Travels through discovery of local gastronomy

The local and international gastronomy is based on many characteristic that can be original of the country and that we can not find elsewhere, this is exactly what I search while I take a plane and travel to another country, discovering the local gastronomy, learning new recipes, tasting also new flavours, and new plates that are the symbol of that city like for example I tasted the paella that is the most famous culinary characteristic in Spain, I had also an experience in tasting the Japanese food in Portugal and I could enjoy an amazing buffet where they serve sushi and all types of food in their most extreme way of preparation, I had also the amazing chance to enter a Thai restaurant also serving only Thai food and I could experience the flavour of a very strange plate, made essentially from a fish with sweet cream all around which was really surprising because in Tunisia we usually don't mix between the salty ingredients and the sweet ones, the mix for us is weird, the only plate we use in it some dried fruits is the couscous that is made this way only in special events like the month of Ramadan, but beside this, cooking with a mix of salty and sugar thing is not a characteristic from this country, but it was really surprising and amazing to taste such a flavour. The Indian food is also very exceptional it was actually made of some bread very well cooked and very delicious, and they offers us two different sauces that are made to be used by the bread, either the one with chicken or the other more hot, of course Indian people are so famous for loving the hot food and we can even say that this is a speciality in the Indian food to be prepared with much red pepper that is very hot. But for me, I can stand very well the hotness because most of Tunisian food is made by a unique preparation called harissa which is a hot preparation made mainly from red pepper smashed and used in main plates, in sandwishes, everywhere and that can be prepared even at home.

One of the most delicious dessert in Tunisia and that I personally prefer among all the sweets I ever tasted before is the sweet called mlabes. The recipe is very easy to prepare it is very similiar to the preparation of macron but this one is even more difficult and amazing to taste. The recipe is constituted exactly from these special steps:
• First we must prepare the main mix that will be used inside the sweets, it is mainly made of 300 g of sweet almonds that we must put in special kitchen utensil to smash it into very smooth pieces, (people in this step are free to use other types of dried fruits like for example pistachio, or nuts that they can also use by smashing them and collecting the essence to the mix we need),

• In the second step, we must add 80 g of sugar flour which is a special type of sugar not like the one used to breakfast but rather a sugar made with very special way to be very much thin and smashed and that could use to prepare cakes in general and sweets things, we add to the mix ten spoons of geranium, one bag of baking powder that allows the mix to be thicker after and then we must only put the yellow on eggs to the mix by separating the white one in another recipient we can use at least seven eggs in this process and we divide the yellow from the white one, we can also add more flavour by adding some orange external skin, we must actually divide by putting the yellow eggs with the almonds and mix them together in good way and then we put the white part of the eggs with the sugar flour to mix together in that way we obtain two different preparations,
• the third step consists of using a silicone plate that would allow us to make the balls in the form of the macron, the mix of almonds , sugar and yellow eggs must be mixed together and then the pow is used to do small balls manually then we put then in the plate,
• the plate is then put inside the oven for ten or fifty minutes to be well cooked,
• then the amazing cover of the sweets is prepared that is mainly the most important step because this white cover like the snow make the beauty of such a unique dessert,
• the cover is prepared by mixing 125 ml of white eggs previously divided with 500 g of special baking sugar, we can then choose to add some spoons of geranium water or rose water, we put the mix in the mixer to smash the totality together,
• we then put out of the oven the balls we already cooked so well, we must then must take each ball prepared and drop it in the first mix made mainly from white egg and and baking powder already prepared in the previous step, we then put the ball to dry in the plate for the first facade, then after being totally dried we do the other ball to the point of having a brilliance due to this liquid,
• We then use a gold paper that is eatable and used in different types of the sweets just for decoration, this way of preparation is the right way to prepare these sweets that are so delicious and every people would like to taste them a lot.

I also had the chance to prepare all by myself new plates during my internship in Portugal, the country I was lived in was very generous and offering all types of nutrition that we could use and enjoy even with each other.
The second recipe for today is therefore a pate that I used to cook that is very resembling the Portuguese balls that we could see everywhere even in the university restaurants, the recipe is therefore constituted of these steps:
• we must first prepare the mix that is the most important in this dish, the first ingredient is potatoes we must choose some potatoes of good quality, then erase the external skin, after that we must put then cooking in water and some salt and boiled under very soft fire, then we close the gas and we smash the preparation of potatoes very slowly until we have as a result an actual pow,
• The second step is the preparation of fish, fishes must be cleaned a lot to avoid all the dirty things that could be stuck in its skin, then we put in under cold water , we then try to cut then into pieces and cook them with olive oil to have an extremely amazing result for fried fishes,

• the next step is to mix the two preparation ; so we mix the amazing first preparation made from potatoes with the fried fishes and we mix them together then we prepare some balls and we put them another time to be fried with olive oil and some basilica to give the actual Mediterranean aspect, these balls are usually sold for ten Euros or even more in the local market, today at least we knew how to prepare alone these special recipes mainly to discover more about the kitchen as a stranger from the country as well.
In my personal point of view, people get more happy together by tasting an amazing food and by sharing it together while its perfectly, I remember that one friend had a special desire for manga juice that is also made in different way and that we could discover in the Indian restaurant.
The local market is also important because it allows to have fresh vegetables and fruits and prepare the dishes in very original and unique manner, people can even discover new talents in them to prepare the most delicious dishes and the most extraordinary table ever.