Olympic Food Challenge

The Olympic Food Challenge takes Yorkshire food bloggers on a trip around the world in 80 flavours – Clare Tollick tells us all about it…

Just as Britain is mourning the end of the Olympics, and looking forward to the Paralympics, I and other food bloggers are mourning the end of the Olympic Food Challenge.

Dreamt up by Leeds based food blogger Ewan Mitchell, writer of ‘Tonight’s Menu‘, the Olympic Food Challenge brought a group of (mostly) Yorkshire based bloggers together to cook dishes from all the competing countries; yep, all 204 of them.

Ewan had set himself a similar challenge for the last world cup when he cooked meals from the teams playing each night. On discovering a blinder of a recipe for kedjenou, a dish hailing from the Ivory Coast (a country that Ewan had never looked to for food inspiration before), he knew that there had to be more star dishes out there just waiting to be discovered.

Although Ewan is a competent cook and a true lover of food, he knew that he couldn’t physically cook a dish from every country himself and so he set about recruiting a team of hardened bloggers to help him out.  With 204 countries to be divided by 12 of us some real commitment was needed from us all; simply finding a recipe for some of the more obscure countries was hard work, and then there was the search for the ingredients, the cooking and finally writing a blogpost about each dish.

Once signed up, we all eagerly awaited confirmation of our countries. Of course, we had high hopes that our favourite cuisine would turn up in our allocated lot, but sadly, with 19 of us, the chances of pleasing everyone were pretty slim… and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who didn’t get one of my favourites.

In our quest to hunt down our own kedjenou, we all hit on a few dud recipes. Rebecca Tredget, of Big Spoon, Little Spoon Blog, possibly came worse off with suafa’i from Samoa; a dish of boiled and mashed up over ripe bananas made into a soup with coconut milk and tapioca pearls was ‘ok’ warm, but quickly congealed when cold. Whereas Gary of Exploits of a Food Nut had difficulties thanks to a vague and potentially incorrect recipe for Bolivian cocodas. Even our esteemed leader, Ewan, hit on a bad dish with Lithuanian braised pig’s trotters. Eating a whole trotter, rather than just using it to create a gelatinous stock, makes me feel a tad queasy and thankful that my own dud dish (Yétissé de Poulet from Guinea) was just a bit bland.

And with dishes like that, it’s hardly surprising that some us found the challenge a little, er, challenging at times; indeed Dan Van Heeswyk of Soup Tuesday blog says that he found it ‘tasty, slightly insane, eye-opening and not at all stressful!’, and I think I’m right in assuming that his last remark had a hint of sarcasm attached to it! Rachel Baxter of ComeDine With Rach struggled through her countries whilst pregnant, so it’s hardly surprising that she found the challenge ‘demanding, tiring, expensive’, but overall ‘an eye opening and fantastic challenge’, which is pretty much how most of us felt to be honest.

Thankfully there were winning dishes that helped us on our way. For me a deliciously fresh and tasty Vietnamese rare beef salad with fresh mint and coriander was my star, although the Congolese stew of chicken, tomato and peanut butter was a pleasant surprise. Another surprising dish was the Austrian schnitzel. Rebecca Tredget had never had one before but ‘with garlic mayo it completely hit the spot of a hung-over lunch. It looked uber Bernard Matthews and felt dirty but in a good way!’. Well, it sounds good to me! Jo & Joe Rees of Food & Biscuits blog had another surprising dish in New Zealand pork stuffed cabbage rolls served with a tangy sauce. Joe says it was a ‘healthy mix of ingredients that we wouldn’t have previously thought of putting together’, but they would make it again ‘for sure’. To make up for that pig trotter, Ewan dropped incredibly lucky getting India as one of his countries, and to be fair, he made the most of it by learning a new technique and making his own paneer. A resounding success, I am told.

The one thing I really loved about this challenge was that it forced me to make new things, learn new techniques and use ingredients I’d never even heard of. I made flatbreads, peanut butter, tortillas and cooked with dried limes; I learnt that boiling chicken actually produces a really tasty and tender meat and that the idea of serving curry in a loaf of bread come from times of apartheid, not a Come Dine With Me episode.

It’s good to know that my fellow bloggers also tried new things. For Rachel, the Olympic Food Challenge allowed her to try goat for the first time. Another first was duck tongues which Dan had the joy of preparing and eating (actually, saying that, Dan claims they weren’t as horrifying as he first feared). Rebecca Crowdey of Lil Miss Squirrel learnt how to make chicken momos, a Nepalese version of Chinese dim sum; from scratch, wrappers and all.

I do think Rebecca Liburd of Really Nice Food, probably had one of the best challenges in preparing lobster. Twice. Although it’s something she would normally have her fishmonger do, she went all out and learnt how to do it herself for two dishes including lobster thermidor!

We’ve all taken something away with us from this amazing challenge; whether it’s those new cooking techniques or a cupboard full of unusual ingredients (when will I use those dried limes again?!). Of course there’s the memories too. Rebecca Liburd will take away the joy of watching her allocated countries enter into the stadium during the opening stadium. For Rachel, it was the rather embarrassing moment of sitting down to eat Strukli (from Croatia), googling a picture of the dish and finding it was nothing like the dish she’d created! For Joe, it was the look on his fiancé Jo’s face as he told her what he’d signed her up to; I can well imagine that was an interesting conversation…

Now that the Olympics are over, we’ve all been left feeling a little bereft. Yes, it’s been hard work; yes, spending four hours cooking after a day of work was nobody’s idea of fun; but, oh my, it’s been great*.

The Participants and their blogs;

Feast And Glory of Sheffield;

Tonight’s Menu, Big Spoon, Little Spoon, SoupTuesday, Geek Leeds, Really Nice Food and Food & Biscuits from Leeds;

The Food I Eat based in Huddersfield;

Come Dine With Rach and 750 Miles based in North Yorkshire;

The Food Nut currently based in Grimsby

Lil Miss Squirrel’s 366 Recipe Challenge from Wiltshire.

*and word on the street has it that some people haven’t finished working through their allocated countries so there may be a bit of a Paralympic ‘catch-up’ Food Challenge for us all to look forward to…