Travelling and eating are two very important things in my life 🙂 When I travel to different places, I always plan my trip around what I want to eat! It is a truly wonderful thing to taste and experience a National Dish* in the country where it was created. We also use the word cuisine** to talk about food and flavours that come from a specific country.
*National Dish is a common dish that is recognised as from a particular country. It is famous because it uses local ingredients, is associated with a festival or tradition or is a commonly eaten food.
** Cuisine (n) a style of cooking
If you live in a big city, you have probably tasted lots of food from other countries – even if you have never visited the country yourself!! For example, I love Japanese cuisine (gyoza, ramen, okonomiyaki, sushi..), but I have never been to Japan!
Here are some of my favourite dishes from the countries that I've visited:
- Indonesia: Nasi Goreng (fried rice with meats, vegetables and spices)
- Singapore: Hainanese chicken rice
- Malaysia: Nasi Lemak (a breakfast dish – rice, anchovies, peanuts, boiled egg, lamb curry, cucumber and ‘sambal‘ chilli sauce)
- Thailand: Som Tam (spicy papaya salad) and Pad Thai (sweet and sour rice noodles with prawns)
- Vietnam: Pho (beef or chicken noodle soup)
- China: Peking Duck (roasted duck with delicious crispy skin, eaten with pancakes, sweet bean sauce and cucumber)
- India: I love so many Indian dishes that I can't possibly choose one!! Tandoori Chicken and Dahl Makhani are two favourites!
- Nepal: Dal Bhat (rice served with lentils)
- Greece: Every dish made in Greece is delicious! But Souvlaki is probably the National Dish! (slow-cooked meat and chips wrapped in a warm soft pita bread. Mmm…)
- France: I'm just going to put “All French Cheese” here. When I visited France, I ate cheese. Lots and lots of delicious cheese!
- England: A Sunday roast (roasted meat and vegetables and Yorkshire puddings)
- The Czech Republic: Pork dumplings and beer!
- Austria: Apfelstrudel (An sweet pastry made with apple)
- Germany: Bratwurst (pork sausage)
- Switzerland: Fondue (a shared pot of melted cheese you dip bread, meats and vegetables into before eating.)
- The Netherlands: ‘Poffertjes’ (sweet baby pancakes served with butter and sugar)
These are my favourites!! What do you think? Where should I travel next? What's your national dish?
Image: fancy-edibles.com
I need to taste them all! So what about Australian food?Snag on the barbie, Dogs eye with dead horse?
Nice Liz! Great use of Australian slang!
A “snag on the barbie” is a sausage cooked on the barbecue! And a “dogs eye with dead horse” is a meat pie with tomato sauce!!
I agree with you – a meat pie with sauce is very Australian! (And the food flag picture above agrees too!)
My favourite dishes from the countries I have visited are: Spain, all Mediterranean food. France, crepes and cheese companies by wine. Portugal, Polvo à la lagareiro it is octopus over a grill, another one is the pastel de nata with coffee, it is a dessert. Mexico, tacos and tequila. Cuba, mojo (cassava with lemon and garlic), arroz con gri (rice with black beans) y mojitos. The Dominic Republic, tostones are fry plaintains. Colombia, sancocho is a delicious soup with chicken made over a wood fire. Ecuadro, grilled shrips. Peru, ceviche.
I'm brasilian! My national dishes are : Feijoada/ coxinha/ brigadeiro.
Yum! I'll have to try them one day when I visit Brazil 🙂
Hi Emma, I’m italian and we have a lot of national dishes. Each italian region has a own typical dish. I live near Venice and we have many dishes with fish. Thank you, bye!!
So lucky! Can you describe one Italian dish that's common in your region? 🙂
Of course, my pleasure!! my favourite is a dessert called “Tiramisù”, maybe you already know it! It’s a cake with coffee, biscuits called “savoiardi” and a mascarpone cream. Above, some chocolate powder. It’s very good! Come to Italy to try it, my treat!!
Definetly to Lithuania!
Cepelinai and cold beet soup are waiting for you;)
Hi Emma, thanks for your post, have you ever been in Spain? I'm from Valencia, and you should taste paella, it's amazing
Yes I have been to Spain – I was there last year! It's such a beautiful country!