Someone asked me the other day how long we had been doing the Olympic Cooking thing. We started in 2008 and did crafts and other educational things in addition to cooking. As the kids grew, time to do anything other than cooking got away from us and we transitioned to mostly culinary adventures. At the end of the 2022 Winter Olympics, we have sampled the cuisine of 60 different countries over 94 meals (obviously we have repeated some countries, but not recipes) with adaptations made for dairy-sensitivity for several years and through the struggle of an eating disorder. We have learned more about what flavors we like and what we don't. It’s a load of planning, researching recipes, shopping, plus the time of cooking. Every country we do is/was a participant of the Olympiad when we cooked it. You can search for the labels Olympics and cooking in the sidebar to go to any of the pages. Curious about which countries we have explored, you can check out the google map (layered with each Olympic games as a different color) by clicking below.

Through it all, I still do not like to cook, but I am grateful for my family who taste it all and help me, even when things don't come out as they should. I'm a little sad because this may well be the last Olympic Cooking adventure, since my oldest two will be in college during the next games and my pickiest eater will be the only one still home.


It's our final 2022 Olympic cooking day!! Phew. We made it all 17 days. Thanks for joining in our adventures.

Today’s country was Serbia. I made Prebranac and Vanilice cookies.


Prebranac is basically Serbian baked beans and I was a bit disappointed with the flavor and texture. I soaked the beans overnight, boiled them for an hour, and then baked them for 45 minutes, as instructed, but they turned out somewhat crunchy. I think they probably baked too long. Flavor wise, I thought they would have more spice to them, but really they just tasted like beans. No real burst of flavor or spice to speak of. None of us were impressed.



The Vanilice are similar to the Austrian Linzer cookies. The cookies themselves aren’t as sweet and we filled these with apricot preserves (and a few with raspberry jam). The recipe I used was found on the Serbian tourism site, but when I clicked the link contained in the recipe, it took me to a very different recipe for Vanilice… hmm. Well, I followed the original one I found since that’s what I had shopped for. I halved the recipe and we still had a huge amount of cookies. I also made homemade vanilla sugar since I couldn’t find any in the stores and it is pretty easy. These were tasty. Not as sweet as the Linzer cookies, but just as good. It was hard to get them coated in vanilla sugar after they were cooked, whereas the linzer cookies baked with the almond sugar on them. Prebranac Recipe -> https://www.worldfoodstory.co.uk/recipe/prebranac-serbian-baked-beans Vanilice Recipe -> https://www.serbia.com/10-serbian-recipes-everybody-know/ Then scroll down to #6 about halfway.

We made Chakchak (pronounced shek-shek), a popular honey cake from Kazahkstan. This took a while to make, but I had high hopes after reading some comments that likened chakchak to Rice Krispie treats. I will admit I was disappointed in these. Now, I know we made these a day in advance, but the honey didn’t set, even when they were refrigerated overnight as the recipe suggested. They just have a sort of stale taste. No one hated them, but no one particularly liked them either. Can’t win them all!




Recipe here -> https://petersfoodadventures.com/chak-chak/
Originally we were going to make the Danish Braid tonight so it would be ready for breakfast tomorrow, but it smelled so good, we decided to have some tonight and then again tomorrow for breakfast! We will have our dessert we made for today tomorrow instead.


These were fun to make, but the recipe was very confusing when we got to the step on how to make the braid. We attempted one following the directions. Then we googled how other pastry chefs do it and made two that way. Then K decided she wanted to try something slightly different than the original recipe, but still a regular braid. So we have quite a variety of styles. Can you tell which is which?!



If you make this, I would suggest watching Anna Olson's demo on YouTube, starting at about 1:50 before you try executing the braid portion.
This was very similar to the Poteca Nut Roll we made earlier, but the Danish Braid was sweeter and easier to make. The dough was nice and flaky and the filling was nice and sweet. We all enjoyed this! Also, if you are keeping score, we have now used more than 10 lbs of flour during the last 15 days.  

Recipe here -> https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/flaky-danish-braids/ 

Olympic cooking was Norway - Kjøttkaker med brunsaus (Norwegian meatballs in brown sauce) served with boiled potatoes, peas and carrots.

I picked Norway as one of our places to cook from because my hubby is 16% Norwegian, so how could I pass it up?


Served as shown, this was delicious and had great flavor. Eaten without gravy, Ebabe said the meat was mostly flavorless. The gravy reminded me of the sauce we make when we have stroganoff, but without the mushrooms. Oh, we did not use the gjtost (brown goat cheese) that was optional, mostly because I inadvertently left it off my shopping list. Recipe here ->
https://food52.com/recipes/6239-mom-s-norwegian-meatballs-with-gravy-kjottkaker-med-brunsaus

Another day of Olympic cooking down, just a few more to go. Today we experienced Argentinian Chocotorte.




I had to order Chocolinas from Amazon for this one and had to find dulce de leche at the grocery store.
I will admit I used twice the amount of cookies as the recipe suggested, but I ended up with 8 layers instead of the 4 they suggested as a minimum. I am neither a chocolate fan, a caramel fan, nor a coffee fan, but this wasn’t as bad as I thought.



Larry said it was very rich. K and E both said it reminded them of fudge pop tarts. The Chocolinas absorb the flavors and it's very similar to the texture of a regular cake.


This is a no-bake, easy to make recipe. You can find the recipe here -> https://www.authenticfoodquest.com/chocotorta-recipe-argentina-cake/

Olympic Cooking Day 12 - Trinidad Doubles served with Cucumber and Bandhania Chutney and Mango Colatas.



I specifically planned Trinidad’s meal for today because K had her World Music concert tonight and played double steel pans.



This was good. The bread was delicious and the channa was tasty without too much spice and quite filling. It's also vegetarian, so we will be making this again when our vegetarian is home from college. Even the picky eater said she liked this, although she said she wouldn’t pick it over Mac & cheese.
This did take a bit of prep work, but if you plan ahead, it was easy to put together, although I could not fry the dough in a ball shape to save my life. For the mango colata, I used coconut milk, frozen mango, and pineapple juice. No recipe, just blended it together for a fresh flavor. Trinidad Doubles recipe here -> https://cookingwithria.com/2018/12/how-to-make-trinidad-doubles-detailed-recipe-instructions.html

For Olympic Cooking today we enjoyed Austrian Raspberry Linzer Kekse.

YUM! These reminded me a bit of Jammie Dodgers, but sweeter. Chip said they tasted like pop tarts with all the "glittery sparkles" on them. These were pretty easy to make, though a bit time consuming because the recipe makes so many I had to bake them in batches. I would definitely make these again, maybe for a holiday or special occasion. They fit well with the Valentine's Day theme!




Recipe here -> https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/raspberry-linzer-cookies

Macedonian Kebapi with yoghurt sauce and Shopska salad for dinner today. Pretty easy and not hard to make, it just has to marinate for a while before you cook it.


Chip loved the seasoning of the meat and thought it was a similar in taste to a Brat. It was full of flavor and a bit spicy for my taste, but with the dipping sauce, it was just about perfect. Even Ebabe didn’t hate it, although she didn’t know it had lamb in it...


The salad was good. Bug said it needed a little more something, but she couldn’t place what. I didn’t find it lacking at all.

Shopska Recipe -> https://diethood.com/shopska-salad-macedonian-chopped-salad/ 

Today we made a Croatian Poteca (po-teet-sa) Nut Roll. This is traditionally a special occasion dessert or breakfast, rather like a coffee cake.


This recipe seemed to make a very large portion.

You roll out the dough into a 20x30" rectangle!

If I made this again, I will half the dough and make two smaller rolls. The center of the dough was not fully cooked, I believe because of its size. 🙁

The filling is quite tasty and as a whole, I felt this was very sweet and rich in flavors. Chip thought it was okay but a little on the bitter side.