A couple of days ago I mentioned kugelis to another Lithuanian here, and ever since then I have had a hankering for some.

I wasn't actually born in Lithuania, it's not my true homeland . However, some of my relatives were born there ( my father, paternal aunts and uncles,paternal grandparents,maternal great-grandmother) so I grew up in a partly Lithuanian atmosphere.

Anyways, we'd consider this stuff right here to be awesome, but everybody else I know thinks it is disgusting. But that's because they are crazy . You top it with sour cream and it's kinda like a bacony baked potato. How can you hate baked potatoes with bacon and sour cream? ( I know it's not the healthiest thing ever but whatever. We'd eat it mostly around the wintertime holidays )
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/lithuanian-kugelis/


edit-I see that the listed recipe also uses butter, which actually does sound kinda weird. I've never used butter, the bacon fat is plenty

edit 2-I don't think this thread will be very popular, and kugelis will never get the recognition it deserves :(:(

I guess I will have to change my user title to subliminally suggest it

Here's a traditional Easter dish from Finland, that some love and others hate. It's called Mämmi and it looks pretty disgusting to most people at first.

http://cookingfinland.blogspot.fi/2011/04/mammi-traditional-finnish-porridge-or.html

You have to add milk or cream and sugar to get the most out of it. So next time, when you're visiting Finland, be sure to ask for some mämmi! ;)

I'm British. I cannot take part in this.

I will go with Poutine as my entry to this lovely thread, it's a very simple recipe as follows:

Chips - Any kind will do, either home made, shoe string, julian, or my favourite those curly or ribbed ones.
Gravy - Again any works, but I particularly like beef or turkey gravy in particular
Cheese - As I am highly allergic to most cheese, I have to be very careful what I do put on it, so I tend to use feta or very little shredded (of kinds I can consume). But, cheese curds work (if you wish to go Quebec style) or mass amounts of shredded of any variety.

Basically just take some just heated chips (the more steaming the better), throw on your cheese/cheese curds (temp doesn't matter, but preferably room temp), and a dump the hot gravy over the mix. Then, either eat or wait a bit for the cheese to melt from the heat of the gravy and chips. I rather filling meal, and if made right quite delicious. ^_^

I suppose we could say put meat, various chopped chunky veg in a pan, add stock and boil the crap out of it for about an hour and you have a Casserole / Stew / Hotpot!!!

Then do either Dumplings (essentially dough balls you put in said stew and cook them through so they absorb the gravy) or Yorkshire Puddings with it, they are very British

I love dumplings, I make them almost every time I make stew. My mother gave me a very nice recipe for them that's been in the family since...Wow long time actually.

Actually, despite what I said, here's a nice version of very British food. Fish, chips and mushy peas, stolen from Jamie Oliver.

Ingredients

• Sunflower oil for deep-frying
• ½ teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 225g nice white fish fillets, pinboned
• 225g flour, plus extra for dusting
• 285ml pint good cold beer
• 3 heaped teaspoons baking powder
• 900g potatoes, peeled and sliced into chips

For the mushy peas:
• a knob of butter
• 4 handfuls of podded peas
• a small handful of fresh mint, leaves picked and chopped
• a squeeze of lemon juice
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

To make your mushy peas, put the butter in a pan with the peas and the chopped mint. Put a lid on top and simmer for about 10 minutes. Add a squeeze of lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. You can either mush the peas up in a food processor, or you can mash them by hand until they are stodgy, thick and perfect for dipping your fish into

Pour the sunflower oil into your deep fat fryer or a large frying pan and heat it to 190ºC/375ºF. Mix the salt and pepper together and season the fish fillets on both sides. This will help to remove any excess water, making the fish really meaty. Whisk the flour, beer and baking powder together until nice and shiny. The texture should be like semi-whipped double cream (i.e. it should stick to whatever you're coating). Dust each fish fillet in a little of the extra flour, then dip into the batter and allow any excess to drip off. Holding one end, lower the fish into the oil one by one, carefully so you don't get splashed – it will depend on the size of your fryer how many fish you can do at once. Cook for 4 minutes or so, until the batter is golden and crisp.

Meanwhile, parboil your chips in salted boiling water for about 4 or 5 minutes until softened but still retaining their shape, then drain them in a colander and leave to steam completely dry. When all the moisture has disappeared, fry them in the oil that the fish were cooked in at 180ºC/350ºF until golden and crisp. While the chips are frying, you can place the fish on a baking tray and put them in the oven for a few minutes at 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4 to finish cooking. This way they will stay crisp while you finish off the chips. When they are done, drain them on kitchen paper, season with salt, and serve with the fish and mushy peas.

Since in Finland we love food that looks like shit (literally), let's not forget mustamakkara (black sausage), kind of "blood sausage".

While mämmi looks more like dark diarrhea, mustamakkara looks much more like a proper, long firm turd when your stomach is ok. So whichever look you prefer.

http://3makua.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/133/

Black sausage is best served with cowberry (=puolukka) jam, which has a very tart flavor.

Irish Stew .

Ingredients

1½kg/3lb 5oz stewing beef, cut into cubes

175g/6oz streaky bacon

3 tbsp olive oil

12 baby onions, peeled

18 button mushrooms, left whole

3 carrots, cut into quarters or 12 baby carrots, scrubbed and left whole

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 tbsp chopped thyme

2 tbsp chopped parsley

10 cloves of garlic, crushed and grated

425ml/15fl oz red wine

425ml/15fl oz chicken or beef stock

For the roux
50g/2oz butter

50g/1¾oz flour

champ, to serve

Preparation method
1.Brown the beef and bacon in the olive oil in a hot casserole or heavy saucepan.

2.Remove the meat and toss in the onions, mushrooms and carrots, one ingredient at a time, seasoning each time.

3.Place these back in the casserole, along with the herbs and garlic.

4.Cover with red wine and stock and simmer for one hour or until the meat and vegetables are cooked.

5.To make the roux, in a separate pan melt the butter, add the flour and cook for two minutes.

6.When the stew is cooked, remove the meat and vegetables.

7.Bring the remaining liquid to the boil and add one tbsp of roux.

8.Whisk the mixture until the roux is broken up and the juices have thickened, allowing to boil.

9.Replace the meat and vegetables, and taste for seasoning.

10.Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve with CHAMP


Champ Recipe

Ingredients
1½kg/3lb 5oz potatoes, scrubbed

100g/3½oz butter

500ml/18fl oz milk (if you want it rich use ¾ milk to ¼ cream)

450g/1lb peas

75g/2¾oz spring onions, chopped

4 tbsp chopped parsley

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preparation method
1.To make the champ, cook the potatoes in salted water for 5-10 minutes, until tender.

2.Drain three-quarters of the water and continue to cook on a low heat. Avoid stabbing the potatoes with a knife, because if they're floury potatoes they'll break up if you do.

3.When cooked, drain all the water off, peel and mash with most of the butter while hot.

4.Meanwhile, place the milk in a saucepan with the peas and spring onion and boil for four or five minutes, until cooked.

5.Add the parsley and take off the heat.

6.Add the potatoes, keeping some of the milk back in case you don't need it all.

7.Season to taste and beat until creamy and smooth, adding more milk if necessary.

8.Serve piping hot with the remaining butter melting in the centre.

Karjalanpiirakat are the best thing around here.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Karjalanpiirakat
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Egg_Butter

I've never made 'em myself, so I can't comment on the recipe, but if the recipe is even relatively decent, those things are delicious. Especially with the egg butter. Oh dear..
I want some right now :D

Remember to use genuine Finnish rice for the filling, grown on the hills of Lapland by the local Lapdancers.

Even though you can use other fillings too, like potato or such with those pies, I always find it funny that many of the Finnish "traditional dishes" use e.g. rice, which grows nowhere near Finland. Karelian pie, Christmas rice porridge etc.

And karjalanpiirakka is still an acquired taste. One American tourist tried it at my mother's home, and he couldn't eat half of one tiny pie. "Interesting...", he said. But I like it though, nice filling little snack.

My favourite British dish has to be Spotted Dick, definitely the best dessert in my opinion

Many people flack and talk bad about British food, when in reality there are a lot of british dishes that are very good, the main problem I think comes from the actual people themselves who almost cannot cook anything on their own and the only "British" dish they know are fish and chips

German-style cheesecake (this ought to be the one everyone knows):

For the pastry:
125 g butter
1 egg
75 g sugar
A couple of drops of vanilla essence (actually in Germany we use "Vanillinzucker", which is basically a small pack of very fine sugar mixed with vanilla essence, but good luck in trying to get that anywhere but here!)
250 g flour
1 tsp baking powder
A pinch of salt

For the cream:
125 g butter
750 g low-fat quark cheese
200 g sugar
50 g semolina
5 eggs, separated
The juice of one lemon

Pastry: Mix the butter with the egg, sugar, vanilla essence, salt, flour and backing powder. Grease a spring-loaded cake tin with butter.

Filling: Beat the butter until it's light an fluffy, mix in the quark cheese and sugar little by little, then mix in the semolina, the egg yolk and the lemon juice. Beat the egg white until it's firm and then "fold in".

Spread the filling onto the pastry and then stick it in the oven for around 45 minutes at 200°C.

Unless the German variant is something else, at least here in Finland we certainly have "vaniljasokeri" (vanilla sugar), quite commonly available in stores. I'm unsure though when it is used, ie. where normal fine sugar is not enough. Well, now I know at least one such recipe...

EDIT: Googling for it, they are selling also "vanilliinisokeri" here. I think the difference is that

vaniljasokeri = the vanilla taste comes from real vanilla. This fine sugar should apparently have tiny black dots, which is the actual vanilla powder mixed with the very fine sugar.

vanilliinisokeri = the taste apparently comes from "vanilliini", which is artificial, but supposed to taste like vanilla.

Or then I don't know what I'm talking about...

I don't think I've ever seen real vanilla sugar in stores here (at least I don't remember ever seeing it), only the vanillin kind.

As for Swedish recipes, I really couldn't say. We're supposedly famous for meatballs and our hard bread (knäkkebröd), and I'd guess blood sausage, leverpastej, and our caviar (which I think cannot be called caviar outside Sweden, since it contains too little actual caviar) are fairly unique, but of those, only meatballs are quite often made at home, the others are always or almost always bought.