Cultural Culinary Adventures

Cultural Culinary Adventures

I live in a very ethnically diverse community, and Easter is a very special time for many nationalities. As I don’t cook very much my friends all invited me over for Easter diner.  However, since all of them wanted to have everyone else over for a meal they decided to take turns and each of them would cook diner on a different night of Easter week. I should mention that all of us here are at least second generation so I think that some of the recipes have been Americanized just a bit. Still it all tasted very good, and I heard no complaints from the groaning tables.

My friends who have relatives from Greece got the honor of having the first meal. There were “gyros” served on soft bread with a delicious sauce over the meet. Along with the gyros they served stuffed grape leaves. They were stuffed with a rice and milk chocolate mixture that got rave reviews from everyone present. My host said that it was possible that they might have gotten the recipe for the grape leaves a little wrong since they had been drinking a beverage made from grapes when they copied down the ingredients.

The next night we all gathered at the house of folks who had forefathers who came from Poland. They served a sausage called Kieska on a bed of shredded lettuce. At least I thought that it was lettuce, but I was wrong. It turned out that the sausage was made from both white and dark chocolate, and instead of lettuce it was served on a bed of shaved licorice. They too thought that they might have gotten the dish a little wrong since they had been drinking a beverage that was traditionally made from potatoes. 

I was beginning to suspect that the American influence was a bit more prevalent than I originally thought. My friends who have an Italian name had the next meal prepared when we arrived at their house. Now I had spaghetti before but not in what they told me was the traditional Easter style. The spaghetti was made from chocolate flavored noodles, and served with a white chocolate sauce.  It came with marshmallow meatballs. Again very tasty, but somehow I was beginning to doubt the authenticity of the preparations. 

The next meal up was from my neighbors who came from England. They served a roast beef and along with the meat they had a traditional Easter soup, that the lady of the house assured me was made exactly as the recipe that her mother sent her in a letter.  It was called Easter egg soup, and was made from the eggs that they had during the Easter celebration. It had a cream base and was very rich. I suspect that she might have gotten it a bit mixed up, but using the chocolate Easter eggs actually made the soup the best part of the meal.

Our next meal came from folks who had a few relatives from Turkey.  It turned out that they eat a lot of lamb over there and it was a favorite for Easter. They said that it was “butterflied” leg of lamb, but it turned out that there weren’t any butterflies in the recipe.  They had taken the bone out of it and stuffed it with a mixture of bread crumbs and dark chocolate. I must admit that I had never known just how much chocolate they used over there in Europe.

Our final meal came on Easter morning, and this time the influence was from France. They served Pain Chocolat. Well I guessed this one wrong as well. The dish wasn’t painful at all, it was really good and it finished off our Easter week celebrations just swell. What they served was French toast that had chocolate in the mixture. Very tasty.

After all of that food everyone came over to my place and we watched the traditional Easter Egg toss on TV.  This year to make it a bit more interesting they didn’t boil the eggs before they had to start tossing them to each other. Of course I served the traditional drink for egg tossing championships, Hot Chocolate.