Our family recently embarked on a culinary adventure to research, create, and enjoy authentic recipes from around the world. It’s been a lot of fun researching different culture’s cuisines and searching for recipes. I created a spreadsheet for my research (because I am that level of nerd).
I found a fabulous website that lists common dishes for each country, gives a bit of history of those dishes, and the regional variations: World Food Atlas. There are a few recipes listed on the website, but I found better luck hunting for my own and asking folks who have lived in other countries for their insights.
Because we’ve cooked many international cuisines before, I challenged myself to find a new-to-me recipe that I haven’t made before. So for several countries, I had to search a little harder for some country’s well known dishes. This was definitely an issue when hunting for Italy since I’ve made so many Italian dishes or variations on Italian dishes. So I turned to my friend who is currently living in Sicily for her favorite local foods. She immediately said “cacio e pepe” (pronounced kachio-eh-pehpeh) and “caprese salad” (pronounced kap-pray-zay, roll the ‘R’ a little). I also made zabaglione, a frozen custard gelato to go over berries, but wasn’t able to get to Total Wine & More to get the stuff to make Aperol Sprtiz.
The gelato was a little too tart for my people with both the rum and the Marsala wine in it. The cacio e pepe was a huge hit, but my carnivores wanted meat. The show stopper was the light caprese salad. It was absolutely incredible and I highly recommend it!
