International Food Night: March 20, 2009

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Tita Dory's house once again became the venue for Neerja's farewell party. Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, and Ghanaian food were set on the buffet table. 

(This photo was taken early in the plating process. John was still cooking, Neerja just started unpacking her trays of food. Only Tran's fried spring rolls were on the table, along with the leaves for the fresh rolls.)

There were several dietary restrictions.

With all the food choices at the table, I started off with the molo soup, which was made from a recipe from the Visayas region. Then I concentrated on eating a lot of poori, the Indian flatbread. This was accompanied by chickpea curry or by yoghurt.

(Indian poori all puffed up.)

Then I had the two versions of the Vietnamese spring roll: (1) fried; and (2) "make your own" fresh rolls. I like the second one a lot because of the variety of vegetables included in the roll.

(This spring roll in the photo was assembled by Tran, the Vietnamese scholar. The one I made contained too many leaves that I couldn't wrap them in the roll!)

Basil leaves, noodles, greens... the only ingredient I didn't add to the mix was shrimp, which I am allergic to. Everyone else had a grand time with the shrimp, except for Neerja, who's vegetarian.

(Ugh! Shrimp! Every non-allergic/omnivorous person in the group had a field day eating these.)

Then there's the jollof rice by John, the Ghanaian visitor, which is delicious! It's so similar to risotto but for the rice used in the dish. John also prepared an eggplant soup; unfortunately, it contained fish I'm allergic to, so I didn't eat that. Fried pork was also on the table.

The Filipino dishes included the classic chicken pork adobo and kulao, which I'm sure were hits, but I didn't taste them because I concentrated on the foreign food. 

At the end of the day, I was stuffed! If I were feeling any better that day (I was taking medicine for the cold, the joint pain, and the headache), I could have eaten some of the silvanas as dessert!

A big THANK YOU to Tita Dory, John, Neerja, Tran, and Tita Dory's helper who did all the heavy cooking that night. I absolutely enjoyed everything I ate. :D

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