[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka You could go fo double C with Coconut Curry 😉 I like it, but I am bad with spicy foods, they upset my stomach, I think I mentioned it before. So I can only enjoy the milder kinds of curry, which is not so bad.

But here is something spicy from India's neighbour Nepal! It's Choila:

[Saka]

@DoctorEldritch I am the person who answers "yes" to the question of "how spicy?".

Although usually I eat the curry mild, my spouse likes it, but easily gets hiccups from the sharper versions.

How about Chili con carne? I haven't had it for a longer while, but I used to cook it more often in the past.



Sometimes when I need comfort food or am too lazy to get something more complicated, I make carbonara:

[GoLLuM13]

@DoctorEldritch Couscous is not only Moroccan, it's from Maghreb (North Africa) which means it's also an Algerian dish, just like Karim Benzema and his parents who are Algerians too 👀 Depending on the region you can have it with a sauce with vegetables and meat, chicken or fish or without sauce but with steamed vegetables this one I'll talk more about it when we'll get to the letter M 😜

@Saka I love this one with curry 😍

[DoctorEldritch]

@GoLLuM13 I guess it may be one of those foods that are connected to the whole continent rather than a country, like rice for Asia, but that is a crude generalisation on my part.

And we're on to D! Here's some Dampfnudel. It's German dessert.

[GoLLuM13]

@DoctorEldritch not the whole continent, just the North 😜
According to historians, versions may vary, some say it's Algerian, some others say it's both Algerian AND Moroccan, but the common point is that you can't get the Algerian part out of the equation it must be in here 😁 I tend to say Algerian and Moroccan because both countries has the same people, same ancestor, and same ethnic (the Berber people). Later some other countries with Berber ancestors adopted the Couscous, like Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania.
I won't talk about it longer but fun fact for a long time the Couscous has been the favorite dish of French people 😁

Let's go to the letter D shall we 😜

We have the Dolma (Turkish for "stuffed") is a family of stuffed dishes associated with Ottoman cuisine, typically made with a filling of rice, minced meat, offal, seafood, fruit, or any combination of these inside a vegetable or a leaf wrapping.

Let's have a little dessert with Dziriette which literally means Algerians (from Algiers, the capital of Algeria) is an Algerian pastry which, as its name suggests, originates from Algiers (can't be more specific about the origin 😂). Dziriettes are made from flour paste with little sugar, encompassing an almond stuffing flavored with lemon zest, dipped in a preparation of honey and orange blossom water. Very aesthetic pastry, the dziriettes are in the shape of rosettes, embellished with multiple decorations (flowers, leaves, pearls ...). These cakes are very common during wedding parties or engagements.

[Saka]

@GoLLuM13 These pastries look divine (and probably taste so as well).
The wraps remind me of mince meat and rice rolls wrapped in cabbage leafs that are in Polish cuisine. I wonder if they are related. Apparently variations of these cabbage rolls exist in many countries.

There don't seem to be that many dishes starting with D. I only can think of Dim Sum at the moment. Regrettably, right now I live in a city that's not very good with the food offerings. The "Chinese" places here don't offer much besides stir fry, noodles and spring rolls.

[DoctorEldritch]

@GoLLuM13 That is informative, a feast for both mind and eyes. How do the French use couscous? I know potatoes make fondue, but not sure how long the French had couscous. Are dishes with it more modern, or are there old ones too?

Algerian dessert looks very nice. I am always conflicted with desserts like this, on the one hand, I like them when they are aesthetically beautiful, but on the other hand, if they are too beautiful, I can't make myself eat them. A real dilemma!
@Saka Dim Sum works. But letter D still has some dishes up its sleeve. Here is Dolmathakia, a grape leaves stuffed with pine nuts, herbs, and rice, all the way from Greece:



And as a last hurrah of letter C, here is a song about a lovely bunch of coconuts 😉

[Saka]

@DoctorEldritch I have one more dish, it's a snack from puff pastry. The puff pastry forms swirls, they are spicy thanks to the paprika and cheesy. The name is diablotki. Some derivative of the devil, but don't ask me why.

[GoLLuM13]

@DoctorEldritch French people know the Couscous since the XVI century with the literacy, especially with François Rabelais in his novel Pantagruel in 1532 where he calls it "couscoussou". Its consumption on the other hand did not spread until the XX century in Algerian families sent to metropolitan France to replace in factories the men who went to the military front, during the First World War (1914-1918), then by the Pieds-noirs (European descent people who were born in Algeria during the period of French colonization 1830-1962) who contribute to integrate it into French cuisine at the time of the independence of Algeria and the exodus of 1962.
The preparation in France is called "Couscous Royal" (Royal Couscous) where they mic different kind of meat, chicken, mutton, beef, pork, meatballs and merguez (another dish that comes from Algeria), it's in contradiction with how we usually do it, the principle is that we don't mix kinds of meat, in addition to that the couscous in the French way semolina is often cooked without the steaming of the sauce which should give more taste to it.

[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka maybe because they are swirly, and in some versions, the devil is said to have swirly horns. Or maybe because they are so good you want to sell your would for another bite?
@GoLLuM13 Oh my, it seems couscous has a richer history in Europe than I realised, though it is interesting how it was due to historical events that it gained popularity among the masses. A nice bit of food history trivia there.

As for today's letter E, here is an English bit of trivia: England has a boarding school called Eton College for sons of the upper class (with a fee to match). The legend has it that sometime in the 1920s the school held a cricket match. To celebrate the occasion, a grand strawberry pavlova was prepared, but as luck would have it, it was squashed by a labrador. The resulting mess served as an inspiration for the dish, which was appropriately named Eton Mess:



It's fresh strawberries, sweet meringue and fluffy whipped cream. That was one inspiring labrador. Nowadays to avoid the, well, mess, it all gets packed neatly in a glass: