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Italian food is probably one of the most renowned cuisines in the world, so I wanted to give it a shot (plus, I do have some ancestry there so it also sticks to the heritage trend).

The Platter

The platter acted as the first course of the meal, almost resembling a deconstructed pizza. it was composed of cold cuts, fresh focaccia bread, cheese and some tomato sauce. The only real "cooking" I did here was with the focaccia and sauce. Both were very straightforward, the bread didn't need to be kneaded, and the sauce was very easy to throw together. A platter like this is usually the first course of an Italian meal

Chicken cotoletta.

This was the main course. Chicken cotoletta quite a typical Italian dish, with every family having their own twist to it. however, at its core, it's just chicken fried in breadcrumbs and some herbs. It was obviously really delicious. To make it, I butterflied the chicken breast and soaked the chicken in buttermilk to tenderise it. then I coated it in panko breadcrumbs (mixed with some Italian herbs) and fried it until golden brown. On the side, I had a little more focaccia, some grilled bell peppers and some pasta.

I also made the pasta from scratch, and it was the toughest component of this meal. Making the dough was easy enough, but kneading it and rolling it out was torture! my wrists were are still sore thinking of it! To make matters worse, as I made the rolled out pasta into "nests" so they could dry, they ended up clumping together because I forgot to add flour. But besides that, it was pretty delicious. The sauce was the same sauce from the platter since I wanted the chicken to be the main focus.

Grilling the bell peppers literally just involved cutting them, tossing them with salt and olive oil, and baking them for 10-15 minutes (with some cloves of garlic), until slightly charred. They were soft, sweet and incredible.

Amalfi lemon cake

Truth be told, one cant do justice to all of the Indian cuisines through one three-course meal. There's an incredible amount of variety and flavours within mere states! Knowing this, I chose to focus on Goan cuisine. I picked this because my family is actually of Goan origin. I recognise my hypocrisy here, having said in my last post that I wanted to expand my culinary horizons, but truth be told I know little of Goan cuisine, and it made sense to me to start with my own heritage. Goa is a small state along the west coast of India. It was a Portuguese colony from the 1600s to the mid-1900s. A lot of Goan cuisines takes inspiration from Portuguese dishes, but they still usually add their own Indian twist to it.

Cutlets (on the upper right of the plate)

Cutlets are, in a sense, Goan chicken nuggets. They are made of minced meat, some vinegar, salt and some vegetables (my family uses onion, chilli, tomato and coriander, but it can vary from household to household). this mix is then rolled into sausages, coated in breadcrumbs and fried. It's a very popular household snack since it's so easy to make. Cutlets are a very good finger food for little children too. I usually eat mine with ketchup, but it's very versatile and can be eaten with most sauces.

Chicken Cafreal (on the lower portion of the plate)

Cafreal was introduced to the Goans by the Portuguese. It's basically just spicy chicken and can be eaten with potato wedges, bread (such as the Goan bread poi), and rive. It was probably the easiest to make since I could just use the premade masala mix (you can make it from scratch, but I didn't have some of the ingredients). I just had to mix it, let it marinate, and then bake it for half an hour or so. To make it from scratch, you'd need ginger, garlic, vinegar, coriander, lime juice and a few other ingredients, so it's still very straightforward. It's very, very rich in flavour and definitely one of the most iconic Goan dishes.

Serradura (also called Portuguese sawdust pudding)