Dinner #5: ESPAÑA! olé olé!

POR FIN, lleguemos a ESPAÑA! Happily, we all love Spanish cuisine- and are completely thrilled with this country having been pulled from the bag. 

Giuseppe had appetizers- and created a wonderful Green Gazpacho, which none of us had ever had before. 




Amaly was in charge of the main course, and attempted Seafood Paella. Perhaps an interesting choice seeing as we are completely surrounded by desert sands and mountains, but COSTCO and Sams should be able to provide adequate quality seafood, even if frozen.

Will and Tara watching the clams and mussels open as they cook, actually something which fascinated us all. 

The finished Seafood Paella. Tasted pretty good, but unfortunately, the pan (better known as the Wok in our house) was rather ruined. The problem we encountered was ensuring that the different types of seafoods were all cooked enough so we wouldn't poison ourselves. We had no issues, thankfully!

Will chose to make Drunken Pears??? Which entailed cooking pear halves in a mix of red wine and sherry for about half an hour (while everything else was cooking). 

These were altogether, amazingly delicious. The white cream was a great addition. 

Dinner #4: Guuuuuuuuuatemala!!!

We have managed to FINALLY make our way completely off of the Euro-Asian continent, and over to South America.

Everyone was very excited- yet apprehensive. After talking with some of our Tbird friends from Guatemala, who assured us that "the traditional Guatemala cuisine is very ugly and weird, there is very little that is delicious", we all did our best. There was some trouble finding completely authentic and individual to Guatemala cuisine, as there is a lot of sharing of dishes between the different South and Central American countries. In the end, we had the following line-up:

Appetizers: Pupusas
Entée: Guatemalan Stew of some sort
Dessert: Rellenitos de Plátano

Amaly searched and found something called 'pupusas'. For those of you familiar with Mexican cuisine, they resemble gorditas that one can find on the streets of Guanajuato and DF. Pupusas are also claimed by El Salvador, a fact that escaped Amaly until a few days after the dinner. Follow this link for the pupusa recipe that Amaly used. We ended up frying the pupusas in hot oil (varying degrees of success with that) because we lacked the correct pan (comal) to cook them on.

 Will and Tara decided to try their hand at a Guatemalan stew. Filled with potatoes, carrots, green sauce based from tomatillos, and chicken. SUPER DELICIOUS!!

Giuseppe was on desserts, and decided to test us with a concoction made out of black beans, powdered sugar, and fried plantains, called 'Rellenitos de Platano'. It wasn't something any of us really thought sounded amazing, but we were willing to give it a try.






          






We had some issues with the making of the rellenitos- the dough was very sticky and was hard to manipulate (see gooey hands) and then the temperature of the oil was difficult to regulate, so our first attempts at frying them turned into blackened messes.

When we had the final products, eaten with some trepidation, we decided that it definitely was not our most favourite dessert, and most likely would not be attempting this recipe again. But if you want to try it, here is the recipe Giuseppe was following!