East Timor In the Trash

I struggled for days to find a great recipe native to East Timor.  I finally decided that this was my opportunity for some creative license.  Unfortunately it turned out to be a mistake.   Here's the story of my first major failure...

I read several articles about the cuisine of East Timor, and different traditional dishes. I read all about how in poor areas they actually make a meal out of tree bark.  Dog is also a commonly consumed protein.  I was beginning to understand why a recipe was so hard to come by...

I finally read about a dish of fish coated in spices and steamed in banana leaves.  This was it!

I made a fragrant blend of chili powder, ginger, garlic salt, turmeric and ground cloves; with chili powder being the dominant spice.  I cut slits into the flesh of a nice meaty piece of haddock and placed slices of garlic inside, then coated the fish with my spice concoction.  I had also read that coconut milk was a common ingredient in East Timor cuisine, so I poured a little at the bottom of the foil pocket that would house my haddock for steaming.  It looked very professional, smelled great, and I was quite optimistic.

The fish steamed in the foil pouch for thirty minutes at 400 degrees.  The technique for steaming the fish was great.  The haddock was moist and flaky.  What went wrong was the spices.  First, they did not absorb into the flesh of the fish as I thought they would.  Some of the spices actually still looked dry.  Second, although I only used a half teaspoon of ground cloves (the smallest amount used of any of the spices), that is the ONLY thing you could taste.  It was potent, and in a bad way.  One bite and I told Ted, "Get out the leftovers from the Dominican Republic, this is terrible."  I turned my piece of haddock over and ate the un-spiced underside with a squeeze of lemon.  Ted took a few polite bites and very delicately told me that he could not finish his.   Maybe I would have been better off serving dog and tree bark.

After fifty international dishes, I was really thinking my cooking instincts would kick into high gear and I would be able to create a masterpiece.  Good thing I still have over 140 more recipes to go, because I clearly have some practicing to do!

East Timor scores a 1.0.  Lowest score yet.