Join twowildtides on the country challenge. Each week, we’re going to be heading to a new country (in spirit). Primarily, we’ll be cooking a meal from each country; but we’ll also be watching travel documentaries, reading travel blogs, and listening to music. During the global pandemic, travel was largely inaccessible. We want to reignite our wanderlust, satisfy our travel bug as much as we can, and learn some new things along the way. I have a feeling our bucket list will have a number of items added to it through this experience as well. We created a simple alphabetical spreadsheet with all the countries of the world, and each week we will draw a random number that corresponds with a country on the spreadsheet.
Today, we are going east… twice, to a country called East-East. This is the actual translation of Timor Leste or East Timor. Indeed, Timor is a variant of timur which means “east” in Indonesian and Malay. Leste means “east” is in Portuguese.
https://www.196flavors.com/east-timor-batar-daan/
Timor-Leste, also known as East Timor, became the first new sovereign state of the 21st century in 2002 when Indonesia relinquished control of the island territory. The northern neighbour of Australia, Timor-Leste is a mountainous and tropical nation with good weather. It is one of the least visited countries in SE Asia.
East Timorese cuisine is influenced by local meat and produce, as well as historical and cultural influences of Portugal, the Philippines, and Indonesia. One of our favourite food blogs, 196 Flavors, has a few dishes from Timor-Leste. Batar Da’an really jumped out at me during my research as it looked simple yet bright and unique.
This was a super easy dish to make and I won’t make you wait until the end of the post to learn that I’d make this again and again. It’s a vegetarian dish but I felt like I needed some added protein, so I did a simple chicken breast in the air fryer to complete the meal. Sprouted mung beans were a new ingredient for me and I already can’t wait to cook with them again. They are tasty, filling, and have important vitamins and minerals such as vitamin K, vitamin C, and iron.
Our Batar Da’an was hearty and fulfilling. It is reminiscent of stir fry but with an interesting flavour profile considering the sweetness of the corn and squash with the nuttiness of the mung beans. A very enjoyable meal that I look forward to sharing with friends and family.
Let us know what you think!