Or as it is known in my family – ¨Postre de Boris¨ (Boris’ dessert)
Boris was once the boyfriend of my fantastic cousin Ximena, who has always been a trailblazer and is a fixture on my list of girls to follow. Not only is she an expert bamboo taxonomist, a flower connoisseur and the head of a newly converted organic coffee farm but she is also a student of life and a beautiful strong soul.
If you read The Kitchen Nomads’ blog you will have heard us praising the wide, fantastic variety of food in Hong Kong markets and how this allows us nomads to get an international feast in our tables any day of the week. Well, in all my undying love for the gai see* there is a small thorn that never stops pricking; the lack of real plantain. That glorious plantain like the one that grows by the tons in Colombia and represents not only the base of our cuisine but also a big part of the agriculture that feeds endless families, makes no appearance in the Hong Kong wet markets. I’m puzzled as to why this happens as it grows in the Phillipines and Indonesia the same way it grows in South America and most of Africa.
My French family is full of ancestral tradition, and when I visit they always seem to pull out an old recipe that to them seems the epitome of simplicity, and to me seems exquisite and mysterious. The Broyé du Poitou – an old, old recipe for a buttery biscuit coming from the Poitou region of western France – is one such little treasure.
When I was pregnant, people were constantly asking me to imagine what kind of child I was going to have. “What if he doesn’t have all of his limbs?” my fellow pregnant friends would worry. “What if he is ugly?” others would wonder. But for me, the most troublesome and scary thought of all was: “what if he doesn’t like food?!”
Ask any foreigner what the best place to visit in France is, and you’ll get a long and varied list peppered with sighs and “oh, but it’s impossible to choose”. Ask a French person what the best place to visit in France is, and you’ll only get one answer – the region that they are from. We are proud, chauvinistic creatures…
Soooo, here we go! This is our first post and we are elated to bring our nomad suitcases full of recipes to the Chubby Hubby e-abode. We can’t think of a better way to start than to bring you along on our summer adventures, which for your enjoyment (and ours, quite evidently) will take place in our home countries. Call it “The Kitchen Nomads go back home” if you will! I (Paola) will be introducing you to the concept of double deep-frying and the variety of Colombian cuisine, while Jessica will entice you with the beauty of using more butter than you need to and the freshness of summer fruit in France.