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.
This week’s country is Nepal. In all honesty and ignorance, I thought Nepal was a region of China or India, but it is certainly its own country with its capital city being Kathmandu. Of course, Nepal is situated in the Himalayas and is most well-known for being home to Mount Everest– and it is actually home to eight of the ten world’s tallest mountains. Nepal has one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, with tourism booming prior to the pandemic. Mountaineering has long been a huge aspect of Nepal’s economy, but tourists are fanning out across the rest of this striking, mountainous country.
It became evident as soon as I began searching Nepalese cuisine that Daal Bhat is a traditional staple. I already had all the ingredients in my pantry, so I decided to give it a go right away. I followed this recipe:
Since I made this on a whim, I hadn’t soaked the lentils the night before. So I let all the ingredients simmer for a few hours while I attended an online class. The texture came out perfect, as did the taste. For such a simple dish, it is surprisingly aromatic and extremely flavourful. I served it with naan bread, basmati rice, and lots of green onion. I had leftovers for days. I would certainly make Daal Bhat again as an easy weeknight meal.
Let us know what you think!