A recent endeavour involved introducing my Aussie housemates to the delectable goodness that is real Southern cooking. My roommate is actually another exchange kid from North Carolina, so after many food conversations, we took it upon ourselves to educate our new friends as to what great food really is.
Nikki and I had quite an adventure attempting to work the convection oven and have three different pots cooking on a teeny tiny stove, but we made it work!
The meal went over pretty well. About seven people had a full plate, and a few others picked and tasted. The pasta salad and potatoes were pretty tame and easily liked by all and the chicken turned out to be extremely tasty! The green beans and okra were a bit dodgy, though. Some were in love with what butter does to green beans, others just thought they were gross and mushy. It's true that the okra needed a little salt, but no one was particularly fond of it except for Nikki and me. The "cow pies," "mud puddles" or whatever you chose to call chocolate-oatmeal cookies were an absolute hit, as they should be, and have been requested to return.
The menu began as baked chicken thighs marinated in Italian dressing, green beans, fried potatoes, fried okra, pasta salad and chocolate-oatmeal cookies for dessert. After some searching, we had to go to a sketchy Asian food stand to find okra (where we also got some mystery flavor ramen that we'll try sometime).
Our apartment lacks a proper oven, so a neighbor let us borrow her convection oven of sorts to cook the chicken. When the time came to cook, I realized that my Italian dressing was missing, probably commandeered during a BBQ the night before, therefore Plan B was put into play, which involved some Portuguese marinade I had purchased out of curiosity. Not exactly good representation of the southern US, but it got the job done, and rather well, at that!
Nikki and I had quite an adventure attempting to work the convection oven and have three different pots cooking on a teeny tiny stove, but we made it work!
The meal went over pretty well. About seven people had a full plate, and a few others picked and tasted. The pasta salad and potatoes were pretty tame and easily liked by all and the chicken turned out to be extremely tasty! The green beans and okra were a bit dodgy, though. Some were in love with what butter does to green beans, others just thought they were gross and mushy. It's true that the okra needed a little salt, but no one was particularly fond of it except for Nikki and me. The "cow pies," "mud puddles" or whatever you chose to call chocolate-oatmeal cookies were an absolute hit, as they should be, and have been requested to return.
All in all, a great time was had by all. Nikki and I got to have a taste of home, and our new friends got to experience something very American. Success.
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