Pssssst. Is this Miss Julia Dwight’s College Gourmet column? Because if so, it would seem that I am… actually in the right place! You may ask, what is an art and media critic doing in Julia’s wonderfully fragrant space in this newspaper? Well, writing about food of course! And happy April Fool’s Day.
I am no chef like our Julia, but I do spend copious amounts of time on Youtube watching cooking videos, because there is something so satisfying about chopping vegetables, hearing fancy words like roux, blanche, and bain marie being thrown around. Now, I can’t personally execute any of these words, but it’s nice to pretend.
One of my favorite types of cooking videos are international cooking videos. Having grown up in an Indian-American household, it’s very possible that I have had to develop two distinct palates for the different cuisines. As such, I enjoy watching what other people enjoy most in their native cuisines because it’s a nice reminder that our food preferences can tie us back to the environments that which those cuisines were first cultivated. What yogurt, fennel seeds, and garam masala are to Indian cooking is what chickpeas, olive oil, and paprika are to Middle Eastern food, and is what fish sauce, cabbage, and gochujang are to Korean food.
Recently, under the spell of Youtube’s algorithm, I found myself on Youtuber Beryl Shereshewsky’s page, where she tries to recreate different recipes from around the world given a certain topic (think different variations of toast around the world, comfort foods around the world, onion dishes around the world, etc). She always features the recommender of the food in the video itself, and as they explain the significance of the dish to their native region, she tapes a step-by-step version of her making the dish. What I love about this channel is that it is perfect for a non-chef like me. There are no bain maries, flambe’s, or spherifications in this channel but all the recipes echo the important flavors of the countries they come from.
Recently, inspired by Beryl’s visceral reaction to one of the dishes she featured in her video “How the world eats eggs,” I decided to try out one dish I had never heard of before: Cilbir from Turkey. The recipe is as simple as I can possibly ask for: garlic yogurt, which is essentially minced garlic and yogurt mixed with a simple sauce; a poached egg, which can be easily achieved by dropping an egg in a shallow pan of water rather than the usual method of creating a whirlpool in a deeper pot to swirl an egg in; and paprika butter, which is literally just melting butter in a pan and adding (preferably smoked) paprika. Then you just assemble paprika butter on top of egg on top of yogurt and dig in, either with a spoon or some toasted bread. The flavors, warmth, and mouth-feel are incredible and I didn’t even have to lose any limbs to create it.
I am very excited to know that I was able to eat something that my favorite actors from Turkish serial dramas could have eaten for breakfast (seriously, check them out, I still swoon over Dolunay after watching it over two years ago). I definitely recommend picking a country that has intrigued you recently and creating a simple dish from there, even if it’s just their favorite version of toast. Good luck and Bon Apetit! See you soon on the Doodling Duck.
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