How, how are we half way through June? We are in week 24 which means I should be almost half way through the alphabet on this years challenge. I randomly know that M is the middle letter of the alphabet and I’ve made it as far as H. Hmmm, that means I am 5-6 weeks behind. Oops….. On the plus side I and J are exciting cooking adventures. Italy and Japan. But we’re not there yet….

So, what is this delay due to? It’s not like we don’t eat every day which should provide daily opportunities for interesting cooking but let’s be honest, I have been busy. Lots of travel, lots of getting home too late to spend hours in the kitchen and lots of time with Netflix!

However, I have done G and H so probably worth getting on with charting those two journeys.

G is for Ghana

I really wasn’t inspired by Ghana when I started researching the country’s cuisine but finally settled on jolloff rice and fried fish. Traditionally the fish would be tilapia but the best I could do was whole seabass and salmon fillets for the kids. I followed two recipes. For the jolloff rice, I went to a recipe by Tei Hammond (no idea who Tei is!). I followed it pretty much to the letter although as the kids were eating too, I didn’t use habanero chilli and went for a milder red chilli. For the fish, I used the spicing and cooking methods found in this African Food Network recipe although used birds eye chilli rather than habanero.

The kids mostly enjoyed it and COD and I loved it. The rice recipe was far too much for our family of 5 but it has reheated well after freezing and been a useful addition to lunches and dinner last night (had with pan fried cod and green veg).

H is for Haiti*

When Russia invaded Ukraine, we had to take Russia off our list. We added in Romania but then the list was very Eastern Europe heavy so Hungary had to go and was replaced with Haiti. I am not 100% certain I could reliably find Haiti on a map without the help of Google maps but it sounded intriguing. Hmmm, a bit like Ghana, not sure the national cuisine had me leaping with excitement. But, this whole adventure is to try things that we wouldn’t otherwise and find out about the food from different countries. So, in I went for my research. Top dish – mac ‘n cheese. Mac ‘n cheese is something I don’t really enjoy. Not off to a good start but……. look a little further down the list and I found chicken with cashew nuts. Yum, yum, yum!

So, bring on Nikki’s Haitian Cashew Chicken! Luckily I read the requirement to marinade the chicken overnight otherwise we could have been very hungry! I also couldn’t get hold of ground mustard so I used regular English mustard – who knows how this affected the taste. I used chicken thighs and did about 16 so double the portion size for the recipe but kept the rest of the measurements the same.

I invited the parents over to help sample Haitian food. Kids didn’t love it but mostly ate it, parents really liked it, I thought it had too much thyme so, I’d do a teaspoon of thyme rather than a tablespoon next time. It was good. The cashews in it were a nice touch and great to have them in a chicken dish that isn’t Asian – not that I don’t like that but it was nice to have some different flavours. I served it with basmati rice and greens.

*takes over 24hrs in total to make this. Not your quick evening, post work meal – this is why I can’t do this food thing daily….!

In other news:

• We got a puppy. He is called Fly. He is a border collie and very cute. The kids adore him, the cats tolerate him and COD and I scrape his crap off our floors. It’s a joy this puppy malarkey.
• New job is going well but blimey am I busy! Off to Dublin on Monday, London early July and hopefully NYC in mid July! Then COP27 in Egypt, workshop in Stockholm and somewhere in between, launching a global food challenge. So, not a lot then! But I’m loving it!
• This weekend is the Isle of Wight Festival. At last year’s festival, a friend fell in love with everyone’s sequin jackets and asked me to help her make one. I agreed immediately (too much pimms) and this spiralled out of control and before I knew it, I was running sewing classes in the evenings for 6 friends. I am super proud of what they have achieved with 5 of us having matching sequin kimono jackets. I made up the 6th and the 7th is still a work in progress! We will make a fantastic line-up on Saturday night!