The FIFA World Cup Cooking Challenge. KayCalCooks.
The FIFA World Cup is just over the horizon (starting in about a week's time) and without a doubt, it's one of the biggest events this year. Admittedly, I'm not overly enthusiastic about watching football, but I do still want to get involved, so I have created a challenge based on my love of food. This challenge requires me cooking a dish from every nation that's taking part in the World Cup throughout the course of days that the world cup is going on.
There are 32 countries taking part in the World Cup and 30 days from when it starts to when it ends. Before I go on, just take a moment to imagine 30 days of cooking, let alone cooking something NEW everyday. I dont even think chefs cook something NEW every single day (I mean there probably are, but it's still a chore). Oh and on top of that, some days I'll have to double up to cover the extra 2 countries.
Now, I didn't want to over complicate it (because let's not bite off more than I can chew here) by making predictions and ordering the countries by 'who's playing / who's won'. So I'm just going to go through them in group order, starting with A trailing through to H. The groups are are as follows:
Group A: Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Uruguay
Group B: Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Iran
Group C: France, Australia, Peru, Denmark
Group D: Argentina, Iceland, Croatia, Nigeria
Group E: Brazil, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Serbia
Group F: Germany, Mexico, Sweden, South Korea
Group G: Belgium, Panama, Tunisia, England
Group H: Poland, Senegal, Colombia, Japan (Why does my favourite have to be right at the very end.)
Oh the fun of starting a new challenge!
I wish I was well-travelled enough to say that I've either cooked or eaten the delicacies from EVERY single country taking part... But I haven't, so I will have to do some research into finding authentic dishes that represent the countries involved. Believe me, just from taking a generic search across the countries playing; There are a lot of meals that I've never heard of before in my life so some may not turn out that great, but it's all an education and I'm just really excited to get in the kitchen more and make foods I've never tried before.
Just a quick little disclaimer here; There will be some references from the internet but I want to keep it as genuine as possible so on top of using the omniscient interwebs (ignoring websites like Food Network and anything stating it's a 'culture-STYLE' recipe), I'm also going to use a mix of other media as a reference such as cookery books that I have lying about at home, travel and cooking TV shows, YouTube chefs or Vloggers, but only actually using recipes that I feel are authentic and truly represent their country. Don't worry, I'll link or reference whatever I use (so you'll know I'm not just looking at Jamie Oliver or BBC Good Food).
Oh and I'm not giving myself shortcuts, so If a meal requires something that's not in a standard UK supermarket, I will have to source it. That means I have to take the time out (ideally in advance or on a weekend) to find and visit specialist shops for certain items.
I'm super excited to get started (famous last words), especially because I'm going to be learning lots and cooking foods from around the world! I hope you support me in my challenge and look forward to my posts.