Kitchen-travels part 1: destination Aruba

Posted on 17 November 2010

Welcome! This is the first in a series of journeys to exotic and wonderful places through the small but cozy confines of my kitchen. For me, food is an essential part of any travel experience. I love to indulge in the new, exciting and unfamiliar dishes of a foreign country. Unfortunately I don’t get to do nearly as much travelling as I would like to, so these kitchen adventures are a way for me to travel vicariously through my cooking.

The idea is that I randomly select a country using this nifty site called Random Country.com and whichever country I happen to select, I do a bit of research on it and choose one of its national dishes to cook, allowing for some artistic license. This should prove to be an interesting, surprising and educational experience and I hope you will enjoy travelling with me and tasting the food of a variety of weird and wonderful destinations.

First up is the Caribbean island of Aruba. Probably less well known than its tropical island neighbours, Jamaica and Cuba, Aruba is still a very popular tourist destination, famous for its beautiful beaches and lovely warm climate. The island is an autonomous dependency of the Netherlands and thus has many Dutch influences, as illustrated by the name of its capital, Oranjestad. These Dutch roots are also clearly evident in the food of Aruba and one see’s Dutch specialties such as bitterballen and erwtensoep featuring a lot under “Aruban recipes”. Seeing as I am currently residing in the Netherlands, this seems like an apt first kitchen travel destination; although I’ll save the Dutch-influenced recipes for if and when I hit “Netherlands” on my random country search.
Well without further ado, let’s begin: Here is my Aruban menu. I hope you enoy!

Two different starters were decided on for this meal: Chili-kissed prawns on a skewer and Coconut crumbed calamari.

Sticking with the seafood theme, the main course was a delicious meal of Poached red snapper fillets served with a fresh mango salsa and butter-fried banana.






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