Tag: iab-food & drink

Easter dishes from around the world | CNN

CNN
—

Honey-glazed ham, garlic mashed potatoes and fluffy dinner rolls might be staples at American Easter meals, but around the world, there are many distinct ways to savor the holiday – ones that incorporate both local ingredients and unique cultural traditions.

“Italians go all out,” said Judy Witts Francini, creator of the Italian food blog Divina Cucina. She’s from California but has lived in Florence and Tuscany for decades.

Witts Francini’s Easter lunch starts with an assortment of antipasti. For the first course, she serves a savory tart called torta pasqualina, which has 33 layers of phyllo dough to symbolize the 33 years of Christ’s life. The second course includes roast lamb, fried artichokes, peas with pancetta and roasted potatoes. Dessert is chocolate eggs (which can be up to 3 feet tall) with a gift inside and a dove-shaped cake, called colomba.

And that’s just lunch.

Other countries take a similar “more is more” approach to Easter meals, but a few dishes really stand out. Here are just five.

Before you roll your eyes at the mere mention of this circular classic, know that the pizza Italians crave on Easter bears little resemblance to what you find on most US delivery menus.

Pizza rustica, also known as pizzagaina, is stuffed with meat and cheese and enclosed in a flaky crust. Like most Italian recipes, pizza rustica varies from region to region, town to town and chef to chef. It originally comes from Naples, which is known as the birthplace of pizza.

“It’s basically a ricotta cheesecake, but it’s super savory – to the max,” said Rossella Rago, an Italian American author and host of the popular online cooking show “Cooking with Nonna” who wrote a cookbook with the same name.

To make the pie, first, you need to make the pastry dough, which includes flour, eggs, salt, milk and lard.

“Everybody always asks me, ‘Can I make this with shortening?’ And the answer is always: ‘No,’” Rago said. “If it’s any other time of year, I will say, ‘Yes, fine, use shortening,’ but when it’s actually Easter you have got to use lard.”

Inside, the pie – at least Rago’s version – contains ricotta, provolone, mozzarella, soppressata (an Italian dry salami), prosciutto, eggs and more.

“Everybody has their own combination that they swear by. If you want Italian people to fight right now, ask them, ‘What’s the real pizzagaina?’ That’s what everybody is obsessed with in Italian America,” Rago said. “It makes me laugh every single time, because there is no right way. It’s ridiculous to think that.

“Italy had 600 languages until its unification,” Rago added. “So, you think we have one recipe for anything? Absolutely not.”

Rago’s recipe is from her grandma, Nonna Romana, and is a true Italian American story. Romana is from Puglia, a region in southern Italy where they don’t make the dish. She learned about it from other Italian Americans while she was working at a clothing factory in Brooklyn, New York. She took their version and made some additions and subtractions. After years and years of tweaks, she created her own Italian American tradition.

“She swears it’s the best,” Rago said. Her secret is extra-sharp provolone. Rago said it’s one of the most popular dishes on her website, and everyone who tries it says they have success their first try.

Traditionally, this dish is made on Good Friday and served at room temperature on Easter Sunday.

When you think of authentic Mexican cuisine, there are many things that come to mind: rice, beans and tortillas, to name a few.

Now, you can add capirotada to the list.

Capirotada is a Mexican dessert that’s similar to bread pudding. It’s made from bread drenched in syrup and layered among nuts, cheese, fruit and sometimes sprinkles.

“If you are into salty, sweet, soft, crunchy, spongy mixed all together with a dash of spice, this is for you,” said Mely Martinez, creator of the blog Mexico in My Kitchen. “Yes, this concoction sounds really weird, but it is an explosion of flavors in your mouth.”

Martinez was born and raised in Tampico, Mexico. She serves this dish for dessert every Easter.

To make Martinez’s traditional capirotada, layers of sliced white bread are baked with butter and then dipped in syrup made from piloncillo (an unrefined type of sugar), cinnamon and cloves. The bread is placed in a ovenproof dish between layers of cotija cheese, roasted peanuts and raisins. It’s baked and then topped with bananas and sprinkles.

Capirotada is usually served at room temperature on Easter Sunday, but many serve it throughout Holy Week.

“It’s addicting. Once you start eating it, you can’t stop eating it,” Martinez told CNN.

Brought to Mexico by the Spaniards, capirotada became popular in Mexico because it’s easy to make and uses ingredients people have on hand.

It was originally a savory dish using beef broth, but evolved into today’s sweet version using syrup, according to Martinez. Some believe the bread represents the body of Christ and the syrup represents his blood.

There are many variations of capirotada all over Mexico.

My Latina Table blogger Charbel Barker makes hers with milk. Her recipe was created by her “abuelita,” meaning grandma.

“My abuelita would always say, it’s good but something is missing. It needs more sweetness,” Barker said. So she added two types of milk: evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk.

Barker said the milk adds more flavor and creates a pudding-like texture.

“It tastes like a Snickers,” Barker said.

Poland: Żurek

In Poland, a dish that takes center stage on Easter is żurek. It’s a creamy and smoky fermented soup made from rye flour starter. This soup is often served with a boiled egg and sausage, and then garnished with spicy horseradish.

Żurek is regarded as something of a national treasure in the Central European country.

“It’s sour, tangy and meaty,” said Anna Hurning, the creator of the blog Polish Your Kitchen. Hurning was born and raised in Poland and now lives in the city of Szczecin.

She makes żurek every Easter and serves it as an appetizer.

To make the soup, first, you need to make a rye starter: Mix flour and cold water with aromatics (including garlic, allspice, peppercorns, marjoram and bay leaves). Then, let it sit on your counter for several days to ferment. Hurning said this is how it gets its “funky” flavor. Don’t be intimated by this step – she said it’s supereasy. You just let nature do the trick.

Next, the sour starter is boiled with the soup base. Hurning’s version consists of bacon, carrots, parsnip and onion.

This soup is served all over the country year-round and on Easter with many variations. Some have it with sauerkraut and smoked goat cheese. Others add potatoes and wild mushrooms.

The cuisine in Singapore is truly a mélange of cultures: Chinese, Malay, Indian, Eurasian and Peranakan. Pinpointing dishes authentic to Singapore might seem like an impossible feat, but that’s exactly the endeavor chef Damian D’Silva has chosen.

“If I don’t do anything to preserve the cuisine of our heritage, one day it will all disappear,” said D’Silva, chef at Rempapa in Singapore. He has been cooking heritage cuisine professionally for more than two decades.

“The cuisine is very unique. You can have one dish in Singapore, but you have five different ways of preparing it,” he said. “And no one is wrong because every ethnicity puts in their own story and ingredients.”

D’Silva grew up in Singapore, and one of his childhood favorites was beef murtabak. His granddad made it on Easter and served it after Mass – marking the end of Lent. D’Silva remembers looking forward to the savory dish after going 40 days without meat.

“When Easter happened, it was a celebration and, of course when it’s a celebration, the thing that comes to mind is meat,” he said. “We only ate beef on very, very special occasions.”

Beef murtabak is an egg crepe wrapped around ground beef. The beef is marinated in curry powder, then cooked with an onion and garlic paste and spices (star anise, cinnamon and nutmeg). The dish is served with fresh lime, chili sauce and raita.

“The aromatics are the one that lifts the entire dish and bring it to another level,” D’Silva said.

D’Silva has tried to find the origin of the dish. But like many Singaporean dishes, it goes so far back that nobody knows where it started.

D’Silva’s beef murtabak celebrates Singapore’s heritage.

“Singapore is a lot more than chili crab and chicken rice. It’s a lot, lot more than that,” D’Silva said. “If you have an opportunity to go to a restaurant that serves Singapore’s heritage cuisine, go, because it’s mind-blowing: the flavor, the ingredients. Everything about it.”

Loud, large and plentiful – that’s how Lola Osinkolu, who’s behind the blog Chef Lola’s Kitchen, describes Easter in Nigeria.

Osinkolu, who was born and raised in Nigeria, said after church Easter Sunday morning, her family would go home and start cooking.

“We cook, cook and cook. We would cook for hours.”

The dish that was the star of the show? Nigerian jollof rice.

Osinkolu compares the tomato-based rice dish – which likely originated in Senegal and spread to West African countries – to jambalaya. It’s a party staple in Nigeria.

“It’s spicy and delicious,” she said.

Jollof contains long-grain rice and Nigerian-style curry powder for seasoning, and there are many ways to cook the dish that involve endless permutations of meat, spices, chiles, onions and vegetables.

Osinkolu’s recipe, called The Party Style With Beef, comes from her mom. But Osinkolu added her own secret step: roasting the bell peppers, tomatoes, onion and garlic.

“At home, whenever we are having parties, we don’t cook our jollof rice on the stovetop. We use open fire, so the jollof rice has a smoky taste, which makes it more delicious,” Osinkolu said. “So, I roast the bell peppers to achieve a similar, or very close, taste. It makes a lot of difference.”

Her jollof is so popular that she now knows to always make extra for her guests to take home. “I get the same comment over and over about how delicious it is,” she said.

Source link

March 31, 2024
The world’s tastiest dumplings | CNN

CNN
—

How to define a dumpling? In its most basic sense, it’s a pocket of dough filled with some form of savory or sweet stuffing.

And the easy ideas are surely the best, because dumplings are a popular food across the globe: both simple and complex, local and global, adaptable yet fixed in their home regions as cheap, tasty staples to snack on.

Here are no fewer than 35 of our favorites around the world to get your taste buds flowing.

Served steamed in bamboo baskets, xiaolongbao look different from other types of Chinese dumplings, as the skin is gathered and pinched at the top instead of folded in half.

Xiaolongbao are also unique in that aside from the traditional pork filling, a small piece of aspic is folded into the dumpling, which melts when steamed.

Thanks to the broth, the filling stays moist and flavorful.

Italy is, of course, the global home of filled pasta, and ravioli is one of its most famous offerings – so famous that it has been exported across the world.

Ravioli – as well as other Italian filled pastas – can be packed with anything from meat to cheese to vegetables, or any combination thereof.

If the processed canned or bagged varieties familiar to lazy college students makes up your only impression of ravioli, rectify that as soon as possible. Preferably with a trip to Rome.

The spicy Sichuan wonton, or chao shou, comes to the table drenched in a spicy chili oil flavored with Sichuan peppercorn and a black vinegar sauce.

The chao shou is boiled and the very best specimens are so slippery they’re nearly impossible to pick up with chopsticks.

The combination of savory meat, smooth wonton skin and tongue-numbing sauce, makes for the most pleasant runny nose you’ve ever had.

Manti hail from Central Asia – they’re eaten in places such as Turkey, northwestern China, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan – and are very closely related to East Asian variants of dumplings.

Adopted by Turks who traveled across Central Asia during the Mongol Empire, these dumplings can be filled with lamb, beef, quail or chicken – or be left unfilled.

Turkish manti are served with yogurt and spiced with red pepper and melted butter.

A national dish in Slovakia, bryndzové halušky is a dish of potato dumplings served with bryndza, a Slovakian sheep’s cheese, and sprinkled with bacon or pork fat.

A steamed fish dumpling served with vegetables and peanut sauce, think of siomay as the Indonesian street food equivalent of shumai, traditionally found in Cantonese dim sum restaurants.

Adopted from Chinese Indonesian cuisine, the most popular variant of siomay is found in Bandung. The best way to sample these dumplings is from a street vendor carting a steamer on his bicycle.

The Hong Kong-style shrimp wonton is a thick dumpling holding shrimp and minced pork. It’s commonly served with thin egg noodles or on its own in a seafood broth.

Many a heated debate over the best shrimp wonton has been heard locally, but there’s never any arguing over its prime place in the Hong Kong diet.

Originating in Central and Eastern Europe, pierogi are most commonly thought of as Polish.

These dumplings can be stuffed with potato, minced meat, cheese, fruit or sauerkraut. They’re usually boiled, then pan-fried in butter with onions.

This finishing flourish is the selling point of the dish, adding another layer of flavor.

Modak is a sweet from Maharashtra, offered to Lord Ganesha during Ganesh Chathurthi, the festival dedicated to him every year between August and September.

The teardrop-shaped dumpling is kneaded from rice flour and stuffed with coconut and jaggery – an unrefined whole cane sugar.

These Azerbaijani dumplings are filled with lamb or beef, and usually served in broth.

Rather like the most fiddly of Italian pasta dumplings, they’re folded by hand, a process made more difficult by their small size. Vinegar and garlic sauce tops it off with an extra kick.

Found across Germany, kartoffelknoedel, or potato dumplings, usually accompany meat dishes.

The Bavarian variant combines both raw and cooked potato, stuffed with a crouton or bread filling.

This is a popular street food in Brazil: effectively chicken dumplings, made from fried dough with shredded chicken in the middle.

They’re shaped in the form of a teardrop, supposedly to resemble a chicken thigh – the dish was originally made from thigh meat. Some add potato to the dough before frying, for an extra carby oomph.

Pelmeni are Russian dumplings from Siberia, likely introduced to Russian cuisine by the Mongols.

Similar to Chinese jiaozi, Turkish manti and eastern European pierogi, pelmeni are distinguished by the thickness of the dumpling skin.

Pelmeni may be stuffed with anything from meat to mushrooms to cheese, but never with anything sweet.

Some dumpling purists say that the Australian dim sim is merely a bastardized version of Chinese dumplings.

But we say, if a dumpling has fans standing in line, it’s a worthy dumpling.

Dim sim is a combination of meat or fish mixed with cabbage and enclosed in a wrapper. It may be steamed, deep-fried or barbecued, and is usually much larger than a Chinese dumpling.

Dim sims usually taste gingery – a feature of westernized Chinese cuisine found in Australia, North America and Europe.

The word “brik” is thought to derive from Turkish, but this is a thoroughly Tunisian dumpling, a deep-fried triangle of deliciousness, often with an egg popped inside for extra gooey flavor. It can be filled with tuna, harissa and parsley, or anything from capers to cheese and meat.

Banh bot loc are Vietnamese pork and shrimp dumplings, with wrappers made from tapioca flour.

When cooked, tapioca flour becomes clear, giving the dumpling its appearance and the wrapper its chewy texture.

There are two major variants: wrapped in banana leaves and steamed, or boiled.

If you’ve ever been to Argentina (or neighboring Latin American countries) you’ll almost certainly have eaten an empanada: pastry stuffed with meat, fish or other fillings, then baked or fried.

In Argentina, the traditional fillings depend on where you are – olives are often worked into the filling in Mendoza, for example. Usually, though, you’ll have a choice of meat – chicken and beef are classics.

Tangyuan is a Chinese dessert – sticky balls made from glutinous rice flour containing a sweet filling, such as ground peanuts or black sesame paste, and served in a bowl of sweet soup or rolled in ground peanuts.

Some tangyuan are served as smaller, unfilled rice balls in a soup made from cane sugar.

In dessert shop chains all over Hong Kong, tangyuan are served with ice cream, topped with a drizzle of syrup.

Chicken and dumplings

Chicken and dumplings is probably the ultimate in Southern comfort food in the United States.

Chicken soup is a dish found all over the world, but the addition of dumplings gives the soup an extra something.

American dumplings are usually a mix of flour, vegetable shortening and milk – in this case, dropped directly into the chicken broth. The broth may be a clear chicken soup, or thickened with flour or cream.

Kimchi mandu

Mandu, the Korean take on dumplings, are more closely related to manti found in Central Asian cuisine than to Chinese or Japanese dumplings.

Mandu are often folded into circular shapes, a technique rarely found in Chinese cuisine.

As ubiquitous as kimchi is in Korea, it was probably inevitable that somewhere along the way someone would chop up kimchi and stick it in a dumpling.

When winter nights are closing in and the temperatures are dropping, what could be better than a golf ball-sized dumpling made from bread, stuffed with things like speck (a type of cured ham), cheese and onion, washed down with a tanker of beer?

Italians flock to Alto Adige, the autonomous region in the north of the country, which was part of Austrian Tyrol until being annexed to Italy under Fascism, for these traditional Tyrolean dumplings. Eat them in broth, or order a plateful (some restaurants do canederli “flights” of different fillings). Just be warned – these are huge, and you’ll likely find your eyes are far bigger than your stomach.

Bawan is a Taiwanese street snack commonly found in night markets around the island.

A translucent wrapper made from rice flour, corn starch and sweet potato starch holds a stuffing of pork, bamboo shoots and mushrooms. Bawan is served with a sweet and savory sauce.

The dumplings are steamed, then deep-fried to keep the wrapper from drying out.

Momo are dumplings found in northern Indian, Nepali and Tibetan cuisine. They may be filled with meat, vegetables or cheese, and are usually served with a tomato-based dipping sauce.

Enterprising Nepali vendors in Kathmandu have also taken to filling momos with Snickers and Mars bars, especially in areas frequented by tourists.

Uszka are similar to Polish pierogi – the word “uszka” means “little ears” in Polish. They’re usually filled with minced meat and mushrooms and put in borscht soup.

Uszka stuffed with bolete mushrooms and chopped onions without meat are served in clear borscht for Christmas Eve meals in Poland.

Related to Chinese pot stickers, Japanese gyoza tend to be made with thinner wrappers and filled with minced pork.

Frozen gyoza are found in most grocery stores all over the world, but the best restaurants for gyoza always turn out to be holes-in-the-wall outside of Tokyo subway stations.

Found on Chinese takeout menus in the United States, crab rangoon are deep-fried dumplings served as a side dish.

They’re stuffed with cream cheese and imitation crab meat made from a fish-based paste.

It may not be an authentic Chinese dish, but love of fried cheese crosses cultures.

Not your typical pork-filled dumpling, the Teochew fun gor is usually packed with peanuts, chives, dried shrimp, pork, radish, mushrooms and cilantro.

The wrapper is made of a combination of wheat flour, tapioca flour, corn starch and potato starch, giving the fun gor its translucent appearance.

Teochew fun gor is most popular in Cantonese dim sum restaurants.

Usually triangular in shape, samosas are a deep-fried snack popular in south and southeast Asia.

They may be filled with a variety of stuffings, including potato, onions, peas, lentils and ground lamb.

Straddling Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia, it’s not surprising that Georgia has its own dumpling.

The khinkali resembles the xiaolongbao. It’s formed by gathering the pleats of the wrapper at the top and stuffed with spiced beef and pork.

Khinkali are usually served with coarse ground black pepper.

Gnocchi are small, thick pasta shapes that can be made from semolina flour, potato, flour, eggs, cheese – or a combination of the lot. They originated in northern Italy, though are eaten throughout the country today, with recipes varying from region to region.

Gnocchi are prepared like other pasta dishes, and may be served in tomato-based sauces, pesto sauces or with any other sauce you might find on pasta.

Duty-free shops in Japanese airports are packed with what look like mountains of pre-wrapped boxes of Japanese treats. Many of these boxes actually contain daifuku.

They are a type of mochi (glutinous rice cakes), only they’re stuffed – usually with sticky-sweet red azuki.

Daifuku are popular as gifts in Japan – specialty stores that create a dazzling array of varieties move countless boxes over holiday periods.

The apple dumpling is popular across the United States, and common among the Amish, especially in and around Pennsylvania.

A peeled and cored apple is stuffed with cinnamon and sugar, then wrapped in a piece of dough and baked until the apple becomes tender. The pairing of the apple dumpling, fresh from the oven, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top makes for a divine dessert.

Every region of Italy produces its own filled pasta, of course, but these, from southern Piedmont, are particularly prized. Much smaller than regular ravioli – they’re barely bigger than Bolognese tortellini – they’re filled with either a meat mix (which often includes rabbit) and served with a glaze of meaty sauce, or contain a vegetable mix, often cabbage with rice.

As well as being small in size, the pasta is also rolled super thin, so the dumplings seem to melt in the mouth. “Plin” isn’t the place where they came from; the word derives from a local dialect word for “pinch,” as the pockets are pinched together by hand.

This is the ultimate Lebanese comfort food: lamb dumplings, similar to manti, and served drenched in yoghurt – usually goat, rather than cow, to give the flavor a bit more bang.

The lamb is mixed with pine nuts and spices before being wrapped in the dough, and slow-cooked in the yoghurt with water. It’s labor-intensive – requiring constant stirring, to keep the consistency.

These vegetarian dumplings hail from Afghanistan, and are also similar to manti. Recipes vary, but the stalwart is some kind of green vegetable inside – which can be chives, scallions, or celery, as they make it in Venice’s refugee-run Orient Experience restaurant.

Ashak are normally topped with a stewy lentil kind of sauce, and yogurt.

Source link

March 28, 2024
What is Nowruz? Persian New Year traditions and food explained | CNN

Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Eat, But Better: Mediterranean Style. Our eight-part guide shows you a delicious expert-backed eating lifestyle that will boost your health for life.

CNN
—

Just as spring is a time for rebirth, the Persian New Year is a time to celebrate new life. Nowruz is celebrated on the spring equinox, which Tuesday, March 19.

This celebration of spring is filled with symbolism around rebirth and renewal, because spring is a time when life is coming back after a long, cold winter, said Yasmin Khan, the London-based human rights campaigner turned author of “The Saffron Tales: Recipes from the Persian Kitchen,” “Zaitoun: Recipes and Stories from the Palestinian Kitchen,” and “Ripe Figs: Recipes and Stories from the Eastern Mediterranean.”

These three cookbooks from Khan inspire and provide a window into the cultures and stories of people from the Middle East through food.

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

CNN: What are some of Persian New Year’s traditions and rituals?

Yasmin Khan: On the last Tuesday before the New Year, there is a tradition to make small bonfires in your garden. Traditionally people jump over the bonfires, and it’s supposed to be a symbol of purification, challenges of the year gone by, and energetically cleansing you and preparing you for the year ahead.

A key tradition is to set up an altar in your house called a Haft-seen, which means seven S’s in Farsi. You place seven things on your altar that begin with the letter S in Farsi, which are symbols or qualities you’d like to invite in for the year ahead. You can have apples for good health, candles for light, eggs for fertility, wheatgrass for rebirth and renewal, vinegar for wisdom, and a gold coin for abundance and prosperity. Each person chooses items that have meaning for them.

The festival lasts two weeks. At the end of the festival, you take the wheatgrass you’ve been growing on your altar and you take it down to some running water somewhere. You tie knots in the wheatgrass then throw it into the running water. It would float off along with all your hopes and dreams for the year ahead.

CNN: What food is important for the holiday?

Khan: Like all cultural celebrations, food is a really integral part. Because it’s a festival celebrating spring, we eat lots of green and fresh herbs. For example, there’s this dish called Kuku Sabzi (see recipe below), which is a gorgeous herb and spinach frittata that we always eat on the first day of the year in our house. The frittata is fragrant and aromatic and is served with flatbreads, sliced tomatoes and pickles.

The first meal of the Persian New Year is always fish served with herb-flecked rice filled with dill, parsley and chives in it. The two-week festival is a time of celebration with people you know … traditionally you go to people’s houses and eat lots of delicious sweets and pastries.

CNN: What are some easy ways people can join in the celebrations?

Khan: Cooking is probably the easiest and most fun way to celebrate the new year. I really recommend that people give some Persian recipes a go. As well as being delicious, they’re healthy and vibrant with all the herbs that are packed in them.

In the weeks before the new year, we do a big deep spring cleaning called “shaking down the house” in Farsi. It’s really lovely to have a focus and have something that is about bringing in new life, renewal and rebirth during this difficult time.

And no one regrets a spring clean, so I think that’s also a really great idea. I think this is a beautiful kind of nonreligious festival that everyone can join into and that we can all relate to. It’s a time where we really try and let go of any difficulties that we’ve had in the past year and try to start the new year with a clean slate.

This Iranian frittata is a sensational deep green color and tastes like spring on a plate, bursting with fresh herby flavor. It is incredibly quick to throw together, will keep for a few days in the fridge, and can be enjoyed hot or cold.

Serve as an appetizer or as part of a mezze spread, wrapped up in a flatbread with some slices of tomato and a few salty and sour fermented cucumber pickles, or add some crumbled feta and lightly toasted walnuts for a more substantial main.

Makes 4 servings as a main or 8 servings as a starter

Prep time: 15 minutes | Total time: 35 minutes

Ingredients

7 ounces|200 grams spinach

1 3/4 ounces|50 grams fresh parsley

1 3/4 ounces|50 grams fresh dill

2 2/3 ounces|75 grams fresh cilantro

5 medium eggs

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon dried fenugreek leaf

2 teaspoons sunflower oil

2 garlic cloves, crushed

Instructions

1. Wash spinach, parsley, dill and cilantro, then dry well on paper towels or in a salad spinner. Squeeze out as much moisture as possible; if the greens are wet when they are cooked, they will make the kuku go spongy. Chop finely or blitz in a food processor, in a couple of batches.

2. Heat broiler to high. Crack eggs into a large mixing bowl. Add turmeric, flour, salt, pepper and fenugreek leaf. Stir in the chopped spinach and herbs.

3. Heat oil in a large ovenproof skillet. Add garlic and gently fry over low heat to soften, about 2 minutes.

4. Make sure garlic is evenly distributed around the skillet, then pour in the egg mixture. Cook over low heat until kuku is almost cooked through, 5-8 minutes. Finish off in hot broiler.

5. Let kuku cool slightly, then cut into triangular slices to serve.

Makes 4 servings

Ingredients

Marinade

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 cup dark soy sauce

Juice of 1 medium lemon

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)

4 salmon fillets

Mixed herb rice

1 3/4 cups white basmati rice

Sea salt

Pinch of saffron strands

Pinch of granulated sugar

2 tablespoons freshly boiled water

1 small bunch fresh parsley, finely chopped

1 small bunch fresh coriander, finely chopped

2 tablespoons fresh dill, finely chopped

2 tablespoons bunch fresh chives, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, crushed

Sunflower oil

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided

Instructions

1. To make the marinade, combine garlic, soy sauce, lemon juice, olive oil and cayenne pepper, if using, in a deep bowl. Add salmon, turn to coat well, cover with plastic wrap and let marinate in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

2. Rinse and parboil rice and prepare the saffron liquid. Place saffron in a pestle and mortar with sugar and grind until you have a fine powder. Add just-boiled water and let steep for 10 minutes.

3. Very carefully, fold rice, chopped herbs, garlic clove and 1 tablespoon oil together, being careful not to break the rice grains.

4. Preheat oven to 400°F/Gas 6. Place an 8”-wide nonstick saucepan with snug-fitting lid over a medium heat. Melt 1 tablespoon butter with 2 tablespoons oil. Add 1 tablespoon saffron liquid and season with a pinch of salt. Once the fat is hot, sprinkle a thin layer of rice over the bottom and firmly press down to line the base of the pan. Using a large spoon, gently layer the rest of the rice on top, building it up into a pyramid shape. Using the handle of a wooden spoon, make 4 holes in the rice. Dot remaining 1 tablespoon butter into holes and then pour over the rest of the saffron liquid.

5. Place a clean tea towel or 4 paper towels on top of the pan and fit the lid on tightly. Tuck in the edges of the tea towel, or trim paper towels to fit, so they won’t catch the flame. Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes, then reduce heat to very low and cook 15 minutes more. Take rice off heat and let sit. Do not be tempted to sneak a peek while it is cooking as this will disturb the steaming process. When rice has been cooking for 10 minutes, place salmon on a baking tray and bake skin side up until cooked to your liking, 10-15 minutes.

6. Once rice has cooked, fill sink with 2” cold water and place saucepan – with lid still tightly on – in the water. This will produce a rush of steam that should loosen the base of the rice. Remove lid, place a large plate on top of pan and quickly turn rice over. Present the herbed rice with the fish and serve immediately.

This recipes are adapted from Yasmin Khan’s book “The Saffron Tales: Recipes from the Persian Kitchen.”

Source link

March 19, 2024
World’s best spicy foods: 20 dishes to try | CNN

CNN
—

Some like it hot – and some like it hotter, still.

When it comes to the world’s best spicy dishes, we have some of the world’s hottest peppers to thank, along with incredible layers of flavor and a long, spice-loving human history.

“Spicy food, or at least spiced foods, clearly predates the idea of countries and their cuisine by a very, very long time,” says Indian author Saurav Dutt, who is writing a book about the spiciest foods on the Indian subcontinent.

“Every spicy ingredient has a wild ancestor,” he says. “Ginger, horseradish, mustard, chiles and so on have predecessors which led to their domestication.”

Hunter-gatherer groups historically made use of various wild ingredients to flavor their foods, Dutt says, and there are many ingredients all over the world that can lend a spicy taste to a dish or stand on their own.

Peppers – a headliner for heat – are rated on the Scoville Heat Units scale, which measures capsaicin and other active components of chile peppers. By that measure, the Carolina Reaper is among the hottest in the world, while habaneros, Scotch bonnets and bird’s eye chiles drop down a few rungs on the mop-your-brow scale.

Redolent with ghost peppers, Scotch bonnets, serranos, chiltepin peppers, mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns and more, the following spicy dishes from around the world bring the heat in the most delicious way.

Ata rodo – Scotch bonnet pepper – brings the fire to Nigeria’s famous spicy soup. Egusi is made by pounding the seeds from the egusi melon, an indigenous West African fruit that’s related to the watermelon.

In addition to being protein-packed, the melon’s seeds serve to thicken and add texture and flavor to the soup’s mix of meat, seafood and leafy vegetables. Pounded yams are often served alongside this dish, helping to temper the scorch of the Scotch bonnets.

“The joy of this dish is not only the delightful warming ingredients of cinnamon, cloves, star anise and, of course, the Sichuan peppercorns, but the fact that you can cook exactly what you like in the bubbling spicy broth,” says British-born Chinese chef Kwoklyn Wan, author of “The Complete Chinese Takeout Cookbook.”

Duck, seafood, chicken, pork, lamb and seasonal vegetables are all fair game for tossing into the pot to simmer in a mouth-numbing broth made with Sichuan peppercorns and dried Sichuan peppers for serious kick (the dipping sauce served on the side often has chile paste, too).

Also known as Chongqing hot pot, the dish is said to have originated as a popular food among Yangtze River boatmen. It’s enjoyed by those who can handle its heat all over China, not to mention elsewhere around the world.

Som tam, Thailand

From northeastern Thailand’s spice-loving Isaan province, this fresh and fiery salad is a staple dish at Thai restaurants around the world and is also popular in neighboring Laos.

Som tam turns to green (unripe) papaya for its main ingredient, which is usually julienned or shredded for the salad. The papaya is then tossed with long beans or green beans and a mix of flavorful Asian essentials that include tamarind juice, dried shrimp, fish sauce and sugar cane paste, among other ingredients. Thai chiles, also called bird’s eye chiles, give the salad its requisite kick.

Piri-piri chicken, Mozambique and Angola

The Portuguese introduced this spicy dish also known as peri-peri chicken into Angola and Mozambique as far back as the 15th century, when they mixed African chiles with European ingredients (piri-piri means “pepper pepper” in Swahili). And it’s the perky red pepper of the same name that brings the spiciness to this complex, layered and delicious dish.

Piri-piri chicken’s poultry cuts are marinated in chiles, olive oil, lemon, garlic and herbs such as basil and oregano for a fiery flavor that blends salty, sour and sweet. The dish is also popular in Namibia and South Africa, where it’s often found on the menu in Portuguese restaurants.

The glossy red hues dancing on a plate of this popular pork dish, a version of which hails from Mao Zedong’s home province, give a hint about the mouth experience to come. The dish was apparently a favorite of the communist leader, who requested his chefs in Beijing prepare it for him.

Chairman Mao’s braised pork belly – called Mao shi hong shao rou in China – is often served as the main dish for sharing at a family table and is made by braising chunks of pork belly with soy sauce, dried chiles and spices.

“It is a very delicious and moreish dish due to the caramelized sugar and dark soy sauce being reduced and all the aromatics (that coat the pork belly),” wrote BBC “Best Home Cook” winner Suzie Lee, author of “Simply Chinese,” in an email to CNN Travel.

Jamaica’s favorite pepper is the Scotch bonnet, beloved not just for its spiciness but for its aroma, colors and flavor, too, says Mark Harvey, content creator and podcaster at Two On An Island, who was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica.

“For Jamaicans, the degree of spiciness starts at medium for children and goes up to purple hot,” he says, explaining that the peppers come in green, orange, red and purple hues, growing increasingly spicy in that order.

Scotch bonnets star in several of the island’s iconic dishes, including escovitch fish, pepper pot soup and curry goat. But you might recognize them most from the ubiquitous jerk chicken and pork smoking roadside everywhere from Montego Bay to Boston Bay, where meat prepared with the peppery marinade is cooked the traditional way, atop coals from pimento tree wood (the tree’s allspice berries are also used in the jerk marinade).

Popular on the Indonesian islands of Bali and Lombok, in particular, this whole chicken dish is stuffed with an intensely aromatic spice paste (betutu) that usually includes a mashup of fresh hot chile peppers, galangal (a root related to ginger), candlenuts, shallots, garlic, turmeric and shrimp paste, among other ingredients.

The chicken is then wrapped in banana leaves and steamed, bringing the aromatics out all the more and flavoring the chicken to the max. Best shared, ayam betutu is often presented at religious ceremonies in Bali, but you’ll find it at restaurants specializing in it throughout the islands, too.

Beer and buffalo chicken wings are as American as, well, hamburgers. And if you’re not eating them alongside a pile of celery sticks and a ramekin of dunking sauce – traditionally blue cheese dip, but ranch works, too – you’re missing half the picture.

A sports bar staple at chain restaurants such as Buffalo Wild Wings and more refined outposts, too, from Alaska to Maine, “wings” are actually made up of the wing parts called drumettes and wingettes, which have the most meat.

Buffalo wings, said to have been invented in a bar in Buffalo, New York, in 1964, are among the spiciest preparations (other popular variations include teriyaki wings and honey garlic wings). Make them as fiery as you like using a sauce that includes cayenne pepper, butter, vinegar, garlic powder and Worcestershire sauce.

Similar to ceviche but with more bite, this raw marinated shrimp dish from the western Mexican state of Sinaloa (and a staple along the Baja Peninsula, too) tastes as good as it looks.

Tiny but mighty chiltepín peppers (they look like bright little berries), grown throughout the United States and Mexico, make the spicy magic happen in shrimp aguachiles, which means “pepper water.” If you can’t find those, serrano and jalapeño peppers also do the trick.

Marinate the raw shrimp with ingredients including lime juice, cilantro, red onion and cucumber and enjoy with crispy tostadas.

Pad ka prao, Thailand

A go-to dish when you want something satisfying – but with kick – pad ka prao is a mealtime staple in Thailand, where you’ll find it on offer at street-side stalls and restaurants everywhere from Bangkok to the islands.

Considered the Thai equivalent of a sandwich or a burger, the dish is a mix of ground pork, spicy Thai chile peppers and holy basil and can be ordered as spicy as you like. Many locals believe it’s best topped with a fried egg with a runny yolk.

Beef rendang, Indonesia and Malaysia

A fiery favorite that originated in West Sumatra, versions of beef rendang are also enjoyed in Indonesia’s neighboring countries, including Malaysia and Brunei, as well as the Philippines.

This flavorful dry curry dish calls on kaffir lime leaves, coconut milk, star anise and red chile, among other spices, to deliver its complexity. It’s often presented to guests and served during festive events.

The fermented cabbage dish kimchi might be the spicy Korean dish that first comes to mind, but when you want some extra kick, dakdoritang does the trick.

Comfort food to the max, the chicken stew doubles down on its spiciness with liberal doses of gochugaru (Korean chile powder) and gochujang (Korean chile paste) mixed with rice wine, soy sauce, garlic, ginger and sesame oil in a braising sauce that packs the bone-in chicken pieces with flavor. It’s often served with carrots, onions and potatoes.

Phaal Curry, Birmingham, England (via Bangladesh)

This tomato-based British-Asian curry invented in Birmingham, England, curry houses by British Bangladeshi restaurateurs is thought to be one of the spiciest curries in the world.

“Typically the sauce has a tomato base with ginger, fennel seeds and copious amounts of chile, habanero or Scotch bonnet, peppers,” says Indian author Saurav Dutt.

As many as 10 pepper types may find their way into phaal curry, he says, including bird’s eye chiles and the bhut jolokia (also known as the ghost pepper, it’s one of the world’s hottest peppers). Even hotter than vindaloo, this dish will absolutely light your mouth up.

This classic Roman pasta dish’s name gives you an idea of what to expect. “Arrabbiata” means “angry” in Italian. And penne all’arrabbiata pairs the relatively plain penne pasta with fiery flavors from the sauce (sugo all’arrabbiata) in which it’s slathered.

“The peperoncino (red chile pepper) is what makes this sauce ‘angry’ (arrabbiata) or spicy,” Chris MacLean of Italy-based Open Tuesday Wines said via email.

To tame the angry peppers in this garlic and tomato-based dish with a good glass of red wine, MacLean says to pair penne all’arrabbiata with a Cesanese, also from Rome’s Lazio region, with its crisp fruit and light tannins.

“A wine that’s heavy in oak or alcohol would turn up the heat (in the dish) in your mouth and render the wine tasteless,” he warns.

“There’s a saying in South India that you are lucky to ‘eat like a Chettiar,’ ” says Dutt, referring to the Tamil-speaking community in India’s southern Tamil Nadu state credited with creating this spicy dish.

“Like this chicken dish, the traditional Chettinad dishes mostly used locally sourced spices like star anise, pepper, kalpasi (stone flower) and marati mokku (dried flower pods),” he says.

The chicken pieces are simmered in a medley of roasted spices and coconut, and it is traditionally served with steamed rice or the thin South Indian pancakes called dosa, fried chapati or naan.

The fiery Ethiopian spice blend called berbere – aromatic with chile peppers, basil, cardamom, garlic and ginger – is instrumental to the flavor chorus that’s doro wat, Ethiopia’s much-loved spicy chicken stew.

Topped with boiled eggs, the dish almost always finds a place at the table during weddings, religious holidays and other special occasions and family gatherings. If you’re invited to try it in Ethiopia at such an event, consider yourself very lucky indeed.

Mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns bring the X-factor to this popular dish from China’s Sichuan province, which mixes chunks of silken tofu with ground meat (pork or beef) and a spicy fermented bean paste called doubanjiang.

Mapo tofu’s fiery red color might as well be a warning to the uninitiated – Sichuan cuisine’s defining flavor, málà, has a numbing effect on the mouth called paresthesia that people tend to love or hate.

A Portuguese-influenced dish from India’s southwestern state of Goa, vindaloo was not originally meant to be spicy, says Dutt. “It originally contained pork, potatoes (aloo) and vinegar (vin), giving you the name,” he says.

But when the dish was exported to curry houses in the United Kingdom that were mostly run by Muslim Bangladeshi chefs, Dutt says, pork was replaced with beef, chicken or lamb and the dish evolved into a spicier hot curry.

Ghost pepper flakes and Scotch bonnet peppers are among the peppers giving the dish its scorching taste. But in Goa, you can still find versions of the dish that swing more on the side of milder spices such as cinnamon and cardamom.

Senegalese cooks are also big fans of Scotch bonnet peppers, named for their resemblance to the Scottish tam o’ shanter hat. And their spice-giving goodness is deployed liberally in one of the West African country’s favorite dishes, the spicy tomato and peanut or groundnut-based stew called mafé.

Usually made with beef, lamb or chicken, the stew is made even heartier with potatoes, carrots and other root vegetables for one filling feed. Mafé is popular in other West African countries, too, including Mali and Gambia, and it can also be prepared without meat.

Synonymous with watching the Super Bowl or hunkering down on a cold night, chili is a spicy American staple where you can opt to ratchet up the heat as much as you like.

There are basically two pure forms of American chili – with or without beans (usually red kidney beans) – says Chef Julian Gonzalez of Sawmill Market in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In Texas, he explains, chili traditionally doesn’t have beans, which puts the focus on the spices and chiles used to flavor it, and he goes with that approach himself.

“Traditionally chili is seasoned with chili powder, cumin and paprika,” Gonzalez says. From there, you can use other ingredients to make your recipe unique. Adding cayenne pepper is one way to turn up the heat.

At his restaurant Red & Green, which serves New Mexican cuisine, Gonzalez’s green chile stew, made with pork and no beans, is seasoned with a mix of roasted green New Mexican hatch chiles (half mild and half with heat), onion and garlic powder.

Source link

March 6, 2024
7 countries, 7 traditional Christmas feasts | CNN

CNN
—

Christmas is celebrated in many ways in many corners of the globe, and the cuisine that marks the holiday is as diverse as the people feasting on it.

Christmas and Advent food traditions are comforting at a time when many people have had a challenging year. And Christmas dishes are particularly special in many households.

The typical Christmas meal may be different by destination, but the idea of indulging in a feast, be it on the day itself or the night before, isn’t.

Here’s a look at how locals celebrate Christmas through cuisine in seven countries. We asked hospitality experts about these traditions, and they shared their perspective on what’s typical for them as well as their families and friends.

The French enjoy their lavish holiday meal on December 24, says Francois Payard, the renowned pastry chef who grew up in Nice.

Locals sit down for dinner around 8 p.m., he says, and savor a first course of seafood. That usually means a lobster thermidor – a baked dish of the cooked crustacean mixed with mustard, egg yolks and brandy – or a shrimp scampi.

Then it’s on to a large capon – a male chicken that’s renowned for its tenderness – and a medley of sides including mashed potatoes and chestnuts sauteed with butter and topped with sage. “Chestnuts are a fixture in any Christmas meal for us,” says Payard.

Dessert, the grand finale, is a yule log, or bûche de Noël – the French version of a Christmas cake. Often two are served – one chocolate, the other chestnut. To drink, it’s the finest wine you can get your hands on, usually red from Burgundy that’s not too full-bodied for the capon.

On Christmas Day, the French savor a hearty brunch that may include creamy scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and toast. The meal finishes with assorted cheeses such as Brie, Gruyere and Munster, Payard says.

Similar to France, Italians celebrate Christmas with their biggest spread on the eve of the big day. Luca Finardi, the general manager of the Mandarin Oriental Milan, says that locals usually attend midnight Mass and enjoy a sumptuous meal before heading to church.

Smoked salmon with buttered crostini or a smoked salted cod is the precursor to the main meal. Italians from coastal areas such as the Amalfi Coast may start with a crudo such as sea bass with herbs and sea salt, says Finardi.

Next up is tortellini in brodo – stuffed pasta bathed in a hot broth of chicken and Parmesan cheese – the latter of which must come from the namesake region in Italy.

For the main meal, northern Italians tend to have stuffed turkey while those from seaside areas may tuck into a large baked sea bass surrounded by roasted potatoes and vegetables.

“The must no matter where you’re from is panettone – a typical sweet bread,” says Finardi. “The secret is to warm it up for just a few minutes.” Spumante, a sparkling wine, is the drink of choice.

As for the famous Italian Christmas meal of the feast of the seven fishes, Finardi says it’s limited mainly to the Campania region, which includes the Amalfi Coast and Naples.

Christmas Day is more about connecting with family and less about food, Finardi says. “We eat leftovers and recover from the day before.”

England

The Brits don’t typically indulge in their big holiday meal on Christmas Eve. “The 24th is for cooking with our families and going to the local pub for a pint,” says Nicola Butler, the owner of the London-based luxury travel company NoteWorthy.

The real festivities start on Christmas morning with a glass of champagne and a breakfast of smoked salmon and mince pieces, she says. Later that day, after the Queen’s annual Christmas speech is aired, it’s time for dinner.

That means a turkey or roast beef and a host of sides such as roasted parsnips and carrots, buttered peas and Brussels sprouts. Some families include Yorkshire pudding, a savory baked good of flour, eggs and milk made with meat drippings.

Dessert is Christmas pudding, which is actually a dark and dense cake made with dried fruits, spices and usually a splash of brandy. “We have lots of wine to go along with the food,” says Butler.

Maria Loi, the celebrity Greek chef, says that the country’s holiday celebrations begin on Christmas Eve around 7 p.m.

“Families sit around the fireplace and eat a special wheat bread that we make only at Christmas,” she says. “Some households also eat pork sausages. It’s the only [occasion] Greeks eat pork because the meat is not common in our cuisine.”

After attending an early morning holy communion on Christmas Day, Greeks go home for an all-day eating fest, says Loi.

Homemade honey cookies with walnuts or almonds come first followed by chicken soup with orzo. A few hours later, it’s on to either a roast chicken stuffed with chestnuts or variations of grilled or braised pork dishes. Sides such as sauteed wild greens, finely shredded romaine with scallions and feta cheese and roasted lemon potatoes accompany the entrée.

Dessert is light and could be baked apples with honey and walnuts or Greek yogurt topped with honey. To drink, Loi says Greeks favor red wine.

Mexicans get the Christmas festivities going on December 24, according to Pablo Carmona and Josh Kremer, co-founders of Paradero Hotels.

“Families start by breaking a piñata that’s filled with all sorts of locally made candies in chili and tamarind flavors,” says Kremer. Dinner follows usually somewhere between 7 and 10 p.m.

The meal starts with posole – a stew with big corn kernels and pork or beef that’s accompanied by as many as 20 condiments such as parsley, cilantro, chiles and assorted cheeses.

In a nod to the American influence in Mexico, the entrée – at least for Carmona and Kremer – is a turkey with all the trimmings such as mashed potatoes and green beans.

The sweet finish is often a creamy flan plus strawberries and cream. But the meal isn’t complete without tequilas and mezcals to go along with the food.

On the 25th, many Mexicans heat up the leftovers from the night before. “We’re tired so we don’t want to bother to cook,” says Carmona.

Many Costa Ricans celebrate Christmas with a middle-of-the-night extravaganza, says Leo Ghitis, owner of Nayara Hotels, in the country’s northern highlands. “We go to midnight Mass and come home and have a huge meal at 2 a.m.,” he says.

Homemade tamales, filled with either chicken or pork or vegetables and cheese, kick off the spread. Then it’s on to arroz con pollo, Costa Rica’s national rice dish that’s made with green beans, peas, carrots, saffron, cilantro and a chopped up whole chicken.

The third course is an assortment of grilled proteins. Costa Ricans who live along the coast have seafood such as marlin, tuna, mahi mahi, shrimp and lobster while inlanders tuck into beef, pork and chicken. Sides are the same for both: rice with black beans, boiled palm fruit with sour cream and a hearts of palm salad with avocado.

Dessert is typically a coconut flan and arroz con leche – rice with milk, sugar and cinnamon.

“We top off the meal with lots of rum punch and eggnog and don’t finish until 4 or 5 a.m.,” says Ghitis.

Christmas Day itself is about finishing leftovers and hitting the streets for outdoor parties, he says.

Christmas Day is the big food celebration for Bahamians, says Vonya Ifill, the director of talent and culture at Rosewood Baha Mar.

Locals have a big dinner that includes turkey, ham, macaroni and cheese, peas and rice made with coconut milk and potato salad.

“We have this feast in the evening and then at midnight go off and celebrate Boxing Day with a Junkanoo Festival,” she says. “After dancing and parading around all evening and into the early morning hours, we end the festivities with a boiled fish or fish stew.”

The seafood, she says, is always accompanied by potato bread or Johnny Cake, a cornmeal flatbread.

Source link

December 24, 2023
16 luxury hotels that go all-out for Christmas | CNN

Editor’s Note: Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel’s weekly newsletter. Get news about destinations opening, inspiration for future adventures, plus the latest in aviation, food and drink, where to stay and other travel developments.

CNN
—

Twinkling lights, glitter, Champagne and petit fours. It’s time to treat yourself to some holiday cheer.

Luxury hotels serve up a glamorous way to brighten up the Christmas season, whether for an overnight stay or an elegant afternoon tea.

These lavish hotels are worth a closer look for a few hours of sipping tea and admiring Christmas decorations or for a spur of the moment escape or a future holiday splurge.

Natural mineral springs have drawn guests, including US presidents, to The Greenbrier for more than two centuries. The historic hotel opened in 1913.

Letters to Santa, a fun run and cookie decorating workshops are all part of The Greenbrier’s lineup in the days surrounding December 25.

On Christmas Eve, there’s a Season’s Greetings Dinner ($125 per adult; $55 per child) and a service in the resort’s chapel. On Christmas Day, puzzles and board games, indoor planetarium presentations and a Christmas musical will keep families entertained.

Rates start at $609.

The Greenbrier, 101 Main Street West, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia

The Fife Arms: Braemar, Scotland

Fishing, foraging and hiking are just outside at The Fife Arms, an antiques-packed, 19th-century retreat within Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands.

The hotel is 14.5 kilometers (nine miles) from Balmoral, the Royal Family’s residence in Scotland.

For winter guests, there’s a seasonal alpine fondue hut with a cozy fireplace. On the menu, a traditional Swiss option of molten cheese is joined by a Scottish take on the rich classic – a blend of two local cheeses and a local pale ale.

Rooms start at about $650 in late December. There’s also a special Christmas package, subject to availability.

The Fife Arms, Braemar, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

“Serenity Season” is right on time at the Ojai Valley Inn, where spa treatments, golf, tennis, yoga and more can be incorporated into a restorative stay at this 220-acre coastal valley resort.

In December, caroling, a nightly Menorah lighting, breakfast with Santa and story time with Santa’s elves are among the festivities. On December 24, there’s a Jingle Bell Jaunt across the resort grounds.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinner will be served at both Olivella and The Oak, and there’s a grand buffet on Christmas Day at The Farmhouse ($195 per adult, including wine; $65 for children 12 and younger).

December room rates start at $795 per night.

Ojai Valley Inn, Ojai, California

Tea time and Christmastime coincide at The Plaza’s elegant Palm Court, where three holiday tea menus will be available through December 31.

The Holiday Signature Tea ($155 per person) features savories and sweets, including a foie gras macaron and an oolong tea cheesecake.

Eloise, the hotel’s famous fictional resident, lends her name to a children’s tea available for $118 per child.

There’s a Christmas Day buffet ($325 for adults). And for New Year’s Eve, a lavish grand fête offering comes with a price tag to match: $995 per person.

The starting rate at The Plaza for Christmas week is $1,800 per night.

The Plaza, Fifth Avenue at Central Park South, New York

Anantara Golden Triangle: Chiang Rai, Thailand

As far as memorable holiday experiences go, it’s hard to beat sleeping in a clear bubble with elephants roaming right outside.

It’s possible at Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp & Resort in Thailand’s Chiang Rai province. The resort’s two-bedroom Jungle Bubble Lodge is transformed into snow globes for the holidays. Starlit skies and gentle giants add another layer to the magic.

The resort has a selection of more traditional luxury rooms, and guests can learn more about the beloved residents at Elephant Camp.

A Christmas Day brunch will showcase fresh, locally sourced ingredients.

Rooms start at about $1,660, including meals, airport transfers and some activities.

Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp & Resort, Wiang, Chiang Saen District, Chiang Rai

A sledding mountain, two outdoor skating rinks and a new Aurora Ice Lounge are just part of the annual Christmas at the Princess festival. Add 7.5 million lights, a train and more: It’s safe to say Fairmont Scottsdale Princess doesn’t believe in holding back for the holidays.

The festival, which runs through January 6, is open to the public. Free for hotel guests, the entrance fee is $35 per wristband with advance purchase; children three and under are admitted for free. Self-parking is $35 in advance.

Rooms start at $399. There are also holiday packages available.

Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, 7575 East Princess Drive, Scottsdale, Arizona

Rock House: Providenciales, Turks and Caicos

There’s certainly a lot to be said for a warm-weather Christmas that involves lounging poolside with a cocktail.

The luxury resort Rock House on the island of Providenciales in Turks and Caicos offers holiday programming from December 18 through January 3 including live music at al fresco restaurant Vita, a craft market, s’mores and more.

On Christmas Eve, guests are invited to a boat experience followed by brunch from chef Dennis Boon, and in the evening, a Feast of the Seven Fishes is followed by live entertainment at Vita.

A “Journey of the Mediterranean” Christmas dinner will features flavors from Greece, Morocco and Italy.

Christmas week rates start at $1,100 a night.

Rock House, Blue Mountain Road, Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands

Historic Hôtel de Crillon delivers a next-level Parisian holiday.

From December 11 through January 1, a festive afternoon tea service with pastries and canapés is available at the Jardin d’Hiver for about $95 per person.

A seven-course Christmas Eve menu at L’Écrin starts at about $650. A lavish Christmas Day brunch, featuring items such as scallop carpaccio, roasted veal rack and black truffle mashed potatoes, is available for about $250 including a glass of Champagne.

The five-star property, originally built in 1758 under the direction of King Louis XV, overlooks Paris’ Place de la Concorde.

Over Christmas weekend, rooms start at $2,265.

Hôtel de Crillon, A Rosewood Hotel, 10 place de la Concorde, Paris

In the United States capital, the Willard InterContinental will host free nightly performances by local choral and vocal ensembles in the lobby through December 23, and signature holiday cocktails will be available in the famed Round Robin Bar.

Holiday afternoon tea – with finger sandwiches and pastries – will be served every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from December 2 through December 30 ($90 per adult or $102 with a glass of champagne; $65 per child).

Room rates in December start at $289.

Willard InterContinental, 1401 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC

Four Seasons: Hampshire and London, England

An hour from central London, Four Seasons Hotel Hampshire serves up a sophisticated country Christmas in an 18th-century manor on 500 acres of rolling meadows.

An equestrian center and other outdoor offerings will ensure a hearty appetite for holiday meals at Wild Carrot, afternoon tea in the Drawing Room or a cozy Swiss-inspired meal at the pop-up alpine restaurant Off Piste.

Hotel Hampshire rates during the Christmas season start at about $1,790.

For a sparkling city Christmas, guests at Four Seasons Hotel London at Park Lane will find an enchanted forest of chandeliers in the lobby, Christmas afternoon tea and other special holiday menus. Room rates start around $1,050 this season.

Four Seasons Hotel Hampshire and Four Seasons Hotel London Park Lane, England

Madeline Hotel & Residences: Telluride, Colorado

With 14,000-foot peaks as your backdrop, why not have a ski and spa Christmas?

Madeline Hotel & Residences in Telluride boasts luxurious ski-in/ski-out accommodation, with a spa that offers treatments such as Alpine Remedy Muscle Relief for your after-ski rejuvenation.

There’s a three-course Christmas Eve dinner that can be packed to-go or enjoyed at Black Iron Kitchen + Bar, featuring juniper-glazed Cornish game hen or herb-crusted Colorado lamb leg, for $175 for adults, $55 per child.

A Holiday Maker’s Market will be held on select days leading up to Christmas, and the interactive art installation Alpenglow is returning for a second year. The resort has teamed up with a local holiday decorating service to offer a menu of in-room Christmas trees with choices from Tartan & Tradition to the sparkly All That Glitters.

The starting rate during Christmas is $1,799.

Madeline Hotel & Residences, Auberge Resorts Collection, Mountain Village Blvd. Telluride, Colorado

The holidays are a gourmet affair at the Royal Mansour in Marrakech.

The property’s restaurants will feature special menus for Christmas and New Year’s Eve from Michelin-star chefs.

At La Grande Brassiere, which debuted at Royal Mansour on November 1, chef Hélène Darroze is introducing a festive afternoon tea featuring items such as an orange blossom tropézienne and a cardamom opéra.

Pastry chef Jean Lachenal and Darroze have created four bûches de Noël this year, including a mango and gingerbread yule log topped with a light cream with local cinnamon.

The hotel will host a Christmas market in its lobby on December 16 with handmade crafts, Christmas sweets and gift items for sale, with proceeds going to local charities.

Hotel rates start at about $1,420 per night.

Royal Mansour, Rue Abou El Abbas Sebti, Marrakech, Morocco

Founded by Standard Oil Co. magnate Henry Morrison Flagler in 1896, The Breakers Palm Beach carries its lovely traditions right through the holiday season.

The oceanfront Italian Renaissance-style resort dazzles with sparkling lights, and holiday tea is available at HMF on December 20-23 and December 26-30 for $120 per person.

The Circle will host a buffet brunch on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day ($285 per person; $100 for children 12 and younger). There’s also a Christmas Day buffet in the Ponce de Leon ballroom, and the resort’s Flagler Steakhouse will serve three-course, prix fixe menus on December 24 and 25.

There’s limited room availability in December with rates starting at $1,090.

The Breakers, One South County Road, Palm Beach, Florida

The Ritz Paris is putting on exactly what you’d expect from the elegant luxury property.

Christmas Tea is available at Bar Vendôme and Salon Proust, starting at about $75 per person with a hot beverage or about $95 with a glass of Champagne.

The Salon d’Eté will serve a lavish holiday brunch on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day for about $325 per person. The Ritz’s new restaurant Espadon is offering a next-level New Year’s Eve tasting menu for about $2,220 per person, including wine pairings.

Rates around Christmas start at about $2,300 a night.

Ritz Paris, 15 place Vendôme, Paris, France

Guests at Claridge’s will be treated to horse-drawn carriage rides and carol singing over Christmas.

Three-night Christmas packages feature those festive events, plus a personal Christmas tree, Champagne, a visit from Father Christmas, a Christmas lunch, stockings for all and a full English breakfast each day. (Pricing available upon request).

Festive afternoon tea, served through January 1, starts at about $130.

Claridge’s enlists celebrated designers each year to create an eye-catching lobby Christmas tree.

This year’s tree, from Louis Vuitton, is a sculptural creation situated within two large LV wardrobe trunks. Both Claridge’s and Louis Vuitton were founded in 1854.

Rooms start at about $1,060.

Claridge’s, Brook Street, Mayfair , London

Source link

December 2, 2023
How to prevent a hangover, and 3 ways to treat one | CNN

Editor’s Note: Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being.

CNN
—

You had a little too much to drink last night, and now you’re nursing that dreaded morning aftermath — a hangover.

What seemed like fun at the time is now causing your hands to shake, your head to pound and your heart to race, not to mention other unpleasant symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, vomiting, light sensitivity and excruciating thirst.

Why are you suffering? Because the liquor that smoothly passed your lips is now wreaking havoc in your body, causing dehydration, stomach distress and inflammation. These ailments peak about the time all the alcohol leaves your body.

There is no scientifically proven way to cure a hangover, but experts say you can prevent one — or at least keep that morning-after misery to a minimum. Here’s how.

Forget a late-night meal after a night of drinking — that’s much too late, experts say. Instead, eat before your first drink and keep noshing as the night goes on.

“Food in the stomach slows gastric emptying and can reduce hangover symptoms,” said Dr. Robert Swift, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island.

Why does food help? Because most alcohol isn’t absorbed by an empty stomach but via the intestinal tract just below it, Swift said.

“If somebody does shots on an empty stomach, for example, all that pure alcohol is not diluted by the stomach and is passed to the intestine very quickly,” said Swift, who has studied alcohol abuse since the 1990s.

“If the stomach contains food, however, there are gastric juices and enzymes that mix the food and the alcohol, and only small amounts of food are passed into the intestine,” he said. “Now the alcohol is diluted in the stomach, and only a small quantity of alcohol is absorbed at any time.”

The same principle applies to water and other nonalcoholic beverages, Swift said. “If alcohol is mixed with fluid, it’s diluted, so when it goes into your intestines, it’s not as irritating. You’re less likely to have inflamed intestines or an inflamed stomach lining.”

There’s another benefit to downing water between drinks, said Dr. John Brick, former chief of research at the Center of Alcohol Studies, Education and Training Division, at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

“The primary cause of hangovers is dehydration and the loss of fluids, along with vitamins and minerals,” said Brick, who authored “The Doctor’s Hangover Handbook” and published scientific papers on the biobehavioral effects of alcohol and other drugs.

Downing just 3½ alcoholic drinks can result in the loss of up to a quart of water over several hours, Brick added. “That’s a good amount of water that has to be replenished.”

Dehydration from alcohol may affect a woman even more, and she is more likely to suffer a hangover, even if she drinks less than a man, Swift said. That’s because a man has a higher percentage of body water than a woman of the same height and weight, so the same amount of alcohol will be more diluted in a man, he said.

The alcohol we drink, called ethyl alcohol or ethanol, is the byproduct of fermenting carbohydrates and starches, usually some sort of grain, grape or berry.

We use byproducts of fermentation in other ways: Ethanol is added to the gasoline in our cars, and methyl alcohol or methanol — a toxic substance — is used as a solvent, pesticide and alternative fuel source. Also called wood alcohol, methyl alcohol made by bootleggers blinded or killed thousands of people during Prohibition.

That’s not all — the list of byproducts or chemicals added by manufacturers for flavor and taste can read like a list of supplies at an industrial warehouse: ethyl formate, ethyl acetate, n-propanol, isobutanol, n-butanol, isopentanol and isoamyl alcohols. While these congeners, as they are called, are added in small, nontoxic amounts, some people are overly sensitive to their effects.

Overall, dark-colored beer and spirits tend to contain more congeners and thus may be more likely to cause hangovers, experts say. A 2010 study investigated the intensity of hangovers in people who drank the darker-colored liquor bourbon versus clear vodka.

“Congeners in bourbon … significantly increased hangover intensity, which is not too surprising since bourbon has about 37 times the amount of congeners as vodka,” Brick said.

Chemical preservatives called sulfites, known to cause allergic reactions in sensitive people, are also a natural byproduct of fermentation in small quantities. However, many manufacturers of beer and wine add sulfites to their products to extend shelf life. (Sulfites are also added to soda, cereals, sweeteners, canned and ultraprocessed foods, medications and more.)

Sweet and white wines tend to have more sulfites than red, but red wines contain more tannins, which are bitter or astringent compounds found in the skin and seeds of grapes. Like sulfites, tannins can trigger allergic reactions in people who are sensitive.

As a result, limiting your drinking to light beers, clear liquors and white wine might help keep hangovers at bay.

In the end, however, experts say there is only one true preventive — or cure — for a hangover: Don’t drink.

“There’s no simple cure because there are so many complex factors that are producing the multiple symptoms of a hangover,” Swift said. “And that’s why the only real cure for a hangover is to not drink alcohol or drink such a low amount of alcohol that it won’t trigger a hangover.”

• Drinking coffee can speed up recovery

• Electrolytes help

• Drink as much water as you can

We know that alcohol dehydrates, so a headache and other hangover symptoms may be partly due to constricted blood vessels and a loss of electrolytes, essential minerals such as sodium, calcium and potassium that your body needs.

And if you’re a coffee drinker, skipping your morning cup of joe may lead to caffeine withdrawal on top of your hangover.

“If you have a hangover, have a quarter of a cup of coffee,” Brick suggests. “See if you feel better — it takes about 20 minutes for the caffeine to start to have some noticeable effect.

“If coffee doesn’t make you feel better, don’t drink anymore.”

Replacing lost fluids with water or a type of sports drink with extra electrolytes can help boost recovery from a hangover, Swift said.

And while most alcohol is handled by the liver, a small amount leaves the body unchanged through sweat, urine and breathing.

Get up, do some light stretching and walking, and drink plenty of water to encourage urination, Brick said.

“Before you go to sleep and when you wake up, drink as much water as you comfortably can handle,” he said.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the process through which alcohol is absorbed in the body.

Source link

November 22, 2023
Ultraprocessed foods now account for two-thirds of calories in the diets of children and teens | CNN

Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Eat, But Better: Mediterranean Style. Our eight-part guide shows you a delicious expert-backed eating lifestyle that will boost your health for life.

CNN
—

Children and teens in the United States now get more than two-thirds of their calories from ultraprocessed foods, an analysis of almost two decades worth of data has found.

Ultraprocessed foods – such as frozen pizza, microwave meals, packaged snacks and desserts – accounted for 67% of calories consumed in 2018, up from 61% in 1999, according to research published in the medical journal JAMA Tuesday. The study analyzed the diet of 33,795 children and adolescents nationwide.

While industrial processing can keep food fresher longer and allow some foods to be fortified with vitamins, it modifies food to change its consistency, taste and color to make it more palatable, cheap and convenient – using processes that aren’t used in home-cooked meals. They are also aggressively marketed by the food industry.

“Some whole grain breads and dairy foods are ultra-processed, and they’re healthier than other ultra-processed foods,” said senior author Fang Fang Zhang, a nutrition and cancer epidemiologist at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston.

“But many ultra-processed foods are less healthy, with more sugar and salt, and less fiber, than unprocessed and minimally processed foods, and the increase in their consumption by children and teenagers is concerning.”

The information on children’s diets used in the study was collected annually by trained interviewers who asked the children or an adult acting on their behalf to detail what they had eaten in the preceding 24 hours. The information was gathered as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Between 1999 and 2018, the proportion of healthier unprocessed or minimally processed foods decreased from 28.8% to 23.5% of consumed calories, the study found.

The remaining percentage of calories came from moderately processed foods such as cheese and canned fruits and vegetables, and flavor enhancers such as sugar, honey, maple syrup and butter, the study said.

The biggest increase in calories came from ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat meals such as takeout and frozen pizza and burgers: from 2.2% to 11.2% of calories, according to the study. The second largest increase came from packaged sweet snacks and desserts, the consumption of which grew from 10.6% to 12.9%.

The link between child health and ultraprocessed food is complex but one recent study in the United Kingdom found that children who eat more ultraprocessed food are more likely to be overweight or obese as adults.

Experts said the study’s implications for future health were significant given that childhood is a critical period for biological development and forming dietary habits.

“The current food system is structured to promote overconsumption of ultra-processed foods through a variety of strategies, including price and promotions, aggressive marketing, including to youths and specifically Black and Latino youths, and high availability of these products in schools,” wrote Katie Meyer and Lindsey Smith Taillie, both assistant professors in the department of nutrition at the University of North Carolina’ Gillings School of Global Public Health, in a commentary on the study. They were not involved in the research.

There was good news that suggested efforts to tackle consumption of sugary drinks such as soda taxes had been effective: Calories from sugar-sweetened beverages dropped from 10.8% to 5.3% of overall calories.

“We need to mobilize the same energy and level of commitment when it comes to other unhealthy ultra-processed foods such as cakes, cookies, doughnuts and brownies,” said Zhang.

Black, non-Hispanic youths experienced a bigger increase in the proportion of ultra-processed foods in their diet compared to their White counterparts. The study said it did not assess trends in other racial or ethnic groups because of a lack of nationally representative data. However, it noted that Mexican American youths consume ultraprocessed foods at a consistently lower rate, which authors said could reflect more home cooking among Hispanic families.

The education level of parents or family income didn’t have any impact on the consumption of ultraprocessed foods, suggesting that they are commonplace in most children’s diets, the study added.

The authors said their study had some limitations: Asking people to recall what they ate isn’t always an accurate measure of dietary intake. Plus, there is a tendency to under report socially undesirable habits such as consumption of unhealthy food.

In addition, it can be a challenge to accurately classify ultraprocessed food because it requires a full list of ingredients – information unlikely to be given by children answering a questionnaire.

“Better methods for dietary assessment and classification of foods are needed to understand trends and mechanisms of action of ultra-processed food intake,” Mayer and Taillie wrote.

Source link

November 21, 2023
Don’t serve disordered eating to your teens this holiday season | CNN

Editor’s Note: Katie Hurley, author of “No More Mean Girls: The Secret to Raising Strong, Confident and Compassionate Girls,” is a child and adolescent psychotherapist in Los Angeles. She specializes in work with tweens, teens and young adults.

CNN
—

“I have a couple of spots for anyone who wants to lose 20 pounds by the holidays! No diets, exercise, or cravings!”

Ads for dieting and exercise programs like this started appearing in my social media feeds in early October 2022, often accompanied by photos of women pushing shopping carts full of Halloween candy intended to represent the weight they no longer carry with them.

Whether it’s intermittent fasting or “cheat” days, diet culture is spreading wildly, and spiking in particular among young women and girls, a population group who might be at particular risk of social pressures and misinformation.

The fact that diet culture all over social media targets grown women is bad enough, but such messaging also trickles down to tweens and teens. (And let’s be honest, a lot is aimed directly at young people too.) It couldn’t happen at a worse time: There’s been a noticeable spike in eating disorders, particularly among adolescent girls, since the beginning of the pandemic.

“My mom is obsessed with (seeing) her Facebook friends losing tons of weight without dieting. Is this even real?” The question came from a teen girl who later revealed she was considering hiring a health coach to help her eat ‘healthier’ after watching her mom overhaul her diet. Sadly, the coaching she was falling victim to is part of a multilevel marketing brand that promotes quick weight loss through caloric restriction and buying costly meal replacements.

Is it real? Yes. Is it healthy? Not likely, especially for a growing teen.

Later that week, a different teen client asked about a clean eating movement she follows on Pinterest. She had read that a strict clean vegan diet is better for both her and the environment, and assumed this was true because the pinned article took her to a health coaching blog. It seemed legitimate. But a deep dive into the blogger’s credentials, however, showed that the clean eating practices they shared were not actually developed by a nutritionist.

And another teen, fresh off a week of engaging in the “what I eat in a day” challenge — a video trend across TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms where users document the food they consume in a particular timeframe — told me she decided to temporarily mute her social media accounts. Why? Because the time she’d spent limited her eating while pretending to feel full left her exhausted and unhappy. She had found the trend on TikTok and thought it might help her create healthier eating habits, but ended up becoming fixated on caloric intake instead. Still, she didn’t want her friends to see that the challenge actually made her feel terrible when she had spent a whole week promoting it.

During any given week, I field numerous questions from tweens and teens about the diet culture they encounter online, out in the world, and sometimes even in their own homes. But as we enter the winter holiday season, shame-based diet culture pressure, often wrapped up with toxic positivity to appear encouraging, increases.

“As we approach the holidays, diet culture is in the air as much as lights and music, and it’s certainly on social media,” said Dr. Hina Talib, an adolescent medicine specialist and associate professor of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in The Bronx, New York. “It’s so pervasive that even if it’s not targeted (at) teens, they are absorbing it by scrolling through it or hearing parents talk about it.”

Social media isn’t the only place young people encounter harmful messaging about body image and weight loss. Teens are inundated with so-called ‘healthy eating’ content on TV and in popular culture, at school and while engaged in extracurricular or social activities, at home and in public spaces like malls or grocery stores — and even in restaurants.

Instead of learning how to eat to fuel their bodies and their brains, today’s teens are getting the message that “clean eating,” to give just one example of a potentially problematic dietary trend, results in a better body — and, by extension, increased happiness. Diets cutting out all carbohydrates, dairy products, gluten, and meat-based proteins are popular among teens. Yet this mindset can trigger food anxiety, obsessive checking of food labels and dangerous calorie restriction.

An obsessive focus on weight loss, toning muscles and improving overall looks actually runs contrary to what teens need to grow at a healthy pace.

“Teens and tweens are growing into their adult bodies, and that growth requires weight gain,” said Oona Hanson, a parent coach based in Los Angeles. “Weight gain is not only normal but essential for health during adolescence.”

The good news in all of this is that parents can take an active role in helping teens craft an emotionally healthier narrative around their eating habits. “Parents are often made to feel helpless in the face of TikTokers, peer pressure or wider diet culture, but it’s important to remember this: parents are influencers, too,” said Hanson. What we say and do matters to our teens.

Take a few moments to reflect on your own eating patterns. Teens tend to emulate what they see, even if they don’t talk about it.

Parents and caregivers can model a healthy relationship with food by enjoying a wide variety of foods and trying new recipes for family meals. During the holiday season, when many celebrations can involve gathering around the table, take the opportunity to model shared connections. “Holidays are a great time to remember that foods nourish us in ways that could never be captured on a nutrition label,” Hanson said.

Practice confronting unhealthy body talk

The holiday season is full of opportunities to gather with friends and loved ones to celebrate and make memories, but these moments can be anxiety-producing when nutrition shaming occurs.

When extended families gather for holiday celebrations, it’s common for people to comment on how others look or have changed since the last gathering. While this is usually done with good intentions, it can be awkward or upsetting to tweens and teens.

“For young people going through puberty or body changes, it’s normal to be self-conscious or self-critical. To have someone say, ‘you’ve developed’ isn’t a welcome part of conversations,” cautioned Talib.

Talib suggests practicing comebacks and topic changes ahead of time. Role play responses like, “We don’t talk about bodies,” or “We prefer to focus on all the things we’ve accomplished this year.” And be sure to check in and make space for your tween or teen to share and feelings of hurt and resentment over any such comments at an appropriate time.

Open and honest communication is always the gold standard in helping tweens and teens work through the messaging and behaviors they internalize. When families talk about what they see and hear online, on podcasts, on TV, and in print, they normalize the process of engaging in critical thinking — and it can be a really great shared connection between parents and teens.

“Teaching media literacy skills is a helpful way to frame the conversation,” says Talib. “Talk openly about it.”

She suggests asking the following questions when discussing people’s messaging around diet culture:

● Who are they?

● What do you think their angle is?

● What do you think their message is?

● Are they a medical professional or are they trying to sell you something?

● Are they promoting a fitness program or a supplement that they are marketing?

Talking to tweens and teens about this throughout the season — and at any time — brings a taboo topic to the forefront and makes it easier for your kids to share their inner thoughts with you.

Source link

November 18, 2023
This city never slept. But with China tightening its grip, is the party over? | CNN Business

Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter which explores what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world.

Hong Kong
CNN
—

As the scattered patrons hop from one deserted bar to the next, it’s hard to believe the near-empty streets they are zigzagging down were once among the most vibrant in Asia.

It is Thursday evening, a normally busy night, but there are no crowds for them to weave through, no revelers spilling onto the pavements and no need for them to wait to be seated. At some of the stops on this muted bar crawl, they are the only ones in the room.

It wasn’t always this way. It might seem unlikely from this recent snapshot, but Hong Kong was once a leading light in Asia’s nightlife scene, a famously freewheeling neon-lit city that never slept, where East met West and crowds would spill from the bars throughout the night and long into the morning – even on a weekday.

Such images were beamed around the world in 1997, when Britain handed over sovereignty of its prized former colony to China, and locals and visitors alike welcomed in the new era with a 12-hour rave featuring Boy George, Grace Jones, Pete Tong and Paul Oakenfold.

China’s message at the time was that even if change was coming to Hong Kong, its spirit of “anything goes” would be staying put. The city was promised a high degree of autonomy for the next 50 years and assured that its Western ways could continue. Or, as China’s then leader Deng Xiaoping put it: “Horses will still run, stocks will still sizzle and dancers will still dance.”

And for long after the British departed, the dancing did indeed continue. Hong Kong retained not only the spirit of capitalism, but many other freedoms unknown in the rest of China – not just the gambling on horse races that Deng alluded to, but political freedoms of the press, speech and the right to protest. Even calls for greater democracy were tolerated – at least, for a time.

But little more than halfway into those 50 years, Deng’s promise now rings hollow to many. Spasms of mass protests – against “patriotic education” legislation in 2012, the Occupy Central movement in 2014 and pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019 – led China to restrict civil liberties with a sweeping National Security Law. Hundreds of pro-democracy figures have since been jailed and tens of thousands of residents have headed for the exits.

That crackdown and Hong Kong’s fading freedoms have been well-documented, but it is only more recently that a less-reported knock-on effect of China’s crackdown has started to emerge: In the streets and the bars, the trendy clubs and Michelin-starred restaurants, the city that never slept has begun to doze.

Nightlife in the city has become a pale shadow of its heyday as a regional rest and relaxation magnet, when its reputation rested on it being easier to navigate than Japan, less boring than Singapore and freer than mainland China.

Now, apparently in tandem with the diminishing political freedoms, business in the city’s once-thriving bars is drying up. And while some argue over whether politics or Covid is at fault, few dispute that something needs to be done.

Bars earned about $88.9 million in the first half of 2023, 18% less than the $108.5 million brought in during the same period in 2019, according to official data.

In an effort to arrest the decline, the Hong Kong government has launched a “Night Vibes” campaign featuring bazaars at three waterfront areas, splurged millions on a recent fireworks show to celebrate China’s National Day and reintroduced a dragon dance, lit by incense sticks, in its neighborhood of Tai Hang.

Those efforts have attracted a mixture of criticism and mockery – with many pointing out the irony of the campaign’s opening ceremony featuring two white lions, a color associated in Chinese culture with funerals. Meanwhile, the bazaars have been interrupted by a mix of typhoons and security concerns over the use of fireworks.

Still, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee insists the events are a success, saying at least 100,000 people have checked out the bazaars and that 460,000 tourists from mainland China visited for National Day. And the white lions? Officials say they were “fluorescent.”

A Hong Kong government spokesman told CNN this week that the activities were “well-received by local residents and tourists”. A recent Hong Kong Wine & Dine Festival brought in 140,000 patrons and shopping malls supporting the Night Vibes campaign said they had seen “growth in visitor flow and turnover,” he added.

There are some who point the finger solely at Covid.

“It’s obvious that it’s worse than before. This is the side effect of Covid, which has changed the way of life,” said Gary Ng, an economist with French investment bank Natixis.

And few would dispute that Covid took its toll. During the pandemic, Hong Kong made a virtue of cleaving closely to a mainland Chinese-style zero-tolerance approach that, though not quite as draconian, was still extreme enough to send large numbers of expatriates heading for the exit, with many of them decamping to rival Asian cities like Singapore, Thailand and Japan.

Hong Kong, where incoming travelers faced weeks in quarantine and restaurant tables were limited to two customers, was suddenly the boring one and Singapore – in a telling comparison – the more lively.

Under Hong Kong’s pandemic restrictions, live music was all but banned in small venues for more than 650 days.

But others say Hong Kong is in denial and that its nightlife problems go much deeper than the pandemic. Other places have recovered, they say, why not Hong Kong?

These observers note the city’s response to Covid should itself be seen through the lens of the city’s ever disappearing freedoms.

Months before the virus emerged, China had been tightening its grip on Hong Kong in response to pro-democracy protests that had spread throughout the city.

It introduced restrictions on freedoms – such as of expression and of the press – which were supposedly guaranteed at the time of the handover.

Songs and slogans perceived as linked to the protests were outlawed, memories of past protests scrubbed from the internet, sensitive films censored and newspaper editors charged with sedition and colluding with foreign forces.

The government has maintained that legal enforcement is necessary for Hong Kong to restore stability and prosperity and stop what China says is “foreign forces” from meddling in the city.

“We strongly disapproved of and firmly rejected those groundless attacks, slanders and smears against the HKSAR on the protection of such fundamental rights and freedoms in Hong Kong,” a spokesman said, referring to Hong Kong’s official name, in a reply to CNN.

But, the critics hit back, none of that lends itself to an atmosphere where people will want to sit back, relax and shoot the breeze.

“People may feel like they have to self-censor when having a chat at restaurants or bars because, who knows who may be listening. They may as well stay home for the same chat where they feel safe,” said Benson Wong, one of the hundreds of thousands who have left Hong Kong.

Wong, a former associate professor who specialized in local politics, said he used to enjoy eating out at dai pai dongs – open-air stalls selling Cantonese classics and (usually) plenty of beer – where patrons once talked freely about everything from celebrity gossip to politics.

Now though, he said, “one won’t feel happy if they have to watch everything they say.”

Whether it was Covid or the crackdown, or some combination of the two, an exodus of middle-class Hong Kongers and affluent expats has taken place in recent years.

Last year, the city saw a net outflow of 60,000 residents, its third drop in as many years, taking the number of usual residents down to 7.19 million as of the end of 2022 — a drop of almost 144,000 from the end of 2020.

Tens of thousands of them are Hong Kongers who have taken up special visas and pathways to citizenship offered by Western countries such as Britain, Canada and Australia in the wake of China’s crackdown.

But there has also been a steady drip of departures from the expat population that, like a post-colonial hangover, had remained in the city long after Britain’s departure. They were largely professionals in finance and law with a reputation for working hard and partying even harder, regardless of the politics.

Local media is now awash with reports of banking and law firms relocating their offices, in part or full, to rival financial hubs such as the no-longer-boring Singapore.

Unfortunately for bar and restaurant owners, the two demographics leaving are among their biggest customers.

“The expats have relocated, as well as [Hong Kongers] with a higher income. Their departure of course will have an impact,” said Ng, from Natixis.

Increasingly, these two groups are being replaced by people from mainland China, who now account for more than 70% of the 103,000 work or graduate visas granted since 2022, according to the Immigration Department. The newly dominant migrants, economists point out, tend to have very different spending habits.

Yan Wai-hin, an economics lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the city’s previously robust nightlife was propped up largely by a base of expats and middle-class locals steeped in the time-honored drinking culture of enjoying a nice cold one after a long day.

“The makeup of the population is different now,” Yan said. “Now we have more immigrants from the mainland, and they tend to love to go back to mainland China to spend instead.”

At Hong Kong’s most famous nightlife district, Lan Kwai Fong, the music may be fading, but it hasn’t stopped completely.

The area was long synonymous with jam-packed streets of revelers who would spill out from the bars as the air filled with the sounds of boisterous chatter, clinking glasses and dance music blasting away late into the night.

But during a recent visit by CNN, there was little to distinguish the area from any other street.

“It has been very challenging so far and it has not got back to normal by a long shot,” said Richard Feldman, who runs the gay bar Petticoat Lane at the California Tower in Lan Kwai Fong.

The chairman of the Soho Association, who has been running businesses in the city for more than three decades, Feldman said business was slightly better between Friday and Saturday than weekdays and shops with a good reputation have been less affected.

But across the board, he too said the number of Western faces were dwindling in what was once a favored expat haunt.

“It was a mix of expats and local professionals who would go out for drinks and a late night dance. But that demographic has eased quite a bit in the past year,” said another bar owner Becky Lam. “We are getting more mainland customers.”

Lam, joint founder of a number of Hong Kong bars and restaurants, including wine bar Shady Acres in Central, said while mainland Chinese were willing to spend, they tended to gravitate towards restaurants rather than bars and were less likely to stay out late.

On a weekday, she said, the bars she runs have been getting only half of the customers compared to pre-pandemic days.

“They’ll settle for the Happy Hours and that’s it. We are not talking about 2 a.m. to 3 a.m.,” she said.

There are other problems gnawing away at the nightlife sector.

“People’s habits have changed since Covid, as many are so used to staying at home watching TV and Netflix,” Feldman said.

During the pandemic, Hong Kong imposed a lengthy ban on bars and dine-in services to stem social gatherings, in what many saw as a nod to mainland China’s “zero-Covid” strategy.

This affected shops and malls, which shortened their business hours due to the lack of customers. In many cases, those shortened hours have now become the new normal, with some shops now closing as early as 9 p.m. as opposed to the pre-Covid standard of 10:30 p.m.

Also conspiring against the city’s nightlife is a strong Hong Kong dollar compared to the Chinese yuan, which affects how both Hong Kongers and potential tourists spend their money.

“People from the mainland are less likely to come here to shop, while people in Hong Kong are going to Shenzhen to spend their money,” said Marco Chan, head of research at real estate and investment firm CBRE.

While mainland tourists now think twice about coming to Hong Kong, many Hongkongers have been spending their weekends in mainland China, where many services come at a fraction of the price, Chan said.

Known as the “Godfather of Lan Kwai Fong,” Allan Zeman – the entrepreneur who turned the small square in Hong Kong’s Central district into a renowned nightlife hub – cuts a more optimistic figure than most and insists business is not as bad as it appears.

He estimates mainland Chinese customers now account for 35% of the patrons in Lan Kwai Fong and says they are big spenders.

“They’ll go up to a club, like the California Tower on the roof, and they’ll spend like 400,000 to 550,000 Hong Kong dollars ($51,000 to $70,000) just for drinks,” he said.

His take is that it is Hong Kong’s strong currency and a relative lack of incoming flights compared to the pre-Covid era that are stalling the city’s comeback. “I think it’s temporary,” he said.

But bar owner Lam said Hong Kong needs to reexamine its regulatory approach, if it is to thrive at night once more.

Lam pointed to a drive in recent years by the authorities to remove the city’s famous neon lights in the name of safety as an example of the current misguided approach, saying Hong Kong’s most defining nighttime icons were being dismantled one sign at a time.

She also said her bar, Shady Acres, had been told to serve customers only indoors and shut all doors and windows after 9 p.m. as part of its licensing requirement.

“These kinds of hurdles are really big in Hong Kong,” Lam said. “But I look at our neighboring cities like Bangkok, Shanghai and Taipei. These cities have an exciting nightlife as they really make it late night fun with music, street art and late night dining.”

Feldman, of Petticoat Lane, had another suggestion. “Hong Kong used to be a far more international destination. Now it is a domestic destination,” he said.

The city, said Feldman, should “do everything it can to attract people not only from China but from all over the world.”

Source link

November 3, 2023
Should you let Halloween be a candy free-for-all? Maybe, experts say | CNN

Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being.

CNN
—

Micromanaging how your child eats candy this Halloween might be more of a trick than a treat, experts say.

Once you’re a grown-up raising kids, that bag full of candy might be the scariest part of Halloween — whether it’s concern about a potential sugar rush, worries of parenting perfectionism or diet culture anxiety.

“It makes sense to be scared, because we’ve been taught to be scared,” said Oona Hanson, a parent coach based in Los Angeles. “Sugar is sort of the boogeyman in our current cultural conversation.”

But micromanaging your child’s candy supply can backfire, leading to an overvaluing of sweets, binge behavior or unhealthy restriction in your child, said Natalie Mokari, a registered dietitian nutritionist in Charlotte, North Carolina.

As stressful as it may be to see your child faced with more candy in one night than they would eat in an entire year, the best approach may be to lean into the joy, she added.

“They are only in that age where they want to trick or treat for just a small glimpse of time — it’s so short-lived,” Mokari said. “Let them enjoy that day.”

Experts aren’t suggesting kids have sugar all day every day. The American Heart Association and the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee — groups charged with providing science-based recommendations every five years — have recommended lower daily levels of sugar. Too much added sugar has been associated with cardiovascular disease and lack of essential nutrients.

But a healthy relationship with food has balance, and you can keep your kids’ diets full of nutrients while allowing them to eat sweets, Mokari said.

She and Hanson shared some tips on how to relieve candy-eating stress this Halloween.

Some stress over limiting children’s Halloween candy may reflect the adults’ relationship with food.

If you look at the candy in your child’s bag and worry that you will binge on it or get anxiety about weight, it may be a good idea to talk to a mental health professional or dietitian about reworking your own relationship with food, Mokari said.

It is especially important because what we say about food in front of children can make a big impact on the relationship they have with it and their bodies, Hanson said.

A passing comment of “I really need to work out after all that sugar” or “I can’t have that in the house — I’m going to get so fat” can have long-lasting impacts of overeating or under eating, she said.

Should you trade out the candy?

Many communities have their own traditions to encourage kids to give up their Halloween loot. Maybe it’s making a “donation” to dentists for a reward or switching candy with the Switch Witch for a toy instead.

There is a place for weeding out candy after Halloween for some children, Hanson said.

If your children just aren’t excited by the candy, they may ask to trade it for toys, Mokari said. Or if they have allergies or aversions to certain candies, they may welcome an opportunity to get rid of what they can’t or don’t want to eat, Hanson said.

But if your child looks at the full candy bag with glee, enforcing a reduction could turn the sweets even more valuable in their minds and heighten a fixation that may not have been there initially, Mokari said.

Should Halloween be a candy free-for-all? Maybe, Mokari said.

Just as adults find themselves craving whatever they have outlawed for themselves on a restrictive diet, kids who have their candy highly managed may start to value it more than they would have otherwise, she said.

“The forbidden Twix tastes the sweetest,” Hanson said.

Enjoying different foods on different occasions is part of a healthy relationship with food — so try to relax and lean into the holiday, Mokari said. And remember that though they may be breaking into a lot of candy on Halloween, that isn’t how they always eat, she added.

If you are worried about a candy binge in the days following, make a plan with your child to divvy up the treats in ways that are exciting, Mokari said. Maybe that means packing a few pieces up with lunch or adding them to an afternoon snack with a few more food groups, she added.

It can be difficult to relax around a pound of chocolate, however, when you are worried about the negative impact that candy might have on your child.

Maybe it’s a stomachache from eating too much. It isn’t the worst outcome, Hanson said. That upset stomach can be an important lesson in how to listen to what their body needs and know when they’ve had too much of something that tastes good, she added.

Maybe you worry about a sugar rush. Well, sugar affects everyone differently, and some kids might seem to get a boost, while others grow irritable, Mokari said. But both will likely end in a crash.

And either way, kids will likely be extra enthusiastic on Halloween, Hanson said. Even without all the sugar, she said to remember it’s exciting for them.

Source link

October 31, 2023
She lost her mother to gun violence. 5 years later, this vibrant fourth grader was killed while getting ice cream | CNN

Editor’s Note: This story is part of a series profiling American youth killed this year by guns, a leading cause of death of children in the US. Read more about the project here.

CNN
—

Every morning since the school year started, before teacher assistant Madelyn Cedeno shuts the front door of Peter A. Reinberg Elementary School at the start of classes, she peers out one last time.

She hopes she’ll see Serabi Medina running late, with her playful smile, her big red hair flying and her father trailing just behind her. The teacher and student first bonded over their ginger hair when Serabi began kindergarten four years ago. “She just reminded me of me at her age with that color hair,” Cedeno said. “I pretty much told her, ‘All of us gingers around the world, we stick together in any kind of weather, so you and I are stuck together forever.’”

“We were the gingers of Reinberg,” she said.

The two often chatted in the school hallways and in the mornings, when Cedeno stood outside the school to greet students. And every day, before Serabi walked into school, she would tell Cedeno she loved her.

They saw each other again in early August, after Serabi had finished a summer class she took before she was set to start fourth grade. Cedeno told her the upcoming school year would be fantastic. They hugged and said goodbye with their special, signature wave.

Less than a week later, the vibrant 9-year-old was shot and killed, allegedly by a neighbor, in front of her Chicago home – one of at least 1,400 children and teens killed by a firearm so far in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Firearms became the No. 1 killer of children and teens in America in 2020, surpassing motor vehicle accidents, which had long been the leading cause of death among America’s youth, federal data shows.

Serabi had been riding her scooter and had just returned from a nearby ice cream truck carrying two ice-creams: one for herself and one for her dad, who was outside with her. As she reached the door of their apartment building, authorities say neighbor Michael Goodman approached her and fired his gun, fatally striking Serabi in the head.

He has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bond on first-degree murder charges. Goodman’s public defender, Kathryn Lisco, told CNN Goodman has been “plagued by debilitating and documented mental health issues over the course of his life.”

“The real question we should be asking is why, despite Michael Goodman’s mental health history was he ever able to legally obtain a gun?” Lisco said.

At every court hearing, Serabi’s family has been there, waiting for justice. It’s been rough, her father says. But that doesn’t even begin to describe it: Serabi was his “light,” the little girl he had devoted his life to after his partner, Serabi’s mom, was shot and killed five years ago right in front of their eyes. Chicago police say that investigation is ongoing, and no suspect is in custody.

“Once I lost her mom, I lost half of myself, so my focus was all on my daughter,” Michael Medina told CNN in a recent interview.

“She was just a beautiful girl, my light. She was my life.”

Braids and press-on nails

Even for those who knew her best, putting Serabi into words isn’t easy: She was unstoppable.

Serabi was always happy, always active. She was a dodgeball champion, a YouTube enthusiast, an animal lover. She didn’t shy away from saying hello to strangers.

“She was full of life,” her cousin, Jaleesa Medina, 29, said. “She wouldn’t need music to dance.” She loved to dress up during Halloween – last year, she dressed up in a Ghostbusters theme, her cousin recalled.

And she was creative, often putting press-on nails and pouring time into braiding her hair and coming up with new hairstyles, her father recalled. She’d often ask Medina for help, directing him to hold one braid as she worked on another. “Daddy, just do it, you can do it, don’t worry,” she’d encourage him.

Serabi was fearless, never afraid to learn something new or stand up to someone decades older than her when she felt picked on. She was always cracking jokes to make others laugh, and often enjoyed sassy exchanges with family members, they said. At school, even the eighth graders knew her, her father says, and she was always trying to be “a comedian.”

“She walked in the room with a big smile on her face and everyone just kind of turned and looked,” her principal, Edwin Loch, said.

Five days after her death, Loch helped organize a candlelight service in her honor. He asked everyone to wear purple, her favorite color. More than a hundred people gathered to say goodbye.

“She was never mean to anybody, always wanted to be the person that got people together, and have fun,” Loch recalled. “She just wanted to live.”

To John Hogue Jr., her half-brother, Serabi was, first and foremost, his “baby sister.”

John, 16, was the second person to ever hold her when she was born. He fed her when she was a baby, rocked her to sleep and watched cartoons like “Paw Patrol” and Barbie, just to spend time with her. When their mom, Blanca Miranda, was still alive, the three of them would often go to water parks and the movies.

He had felt excited, he told CNN, to be a big brother to Serabi and wanted to take care of her. But often, it felt like she took care of him, he said.

“She was always caring, and if something happened, she’d be there and help me talk,” John, a high school junior, said. “She’d talk like a grown-up, she was loving like a grown-up.”

It’s something many of her loved ones point out: Despite her young age, Serabi always seemed wise beyond her years, and quick to offer words of comfort to those who needed it most, though she was hurting from her own loss. Serabi saw her mother’s fatal shooting, alongside John and her father, when she was just 4 years old.

“I don’t know if it was like a little sister feeling that she would get inside, but it seemed at times when I’d be hurting the most, she would reach out and say, ‘Hey, I love you,’” Serabi’s half-sister, Lacey Tatro, said. The two hadn’t seen each other in years but would video call almost every night. “That was my best friend,” Tatro said.

After her mother’s killing, Serabi would also often console her aunt Juanita Miranda, Blanca’s sister. “Mommy’s okay,” Serabi would remind her, urging her not to cry.

More about Serabi
She was shot and killed on August 5, 2023
She was 9 years old and preparing for fourth grade
Her neighbor, Michael Goodman, has been charged with murder and is expected again in court on December 6, according to jail records.
A verified GoFundMe has been set up for her family
Online, her family uses #justiceforSerabi for updates in the case

“She raised us,” Miranda said. “She taught me to be strong in a lot of ways, no matter what. And she still teaches me to this day.”

The two shared a special bond, Miranda said, since the very moment Serabi was born. “She came out with her eyes open, and I’ll never forget that,” she said of that moment. “She was just open to the world. She was my baby before I even had a daughter.”

Together, they made YouTube videos that never got posted, did internet challenges, and regularly ordered their favorite drink: iced coffee, extra caramel. Three days before Serabi was killed, she spent the night with her aunt, and they ate snacks, scrolled through TikToks and watched the Barbie movie.

Her niece’s loss, Miranda says, has left her deeply traumatized. But she’s determined to join other family members in court once the trial in Serabi’s killing begins. “I just want to know why,” Miranda said.

At school, faculty members are preparing to dedicate a permanent memorial on the campus Serabi once roamed. The past two months have been very difficult, Cedeno says.

“Her reminder, her presence is very, very strong,” she said. Mornings are the toughest.

At home, Medina misses his daughter’s voice, the brief arguments they’d share in the morning as they got ready to start the day, their walks to school, their bike rides in the evenings. Since losing her mother, Serabi and her father had become inseparable. Even when he spent time fixing cars in their garage during the frigid Chicago winters, Serabi was there, passing him the tools.

Serabi, left, and her father, Michael Medina.

“My baby was always with me,” Medina said. “That’s why I’m so lost now.”

After she died, Serabi was laid to rest with her mother.

John said he promised her he’d visit every weekend, but the visits are devastating reminders of the two losses the teen has suffered in the past five years: his mom, and his only little sister.

“When I go over there, I cry,” he said. “I just think about the times me and her had together.”

“She always loved me, her big brother.”

CNN
—

There are countless things about our homeland that Australians miss after moving abroad: the magnificent landscape, the laid-back lifestyle and that endless blue sky, to name a few.

But something as simple as a trip to the supermarket can leave us expats – according to some reports there are an estimated one million of us – feeling desperately homesick.

With its long history of immigration, Australia is quite literally a melting pot of cuisines.

While some foods are the result of cultural influences such as the Chiko Roll, others are uniquely Aussie, like Golden Gaytime ice cream.

And who could forget the most famous of them all, Vegemite, which turns 100 on October 25.

According to the National Museum of Australia, it was invented by chemist CP Callister in Melbourne in 1923 when Australian food manufacturer Fred Walker asked him to create a product similar to British Marmite.

“During the Second World War, Vegemite captured the Australian market. Marmite was unobtainable and the Australian Army supplied Vegemite to its troops,” says the museum in a post highlighting defining symbols of Australia.

“In the 1950s and 60s, despite acquisition by the American company Kraft, Vegemite became a distinctively ‘Australian’ food. It featured in songs, on souvenirs and other popular culture ephemera. Vegemite returned to Australian ownership in 2017 when purchased by dairy company Bega.”

More on this famed brown spread below as we round up the A-Z of Aussie favorites:

Introduced in 1927, this simple dessert is an Australian classic.

Every Australian child grew up singing the famous 1930s jingle: “I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me!”

The brand’s “Bertie the Aeroplane” mascot was named after inventor Bert Appleroth – a Sydney tram driver who is said to have made the first batch in his bathtub.

Although now owned by an American company, Aeroplane Jelly has hardly changed since grandma was a girl.

Sure, there are plenty of brands of jelly available worldwide, but when it comes time to make a trifle or treat for the kids, Aussie parents can’t resist this familiar favorite.

An Australian variety of mango that isn’t grown anywhere else in the world, the Bowen is considered the best of the best.

It was first discovered in the northern Queensland town of Bowen, hence the name, but is also known as Kensington Pride.

Bigger and juicer than other varieties, Bowen mangoes account for 80% of mangoes produced in Australia. Some are exported but arguably not enough for the huge number of mango-loving expats.

To Aussies, mangoes are the taste of summer. No matter where we are in the world, the craving for a Bowen mango usually kicks in around Christmas.

This strange little deep-fried snack has been an Australian icon since 1950 when it was first sold by an enterprising boilermaker at football games.

Inspired by Chinese spring rolls, the exact recipe is a little unclear but the combination of meat, veg and some unknown spices hits the spot.

Best consumed with a couple of potato scallops and a soft drink, the Chiko Roll is the go-to for tradies on their lunch break or those 3 a.m. munchies on your way home from the pub.

And the only place to get them is a typical Aussie takeaway joint.

Dukkah – a humble blend of crushed Middle Eastern spices, herbs and nuts from Egypt – has been embraced by Australian foodies.

Its versatility is one of the reasons this condiment is so popular. Dukkah can be used as a garnish, a coating on a piece of meat or mixed with olive oil as a dip for bread.

A number of producers have given the basic dukkah recipe an Australian twist by adding native ingredients, such as lemon myrtle, macadamia nuts, wattleseed, saltbush and pepperleaf.

Expats can find many variations in Australian supermarkets and, fortunately, they’re often sold in packets small enough to sneak into a suitcase.

Australia is one of the few countries where it is considered perfectly acceptable to eat the coat of arms.

Exceptionally lean and gamey, emu and kangaroo tend to be popular among adventurous chefs in Australia.

But when living abroad, neither is easy to get your hands on.

A number of restaurants and specialty butchers offer native meats, but the expense involved in raising emus, in particular, means it’s harder to come by.

The flat white is practically Australia's national drink.

Thanks to the influx of Greek and Italian immigrants who brought “proper coffee” to Australia post WWII, we have become a nation of coffee snobs.

The flat white is almost Aussie enough to be called the national drink.

All over the world, café goers and baristas have been confounded as Aussie expats seek out their favorite brew abroad.

With less milk than a latte and without the froth of a cappuccino, the flat white requires special attention (it’s all in the pouring).

One of the first questions asked on expat forums: “Where can I get a decent flat white in this town?”

And it’s usually the first thing ordered at the airport café when back on home soil.

Ice creams feature highly on the most-wanted lists of expats, so it’s only natural we highlight them here.

Milky Paddle Pops and fruity Splice have been popular summer treats since the 1960s.

Likewise, Weis Bars have also been around for more than 60 years, and the mango and cream concoctions invoke memories of lazy summer afternoons.

But the number one, the crème de la crème, is the Golden Gaytime – a vanilla and toffee ice cream coated in chocolate and dipped in crunchy biscuit pieces that has inspired many a replica over the years.

While the burger itself is not an Australian invention, we have added some unconventional ingredients that make the Aussie version truly memorable.

Take the essentials – a beef patty, cheese, tomato, lettuce, grilled onions, tomato sauce (ketchup) – and add beetroot, pineapple, a fried egg and bacon, and you have yourself a massive mouthful.

A quick online search reveals variations that include pickled beetroot and spicy mayo, among others, but the classic Aussie burger celebrates simplicity.

It’s easy enough to replicate at home, but nothing beats the experience of ducking into the local milk-bar (café), or fish and chip shop, to enjoy a burger and a milkshake after a day at the beach.

The Iced VoVo – a biscuit covered in pink fondant, raspberry jam and shredded coconut – is a national treasure.

Produced by Arnott’s since the early 1900s, the iconic treat was mentioned by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in his victory speech after the 2007 election, leading to a spike in sales.

“Friends, tomorrow, the work begins. You can have a strong cup of tea if you want, even an Iced VoVo on the way through. But the celebration stops there,” Rudd said.

Not often found for sale overseas, this sweet treat is one to enjoy with a cup of tea when you’re home visiting mum.

Ask any Australian expat what they miss most about ‘home’ and their list is sure to include at least one type of junk food – the absence of which is felt most keenly at kids’ birthday parties.

Allen’s Lollies (candy) have been around for decades and Minties, Fantales, Jaffas, Snakes and the Classic Party Mix remain as popular as ever.

The Aussie public doesn’t seem to mind that they are all owned by Nestlé, which is headquartered in Switzerland.

Fairy Bread – essentially white bread covered in butter and sprinkles – is another party staple that manages to be devoid of nutrition but highly nostalgic.

On return trips to Australia, expats are known to bulk-buy chocolate bars like Cadbury Cherry Ripes, Caramello Koalas and ever-popular Violet Crumbles.

When it comes to savory junk foods, Smith’s Chips, cheesy Twisties and Nobby’s nuts are synonymous with snacking – and nothing produced overseas comes close.

We tend to lump all Middle Eastern meat-and-pita combos under the heading of “kebab” and be done with it.

Of course, there are subtle differences between doner kebabs, shawarma, souvlaki, and gyros – in both ingredients and quality – depending on the source.

Connoisseurs agree that pork gyros (Greek flatbread filled with rotisserie-roasted meat) found in more legitimate venues around Australia are the best.

Consider the sauce dripping down the front of your shirt an essential part of the experience.

Proving that Aussies love anything with jam and coconut, the lamington is the country’s favorite cake.

Named after Lord Lamington, Queensland’s eighth governor, these delightful squares of sponge cake – dipped in chocolate and coated with coconut – have become nothing short of a culinary icon.

There are entire websites (and an Australian Lamington Appreciation Society) devoted to the origins of the lamington and how to make them. Achieving the right ratio of chocolate, jam and coconut is essential.

Meat pies: Colloquially referred to as a

There are pies, and then there are Aussie meat pies.

Synonymous with afternoons at the football pitch, brands like Four ‘N Twenty and Vili’s have cornered the market for mass-produced pies.

Small local outfits (like the Bemboka Pie Shop and Harry’s Café de Wheels) are institutions in their own right.

Everyone has a favorite type, whether it’s shepherd’s pie, a floater with peas, cheese and bacon or straight-up meat.

The only requirement? The pie is served piping hot with tomato sauce … and eaten one-handed.

With Four ‘N Twenty now exporting to the United States and parts of Asia, some expats can get their pie fix without venturing too far.

Australia’s love affair with Asian food is no secret, and our northern neighbors strongly influence what we put on our plates.

Even Aussies living in Asia admit to craving “Aussie Chinese” or “Aussie Thai” – dishes that give a nod to the original but are not as authentic as the real thing. In fact, some would say they’re potentially even better.

We’d argue the fresh, high-quality produce and quality meats available in Australia bring out the best in Asian dishes.

A fishmonger shucks an oyster at the Sydney Fish Market.

It’s fair to say that oysters are an acquired taste, but for those with a penchant for the salty mollusks, Australia produces some of the best in the world.

You’ll find two main species in Aussie waters: rock oysters and Pacific.

As bivalves, oysters filter the water around them and their location dictates their flavor.

The pristine waters along Australia’s coastline provide the perfect conditions for oysters, and they rarely need any accompaniment.

There’s nothing quite like eating these slippery snacks straight off the rocks – export just doesn’t do them justice.

A pavlova cake is typically served with summer fruits heaped on top.

The origins of this meringue-based dessert are hotly contested.

Recent research suggests that the Pav didn’t come from the antipodes at all, but nevertheless it remains a firm favorite.

Meringue, cream and plenty of fruit are the key ingredients, though there are no hard and fast rules about what has to be included.

Expats living in tropical climes often bemoan how challenging it is to get a decent meringue, given humid weather can turn it soft and sticky, so Pavlova is a rare treat.

Q: Quandong and quince

Both the native quandong and the foreign quince lend themselves to some of our favorite condiments and desserts.

Similar to a wild peach, the quandong is incredibly versatile and nutritious and can be made into juice, jam, filling for pies or eaten raw.

The quince is a relative of the apple and pear, and while several varieties are grown commercially in Australia the fruit is best known as the star in Maggie Beer’s quince paste – the only way to eat soft cheese.

Bottle number 1,888 of Bundaberg Rum's 125th anniversary rum.

Bundaberg Rum, to be more specific. Or just Bundy, as it’s known to locals.

This Australian beverage was created way back in 1888 to deal with an oversupply of molasses in Queensland’s sugarcane region.

Producers believe that it’s the sugar, grown in volcanic soil, that gives Bundy its distinct, rich flavor.

The distillery produces 60,000 bottles a day and the factory was the subject of a National Geographic documentary in 2013.

To say this drop has cult status would be an understatement.

There are so many foods starting with S – smashed avocado, SAO biscuits, sausages – that could represent the land down under.

But Australia’s best produce comes from the sea and expats fondly reminisce about mornings spent at the fish markets picking up the catch of the day before special occasions.

While we’re known to “throw a shrimp on the barbie” there are some creatures that are far more popular.

Barramundi, Balmain or Moreton Bay bugs, abalone, and of course, prawns are just some of the native seafood worth queuing for.

Technically a junk food, Tim Tam biscuits are so famous, so overwhelmingly popular, that they deserve their own spot on this list.

The original Tim Tams are the best: A chocolate-coated sandwich of two malted chocolate biscuits with chocolate cream filling.

Arnott’s, the manufacturers, now export to more than 40 countries around the world, so you can get your fix whether you’re skiing the slopes of Niseko, in Japan, or catching rays on a Tahitian beach.

Uncle Tobys began producing oats way back in 1893. But it wasn’t until the 1970s, when convenience foods started hitting the shelves, that they developed their now famous muesli bars.

The ultimate lunchbox treat or after-school snack, kids had the luxury of choosing not only the flavor, but also the texture.

Many a playground war has been fought over which was best – crunchy or chewy. For the record, we’re firmly in the crunchy camp.

These days the range has grown to include yoghurt and choc-chip toppings. There’s even a lamington flavor.

No round-up of Aussie foods would be complete without this ubiquitous salty brown spread, which turns 100 on October 25.

Twenty million jars of Vegemite are sold each year – that’s one for every Australian citizen.

Now owned by Bega Cheese, there was great joy when the icon returned to Australian ownership several years ago.

No one else quite understands the appeal of our favorite toast topping.

For those living in countries where it’s not yet exported, Vegemite comes in massive 560 gram jars and travel-sized tubes.

While there are similar cereals available around the world, there’s nothing quite like “Australia’s favorite breakfast.”

These small biscuits made from wholegrain wheat are occasionally available in supermarkets overseas, but they generally sell out pretty quickly.

Aussie mums have been known to stock up on them on trips to the motherland.

Best eaten with a little bit of sugar, some chopped banana and a lot of milk, Weet-Bix is promoted as family-friendly health food. But we’d love them even if they weren’t good for us.