Two Weeks, Five Cuisines — and a Voice I Hadn't Heard in 18 Years

Hello everyone!

Unfortunately I lost a week to technical issues, but I'm back and making up for it — so I'm trying to squeeze two weeks' worth of material into this one post. It won't be extra long, in fact according to plan it should be shorter. I ate some incredible things over the past two weeks, and there was also an event that stirred up some deep emotions.

Food

As usual, the Italian-Greek line dominates for me, but a Spanish and a Ukrainian dish also made an appearance this time — and I don't regret it at all.

Italian-Greek line

I simply can't get tired of it, top 1 flavor profile.

Hybrid Italian-Greek chicken pasta

This is definitely a dish I'll make if there are ever video blogs. This one turned out to be an actual masterpiece, it was divine!

What went into it: pasta, basil tomato sauce, cream, fresh basil, arugula, parsley, onion, garlic, chicken, feta cheese, parmesan, capers, olives.

Greek salad

A simple, standard Greek salad — it really hits the spot in this heat. I souped it up with chicken cubes. Plenty of olive oil, and off you go!

Gyros plate

We got a nice gyros plate locally, but with sweet potato and whole grain pita, so you could say it was 90% healthy. The part that isn't: I think they deep-fry the sweet potato for it — but other than that, 10/10.

Spaghetti bolognese

The usual menu. I didn't make this one, my father-in-law did, with beef. It turned out really well. Next time I'll make it too, but I prefer the long-cook method, meaning 2-3 hours of simmering. Looking forward to that as well.

Spanish line

Spanish food is rare for me, since there's a lot of seafood involved, but I adapted it a bit.

Chicken and rice paella

Normally this should be made with seafood, but I stuck with the plain chicken-only version — I'm sadly not much into seafood. The dish itself was divine. The good tomato sauce with fresh basil delivered an incredible flavor experience.

Hungarian

This is currently the top 1 dish on my top 3 list, I think.

Mátrai borzaska

I had a good Hungarian dish that I simply love: mátrai borzaska. Chicken breast fried in a potato batter, topped with garlic sour cream. I like it with sweet potato as a side. Unbeatable. Wherever I go, this is what I order.

Ukrainian

If I had to name a Ukrainian dish, I think this would be the only one — but the flavor is simply a bomb.

Chicken Kiev

I'd never made this before, because it's on the harder end for me in terms of preparation. But I went for it, and it turned out brutally delicious. I watched an authentic Ukrainian YouTube video where they make it, and followed that. You have to stuff the chicken breast with herb butter and then deep-fry it. I ate it with sweet potato on the side. Well, the flavor was brutally perfect. I'd eat it every day!

Trash

I'm not proud of this section, but I seriously had to order — if only because of the restaurant's and the dishes' names. The restaurant is called Cicabár ("Kitty Bar"). The burger is called Cicaburger (with "tabby sauce"). The pizza is called Tabby Pizza. It sold me completely, I loved it — and it was even tasty :D

• Smashburger
• Pizza (tomato sauce, mushroom, ham, cheese)

Thoughts

As I mentioned in the intro, I had a moment of deep emotion. An old childhood friend I hadn't spoken to in 18 years turned up. It stirred up deep feelings, because we had an incredible nostalgia conversation. I spent my entire childhood with him and the circle of friends I had back then. It was great to reminisce about what we did and what we lived through. There was a lot I no longer remembered that he did — really surprising. I'll tell the story in more detail sometime. I hope this doesn't stay a single conversation, and that we can pick the friendship back up where we left off. I'd really like that. Although really, it takes two people for anything, so we'll see. But I'm all for this old-new friendship, since our interests have stayed roughly the same over the years, barely changed at all.

Summary

I can say that since I started blogging, I think I've now made the best food yet. It left behind some brutal flavor experiences. I also leveled up, I think, with the chicken Kiev. According to plan there will be more detailed recipe write-ups, and videos to go with them. Unfortunately I haven't yet managed to do what I described in the previous post, splitting the recipes and my personal thoughts into separate posts. But I'm on it. I'm saving the recipes, so I'll work them out later, and anyone who wants to make them will succeed based on the detailed description and video.

One last observation: there was no Asian food in these two weeks. Interesting. No matter, I'll start next week with that.

To close: I've started developing the health module of my Twin web app, which includes the nutrition part. It's going to be veeeery complex. Can't wait to show it.

Have a good week everyone, and eat well!