To Market, To Market

Today was not particularly productive, though there was a lot of produce. I managed to get myself up earlier than usual, which meant I could travel to the market with Dominique in a car, rather than going by bike, which in turn meant that I could buy much more. I decided that it was time to cook dinner for the family once again, so I bought enough food to make charquican, calalou, and macadam. OK, one by one:

Charquican: This is a Chilean dish that I never actually made myself (at least not rom scratch) until AFTER I returned home from Chile in 2004. However, it's my go-to ish when I want to make something special that I'm pretty sure the people 'm cooking for have never had (though I also make watermelon curry from time to time for the same reason). Charquican uses potatoes, winter squash, and dried salted beef for its main ingredients (fun fact: when I say 'beef' I really mean 'horse', but I'm pretty sure that horse meat isn't usually used these days). However, since dried salted beef wasn't available, I had to use fresh salted beef when I made it tonight. Still good.

Calalou: This is a French Guianese dish. The name is a bit tricky-- for some calou is the word for 'okra' and calalou is the name of this stew (which features okra). For others, the two words are reversed. For still others, they use only one word (either of them) and not the other. Anyhow, this stew uses a LOT of spinach, some smoked fish, smoked lard (which I refuse to use), pig's tails, and of course, okra. I'll mae ths later in the week.

Macadam: This is another French Guianese dish. This one is another fish stew, which is made with tomatoes, onions, roukou, shrimp, and some other stuff that I can't remember. I am planning to use some sting ray that I bought. Take that, Steve Irwin.