Dear Latvia

Dear sweet Latvia, your landscape is beautiful, your culture is rich, your people are friendly .... your food... not so good.  Unfortunately, our Latvian adventure did not turn out as well as we had hoped-- whether it was the execution of the recipes or the actual recipes themselves will remain a mystery as I sincerely doubt that any one of us will be trying them again. The term most commonly used to describe Latvian cuisine is "peasant food" which to me evoked scenes of a Snow White-esque forest, a cast iron pot full of some dark, rich stew bubbling over an open hearth and fresh loaves of yeasty bread cooling on a stone windowsill. Apparently, I had no idea what I was talking about.   While looking for a truly authentic Latvian recipe via Google (which is where all the cool Latvian recipes go) I quickly discovered that "peasant food" was just another way of saying "with potatoes and sour cream". Every recipe I came across had potatoes or sour cream or both as their main ingredient(s) AND there was not one stew recipe to be found!  My romanticized peasant food vision was fading fast-- thinking that surely the recipes I was finding were not entirely authentic I decided to turn to ... wait for it ... books. Yes, dear reader I decided to search for my delectable Latvian morsel in a book and do you know what I found? More potatoes and sour cream! Seriously! There was also an abundance of Kielbasa and cabbage-- turns out that Latvia has some heavy Polish influence  (pretty obvious I guess since they're neighbours and everything). So, I spent hours upon hours scouring the pages of many books (okay, one book but still it was a thick one) until I finally made my decision: Abolu platsmaize (Latvian Apple Pie).  The name sounded easy enough, the picture of the finished dessert looked good AND it didn't contain any potatoes (only sour cream), so without another thought I bookmarked the page and completely forgot about it until Wednesday evening ... that's when I noticed that the recipe had one fatal flaw: NO QUANTITIES!! That's right, the recipe HAD an ingredient list but unfortunately had NO measurement of said ingredients.. Here is the actual recipe as it was written:

Abolu platsmaize (Latvian Apple Pie)

Ingredients:

Eggs
Keifers
Flour
Sugar
Baking Powder
Apples Raisin
Sour Cream
Eggs
Sugar
Cinammon

Method:

Combine ingredients to make a dough. Spread on flat sheet. Put remaining ingredients on top. Sprinkle sugar and Cinnamon.

That's it, that's all it said. No amounts, no directions, nothing. I'm not even sure which ingredients I put in the dough and which I put on top--at this point my inner gypsy started to panic-- so I took a deep breath, reminded myself that this was SUPPOSED to be an adventure, tied my sweater around my waist and dove head first into the recipe of confusion ... and you know what? It didn't turn out half bad.  I was able to "guess" at the dough recipe and, thanks to the book's picture, I was able to figure out what ingredients went on top (I think?) Was it perfect? Was it actually Latvian? Probably not but I definitely had Latvian spirit in my heart while I was putting it all together, so that's got to count for something right? (*Please note that I have also not included any ingredient amounts for the recipe-- where's the fun in that?!)

The other's fared pretty much the same as I did-- although their recipes did come with measurements, they had they're own hardships to overcome. Berni's Latvian potato salad with kielbasa was ... um ... interesting. How'd it taste? Lets just say that nobody was grabbing for seconds; this probably had to do with the fact that not a single one of us was a fan of kielbasa and let me tell you,that sausage had hooked up with absolutely every potato in that salad. Ugh.

Latvian Potato Salad with Kielbasa

Ingredients

4-5 large potatoes
3 eggs
1 large Kielbasa (diced)

Dressing-
 1 cup sour cream
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 tbsp horseradish
2 tbsp mustard

Directions

Boil potatoes until fairly soft (but not until they are falling apart). Hard boil eggs. Remove skins from potatoes, and shells from eggs. Dice into fairly large chunks—about ½ inch (1 - 1.5 cm) in diameter. Dice sausage into slightly smaller pieces; it should make approximately one cup (250 ml) when diced. Put all ingredients into a large bowl.
Make salad dressing. Start with smaller amounts, and keep adding sour cream, horseradish (or mustard), salt, etc. until it tastes good to you.
Add salad dressing to diced ingredients. Stir well. Cover. Refrigerate for several hours, if possible. Serves 4 - 6.

Christine's hardship had less to do with the recipe and more to do with her driving.  She had originally made Latvian Meatballs but when getting ready to transport them to the office she left them on the hood of her car. Subsequently, when she started driving the meatballs fell off the hood onto the road where they were promptly squished under the wheels of an old Dodge Dakota rumbling along behind her. In a moment of pure genius Christine headed straight to the market and purchased a tube of hot dog rolls (the kind you roll around the outside of a wiener and then bake in the oven), a tub of chopped onions, bacon bits and a package of deli ham-- she made Piragi on the fly in our office kitchenette using the toaster oven! What a smartie pants! They were delicious ... a little charred on the outside but still by far, the best recipe of the day. (Note: Piragi are traditionally made using a yeast dough-- so for the record, not all my Latvian peasant dreams were wrong- just saying).

Christine's Latvian Piragi

1 tube of hot dog rolls

1 package of pre-cooked bacon bit
1 package of deli sliced ham (diced)

Directions

Place diced onion, bacon bits and ham in a heat safe bowl and bake in the toaster oven for approximately 10 minutes of medium heat.

Place hot dog rolls on a piece of foil, fill with onion, bacon, ham mixture and roll. Bake for approximately 20 minutes.


So Latvia, it's been a slice and although I will probably not be recreating this weeks brown bagged feast any time soon, you did provide me with quite the culinary adventure and for that I am grateful.


Next week's brown bagged travels will be taking us to a part of the world where the mountains are majestic, the tigers run free and the spices are fragrant.... see you in India!