With my pupils we have looked at the wiki page about Czech cuisine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_cuisine and also the wiki page about French cuisine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_cuisine
And one of my pupil suggested that: An onion soup with sauteed mushrooms.This recipe would be a mix of the French onion soup and the Czech sauteed mushrooms recipes:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_onion_soup, http://www.food.com/recipe/czech-sauteed-mushrooms-307209
We have already seen the benefits of mushrooms. And onions would be our second superfood : http://jonnybowden.com/onions-a-real-superfood/.
What do you think of that?
The French team
(March 2nd)
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The Czech team's answer:
It is great that you have made the investigation - we really appreciate it. Your idea is good and we can do it. I would just consider the fact that even if ONIOn certainly also is a superfood, it is not on our list. We have made a list of "OUR SUPERFOODS" - see it below. However, you are right that there are not many options for soups based on "OUR" superfoods. We discussed it today at school in our English class, we were considering a cold starter which could be easily made by the students at school and maybe filmed too (you know, we have no cooking classes and training kitchen so cooking a hot meal is a problem). Since two of the studenst from our group are presently working on one more superfood - GOAT CHEESE (we have another reason for that and I will explain it soon), it might be something with GOAT CHEESE or probably something with hard-boiled EGGS or maybe an EGG omelette (but then we would have to do it at home :-( ). It might be a spread with goat cheese ( with ingredients such as YOGURT, a bit of kechup which is from TOMATOES, ...) on a toast decorated with KIWI, .....
LIST OF "OUR" SUPERFOODS:
Apple, Artichoke, Bergamot, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Chickpeas, Crocus, Dark chocolate, Egg, Fig, Fish, Grapes, Goat cheese, Herring, Honey, Iceberg lettuce, Juice, Kiwi, Lemon, Legumes, Mastic, Mushrooms, Nuts, Oranges, Olive oil, Pasta, Pomegranate, Poppy seed, Quince, Raisin, Rice, Sardines, Tomato, Ugli fruit, Vinegar, Walnuts, Xigua, Yogurt, Zucchini.
2/3/2016
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We know that ONIONS are not on the list of our superfoods. We supposed it was not a big issue and that it was good to discover another one!
OK for a cold starter. (Do you know that French people eat cold onion soups in summer with a zest of lemon ? :-) )
Goat cheese is one of our superfoods? Really? In France we eat a lot of different cheeses but I'm not so sure this is good for health! :-)
Of course we can find something with eggs, tomatoes... let's go on searching!
The French team.
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The Czech team's answer:
Today we had an English class again and we discussed the menu and starter.
First of all, you are right that GOAT CHEESE doesn´t appear on the list of superfoods on the Internet, but PASTA is not on them either and we have it on our list. There are lots of studies that show that GOAT MILK and CHEESE is very healthy, healthier than COW MILK and CHEESE. However, we voted today in class and it turned out that 7 out of 15 students hate it so we have decided that it SHOULDN´T be the ingredient of the starter.
We also discussed ONION SOUP and nearly everybody likes it. However, we are not sure that mushrooms fit into it - the students are going to ask their mums at home. So, we can still do the onion soup but maybe add something else, not mushrooms. Could your students discuss it at home with their mums too?
A cold starter is still in question. If we did something e.g. with hard-boiled eggs ( a kind of dressing, decorated with some vegetables and fruits), some Czech students could do it in their art class on their project day (16/3/2016) whilest some other students are creating a 3D goat :-). Why a goat??? We are going to raise money to buy a goat for the poor people in Africa - see "Real gift".
So we need to make the decision - a) onion (or perhaps another) soup OR b) a cold starter.
3/3/2016
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I meant Goat Cheese isn't in OUR superfoods list. But I didn't mind. This was OK with us to cook goat cheese. We love it here in France!
I think sauteed mushrooms would be wonderful on a piece of bread on top of the onion soup! yummy! But I do understand not everybody would like it!
But we can also think of something else!
For example, there's your nádivka dish (which seems to be an Easter dish in Czech Republic and Easter is coming soon!) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4II3uTsGMoU. I suppose that if we want or prefer, we can cook Nadivka without meat too, can't we?
And we could add French sauteed asparagus to eat with it? We have found that following recipe with eggs but of course, we can remove the eggs from the recipe as there are already eggs in the nadivka.
http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/vegetarian-food/sauteed-asparagus-with-eggs-and-parmesan.html
Or we could eat the nadivka with a simple French tomato salad : http://www.veganrecipeclub.org.uk/recipes/french-tomato-salad
What we like is to mix two famous recipes of our both coutries to create one original Czech-French recipe.
What do you think of these suggestions?
One more question : can the nadivka be eaten cold????
The French team ( March 3rd)
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The Czech team's answer:
Dear French team, compliments on how much research you have done and how much interesting information you have found. We don´t have an English class today, so we will discuss it all in our English class on Monday.
By the way, we can see now that we probably misunderstood a bit the task. We thought we are going to suggest a new starter together, something rather unusual and with a few of our superfoods. Now we understand that you are trying to figure out a dish that would combine the French and Czech cuisines. Both is possible of course and it is good that we can see the reasons of a slight misunderstanding.
4/3/2016
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No problem, we'll wait for your answer next Monday! And of course, both is possible, I agree! However, combining both cuisines is more original.
The French team ( 5/3/16)
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The Czech team's answer:
Dear French team,
In our English class today we were working on the topic and ....
We have discussed onion soup with mushrooms with the mums and a local dietitian Marie Korbelová and they all agree that it is not a good match. They all say that the onion soup with cheese is sooooo delicious itself that they wouldn´t add anything there.
On the other hand, "nádivka" sounds pretty good, we can certainly eat it without meat, and even if we eat it always hot or warm here in the Czech Republic, it could be eaten cold too - at least we can try. It is also a great dish to add "new" untraditional ingredients - see our list with highlighted superfoods that could be used in "nádivka" too (of course it doesn´t mean we would use all of them!!!! just a few!!! :-) )
Apple, Artichoke, Bergamot, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Chickpeas, Crocus, Dark chocolate, Egg, Fig, Fish, Grapes, Goat cheese, Herring, Honey, Iceberg lettuce, Juice, Kiwi, Lemon, Legumes, Mastic, Mushrooms, Nuts, Oranges, Olive oil, Pasta, Pomegranate, Poppy seed, Quince, Raisin, Rice, Sardines, Tomato, Ugli fruit, Vinegar, Walnuts, Xigua, Yogurt, Zucchini. .
Then you suggest "asparagus" to eat together with "nádivka" - it is a good match but we ususally can´t get asparagus here we are afraid. In case we are to make it in the end and take photos of it, we can´t do it. However, "tomato salad" is no problem at all and probably it is the best idea.
To sum it up, why don´t we make "nádivka" with a few special ingredients (which ones?) + French tomato salad?
9/3/2016
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Dear our Czech friends,
let's go for this combination!
For the ingredients, we think we should not add
- meat or fish (because we suppose it's going to be a bit too much with the main course)
- tomatoes (because we'll have the French tomato salad to eat with).
- goat cheese (because we would like to add goat cheese in the tomato salad).
- apples and oranges??? ( "seriously?" my pupils say :-))) )
But we are OK with the other ingredients ( cauliflower, chickpeas, legumes, mushrooms, nuts, walnuts, zucchini). Just tell us the ones you prefer. And please, post YOUR recipe so that we can cook it as soon as possible at school.
We have one question : we have seen this picture on the net on a French website : http://www.czechspecials.cz/recipes/velikonocni-nadivka/?lang=fr-FR. Do you confirm it looks like this, that is to say a cake?
As far as the French team is concerned, we will upload OUR recipe of tomato salad with goat cheese as soon as possible too.
The French team. ( March 9th 2016)
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Hello everyone,
Thanks for your answer. We completely agree with you that "nádivka" shouldn´t include fish, but just a little bit of ham would make it much tastier so we propose it. No tomatoes or goat cheese or apples / oranges - agreed on. Apples/oranges would be just an experiment :-) :-) :-). Cauliflower sounds good but if we used some broccoli instead, it would look nicer as it would give it the green colour. Zucchini would also be great. And some green herbs such as parsley - what do you think?
The recipe that you have found is the right one - here it is in English: http://www.czechspecials.cz/recipes/velikonocni-nadivka/?lang=en-US. We could just use some ham insread of smoked meat, and not much - let´s say 400g?
And we have also find this video recipe in English: http://www.video-recipes.net/easter-stuffing. So we could just follw the instructions here and add our ingredients: broccoli and/or zucchini, do you agree?
And what is the recipe for the French tomato salad - we are really curious and looking forward to it.
LOL, the Czech team
9/3/2016
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Dear our Czech friends,
we will cook and taste this starter on April, 26th at our school.
Here's, for you, the recipe (in English) of the Tomato Salad with Goat Cheese : http://www.food.com/recipe/tomato-salad-with-goat-cheese-433728
Bye For Now,
The French team ( 16/03/2016)
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