Meal Time Through a Cultural Lens Day 5: Home Cooking!

To conclude our five-day foray into the multiplicity of meal time traditions, we divided ourselves between Ms. FarrWilliams' and Ms. Breck's kitchens to cook, reconvening twice in the Hassinger Room to enjoy the fruits of our effort! For lunch, we enjoyed bruschetta, three varieties of schnitzel (chicken, pork, and veal), Bratkartoffeln (German pan-fried potatoes), Yum Moo Yor (Thai spicy sausage salad), cauliflower with pork belly, stir-fried eggs and tomatoes, Haiga rice, and a build-your-own ice cream bar (featuring maple-toasted walnuts, bacon, syrup, and whipped cream), all washed down with warm tapioca pearl Thai tea.

Chef Max and sous-chef Sally stir frying the cauliflower and eggs, respectively.

Chef Tulio perfecting his bruschetta with freshly grated Parmesan. Maple-infused treats in the foreground.

For dinner, we partook of various globular, cylindrical, and round dishes, amongst other shapes. Team FW cobbled together a taco bar with all the trimmings (beef, guac, black beans, salsa, hard and soft shells...), summer rolls with homemade peanut sauce, and Lívance (Czech raised pancakes); Team B procured stir-fried eggplant, kimchi stew with mackerel, another form of cauliflower, eggy scallion pancakes, black sesame and red bean tangyuan (sweet rice balls coated in sesame sand), and Thai dessert soup. Although separated into two groups for efficiency, we thirteen gastronauts were very much united in convivial feasting, friendship, and fascination with cultures still mostly unknown but now not altogether unfamiliar.

Chef Pleng expertly colors glutinous rice flour before rolling the dough into tiny spheres.

Chefs Pleng and Max harmoniously sharing a stove.

The aforementioned Thai coconut-milk dessert soup, likened in appearance to Fruity Pebbles in milk! 

Chef Max's luscious eggplant with ground pork, colored with fermented broad bean paste.

Eggy scallion pancakes (admittedly defrosted, but daintily painted with scrambled egg by Candice and Sally).

Tacos: much greater than the sum of their (multifaceted and carefully prepared) parts.

Stained-glassy summer rolls with a knockout peanut sauce (featuring lime and maple syrup).

And lastly, Ms. FarrWilliam's raised-dough pancakes (Lívance), lovingly topped with her homemade summer strawberry preserves, a mix of sour cream and yogurt, raspberries, and cinnamon sugar.