Author: Christopher Finke
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Cooking Around the World: Riz Gras from Burkina Faso
Around and around the world he goes, what he cooks, nobody knows! Until now: I cooked Riz Gras from Burkina Faso. It’s a tomatoey peppery chicken and rice dish. I used this recipe from At Home World Traveler, substituting sweet red bell peppers for the habaneros and cutting up the chicken thighs before sauteeing them.…
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Cooking Around the World: Patatnik Patatnik Baker’s Man
It’s Bulgaria’s turn to be cooked around the world. I made patatnik (a potato pie) using a recipe from Kitchen Frau. It was basically a large hash brown. It certainly needed more salt, and in a perfect world, it would be half as thick and twice as crispy. Better luck next time Bulgaria!
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Cooking Around the World: Brunei Scream, Bruyou Scream, We All Scream for Honey Barbecue Chicken Pizza
My latest “Cooking Around the World” recipe comes from Brunei, and it’s the Pizza Hut Brunei-exclusive Honey Barbecue Chicken Pizza. I used this recipe from Foreign Fork with this Pizza Hut crust copycat recipe from Alyona’s Cooking. How did it taste? Like every barbecue chicken pizza I’ve had before. But I felt extra fancy thinking…
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Typo.js 1.2.1 Released
I’ve tagged and released version 1.2.1 of my pure JavaScript spellchecker, Typo.js on npm. The only change in this version from 1.2.0 is that it’s now less susceptible to a regular expression Denial of Service attack, which is to say that it more elegantly handles .aff files with lots of consecutive whitespace. (Thanks to huntr.dev…
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I Made Some Karate Belt Racks
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine needed a karate belt rack for her son who had begun racking up the belts in his karate class (pun definitely intended). The racks available on Amazon were of suspect quality, so I made one for them out of maple. Two years later, she has another…
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Cooking Around the World: What do you get when you cross Brazil and Botswana? Full.
You. Me. “Cooking Around the World.” This week’s entry is a classic teamup: bread from Botswana and stew from Brazil. Specifically, the bread is Botswanan diphaphata and the stew is Brazilian feijoada. The bread is not dissimilar to an English muffin; I used this recipe from Gourmet Vegetarians. The stew is a cornucopia of meats…
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Cooking Around the World: Cevapi
Today in “Cooking Around the World”, there’s another variation on ground meat shapes: cevapi from Bosnia. This meat is beef and pork, and this shape is little sausages. I followed this recipe, and it tasted exactly like it’s shaped: oblong. Luckily, I didn’t have to have to have the most stressful restaurant experience ever in…
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Cooking Around the World: Unboliviable
In my ongoing “Cooking Around the World” series, Bolivia is up next, and like many other South-American countries, their cuisine seems to be centered on grilled meat. So, I give you: grilled meat. Previous Entries in Cooking Around the World Afghanistan: Kabuli Palau Albania: Tavë Kosi Algeria: Maaqouda Andorra: Cannelloni Andorrana Antigua: Antiguan Butter Bread…
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Cooking Around the World: Bheautiful Bhutan
Bhutan is the next country on my list for “Cooking Around the World”, and I tried to make a Bhutanese potato dish called Kewa Datshi, but it turned out closer to potatoes au gratin that I think it was supposed to (and it did not photograph well). The recipe I used was from Shruti…
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Cooking Around the World: Okey-Dokey, Yovo Doko
Benin doesn’t have many options for representative dishes for my “Cooking Around the World” challenge, but the one I found and made was little doughnut balls called yovo doko: I used this recipe from The Blvck Gourmet. We dipped them in chocolate syrup, which probably isn’t traditional, but nobody objected. Previous Entries in…
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Cooking Around the World: You Better Belize I’ll Be Making This Chicken Again
For our stop in Belize on my Cooking Around the World Tour, I made a Belizean stewed chicken dish served with kidney beans with rice and potato salad: I didn’t make the potato salad myself because I’m the only one in my family that likes it, but I did make the chicken, rice, and beans…
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How to turn your Irwin Quick-Grip clamps into decking clamps
If you’re building a deck or replacing decking, you have probably found that it would be helpful to have a clamp to hold the deck boards in place while you attach them. You could spend $52 for a specialized decking clamp, but you probably already have at least one Irwin Quick-Grip bar clamp that you…
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Cooking Around the World: Belgium for Dinner
Although French fries are arguably Belgium’s national dish, for this week’s entry in Cooking Around the World, I made Belgian Liège waffles — the yeasted version of the deep-pocketed batter-based breakfast that we’re all familiar with. Unsurprisingly, these cakes covered in syrup, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce were a hit. Previous Entries Afghanistan: Kabuli Palau…
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Cooking Around the World: The True BBB
As I continue doing this thing where I cook a dish from every country, I’ve been looking for ways to speed it up a little. So this week, I made a meal out of the three B’s: Barbadian pigeon peas and rice, Bahamanian pineapple pie, and Belarusian draniki (pork-filled potato pancakes). Our review of each…
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Cooking Around the World: Fool me once, shami on you. Fool me twice, shami on paratha.
This week in my Cooking Hero World Tour, my taste buds are visiting Bangladesh. I made shami kebabs and paratha flatbread; we ate them together with lettuce and tomato like a taco or gyro. I liked it — it was like falafel and hamburgers had a baby, and I ate that baby. Previous Entries Afghanistan:…
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Cooking Around the World: Machboos and Maamoul, the original M&M
Bahrain is up next in my challenge to cook the national dish of every country, and I made chicken machboos plus maamoul cookies for dessert. The chicken machboos was not too different from the many chicken and rice dishes that serve as national dishes for other countries, but it used some more fragrant spices like…
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Cooking Around the World: From A to Zerbaijan
It’s been another week since my last passport stamp in my culinary world tour, and this week, I’m stopping in Azerbaijan for some baliq shashlik and tenbel pakhlava. Baliq sashlik is a platter of fish fillets that were marinated in lemon and dill and then grilled on skewers (although I removed them from the skewers…
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Cooking Around the World: Tafelspitz, Bratkartoffeln, and Sachertorte. Gesundheit!
Tonight’s meal in my series of national dishes was Austrian from start to finish. The main course was Tafelspitz (beef cooked in broth) served with Bratkartoffeln (fried potatoes with bacon and onion), and dessert was Sachertorte, a Viennese chocolate cake. I have yet to get the hang of cooking beef via all-day simmering in liquid…
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Cooking Around the World: Put Another Keshi on the Yena, Mate!
Week six of my world-famous every-nation cooking challenge united in matrimony the two countries most likely to be next to each other in an alphabetical list: Aruba and Australia. The main dish came from Aruba, and Australia supplied dessert. I made keshi yena from Aruba — it’s a casserole that is traditionally cooked inside an…
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Cooking Around the World: I Gotta Have My Gata!
Week five of my journey around the world in a flavor-powered balloon brought us to Armenia, where we sampled both a main dish and a dessert: lula kebabs (ground meat mixed with onion and spices, cooked on a skewer) and gata (a flaky pastry akin to a croissant with sugar between its layers). The kebabs…