I am asking because usually, when I find a new recipe, I have a reason to pick it. Often its because folks come out the in the comments talking how as kids they loved it, etc.
As an example I include Macarona Bil Laban. This recipe is outside my culture, but seems to be beloved, and I tried it and it is awesome!
Recommend some more awesome cultural staples please!
by EarlOfThrouaway
11 Comments
I presume you mean more obscurely cultural in a western sense, because otherwise the mainstay bangers of Korean, Italian, Mexican, and Chinese are going to show up here, among others.
I didn’t care for [KJLA’s](https://www.seriouseats.com/extra-flaky-scallion-pancakes-recipe) version as much, but [Scallion pancakes](https://omnivorescookbook.com/chinese-scallion-pancakes/) are ones that come to mind.
Cajun / Creole have some great staples.
I’m not sure if this is a culturally obscure enough dish but I made the Cassoulet from The Food Lab. High effort but a truly superb meal.
Matzo Ball soup, Chopped Liver, Kugel and oven braised Brisket from the Ashkenazi Jewish culture are all worth making and eating
Brazilian strogonoff (estrogonofe) was one of my favorites as a kid. I’m not sure how other people make it, but in my mom’s recipe, she uses a can of hearts of palm instead of mushrooms (she doesn’t like mushrooms), some tomato paste, *ketchup* (very important), and cream, and it’s served over rice, traditionally with potato sticks on top.
My mom also makes a “salad” containing diced ham, diced green apple, pineapple chunks, sweet corn, and raisins, in a mayo and/or cream base (she also adds a bit of the pineapple can liquid, not sure why exactly). This is also traditionally topped with potato sticks. I think it’s a kind of salpicão, which is usually made with chicken but can sometimes contain the bane of my mother: *vegetables*, ewww! (Not sure how she manages to eat almost no vegetables, but…) Anyway, this salad is one of my favorites, and she makes it whenever I go home to visit.
I also grew up on a very stereotypical Latin meal: white rice, black beans, sweet plantains, and steak. In South Florida you can get this at any Latin American restaurant, where they call it a palomilla (if it’s breaded, it’s milanesa, sometimes with ham and cheese too). It’s nice with some chopped onions and lime. In Brazil, this meal would also include farofa, and maybe use meatballs instead of steak. This is trivial to make because all of the components are separate: you make some white rice in the rice cooker, you make some black beans (by opening a can and microwaving unless you want to spend a ton of effort to cook beans), the plantains you can just bake because deep-frying them is far too much work (or you can get frozen maduros), the farofa comes in a bag and you just sprinkle some on the plate, the onion and lime you just cut, and the steak you can make however you want (the palomilla is very thin so it’s not going to be medium rare, and that’s OK). You could also use any other protein, like roast chicken, or grilled shrimp, etc. I feel like the plantains are usually extra, but I need them!
chicken paprikash is really good. also his potato salad is banger.
What *isn’t* a cultural recipe?
Cabbage rolls! Or deconstructed cabbage rolls when I’m lazy.
Two that stand out to me are krokets, which were a special occasion thing, and the soup my Oma always used to make for every hot meal. They’re were a few kinds of soup that my Oma would make but they were all delicious. Her mother had taught her how to make it when she was young.
People give Dutch food a bad rap, they’re not entirely wrong (pickled herring is gross) but some Dutch food is very delicious and has nostalgic memories attached to it for me now that my Oma and Opa are both gone.
Poisson Cru w miti hue
ប៉ែនចុក” refers to a traditional Khmer (Cambodian) dish known as “Nom Ben Jok” in English.
This soup dish consists of rice noodles typically served with either chicken or fish
Had this a lot growing up, and it is nostalgicly yummy