Wow, so much info!! But I gotta chime in here.
Poland: The haggis, which I've never had, looked like a fat kishka, blood and buckwheat in a casing; and then there is Polish blood sausage which tastes of cloves!! and allspice. Kruscziki are extremely crisp thick fried noodles, slit at one end and pulled into a knot; deep fried and heavily dusted w powdered sugar. The interesting thing about these is, they are leavened with ammonium carbonate which is hard to find; gives it an incredible light-and-crunchy texture. (Note: ammonium carbonate cannot be used for any product that will retain a moist middle, or it will TASTE like ammonia!!)
This is funny: Lithuania, Ukraine, Russia, Poland have soup dumplings. Tiny and stuffed w meat or dried
mushroom, served in broth; OR just inhaled as they are, boiled and w butter!!
China has something they call a soup dumpling: it is a steamed wheat-dough dumpling stuffed w jellied soup, that turns liquid when you steam, MMMM!
There are a lot of organ meats missing from our rep here: probably because grass-fed is so hard to get, and they also do not keep. In France (and etc) you can get things like Tripe A La Mode
De Caen: you get a lovely, full plate of one giant piece of
honey comb tripe, impeccably fresh and tender, and the thin little edges all broiled to perfection...
Fish like Skate wing (which we do eat here, unbeknownst, as "scallops": same taste and texture. They punch out little circles and go w it. A friend came back from Disney World to tell me now he knows where scallops come from: skate wings!! OY)
But a fresh skate wing is MMM, AAAH!!! Lotte or Monkfish is interesting, as it is also a doppelgänger for lobster, I swear!! Taste and texture are exactly the same. Cockles, Clams, sea snails, conch (which I have to confess has such a strong taste and rubbery texture, I didn't like it...) not to mention esoteric things like sea cucumber
I totally adore salt cod: amazing in cream sauce, Portuguese style codfish balls (mix w mashed potato and peppers and onions, season and fry), and so many other ways. So hard to get now.
My Whole Foods used to have whole, smoked whitefish, in a freezer in back; you had to ask for it. OMG!! I kept telling them to put up a sign, as I knew a lot of folks would want it!! Nope: they just stopped carrying it cuz didn't
sell!!!
Should we mention the maggoty cheese from Sicily, which is officially banned (but you can still get it: had some offered me once but, no)
Millet, people!! Millet comes in several forms. All of it is a pseudo-grain: it is never going to drain minerals from your body, just to get digested!! Grains are anti-nutrient. To fix this and open up the nutrition, ancient peoples fermented their grains.
In Ethiopia the traditional recipe for Injera (a most delicious, nutrient dense, spongy flat bread the size of a big tray or small table; food is ladled on, and you break off and scoop and eat w fingers. Never had such delicious fingers!!) was fermented: teff flour and
water, a little salt, set it aside in the heat to sour and bubble. Makes SUCH a delicious bread!! And so good for you, teff being the grain highest proteins. Alas: now the Inera in restaurants AND homes is more likely to have white flour and seltzer: no fermentation...
And now, I gotta tell you about millet!! You can eat it as a cereal, either whole or as millet flakes. Main food of Russia! You can use it as flour; in a million ways: here's the thing: it is ALKALINE in the body, NOT anti-nutrient, and has one of the highest nutritional profiles there is in a seed/grain. It has also been a human food (Mongolian; Attila the Hun!) for 10,000 years. Your body WANTS it! My favorite health bread is
online; you can easily find the recipe. Google millet bread. In 8 minutes, you can throw 2 loaves in the
oven: 5 min is waiting time. You mix millet flour w baking soda and powder, and salt; you mix the psyllium w ACV and water; let that turn into a gel, mix well and place in pans, smooth the top w wet hands, and bake. It is crusty, and has a slightly dense, moist springy crumb: makes wonderful toast!! The only GF bread I ever had that didn't turn to slush w poached eggs...VERY healthy, but also so good for you: other breads make you acidic (cancer likes this)
I like to eat millet flakes as a quick breakfast: can eat it plain or top w veggie hash, fruit, etc etc. They use it all over India, in Ukraine, Russia...we need to get our hands on it here! It is available; I bake w Bobs Red Mill. The only other foods that are alkaline forming (health building) in the body are fruits and veggies. Meat, sugar, and all other grains are acid forming: cancer loves this environment...so now, you can make real bread and eat it with meat, or whatever- and be just a little healthier.
I am a veritable wealth of info sometimes, but a dummy when it comes to links and stuff: please make allowances, I'm old...anyway, on here, someone said his homemade bread didn't taste like the bread in Germany. Well, they may have used stronger flours, or a blend w rye: but the biggest thing is that Real Euro breads are supposed to be long-fermented, like good ol
sourdough. The enzymes produced by that, break open the nutrients to be used by the body. Instant yeast changed all that. Now even non GMO bread can be bad for you nutritionally!!
You can make an excellent sour rye by simply mixing rye flour and cool water, and adding half an onion, cut side up. Cover and wait (depending on temp; 3 or more days). When it bubbles all over and smells like beer, use that starter for your yeast. The shiny top is achieved by cooking a starch slurry, and brushing it onto the hot loaves.
While we are on it, GARI is another fermented product, used in African and South American countries, probably elsewhere. It varies in taste: I have had smoky, cheesy gari, also very delicious "lightly" cheesy, mild gari. (usually pronounced, gah-REE) It is made by using a giant grater on fresh cassava, putting that into burlap bags, and pressing out the juice. Then the bags are stacked up for a few days, to ferment. Then it is spread onto thin, hot metal griddles and dried, then packaged. Makes lovely fufu, or just a mash: I have used it in casseroles and meatloaf, even to top a wild kind of shepherd's pie. You can buy it from Brazil as Casabe, in cracker form: heat and eat, very delicious! (Big prices and breakage on Amazon tho). A young friend from Cameroon said she ate it as breakfast cereal most mornings with cold water and some sugar. A useful and long-storing, nutritional food. Cooked, it is creamy and good!!
I wonder if they stuff it...?
Cuz, when we lived in NYC years ago you could get Puerto Rican Pasteles full of picadillo (meat filling): they were big, flat, and bright orange. IDK if that was annatto or real red palm oil; anyway, the dough was a little chewy and very smooth and yummy; made from green banana. Oh man, they were good! After reading Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz, I know there are bunches of these different hand pies/empanadas throughout that region...like to go all over the Caribbean ad try them all!!
There has been a "thing" about eating bugs: in some places there are so many large grubs and beetles and etc, and maybe so little other foods sometimes, that that has become a fond food source for many: you may be thinking Africa, but it is easy to find them as street food in Singapore, Bangkok, etc...
We are some of us focusing on the UK and Germany, and maybe unaware of what else is out there; there is SO much more, but I don't want to type all day!! It reminds me of when, after moving here to Mississippi, I was learning about herbs and getting VERY frustrated, since none of the "all time standards" like chamomile or
nettle or dill or lavender would grow we'll here...a kind of myopia, I think. What helped was the Richter's Herbs catalogue: they are in Canada, and sell seeds and some plants, giving growing zones, from all over the world!!! Roseroot, Ashaghanda, Bacopa, Joe- Pye Weed, Wild Dagga, Greek Myrtle, Caperberry, and Sea Buckthorn!! - so much...many of them are
Native American items indigenous to my area!! Get that catalogue, it is SO informative!! (They even have scented geraniums!!!)
Anyway, one more friend of haggis would be fermented oat porridge. I HOPE people out there on farms are still making it: traditionally, a big wide drawer in the kitchen would be lined w a well-floured (oat flour) cloth, and leftover porridge spread an inch or so thick, smoothed and left to ferment. When cool, cut into squares. It would get cheesy and tangy; anyone hungry could nip in and grab one, or if you were traveling, a stack...
which reminds me of the traveling baked beans of the colonial era, also now a thing of the past but somehow, good to know: take cold, stiff, baked beans, fold into a square in muslin, stack up. The thick material would help the outside dry some, and it would be a "bar" to eat without mess or utensils for stagecoach or other long trips...inside, just a little succulent, but yummy! (Not fermented; except for maybe pease porridge in the pot, 9 days old...)
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