Some 2012 food adventures

The year 2012 had some interesting food moments, some in my kitchen, some from other places. For Valentine’s Day, I made peanut butter- chocolate brownie trifles. Layers of peanut buttery and chocolaty goodness.

 In Turkey, we ate Turkish Delight and drank copious amounts of tea. And our favorite, burek, a flaky pastry stuffed with cheese and sometimes meat and onions.

The was a Neapolitan cooking class where we made some extremely cheesy Pasta alla Siciliana.

In the summer, I really went nuts with trying to make pasta as pretty as possible with as many colorful vegetables as possible. There was also grilled pizza and apple crisp and cold tomato soup.

But the crowning food moment(s) of our summer was Eastern Europe. Burek made several reappearances, much to our delight (the Slavic countries love it, too!). Other delicacies included grape-flavored aloe vera juice, (Lake) Bled cake, Austrian Wiener schnitzel, and Chinese food (sometime you just get tired of Italian). We came home with 5 jars of Ajvar sauce, which is roasted red pepper and eggplant sauce. It doesn’t get much better than that. Oh wait, it does. That would be the 20 or so bottles of wine we had been collecting and had crammed between suitcases in the trunk.

In Slovenia, our host served us fresh trout. I now know how to debone a fish.

In Austria, we found a Vietnamese restaurant that was really good. However, we discovered that neither of us can use chopsticks. I’m pretty sure the waiters were taking pictures of us trying.

Slovakia had egg dumplings that are similar to Italian gnocchi. Very filling and very good.

I’m pretty sure the national seasoning of Hungary is paprika. It was on everything from our eggs at breakfast to the meat at dinner. And it was fabulous. At the Great Market Hall, we had the traditional Langos, kind of like a savory elephant ear with veggies, sour cream, and cheese on top.

The food in Croatia was terrible. So terrible that it wasn’t worth taking a picture of it.

The food in Bosnia and Herzegovina was much better. Whew. During the Iron Curtain era, items from Western culture were not allowed. These included Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, movies, music, etc. The Bosnians really wanted their Coke, so they made a substitute called Cockta. It was actually pretty good and it tasted like vanilla Coke.

Later in the summer, we finally got around to buying an Italian mokapot. How have we lived without it?

When Thanksgiving came around, we decided to start a new tradition and make Pasta Zucca or pasta with pumpkin. It’s the perfect Thanksgiving food! Chicken with honey-cranberry sauce and garlic green beans finished it off. It’s fairly Thanksgiving-y, right?

Stay tuned, 2013 should be just as exciting!