Dear LPG, 

After last month, having chosen to focus in on a national dish with a result where I was confident of what to expect visually, I again opted for food that represented a bit of an unknown quantity to me this month. In my bid to highlight the independence of the Principality of Liechtenstein I branched out into the realms of the gastronomic unknown again.  

But, in this day and age life’s culinary challenges are so much easier to attack, and I have taken advantage of every teaching aid that technology made available to me for my August attempt at producing a National Dish.  I studied the ingredients well in advance of getting to the kitchen and did the video research (even though I could not actually find a set of YouTube instructions with an English soundtrack).  After some of my more recent attempts of national cooking I was sure that Riebel was going to be plain sailing.

I did follow the recipe which included only four ingredients and only four stages of instruction, but as ever there was a snag.  I have never worked out how much a cup is when it comes to an ingredient measurement, so I chose a small mug and was all too aware that the mixture that I first had in the frying pan definitely had its visual difference from the version that I saw on the video. I just left it for an hour or two as instructed and, I think that you will agree with my assessment that the final result was not too bad to look at, although a bit yellower than the original (…not quite sure what I did wrong there…).

The best thing about this dish is the diverse ways in which you can serve it.  The recipe produced more of it than I expected so we tried it as breakfast with my version of apple sauce and I hope that the Liechtensteiners out there will forgive us for adding it to dinner as one third of the ever-English speciality ‘Meat and two veg’.  My thinking was that, if you stretch the realms of your imagination, corn can be seen as a sort of vegetable if rice can? It worked! 

But onwards and upwards, I have discovered that Mali recognises its coming of age on September 22nd each year and, when looking for a way of allowing our taste buds to celebrate this nation, I found MAFÉ AU POULET (TIGUA DEGUÉ) which I cannot wait to have a go at...  
CB, Lewisham. 

CB shares a preview of what is to come next month…

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