My humbling journey of culture, cuisine, and creatine cooking

By Charles Cleveland

A plater of international cuisine prepared from many recipes collected from personal experience.

The tricky part about food is that it’s subjective. Not only that, but food has meaning that almost no other item or event has. Food is ingrained in religion and culture, connects those dining back and forth through time and space, and is woven into the fabric of societies across the world. To those in Brazil, the Northeastern United States classic Fish Platter- a plate consisting of pounds of french fries and fried cod- may sound disgusting. They very well may be correct in that assumption, and yet, Northeasterners carry on. While judging others’ choices in food may be easy, putting down the assumptions and creating that food for yourself may prove to be a more difficult challenge. It was for me, at least. As a flowering foodie myself, I am increasingly interested in making new foods with new challenges to experience as much of the world as I can while staying inside my air conditioned home. Nothing brings me quite as much satisfaction as the sounds and smells of the world culminating in a grand symphony of sizzles in my own small kitchen. In my most recent attempt to push my skills, I wanted to not only try my hand at new foods, but also a new culture. 

1: Roast Lamb and Burnt Fingers

In my first trial, I got in contact with the owner of DC restaurant Martha Dear, Demitri Mechelis. A pizza maker and host at heart, the muscular Greek takes on Easter dinner every year for his DC family. “Large formatted protein such as a beef/ lamb roast or a whole chicken, large salad, beautifully cooked vegetables and maybe some Greek style roasted lemony potatoes. Dessert would be chocolate cake. Always.” The prospect of taking on the challenge of making food that has meaning to others adds a gravity to cooking, because even though Demitri was not at my house to eat the food I prepared, I still left as if I was trying to impress him. With my imagination’s version of Demitri to impress, I began the almost 2 hour long adventure that would result in 4 plates of food, a mountain of dishes, and 3 fingers wounded in action. Almost immediately, I made my first mistake by putting the lamb in the freezer overnight. Despite moving the 2 pounds of meat to the refrigerator 11 hours prior to cooking, it still had not thawed by the time I got home at 5:30 from school. Looking at the chunk meat through the transparent plastic wrapping keeping the bacteria at bay, I could see the frost. Hell, I could have gone sledding on it. With a small prayer I touched the red muscle tissue. Hard as a rock. My second mistake was the Greek classic, lemon potatoes. This dish requires potatoes to brine in a chicken stock, lemon, and garlic bath. Sadly, I did not know this bath should be a day’s process, not a mere hour as I had thought would be acceptable. I would not learn this until I sat and ate the fried wedges of starch. But the show goes on, and my family needs to eat. Having seasoned the lamb, and figured out how to use my wifi meat thermometer, named “Meatbot” by my sister, I stuck it in the oven and began to create the only item of this dinner that did not have a gaping hole in my planning. A simple salad, doused in balsamic vinegar and fresh lemon juice, was undoubtedly my pseudo brainchild in this household cultural experiment, seeing as I ate almost half of the bowl before the lamb and potatoes were out of the oven. After 40 minutes in the oven, the lamb was ready. My excitement to cut into this foreign piece of meat was indescribable. My third mistake. Too eager to take the thermometer out of the lamb, I grab the small metal rod with two fingers. 1 second. 2 seconds. The pain sets in after what I can only assume was it’s 2 second sabbatical, not expecting I would be dumb enough to call it to work. I have an odd tendency to jump in circles when I get burned by something, normally only once. I jumped three times. I felt like I could not move my hand. Just when I needed a break the most, suddenly, the alarm for the potatoes went off. Just my luck. As I throw on the oven mitts. My poor fingers, mere moments after being singed, having to come in contact with the rough inside of the oven mitts. The small silver lining of the potatoes smelling fantastic made me forget about my gruesome injury for the time being. Finally, it was time to eat. The beautiful color of the lamb as I cut off piece after piece was heavenly. As I ate, I thought about Demitri, and the generations of love and culture he had given me the chance to experience through this dish. While I do not believe I have sufficiently experienced Greek culture, I do recommend this to anyone looking to learn, as I am.

2: Pizza Aficionadough

In my sophomore outing of the cultural adventure, I stayed close to Greece and tried my hand at an Italian classic, the Margarita Pizza. This icon of perfect simplicity is a staple throughout the western world that has stood the test of time and cemented itself as a go to for anyone looking for an easy and delicious meal. “I like to always explore new recipes or add a new topping to a particular dish to make it better or a different version.” said chef Carlos Gonzalez of DC chain Pizza Paradiso. My skills are not yet that of Chef Gonzalez, so for this I kept it simple: Dough, sauce, cheese, and oil. My largest constraint for this project was time, and that was sadly something I did not think about until after I had allotted this week day to my Italian pie. For various reasons, I was at school until 6:30 pm, and I had to go to the grocery store for crushed tomatoes and mozzarella cheese, so I did not arrive home until 7:10 pm. Not ideal when the dough has to rise for 90 minutes, meaning I wouldn’t be able to even put my pizzas in the oven until almost 9:00 at the very earliest. I promised myslf I would make as much of the pizza as I could from scratch. I would make this dough from the very flour my mother bought three years ago and the water from my kitchen sink. As I began to knead the dough, my hands slowly became covered in the sticky paste, even getting between the knots in my bracelet. Quick sand. Slowly sinking into the dough, as well as the time it was taking to make it. After what felt like hours of water, flour, kneading, on repeat, this clump of the great western cereal grain was ready to be left to rise. Next, the make or break ingredient, the sauce. The unsung hero of many dishes, pizza in particular, the sauce adds hydration and the majority of the flavor to your pizza. While the cheese is the striker, showy and easily recognizable, the sauce is the midfielder, keeping the pizza in order. And as I promised myself I would, this too I would be making from scratch to the best of my ability. My access to plum tomatoes is limited, but my local grocery store thankfully sells crushed tomatoes by the can. But this canned juice is nowhere near the sauce I would need for my circular child. To make any sauce great, you need to bring your liquid to a simmer on a stove and add seasoning while simmering. My one surprise while in the process of creating my sweet binder was how high the sauce would launch after bubbling. Four times my right forearm was burned stirring my sauce, but beauty is pain. With the dough rising and my sauce now finished, I had an hour of downtime before I could start the assembly. Tick tock. Before I knew it, my time was up. Assembling and cooking the pizza was a walk in the park compared to its preparation. After one bite, I knew the mistake I had made. I had not seasoned the dough nearly enough. It felt more like eating pizza bread than a margarita pizza. Simplicity is easy. Perfection is much harder. 

3: To Wrap Up

In my final bout of this week’s long journey, I shifted my focus from eastern Europe to Western Europe in the last dish, a Spanish empanada. Most commonly made with Beef, peppers, potatoes, and peas, the Empanada is a filled pastry that is either fried or baked. My fastest meal in this adventure, from start to finish, took me less than an hour. The dough is very similar to the pizza dough, except for one notable addition and subtraction. This dough does not need to rise, so it is made without yeast. To fill in for a lack of speciality, this dough is made with butter, which gives the crust of the final empanada a great taste to go along with its filling. “Empanadas are like little pockets of happiness, bringing together the warmth of tradition and the delight of flavors in every bite.” says Venezuelan American and DC local Isa Pacheco-Mourn. For some odd reason though, it seemed that I couldn’t get the dough to the right consistency for a decent amount of time, much longer than it took me to get the pizza dough right. I chalked it up to having just finished the weekend. Once again, the dough seemed to consume my hands and wrists, sticking onto every inch of skin it touched. The butter also added an uncomfortable grease to the outside, one that took two washes to get off my hands. The second task was preparing the filling, which was about three tasks in one. I have recently found cutting peppers to be one of my favorite kitchen activities, and I take any chance I get to cut the colorful fruits. The ease at which they cut is maybe what gets me. On the other hand, I have found myself becoming less and less enthralled with potatoes. Maybe it’s the constant starchy flavor, or the need for absurd amounts of any given seasoning to differentiate one potato dish from another. Whatever the reason, both are needed in this dish. As I cut, I listened to a news podcast, and it got me thinking about how culinary culture has always started in the home, and while people like myself are always looking for something new to try and experience, it’s the easy classics that keep our attention. The memories we attach to tastes and smells that remind us of simpler times, and help us in turbulence yet to come. I continued to think about this while I grilled the peppers and potatoes on the stove, followed by the ground beef. Another mistake I made. Empanada classically uses pulled beef, not ground. Pulled is more natural, and more appetizing. Another thought I had. While the flavor is only slightly different, I much prefer pulled meats over ground meats. The idea of simplicity in contrast to breaking the mold tosses and turns in my brain as I package the filling in the dough crescents. The old adage of “if it aint broke dont fix it” calls into question improvement. Nothing was wrong with the original Margarita pizza, and yet these days there’s a type of pizza with any topic under the sun. But I think it’s the constant urge to improve that pushes people to break barriers and discover new tastes and meanings in all aspects of life.