Kids Kitchen Globe-Trotters: Around the World in 52 Dishes
Building cultural understanding one meal at a time.
I was listening to a podcast interview of some business or science person, and they were asked about their favourite dish from their home country. I’d been to their home country and ate food there, so I was thinking I’d at least have heard of it, but it was way out of left field, not even in the right food genre. The way they spoke about it was compelling and I really wanted to eat some. That all triggered the thought that there are probably loads of speciality dishes from each country that are delicious. That hatched the plan for a game.
The way we played the game yesterday was:
Rupert (nearly 5) and I jumped on google maps, had a look at some places in Africa on satellite view, a bit of jungle, a bit of desert, the Okavango Delta, then I said hey, what about Eritrea? He agreed.
I put the follow prompt into ChatGPT o3:
I want to make some traditional Eritrean food. Not like, so traditional that it's no good or whatever, some of the stuff that is considered really good in modern culinary circles. Also, it needs to be more or less vegan (having yoghurt or cheese additions is fine). So what have you got for me? Ideally it would be a main and a dessert, so can you give me a few options for each. If you need to borrow from nearby cuisine, that's ok. I have a decent array of spices at home and will be going to a woolworths in Tasmania to shop if I need extra things.
You may notice that this prompt is terrible. I mean, I have a bunch of the right stuff in there, but there’s also a lot of useless bits. Re-reading it and seeing “So what have you got for me?” was painful. My excuse/reason is that Rupert really wanted control of the mouse so he could scroll the map and my finger were just typing. Still, the next time I do this, the prompt will likely be an exact copy of this with the country name changed.
The result was incredible. After 7 second of thinking, it gave me three options for mains and three for dessert. They were all vegan with a core shopping list for items unlikely to be in the pantry and a quick method. It also included a “30-minute” pancake recipe (traditionally the ferment is 2-3 days) and the berbere spice mix. There aren’t many sweet desserts, but it came up with one traditional one and then I think just mashed together what it thought would be good: spiced poached pears and coffee-spice teff brownies - I made the traditional one for child spice/coffee reasons, but they sounded delicious. It also gave advice on unavailability: eg. if no fenugreek seeds, increase cumin slightly. It even gave drink pairing suggestions.
We went to the local Woolworths to get what we needed, replacing only teff flour with buckwheat. I’m not trying to shill for Woolies, and if there are other options near you I encourage you to use them.
We cooked. I followed the instructions without further research except (like a noob) looking up how to make self-raising flour for the Himbasha blessing bread. It was much faster than I thought, though they are simple recipes.
We ate. It was delicious. I took some photos, but they’re terrible. Pro-tip for food photography: put the plates together so you can see the food rather than showing mostly table. Rupert and Murphy mostly ate the bready bits (pancake and spiced bread).
We’re going to do this either weekly or fortnightly from now on. Adjustments I intend to make are:
Give Rupert more input with country selection. When asked, he kept suggesting countries that he knew (Italy, Japan), food from which which we already eat - that’s how he knows the countries in most cases. I’ll give him control of the map and he can just pick. We can also have a look at street view a bit here.
Make a poster (we might do this at some point for this one). Currently this would include the name of the country, and a picture and description of the food. When he’s older (though not much), we might turn it into a research the country project: how many people, what they look like, how their houses and towns look, how they live, their history and economy. Then we can put the posters up to see which countries we’ve cooked from.
It was loads of fun! I highly encourage anyone with kids to do this. If you do, let me know what country you try and what you make. I didn’t lean into it being a “lesson” in any way, just a fun exploration.
Final menu:
Main: Zigni Funghi (Mushroom & Kale Spiced Ragù) and Timtimo & Roasted Veg “Mesob” Bowl on the plate with Injera flatbread (pancake).
Dessert: Himbasha (Blessing Bread) – vegan raisin & sesame version.
Fine, here’s a screen snip of part of a photo that kind of shows you what is happening. I usually care more about presentation, but in this case, didn’t.
