Libya, almost to the middle, or is it the middle east?

مرحبا

Libya is another Middle Eastern country and another country where lamb is popular.

We decided to cook a Libyan dish of lamb with couscous. A very nice dish with lots of juices, probably too much in the way of juice as it was almost like a soup.

وداعا

Sam’s rating: 7/10

Liberia, a meaty meal

Hello,

Liberia is an interesting country as it is the only African nation that was colonised and controlled by freed African-American and ex-Carribbean slaves as a free state and a homeland to live. This theme of freedom is seen in many places with the motto “The love of liberty brought us here”, in fact, the name Liberia refers to the “Land of the free”. Sadly, the country is rather corrupt placing 87^th most corrupt in the world.

For this country we cooked Liberian Jollof Rice which is a beautiful combination of chicken, beef and bacon with cabbage and rice. The meal was seasoned with salt, pepper and tomato, very tasty.

Bye

Sam’s rating: 9/10

Lesotho, a vegetarian meal

Hi,

Lesotho is a mountainous landlocked country surrounded by South Africa where 40% of the population lives below the poverty line of $1.25 USD per day. Typically, the Basotho people have very little meat in their cuisine.

We made a dish called Afrikaanse stoofschotel which is a vegetarian dish consisting of cabbage, tomatoes and potatoes with spices. Despite being vegetarian, the meal was surprisingly tasty.

Bye

Sam’s rating: 7/10

Lebanon and leftovers

مرحبا

Lebanon is a very ancient country situated in the Middle East.  we had riz ala’ dajaj which is chicken and lamb with rice and a Lebanese salad.

 The dish was fairly tasty with a lot of cinnamon flavouring, the lamb didn’t add too much to the taste of the meal. The leftovers didn’t do any favours to the dish!

وداعا

Sam’s rating: 7/10

Lativia, a touch of pork

sveiki

Lativia is a country that I hadn’t heard of until about two years ago situated in north-western Europe. The meals according to Wikipedia are generally quite fatty with few spices.

For this meal we decided on karbonāde (pork cutlets with chanterelle cream sauce) which is battered pork that is fried and served with vegetables with a mushroom sauce. It took a while to hunt down a mushroom mix that contained 25% chanterelle mushrooms.

The meal was quite nice although I am not really that fond of mushrooms.

ardievas

Sam’s rating: 8/10

Laos, a salad for the nation

สวัสดี

For this country situated near Thailand sharing the same language we decided to cook laap muu which is essentially minced pork with a fish sauce flavour served on a lettuce.

There was a mild spice taste to the pork and the fish sauce made the smell very different, in fact it had us wondering whether the mince was off!

ลา

Sam’s rating: 7/10

Kyrgyzstan, a contender for the top soup

Здравствуйте

Kyrgyzstan, so many of these countries I cannot pronounce, I will have to pay careful attention next year when I announce the countries at the Rio Olympics that is for sure.

For Kyrgyzstan I decided to cook kesme, a noodle and lamb soup. I do like a good soup and this one is probably the best soup we have had to date. The recipe was a little unclear about what spices to add but according to google, cumin is one of the key ones and the only one I used other than those specified by the recipe.

As mentioned, the soup was nice; I would have given it a 10 except that would put it on level with mum’s Chinese noodle soup and also her bacon bone and vegetable soup. No soup can join those at that level so it had to settle with the lesser score of 9.

До свидания

Sam’s rating: 9/10

Kuwait, four layered meal

مرحبا,

Kuwait is a Middle Eastern country where we decided to cook chicken and rice with daqoos. Daquoos is simply a tomato, garlic sauce from the country.

The dish was nice and the method of cooking even better, there were four separate components to the meal, the rice which was cooked with turmeric flavouring and chicken broth, the chicken which was boiled, coated with flour and fried. Then there was the onion and nut with raisin component followed by the daquoos, a tomato and garlic sauce.

The method of cooking the rice was tasty and different, very nice and I liked the dusting of flour on chicken before frying.

وداعا

Sam’s rating: 8/10

Kosovo, a bit of yoghurt marinade is nice, too much yoghurt not so much

Përshëndetje / здраво,

Kosovo, a very new nation in its own right but still a disputed territory of Serbia (it declared independence in 2008). The country has two official languages being Albanian and Serbian.

Similarly to everything else, the cuisine is a mixture of Albanian and Serbian dishes. We decided to cook a more traditional Albanian dish called Tave Kosi as the Kosovans typically have dairy with every meal.

 While I have loved yoghurt marinade to date with the Egyptian and Jordanian recipes being among my favourite there is certainly too much of a good thing, if you call that good. For the recipe we used 800 grams of yogurt (we scaled the recipe back a little), that much yogurt spells trouble.

I got through my serving, but only just. Needless to say, most of the leftovers ended up in the bin.

Lamtumirë / збогом

Sam’s rating: 4/10

Kiribati, fussing over Lobster

Hi,

Kiribati, sometimes known as Christmas Island (but not the Australian territory one) is extremely small and I ended up doing a red circle around where it is located as my map doesn’t even have it marked. The dish is one that I was looking forward to since it was my first chance to try lobster in my life, a delicacy in Australia. I ended up being severely disappointed with the roasted lobster with coconut curry dipping sauce.

The lobster was strong flavouring, somewhat chewy and tasted a bit like crab to me. Bec loved her lobster but when she tasted mine she observed how different they were as she agreed with me.

So maybe I ended up with a bad lobster, if that is the case it is probably for the best at $70 a kilogram!

Goodbye

Sam’s rating: 6/10

Kenya, not the best for braces

Habari,

For Kenya we decided to cook Kuku Paka, not a good dish to cook when you have ceramic braces as it stains the clear ligatures, a good thing I have a check-up shortly.

I always like a good curry and this was very nice, the coconut adds a special flavour to it along with the coriander (cilantro)

Kwaheri

Sam’s rating: 8/10

Kazakhstan, horse? No thanks, anything but

Сәлеметсіз бе

This Baltic state consumes a lot of horse meat with the national dish, besbarmak consisting of boiled horse. Given this, it was somewhat difficult to find a recipe which we could cook in Australia.

We decided to cook Kazakh lemon chicken. The chicken was quite nice but I prefer the chicken cooked in other ways with other spices!

Сау болыңыз

Sam’s rating: 7/10

Jordan, a tasty yoghurt marinated dish

مرحبا

For Jordan we decided to cook a lamb dish, mansaf, which is served with rice on khubz bread.

The lamb was marinated in Greek yogurt, cinnamon, cloves, cumin, paprika and cardamom. The recipe called for clarified butter which was an interesting procedure.

There is something about yogurt based marinade that I really quite like. The butter dribbled onto the khubz bread also made my taste buds dance.

وداعا

Sam’s rating: 9/10