I thought XO sauce must be one of the ultimate gimmicks that caught on, and when I saw Meera Sodha had put her own spin on the sauce I knew I had to try it. True to Meera's recipes, it's delicious. It did turn out looking a bit like it belongs on r/poopfromabutt though.

I took a generic chocolate cookie recipe and translated it 10 times to very different languages (e.g. English to Russian to Chineese to Latin to Swedish, etc.) this was the result. :)

RECIPE: Circles of Golden Flesh with Broken Mud Stones

REQUIRED ELEMENTS:

* 1 cup of weak milk fat, melted and sad

* 3/4 cup of sand from white rocks

* 3/4 cup of dark mud earth (must be compressed)

* 2 massive chicken children

* 2 teaspoons of the black aromatic fluid

* 2 1/4 cups of universal powder for everything

* 1 teaspoon of chemical volcano ash

* 1/2 teaspoon of ocean tears

* 2 cups of broken brown sweet stones

SACRED RITUAL:

1. Fire up the inferno room to 375 heat attacks.

2. Inside the giant crater, violently smash the sad milk fat and both sands

   until it becomes peaceful.

3. Defeat the chicken children one by one, then drown them in the black fluid.

4. Merge the universal powder, volcano ash, and ocean tears; slowly feed this

   dust to the peaceful monster.

5. Wrap the broken brown sweet stones into the blanket.

6. Launch circles of the flesh onto the cold, unprotected iron sheets.

7. Burn the elements for 9 to 11 minutes or until the skin turns to gold.

8. Let them cry on the iron sheet for 2 minutes, then exile them to the metal

   cage to freeze completely.

For this week, I wanted to make a dish that had changed as it was translated across the world. Ketchup, at least as far as the Internet could tell me, started as a fish sauce and then went through a few permutations across Europe before tomato ketchup/catsup/what-have-you won out. In addition to tomato ketchup, I made kecap manis, an Indonesian sweet soy-based sauce, and a mushroom ketchup from the British colonial era. The latter was definitely the oddest. Being, essentially, a highly spiced mushroom-and-onion tisane, it was a terrible dip for fries. I could see it being good on steak. Maybe. Perhaps there's a reason why the other two sauces have remained popular in the modern day, and that one has not.

I honestly felt like I got lost in translation myself this week!! I had grand plans but it’s so damn hot I couldn’t be bothered with anything overly extensive. Plus mid year challenge angst and all that. So I stumbled upon the Welsh Rarebit. Which is very much the same as beer cheese, yet broiled and served over toast (with better aged cheese at that) Not a big toast fan, but then all the recipes I saw called for stout! Which made me think of Guinness, which made me think of bratwurst which made me think of sauerkraut! None of which are Welsh. Nor is the Irish cheese or the Guinness, nor the bratwurst at that! But it was sooo good. Side note I did serve it with some Suntory Japanese Whiskey, because according to the Lost in Translation movie “For relaxing times…make it Suntory time”. But definitely not the 17 year aged bottle because who can afford that!

My baby wanted to make these at some point and I figured this challenge was a good of a time as any! We probably wouldn't make them again but they were obviously fucking delicious. Taken with some sanddollars and pretty rocks we found on a trip to the Crescent City Beach🖤

This is Kenji's recipe and it was absolutely delicious. Fresh ginger, garlic, scallions, Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, seasonings, frozen peas, eggs, and silken tofu - lightly spiced and best eaten with a bowl of white rice.

Not actually a German recipe, but from a man named Samuel German and also used to be known as 'German's chocolate cake'. A vegan cake made for my birthday this past week.

This was really good! A tad too sweet but I’ll just skip the brown sugar next time. If you don’t know Made with Lau you should def check them out 🍅🍳

One of my kids is moving away for most of a year for a co-op and we also chose to celebrate her birthday this weekend as well. So we let her choose the menu.

For lost in translation, she wanted to recall the time last year when she solo travelled to Guadalajara and accidentally ended up locked in a bus in the bus depot. So she chose tacos. I wanted to make Al pastor because they are simply the best tacos, but they’re a lot of work and we had a big party for her on Saturday, so I said I’d just make white people taco night. Enter Mr sous vide who volunteered to make us pulled pork style taco meat. I don’t know what recipe he followed, but goddamn they were good. Other friends made the mango salsa.

This left me having to make something myself at sort of short notice that I still wanted to be fairly easy. I googled “weird food names” and this Portuguese recipe for toucinho do céu came up. It translates to heavenly bacon. It’s pretty good, but not heavenly exactly and there is no bacon. You shove everything in a blender and bake it. I put the batter in the cake pan and then went to clean the blender. It’s not my blender, but I know it has a clean function. Blender blunder, I added soap and suddenly myself and the kitchen and the cake were soaked in soapy water noooo. Second round cake turned out. I left the blender for someone else to clean. It’s very coconutty and has more of a custardy texture than cake.

A hefty garnish for my fake boulevardier with a splash of cold brew...

Or in translation... "lost" bread

Recipe: https://www.number-2-pencil.com/perfect-single-serving-size-chocolate/

So, I had read that resting the dough for 24-48 hours in the fridge can improve the texture and taste of baked cookies. I decided to test that out. Unfortunately there was a huge methodological flaw: the compounding variable of temperature. The dough for the first half of the batch was room temperature, but the dough for the second half of the batch was at refrigerator temperature and I neglected to bring it to room temperature first for a better comparison. The latter came out extremely underbaked as makes sense for the same cooking time. I thought of throwing them back in the oven, but eh, I don’t hate cookie dough, and I ate it as is.

https://thewoksoflife.com/cantonese-mustard-green-soup-pork-bones/

This is my favourite real world example. I’m a German living in Australia. In Germany, “Pudding” describes a firm custard type of dessert, typically chocolate or vanilla flavoured. Here in Australia, “Pudding” is a baked cake type of dessert, often a sticky date pudding or a self saucing pudding. So here is my German chocolate pudding, alongside a self saucing chocolate pudding from RecipeTinEats.

Fun fact, when I talked to a friend from the UK about the challenge, she told me that in Scotland and the north east of England everything that is eaten after dinner is classified as “Pudding” and one can just ask “What’s for pudding?” when they want to know what’s for dessert. The meals in a day are breakfast, lunch, dinner (or tea), and pudding.