This weekend, I was sous-chef for world-class culinary artist Lana Cullison, making dishes for World on the Square in Corydon, Indiana.

One of the dishes was Bobó, a Brazilian stew. Here’s the recipe:

It says:

Yucca root, red palm oil, bell pepper, onion, scallions, red chili paste or paprika, garlic, cilantro, Jalapeño, tomatoes, coconut milk, lime or lemon juice, peanuts, coconut.

But Lana cooks the way I do, only well, so we didn’t use quite that. Since so many people have peanut allergies, we didn’t even have peanuts in the kitchen. We didn’t have any yucca root or red palm oil or scallions or red chili paste or Jalapeño.

Here is what the stew looked like cooking:

There’s chicken and fresh green beans and zucchini, onions, tomatoes (red and yellow). We used garlic, paprika and cilantro. That may have been the one we put the green, red, and orange peppers in, but I wouldn’t swear to it. Coconut milk, but no coconut. We forgot the lemon juice so, after the dish was mixed with rice and garnished, I squeezed two lemons over a strainer and poured the juice over the top and just let it soak in. Here’s what it looked like:

I also helped do an African-based stew. It’s usually made with peanuts or peanut butter but, again, we did NOT use peanuts! We used almond butter and garnished it with almonds. The dishes were labelled with their ingredients, paying especial attention to allergens.

This dish I do not know the name of. Lana said the recipe she had called it Halal, but Halal is a category of foods that are clean according to Sharia, so I don’t know what this dish is. It was seasoned with turmeric and fenugreek and crushed coriander, and it was DIVINE! The eggplant was soaked overnight in salt water, then drained and squeezed, seasoned with onion, garlic, salt and oregano and braised. SO good!

All these dishes, with the chicken left out, would be heavenly vegan dishes!

I’m posting today at Fatal Foodies about what I got at the end of my cooking adventure. (Not a cut finger, like last year!)

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character cooks for a crowd.

MA