Things Learned / Skills Developed: Learned how to make pizza from scratch. Learned how to make two delicious chinese sauces from scratch. Generally culinary awesome-ness...
Overview / Rant: I'm not a bad cook by any means. I enjoy cooking- I enjoy the feeling of having prepared a meal for some time and then serving it up to others to be enjoyed. All things considered I am a good cook.
Day 1 - Australian Cuisine - My initial google searches wielded results that initally had me intriged... "Chook cuisine"... what was this cuisine- I'd never heard of 'chook' before... after some further reading I established the following helpful equation for solving what 'chook' is...
With this complex equation I ignored the menu I was used to and looked for something a bit more interesting. Eventually I found out that Vegemite on Toast is an iconic food to Australia... Another Australian icon is Skippy... and I thought he'd be fun to eat... so I found the only butcher in Ireland who sells Kangaroo (lovely lovely people- find it here)... and my dream to eat Skippy was finally looking like a reality...
The Woolshed Bar & Grill was the only place that offered Vegemite on Toast... so myself and my trusted assistant went to see what all the fuss was about. I also ordered a Fosters as it seemed fitting for the day.
It was decided that the Kangaroo and Antelope meat (why not?) should be BBQ'd... of course it started to rain... everything seemed to be going wrong...
But wait...
Skippy is f***ing delish! I don't know why someone didn't eat him sooner... antelope was also lovely- but Kangaroo won out as the tastiest. Happy that I'd tried Australian Cuisine for the day, I decided that Day 2 I should move in a clockwise fashion around the globe.
Day 2 - African Cuisine - cooked a delicious chicken and lime sauce meal with cous cous. Surprisingly tasty. Not much more to report here...
Day 3 - American Cuisine - South American to be specific as I feel I have intimate knowledge of North American style foods. Also feeling a little bit tired of cooking- I prepared a simple, yet delicious, meal of fahijtas. The secret is to dice some jalepenos into the chicken while cooking it to give it that extra kick... mmmm... spicy goodness...
Day 4 - Europe Cuisine - Specifically Italian Cuisine... I set myself the task of learning how to create my own pizza from scratch... i.e. making a base, making a sauce- adding topping etc etc. EVERYTHING was going epically... I'd laid the base onto a plate- added the sauce- added the topping... then tried to remove the base from the plate... now- I don't know if you know this about dough... but it sticks... to anything... apparently you should add flour to the underneath to stop it sticking... HINDSIGHT is a beautiful thing (other beautiful things exist here... I wonder how exclusive a site it is?) but FORESIGHT would have been better. Eventually the pizza's were tossed into the oven, in bits, and just left to cook. They were awesome- tasted amazing- looked like shit.
Day 5 - Asian Cuisine - cooked two delicious Chinese meals, creating the sauces from scratch- which is surprisingly easy. A pork and pineapple dish and a chicken soy and ginger dish. Served to family and extended family- positive responses all round...
Conclusion / Recommendation: Really enjoyed learning how to cook different meals. The whole experience taught me that I need to be more adventurous with my cooking! No longer shall I fear the cookbook and it's mysteries...
Next Challenge: Next week is probably going to be the toughest challenge to date. I will fast for five days. I will only drink water, tea and coffee (no milk). It's going to be tough- possibly pointless- but I've always been curious to know what it would be like to fast for that long. I've been fasting now since 3am (was drinking heavily until then) and I'm f**king starving!
Also I'm not allowed drink alcohol for the week (wanted to fit that one in somewhere!) and I figure now would be a good time... mainly because alcohol would probably kill me at this point.
Finally I'm going to attempt to learn 100 of my facebook friends date's of birth. I've been reading Darren Brown's book where he discussed memory techniques and I'd like to try a few out- I figure this would be a good time to try it.
Random Stuff: This guy is a hero in the cooking world...
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