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 is 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.
This week, we are visiting The Horn of Africa, aka the Somali Peninsula. The country is Djibouti, a tiny nation with just under a million citizens. I really enjoyed this article by Global Table Adventure as it really dives into the culture and tradition that surrounds Djiboutian cuisine and highlights local voices.
We decided to try Djibouti’s national dish: Skoudehkaris. This is a rice dish traditionally prepared with lamb. We opted for beef as lamb is not as easy to find in our area. Skoudehkaris is reminiscent of our Uzbek Plov in flavour but is more like risotto in texture.
We followed this recipe by 196Flavors:
This recipe came together very easily and tasted delicious, especially with the cilantro garnish. We have been enjoying it as leftovers with hot sauce or parmesan cheese to revitalize the flavours. I would make this dish again.
Let us know what you think!