Recreating Cultural Dishes From Your Travels At Home
Some of the finest cuisines aren’t found in five-star restaurants but within the community. Travellers often find that the best food is often discovered at markets, street fairs and neighbourhood holes in the wall not advertised in travel brochures. These places are where you find the community, the people and their cultures.
These cultural dishes are often family recipes that have been passed down for generations. These recipes are created using some of the land’s freshest ingredients and made with attention, care, and love. As you see the presentation, smell the aromas, feel the different textures, and taste the herbs and spices used, your senses are taken on an experience they’ll never forget.
After your travels, you find yourself wanting to recreate the experience at home. If you’re dying to go down memory lane by recreating cultural dishes from your travels, these tips will come in handy.
Find Out What You Can During Your Travels
If you’re going to recreate a cultural dish when you return home, you need to get the specifics. What is the dish called, what ingredients are used, what cooking methods are used, and how is it prepared? You want to get answers to as many of these questions as you possibly can. You can talk to locals, inquire with the chef, or take a cooking class.
Obtain Local Ingredients
Another thing you should do while on holiday is to source local ingredients. Depending on the dish you’re trying to recreate, the spices and herbs you need may not be easy to find once you get home. So, find a local grocery store or market and purchase any ingredients you believe will be impossible to find later on.
Take Inventory of Your Cookware
Having the appropriate cookware in your kitchen is essential to recreating cultural dishes. If you don’t have the basic pots, pans, knives, and cooking utensils, your dish may not come out as you’d hoped. Take an inventory of your cookware.
Are you missing key items? Are they high-quality? Are they outdated? If you answered yes to these questions, you’ll want to do some research on brands like Made In Cookware that offers everything from pots and pans to specialty limited-edition knives.
Look for Recipes
When you’ve never created a dish before, having a recipe can come in handy. If you weren’t able to obtain the exact recipe during your travels, you’ll want to search the internet to try and find one. You can check blogs, cookbooks, recipe websites, or social media platforms like Made In Cookware where you’ll find reviews on cookware along with short recipes and videos to follow along with.
Try It Out
You’ve gathered as much information as you could, obtained the necessary herbs, spices, and fresh ingredients for the recipe, you’ve ensured you have the right cookware to recreate the dish, and you’ve even found the right recipe to follow along to. All that’s left to do is put your cooking skills to the test and give it a go. Don’t be discouraged if it takes you a few times to get it right. Remember what’s common for the locals is foreign to you, it can take time to get down the right technique, balance of flavors, and final result.
It’s amazing how one bite into a cultural dish can evoke such strong emotions while tapping into your senses, creating the best experience. When you’ve indulged in something you absolutely loved, it’s only common to want to recreate this dish at home. Though it takes some research and time to master, it won’t be long before one bite of your recreation sends you back down memory lane.
Image by phuong hoang thuy from Pixabay