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Top 10 Recipes to Travel With Your Taste Buds

15 February 2021 - Destinations

For want of travelling the world in search of new cultures, let’s opt for a playground that’s accessible to all, though sometimes ignored, snubbed or concealed at the end of a corridor: the kitchen! Bonus #1: No luggage or passport required. Let’s look on the bright side. Bonus #2: This overall rather mundane destination has the incredible and little-known power of taking us on an unforgettable journey. Close your eyes and repeat after me: mirin, za’atar, sumac, grains of paradise, fenugreek, galangal, tonka bean... From north to south, east to west, Japan to Lebanon, and Russia to Brazil, a new world map is emerging, minus the jet lag.

#3: Turkey

Sumac is still a relatively little-known spice, unlike cumin, turmeric, paprika or even za’atar, but it is very popular in the Middle East. From Turkey to Lebanon via Iran, this red powder is found in all sorts of dishes: in Lebanese labneh, in Turkish fattoush and even in those tasty kebabs. With their lemony and slightly vinegary notes, ground sumac berries are often used as a replacement for salt and provide deliciously fruity aromas. Known for its digestive properties, sumac is the perfect meat seasoning. Shish taouk is a variation of shish kebabs: the lamb is substituted for chicken marinated in yoghurt and spices, and the skewers are substituted for a barbecue. This recipe is guaranteed to transport you to your next summer holiday.

Discover the recipe for shish taouk here

#4: Poland

Rest assured, no exotic or hard-to-find spices are required for traditional Polish babkas. All you need is the holy trinity of baking ingredients: flour, butter and sugar. During the first lockdown, banana bread wasn’t the only baked good to explode in popularity on Instagram. Babkas took over kitchens worldwide: renowned chefs, influencers and even those for whom using an oven is a victory in itself had a go at baking these delicious buns. Specialised boutiques such as Middle-Eastern bakery Babka Zana have since opened in Paris, a testimony to the success of this delicious cake traditionally enjoyed on Easter Sunday. A Jewish version called Kranz uses chocolate instead of candied fruit. A well-deserved treat after 40 days of Lent.

Discover Stohrer Pastry Chef Jeffrey Cagnes’s recipe here
Discover the chef’s Instagram account here
Discover the Babka Zana boutique here

#5: Sweden

In winter, comfort food is always a winner (that takes it all, if you’ll pardon the pun), and no one can argue with that. But to make a change from the never-ending soups, stews, pies and cheese fondues, let’s turn to the Scandis for inspiration. In the land of ABBA, Ingmar Bergman and Greta Thunberg, people aren’t afraid of mixing things up. Cinnamon buns, meatballs with lingonberry sauce, pickled herring, smoked salmon and wild game of all kinds are staples of the Swedish diet. In the Land of Endless Winter, enjoying one’s food is of course important, but the main aim of a meal is to provide enough energy to keep warm in such cold climes. Chef Magnus Nilsson, one of the founders of Nordic cuisine, swears by a very popular 1950s Swedish dish known as hasselback potatoes. Let your imagination run wild and pimp your spuds with the craziest spices you can find.

Discover the recipe for hasselback potatoes here

#6: Paradise

Lost or artificial for some, part of Dante’s Divine Comedy for others, Paradise is always otherworldly, unknown, and perhaps even inaccessible. Known as grains of paradise because of its distant origins, melegueta pepper, alligator pepper or even Guinea pepper is not actually pepper at all. Confusing? Perhaps, but all the better to pique our curiosity. Grains of paradise may resemble pepper, but these small perennial plant berries actually belong to the ginger family. With a strong and fragrant flavour somewhere between ginger and cardamom, grains of paradise can be used in both sweet and savoury recipes. An essential ingredient in many African whitefish or poultry dishes, they are also used in chocolate- and coffee-based desserts.

Discover the savoury recipe for a roasted pumpkin bowl with grains of paradise and crunchy veggies here
Discover the sweet recipe for a fruit bowl with honey and grains of paradise here

#9: Italy

The ‘80s and ‘90s gave us a new culinary trend that encouraged motionless travel, enthusiastic blending and a number of happy accidents. Fusion food, famous for its worldly influences, be they French, Asian or African, combines flavours, ingredients and techniques in a creative frenzy embodied by chefs such as Yannick Alléno and Cyril Lignac. Denny Imbroisi, former Top Chef contestant and now owner of IDA in Paris, embarked on a quest to find the most expensive, and most aphrodisiac, spice in the world, saffron, to jazz up a classic Italian risotto. Up to 100,000 flowers are necessary to make just one kilo of saffron! Native to Nepal, saffron is today also grown around the Mediterranean Basin. A delicious family recipe to bowl over Mamma.

Discover the recipe for saffron and Parmesan risotto here

#10: Brazil

Anyone who’s ever travelled to South America, and in particular to Brazil, will have heard of the Tupi people, Indigenous Americans based along the Brazilian coast, all the way up to Guyana. Tonka, like açai and Ipanema, is originally a Tupi word, as are perroquet (parrot), topinambour (Jerusalem artichoke) and boa! Tonka beans are found in the fruit of the Brazilian teak, a tropical tree that can reach a height of 30 metres. Their aroma is exceptional, somewhere between bitter almond, caramel, vanilla and tobacco. Favoured by the most awarded chefs to enhance chocolate-based desserts, tonka beans are also popular among the new generation of chefs such as Julien Allano in the Drôme region of France. Julien harnesses their gustatory power to tickle our taste buds in savoury dishes, creating a somewhat surprising and contrasting blend, just like this region that was so close to Claude Lévi-Strauss’s heart.

Discover Julien Allano’s recipe for butternut squash, Lagavulin and tonka here