{"id":2833,"date":"2026-05-23T10:22:53","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T17:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=2833"},"modified":"2026-05-31T10:49:55","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T17:49:55","slug":"international-meals-monaco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=2833","title":{"rendered":"International Meals – Monaco"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we discussed here<\/a>, Leigh and I have always entertained a secret plan to visit all the tiny countries in Europe – Andorra, Liechtenstein, San Marino, the Vatican, and Monaco.\u00a0 Last summer, we finally managed to visit one of them together, and we\u2019ve visited TWO of them so far on this culinary adventure.\u00a0 For this meal, we\u2019re ticking off number three – Monaco!<\/p>\n

How small is Monaco?<\/p>\n

So small that when you draw the country border, you can pick out the cruise ship dock. (That may also be an indictment of how goddamn large cruise ships are.)<\/p>\n

\"Monaco<\/p>\n

So small that Tim Traveler had a race across the country<\/a> to see whether it was faster to do it on foot or by elevator.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really small.<\/p>\n

And like many small countries, the question of course, becomes – how is the cuisine of this tiny postage stamp different from that of the surrounding countries.\u00a0 And as always, the answer is \u201cnot by much.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, it turns out there IS an acknowledged national dish – a deep-fried savory pastry filled with a mix of ricotta cheese and chard.\u00a0 Now, we hate deep frying, but sometimes we can\u2019t avoid it.\u00a0 Plus, these things sounded delicious.<\/p>\n

Just chard crunchies didn\u2019t sound like enough for dinner, though, so we added a fish stew common to the region as a main entree.<\/p>\n

This stew is made with cured cod, but there\u2019s two possible ways to do that.\u00a0 The very traditional way, which would have been most appropriate, would have been with \u201cstockfish\u201d.\u00a0 This is a Scandinavian technique where fish are hung in the air to dry, with no other curing solution.\u00a0\u00a0 The resulting product is hard as a rock, but apparently delicious after being laboriously rehydrated.<\/p>\n

However, we were unable to find this style of fish anywhere in Vancouver, despite a great deal of hunting.\u00a0 (In part, that\u2019s why it\u2019s been a hot minute since the last meal.) So we settled on cod preserved the other way – in a metric ton of salt.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve encountered salt cod on here before, for Croatia<\/a> and Jamaica<\/a>, but this is the first time I\u2019ve bought an entire fish, and not just fillets.\u00a0 I found it at a Portuguese grocery store, and when the clerk offered to cut it up for me, she slapped it on a bog standard office paper cutter. So that was neat.<\/p>\n

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

To prepare the cod, you have to soak it in water for several days, changing the water frequently.\u00a0 When you\u2019re done, you have fish that is still quite salty, but is at least edible by humans.<\/p>\n

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

Both the fish stew and the pastries have fairly complicated processes that involve resting times, such that we had to make ourselves a schedule to make sure everything got done roughly simultaneously.\u00a0 For clarity here, I\u2019ll just lay out one recipe then the other.<\/p>\n

First, the fish. Once you drain off the final soak, you have to cut it into good sized pieces for frying.\u00a0 This actually took quite a bit of effort, since whole fish have whole fish quantities of bones that I was trying to mostly remove, along with the skin.\u00a0 This accomplished, the pieces were dredged in flour and then shoved back in the fridge.<\/p>\n

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

While the fish is chilling, you make the stew.\u00a0 Most of the pictures of this dish I\u2019ve seen show an actual stew, with liquid in it.\u00a0 But that\u2019s not what we got.\u00a0 After sweating some onions, garlic, and carrots, you add in chopped tomatoes and some herbs and allow the mixture to simmer for half an hour.\u00a0 To my mind, \u201csimmer\u201d involves some amount of freestanding liquid, but there really wasn\u2019t any, and none cooked out of the tomatoes besides the bare minimum to prevent the whole mixture from scorching.\u00a0 At the end of the cook time everything had softened, but there were still discreet chunks of everything.<\/p>\n

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

Once the sauce is ready, you just fry the fish pieces in olive oil, and then donk the sauce over them to serve.<\/p>\n

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

On to the pastries.<\/p>\n

The dough for the pastries is a flour and egg dough, which is kneaded to a smooth consistency and then put in the fridge to cool.<\/p>\n

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

The filling consists of onions, chard, leeks, and spinach, cooked down until the onions are soft and the greens are wilted.\u00a0 This is then mixed with ricotta and parmesan cheeses and an egg white.<\/p>\n

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

Once the dough is chilled, you roll it out and make little pastries like ravioli or small empanadas.\u00a0 As always with this sort of assembly line cooking process, some came out tidier than others.\u00a0 It\u2019s always challenging with any kind of dumpling to get the crust thin enough while not overfilling them. (Sorry not too many pictures at this point – we were pretty busy here.)<\/p>\n

And then it\u2019s time for deep frying. Sigh.\u00a0 So tasty.\u00a0 So annoying.<\/p>\n

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

A bit of “misfit toys” going on here – the prettier ones were in the first batch under the towel.<\/p>\n

The recipe for the fish said we should serve it with potatoes, so we made some of those too.\u00a0 They were potatoes.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m getting that unenthusiastic description out of the way, because the rest of the meal turned out great! The chard \u2018n\u2019 cheese pastries were tasty and crunchy, and some of them didn\u2019t even look completely hideous.<\/p>\n


But the fish stew was really the standout of the meal – the tomato melange, despite not becoming all that soupy, was flavourful and delicious, and contrasted brilliantly with the salty fish.<\/p>\n

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

And the best part of the meal was that we had friends to enjoy it with!<\/p>\n

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

Thanks Monaco – we\u2019ll visit you someday! Maybe for our 40th anniversary?<\/p>\n

Next up, Mongolia!<\/p>\n

Recipes:
\nBarbagiuan<\/a>
\nSalt Cod with Tomatoes<\/a> (Note that this link seems to have gone down between the time we made the recipe and did this writeup.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we discussed here, Leigh and I have always entertained a secret plan to visit all the tiny countries in Europe – Andorra, Liechtenstein, San Marino, the Vatican, and Monaco.\u00a0 Last summer, we finally managed to visit one of them … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2833","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\/2833","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=2833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2844,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2833\/revisions\/2844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}