Draniki: Belarusian Sausage Stuffed Potato Pancakes

Draniki: Belarusian Sausage Stuffed Potato Pancakes

Alas, not all culinary tales can be a happy one, as is the case in the trajectory of Belarusian cuisine. For a cuisine seemingly so magnificent until as recently as last century, it can only leave you wondering what could have (and should have) been. Thankfully for dishes like draniki, we have windows into the cuisine’s … Read more

Laap Muu: Lao Shredded Pork Salad

Laap Muu minced pork with charred eggplant, shallot and garlic

On this pursuit to “cook around the world,” we’ve come into our fair share of fairly confounding ingredients. With a mysterious ingredient called padek, the recipe for a true Laotian laap muu proved to be no exception. Padek? What could padek possibly be?? We eventually found the answer (as you’ll see here), but along the way we … Read more

Griot: Haitian Broiled Pork Loin

Griot: Haitian Broiled Pork Loin

Griot Haitian food was an exploration that we were really, really looking forward to. We’d had some background into Haitian foods (and how distinctly different it is from other Caribbean cuisines), so we already had a pretty strong inkling that this griot would end up a pretty magical recipe. Even then, we still completely underestimated … Read more

Scotch Eggs: English Meat Encased Hard Boiled Egg

Scotch Eggs: English Meat Encased Hard Boiled Egg

When we test recipes here at Arousing Appetites, we don’t keep all the food just to ourselves to eat. No, we actually have a small “audience” that helps us taste every recipe and provides us with invaluable feedback on their preferences of the dish. Somewhat surprisingly, certain members of this group got especially excited for Scotch … Read more

Toltott Kaposzta: Hungarian Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

Toltott Kaposzta: Hungarian Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

It’s always fun for us to dive head first into a cuisine that we previously knew very little about. Besides the expected gratuitous amounts of paprika, we weren’t all too sure what else might come out of Hungarian recipes. What we learned, though, is that Hungary has been for centuries a melting pot of culinary influences… almost … Read more