A week or so ago TatianaLouise and I were discussing certain foods from our respective homelands that are simply unavailable (or need to be imported or purchased from specialty stores at high cost).
As such, we decided we should compile an "Expat Cookbook" that would contain various recipes for expats to allow them to replicate certain foods from home (wherever that may be) from locally-available ingredients, whether those foods are home-made or something that one would normally buy from a shop.
The cookbook would also contain references to names and specific brands of ingredients that one could buy for the recipes and where they could be commonly found (finding what things are called and where they're located is my particular weakness).
While we'd likely have common stuff ("Mom's meatloaf", "apple pie", etc.) in the cookbook we'd also really like to have some more specialized stuff that really recalls the taste of home. For example, if one suddenly gets a craving for Taco Bell (this happens sometimes), being able to replicate the flavor of their taco seasoning would be useful. There's a certain "something" that burritos from Chipotle have that my homemade ones lack, so being able to make their style of burrito at home using all-local ingredients would be great.
Naturally, since we're both located in Switzerland and both originally from North America (I'm from the US, Tatiana is from Canada) the cookbook would likely start out fairly Swiss-North American focus but hopefully would expand to cover more places.
Of course, the cookbook would be freely-distributable and open for all under a permissive license.
At this point, things are still in the planning stages, but I'm curious if other EFers would be interested in either helping out with creating recipes, experimenting, providing suggestions for new things which we could test, etc. If so, we'd really appreciate your help!
I'd be willing to help, especially if you consider broadening the scope to more than just Switzerland as there are a lot of challenges for NA cooks and bakers depending on which country and what common ingredient simply isn't common or available. I can tell stories about the time I tried to explain what crisco was to a clerk in Helsinki in the best Finnish I could muster, then making my husband go do it and the hilarity that ensued. Needless to say, hydrogenated oils were not a known product. Or, say, bitter almond oil for a traditional Finnish cake going back and forth between the apothecary (chemist) and the grocer, each saying that the other carried it. Finland has lots of fun stuff, like cream of tartar, at the apothecary. But, Finland does have brown sugar, both light, dark and syrups as well.
Anyway, could be a lot of fun to do. Check the expat food blog network as a lot of those folks could be very helpful. And if you need help from the US side of things, I'd be happy to help with what I can.
A wonderful organisation in La Chaux-de-Fonds, RECIF, had a project to compile a cookery book (titled - Femmes de coeur et d'epices) from a selection of immigrant women who live in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Thought it was a great idea and was and is successful.
Hey Pete and Tatiana, I've been doing something alike what you plan to do
a) mostly about Swiss food obviously but
b) I also had to adapt Swiss recipes for friends to use in the respective countries , so it's kinda also the opposite of your plan...however and
c) i was for about 15 years a sort of agony aunt in cookery stuff for expats coming to CH...so i possess a quite good knowledge ...if you need some help......shoot me a PM
Cheers and i wish you all the success upon your enterprise
It maybe worth your time to have a look at a copy of this one so see how yours could improve upon the theme or be radically different so to possible improve your chances of more sales?
Worth trying anyway, there seems to be a,if small, market for such books, esp if a quick search of lulu.com is anything to go by
Anyway, the plan wasn't for it to be a physical book that we sell or otherwise make money on. We're hoping more for the "blog/website" model, with users contributing information and recipes. Making money on it would not be discouraged, but there's no intention of that at present.
I may dig me in a hole, but on the other hand I am a knows-everything-man. If one really, really needs Crisco one has to look for it in stores that cater for a certain part of the male community. I mean the one were the females are welcome in the kitchen but not in the bedroom.
I have an excellent non- orange, powderless, one pot Mac & Cheese recipe that's just as good (if not better!) than Kraft or Velveeta. It free's up precious suitcase space for more brown sugar & chocolate chips.