{"id":537,"date":"2026-06-11T20:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T20:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=537"},"modified":"2026-06-11T20:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T20:12:08","slug":"my-half-baked-attempt-to-cook-through-the-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=537","title":{"rendered":"My Half-Baked Attempt to Cook Through the World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<div><ul><li><span>Share on Facebook<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Share on Twitter<\/span><\/li><li><i><?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n<svg>\n<\/svg><\/i><span>Share on Bluesky<\/span><\/li><li><span>Email<\/span><\/li><li><span>Comments<\/span><\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n<div>\n<p><span>I can\u2019t really say <\/span>why I decided to cook, or otherwise procure, a dish representing every nation at the World Cup, except that I thought it might be kind of fun, and it seemed like the least I could do. If you have a family, or a roommate, or even a cat, and are planning to spend a significant percentage of your summer on the couch, watching the most important of the least important things, you ought to find some way to pull your weight around the house\u2014or at least, to say in advance that you\u2019re sorry.\u00a0<\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=535\">FIFA Peace Prize Recipient Vows to Hit Iran \u2018VERY HARD\u2019 on First Night of World Cup<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It <em>was<\/em> a good idea, though. Anda doable one: I live in New York, a city where I can obtain just about any ingredient I could possibly need for any kind of cuisine (along with, for some reason, the worst onions you\u2019ve ever imagined). And where, failing that, I can simply ride a few subway stops and procure a critically acclaimed meal representing first-time qualifiers Uzbekistan. Given enough time, I could have knocked this quest off slowly and gracefully.<\/p>\n<p>So that was my first mistake. I neglected to plan for the fact that this men\u2019s World Cup has\u2014for the purposes of squeezing more money out of more people over more games\u201416 more countries than the last one did. That might have prompted a reconsideration of my mission, but it\u2019s hard to walk away once you\u2019ve announced your plan. People will just keep <em>asking<\/em> about it, and it becomes increasingly painful to force a smile and say \u201cnope, still working on Curacao.\u201d The burden of expectations, the sense of disappointment\u2026You start to understand, in some small way, what it feels like to play for England.<\/p>\n<p>But I did it, starting in early March and finishing with one week to spare before Mexico kicks off against South Africa. Even with breaks for work trips, family visits, and emergency mac and cheese\u2014or maybe <em>because<\/em> so much else kept getting in the way\u2014the three-month odyssey was ultimately more of a burden than a heroic gesture. There were some bangers along the way: the aforementioned Uzbek; a Cape Verdean dish by way of Rhode Island; a West African meal my 3-year-old, somewhat problematically, began referring to as \u201cdad\u2019s chicken.\u201d Spend enough time poking around for recipes\u2014and even more time looking for ones that are vegetable-forward, or are not yet another national version of stewed chicken\u2014and you start to learn a thing or two about tradition, migration, and common bonds. Maybe <em>that<\/em> was the point.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So here\u2019s how I made it to 48, by eating, more or less in order, through the 12 groups of four teams who will meet in the tournament\u2019s opening rounds. I want to be clear: I was not attempting to create everyone\u2019s national dish. I did not approach this with academic rigor. I took shortcuts. I made liberal substitutions. I used random blogs and Reddit and, in one instance, TikTok. I am not trying to start anything or offend anyone; I was just a soccer fan trying to make dinner.<\/p>\n<h3>Group A<\/h3>\n<p>I started inauspiciously with a Cape Malay curry from <strong>South Africa<\/strong>. The dish was brought to the area by Malaysians who were enslaved by the Dutch East India Company. My recipe came from <em>The Today Show<\/em> and called for <em>3 tablespoons<\/em> of turmeric, which I should have immediately clocked as an editing error but\u2014in the spirit of cultural exploration\u2014dutifully followed anyway and paid a price. For <strong>South Korea<\/strong> I made kalbijim, from Eric Kim\u2019s excellent <em>Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home<\/em>, and won back a little credibility in my household; you, or at least I, simply cannot mess up braised short ribs and beef-fat croutons. <strong>Mexico<\/strong>was ably represented by a large order from Tacos El Bronco, and <strong>Czechia <\/strong>by a 1997 red-cabbage-and-apple salad recipe from the <em>New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n\n<html><\/html>\n<h3>Group B<\/h3>\n<p>I split a big thing of fondue for <strong>Switzerland <\/strong>and wondered why I don\u2019t eat fondue more often. Then I thought about what I had just done. The national dish of <strong>Qatar<\/strong>, and several other nearby states, is machboos\u2014meat (in my case chicken) cooked with rice seasoned by an eponymous spice blend. I pulled it from an official government-sponsored cultural program\u2019s website and it was pretty good. But what you come to realize in an eating project like this is that everyone has a national stewed chicken dish and if you aren\u2019t being careful you could make nothing but stewed chicken for a month. For <strong>Canada<\/strong>, I made a <em>New York Times<\/em> recipe for coconut kale from a restaurant in Vancouver, and paired it with some maple-glazed salmon. <strong>Bosnia and Herzegovina<\/strong> knocked out Italy in the playoffs with a penalty from a guy who was born in Appleton, Wisconsin. I\u2019m just sharing that so you know. I picked up three huge slices of meat, cheese, and spinach burek from a shop in south Brooklyn, and it kicked ass.<\/p>\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n\n<html><\/html>\n<h3>Group C<\/h3>\n<p>We used to have a children\u2019s book by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt in which one of the characters refers to herself as \u201ca tagine machine.\u201d It\u2019s stuck with me, long after all the pages were torn out\u2014so I made a chicken tagine for 2022 semi-finalists <strong>Morocco<\/strong> and a green-pepper salad with preserved lemon to go with. It was probably <em>too<\/em> much preserved lemon for one meal, but both were nice on their own. <strong>Haiti<\/strong>, back for the first time since 1974, is one of the great stories of this World Cup, and the poul ak nwa I made (another stew-adjacent chicken dish, with cashews) was a worthy entry, for the first several days I ate it. <strong>Scotland<\/strong> showed out with rumbledethumps, which, even if you\u2019ve never heard of it before, I feel like you intuitively know is a dish of cabbage, potatoes, and cheese. For <strong>Brazil<\/strong>, I baked p\u00e3o de queijo, little balls of cheesy tapioca bread. They make incredible sliders.<\/p>\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n\n<html><\/html>\n<h3><strong>Group D <\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>One of the few major upsides of the Global War on Terror is that New York has a lot of people from <strong>Australia<\/strong>, which enabled me to get really tremendous sausage rolls from the NoMad outpost of Bourke Street Bakery in April. On balance, you would not say it was all worth it, but I would eat these every day. I should have just made chipa for <strong>Paraguay<\/strong>, but that felt too similar to the p\u00e3o de queijo I\u2019d just made, so I made chipa guazu instead\u2014a sort of cheese-and-corn souffle (at least that\u2019s how it turned out) that I take full responsibility for. At this point, a month into the project, I was starting to hear rumblings from the loved-ones I was feeding that more vegetables would be in order. Googling \u201c<strong>Turkey<\/strong>\u201d and \u201cvegetable dish,\u201d I found karnabahar mucveri, a baked cauliflower recipe from Ozlem Warren. The <strong>United States <\/strong>is also in this group; I got Tacos El Bronco again.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Group E<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>I had never had d\u00f6ner kebab before, but our entry for <strong>Germany<\/strong> immediately slotted itself into the family sandwich rotation. I\u2019ll admit to not having put too much thought into the choice\u2014we have a local d\u00f6ner kebab shop, it has Berlin in its name, that\u2019s good enough for me\u2014but the kebab has become a symbol among members of JD Vance\u2019s beloved German far-white for the kinds of people they don\u2019t like. One of my rules for normal living is to live your life without being triggered by a sandwich. Less controversially, I made keshi yena\u2014ground meat baked in gouda\u2014for World Cup debutantes <strong>Cura\u00e7ao<\/strong>, using a recipe from Oprah.com. It\u2019s a little bit of Holland, a little bit Caribbean, but where it really shined for me was as leftovers, where you could easily repurpose the filling for chopped cheese. For <strong>Ecuador<\/strong>, who I rate as dark horses this year, I made llapingachos\u2014potato patties with a bit of achiote\u2014and a nice peanut sauce. But the real winner here might have been <strong>C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire <\/strong>and its maafe, a stew with chicken and ground nuts that\u2019s popular across West Africa. It was a standout in the highly competitive braised poultry category; naturally, I left it on the stovetop overnight and had to toss the rest.<\/p>\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n\n<html><\/html>\n<h3><strong>Group F<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Many of the <strong>Netherlands<\/strong>\u2019 greatest players have roots in Suriname, which in turn has deep ties to Java, so I made goedangan, a cabbage salad with coconut dressing. <strong>Japan\u2019s<\/strong> oyakodon, another saucy chicken dish, did a job when it needed to. My wife chipped in (or intervened) to make shakshuka for <strong>Tunisia<\/strong>; whenever I have shakshuka, I think: \u201cI should have shakshuka more often.\u201d And then there was <strong>Sweden<\/strong>. As a gift this year, I got a copy of <em>The Nordic Cookbook<\/em>, an absolute doorstop of a treatise by Magnus Nilsson that includes recipes for pilot whale and fermented Greenland shark (definitely read the instructions closely for that one). I opted for the book\u2019s more straightforward weeknight dish of nikkaluokta soppa, a.k.a. cabbage and ground beef soup. Perfect January fare, but I made it in May.<\/p>\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n\n<html><\/html>\n<h3><strong>Group G<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>They <em>do<\/em> eat Brussels sprouts in Brussels, it turns out. In search of roughage, I opted for \u201cFlemish-style\u201d sprouts, sauteed in lots of butter. I don\u2019t like these as much as I like <strong>Belgium\u2019s<\/strong> Tintin jerseys, but they\u2019ll do right by you. For <strong>Egypt<\/strong>, I made dukkah, a nuts-and-spices mixture with various interpretations. Mine came from Claudia Roden\u2019s <em>The New Book of Middle Eastern Food: The Classic Cookbook, Expanded and Updated, with New Recipes and Contemporary Variations on Old Themes<\/em>\u2014an essential volume for Roden heads.<strong><\/strong>I was unduly confident about making Samin Nosrat\u2019s kuku sabzi for <strong>Iran <\/strong>because the process is similar to that of tortilla espa\u00f1ola. But there\u2019s always a moment of hesitation, when you\u2019re preparing to flip the puck, when you can envision the whole thing going horribly wrong, eggs and herbs ending up everywhere, a deep clean-up job, tears, apologies, a hasty search for delivery options. It turned out quite nicely, though. We spent a long time talking about making pavlova,because there was a recipe for it in the Bluey cookbook, and further research confirmed that it\u2019s also eaten in <strong>New Zealand<\/strong>, but by this point, I was starting to grow wary of ambitious projects, and picked up fish and chips.<\/p>\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n\n<html><\/html>\n<h3><strong>Group H<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><strong>Uruguay<\/strong> has one food everyone talks about and it\u2019s a sandwich called a chivito. I used to get it at a gas station in DC, but you can just make them. And then keep making them, for several days, because assembling the ingredients for even one means you end up with a ton of sliced steak, ham, bacon, and mozzarella. Most of what I know about <strong>Cape Verde<\/strong> is that there are lots of Cape Verdeans in southern New England, and lo if you search for the national dish\u2014a hearty stew called cachupa\u2014one of the first recipes comes from the University of Rhode Island. About 10,000 fans showed up to watch the national team play in Hartford in June and I think I made enough for all of them. <strong>Saudi Arabia <\/strong>was ably represented by chicken shawarma. For <strong>Spain<\/strong>,I made a tortilla espa\u00f1ola. (See above.) Versatile, filling, does what it says on the tin.\u00a0<\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=532\">We Need to Talk About Black Women and Uterine Cancer<\/a><\/p>\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n\n<html><\/html>\n<h3><strong>Group I<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>If I had to put money on anyone to win this year\u2014and I don\u2019t, and won\u2019t\u2014I guess it would be <strong>France<\/strong>. And if I could only have one sandwich for the rest of my life\u2026I\u2019m not <em>sure<\/em> it would be a jambon-beurre, but I\u2019d be hard-pressed to improve on it. Hot dogs in <strong>Norway <\/strong>are often wrapped in a potato flatbread called lefse, but I put them in flour tortillas and topped mine with potato salad, fried onions, and\u2014in lieu of lingonberries\u2014a black cherry jam. <strong>Senegal <\/strong>came through with coconut collard greens and butternut squash from Pierre Thiam\u2019s <em>Simply West African<\/em> cookbook. FIFA may have expanded the tournament to make money, but <strong>Iraq\u2019s<\/strong> participation, for the first time since 1986, does feel like one small point in favor of a 48-team tournament. I picked up some lahm bi ajeen\u2014spiced meat and yogurt served on a doughy disc. It came in a pizza box. It\u2019s always nice when something that isn\u2019t pizza comes in a pizza box.<\/p>\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n\n<html><\/html>\n<h3><strong>Group J<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>I made choripan for defending world champions <strong>Argentina<\/strong>. It\u2019s a portmanteau of chorizo and pan. I don\u2019t want to insult anyone by saying it \u201creminds me of what you get outside of Fenway,\u201d because it\u2019s very different\u2014chimichurri, salsa criolla, etc.\u2014but still: grilled sausage with peppers and onion in any variety will transport you to the sporting cathedral of your homeland. It just feels right. We needed vegetables again, so for <strong>Jordan<\/strong>, making its World Cup debut, I got fattoush from a Palestinian spot in my neighborhood, and for <strong>Algeria <\/strong>I made a nice cucumber salad with green bell peppers and mint. <strong>Austria<\/strong> was one of the stars of this gustatorycompetition, for the simple reason that we went to a restaurant called Werkstatt (fun to say) and got some schnitzel (also fun to say!) and r\u00f6sti and a giant pretzel with an anchovy-infused cheese sauce. Very nice.<\/p>\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n\n<html><\/html>\n<h3><strong>Group K<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>If the World Cup hadn\u2019t expanded to 48 teams, I\u2019d already have beendone. But it did expand, and I was running out of time. So by this point in late May, I was cooking a lot less and getting a lot more takeout. Arguably this entire project was just a ploy to get food for <strong>Uzbekistan<\/strong> from Laghman Express, a Central Asian restaurant in south Brooklyn that also has a location in Atlanta. I have already made plans to get it again on Christmas. I picked up egg tarts for <strong>Portugal<\/strong> from a place in Brooklyn\u2019s Chinatown, and they tasted like a sweet, eggy cloud. For <strong>Colombia<\/strong> I sourced an order of bandeja paisa\u2014a platter with steak, chicharron, rice, and egg\u2014and some papas criollas. The last time <strong>Democratic Republic of Congo<\/strong> was in the World Cup it was still called Zaire. I made poulet mayo, which is chicken cooked with mayonnaise, spices, peppers, and onions. It hit the spot.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Group L<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>I\u2019ve always wanted to open a restaurant that only serves canap\u00e9s, sort of like a Golden Corral for things you eat at weddings. We would not serve the exact mini empanadas I made for <strong>Panama<\/strong>, which were pulled from one of the first recipes that showed up when I searched \u201cPanama + empanadas,\u201d and looked vaguely like what a child might come back with if you asked them to draw the moon. But some other version might work. For <strong>Croatia<\/strong> we got burek again from the same place. Burek is shaping up to be a breakoutstar of this year\u2019s World Cup; don\u2019t mess with a good thing. For <strong>England<\/strong>, I got a bag of meat pies and pasties from Myers of Keswick in Greenwich Village. Is it coming home? Talk to me in July. But I\u2019m definitely getting these again. For <strong>Ghana<\/strong>, I made kelewele\u2014a dish of roasted plantains with an absolutely tremendous citrus, miso, and peanut butter marinade, topped with fried shallots for good measure. It was the last thing I made, with one day to spare before a family road trip that would take us out of pocket and away from our kitchen until the opening match. It might also have been the best.<\/p>\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n\n<html><\/html>\n<\/div>\n<footer>\n<section><h3>Take the next step: Help us fight for the truth.<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Investigative journalism, like the story you just read, takes time to do.<\/strong> Months of research. Weeks of writing, editing, and fact checking\u2014and putting together the photography, art, video, and audio that tell the stories in a new way, illuminating new perspectives and voices.<\/p>\n<p><strong>We can afford to take that time because we don\u2019t report to an oligarch or corporation with a special agenda.<\/strong> We report to you, and for you. 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Weeks of writing, editing, and fact checking\u2014and putting together the photography, art, video, and audio that tell the stories in a new way, illuminating new perspectives and voices<\/p>\n<p><strong>We can afford to take that time because we don\u2019t report to an oligarch or corporation with a special agenda.<\/strong> We report to you, and for you. That\u2019s why we unabashedly pursue the truth and relentlessly shine a light into the darkness.<\/p>\n<p><strong>In this month\u2019s Summer Membership Drive, we\u2019ve got to raise $200,000 to support more crucial investigations.<\/strong> This is a pivotal moment in our nation, with democracy on the line, and we can only do this work because readers like you step up. <strong>Every donation, of any amount, makes a difference here. 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