Country 16: Belarus

I have definitely had some highs and some lows in this project.

(Some of) the highs so far:
  • Bahamas macaroni cheese
  • Antigua, as a complete meal
  • Barbados, also as a complete meal
  • Albanian soda bread
And the lows:
  • Andorra, in general
  • Armenian spas
  • Belarus, in general
OH you say, WE HAVEN'T SEEN BELARUS YET. 
That would be right. Belarus was yesterday's meal. And it was... Fine. Not my best work. By no means was it my worst work (that would definitely be the Armenian spas, above). But I didn't really feel like there was anything particularly special about the Belarusian meal. 


The thing about the cuisine of Belarus is that it typically consists of meat, and potatoes. And when you're trying to create a project of cooking around the world that doesn't feature meat, and you get to Belarus, you're pretty much faced with one thing: potatoes. Potatoes were introduced to Belarusian cuisine in the 18th century and quickly became used to form the basis of many dishes.

That's not fair, actually. Of course there are plenty of other non-meat dishes that are available in Belarus that isn't just potatoes. The official website for Belarus was really helpful in teaching me about Belaruisan cuisine and showing me what else there is to select, but when it came to finding recipes for these particular dishes, Google let me down. There just doesn't seem to be a trend to post Belarusian recipes online, which made my search for dishes even more complicated.

I do love potatoes. By far they are my favourite carbohydrate. There are just so many things that you can make out of them, they're so versatile! And delicious! So while I wasn't put off by the idea of having a meal almost entirely made out of potatoes, I do wish that there was something else that I could have tried.

On the menu today we have:

  • Draniki - Belarus' national dish, potato pancakes

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