>\n

\"Simmering<\/a><\/p>\n

The pandan leaves are interesting.\u00a0 They have a really lovely, sweet fragrance, and are used for seasoning desserts all over Oceana and southeast Asia.\u00a0 Our entire fridge now smells like pandan, and I am not complaining.<\/p>\n

And with that, we’re done.\u00a0 Here’s dinner:<\/p>\n

\"Kiribati<\/a><\/p>\n

Simple, isn’t it?\u00a0 The nice thing about saltwater fish is that they taste just fine when you cook them without any seasoning.\u00a0 It was a nice crunchy piece of flaky fish.\u00a0 And the pumpkin was so sweet (if a bit mushy) that it was basically a dessert.\u00a0 Nothing fancy here, but as authentic as we were likely to get, and nothing we wouldn’t eat again.<\/p>\n

Thanks Kiribati!\u00a0 We hope everyone gets out safely.<\/p>\n

Next up, due to our refusal to file it under “N” or “D”, we have Korea, North.<\/p>\n

Recipes:
\nFried Parrotfish: Seriously, just toss it in hot oil for 12 minutes or so.
\nPumpkin Simmered in Coconut Milk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the struggles of this project is to not simply cut and paste our recipes from other bloggers who have taken on this task.\u00a0 Especially since they’re mostly doing a better job. In particular, United Noshes is doing a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-meals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1919,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910\/revisions\/1919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}