Ingredient Improvisations

[Rumah]

OMG first of all, thank you to @Unimportant for telling me about this section! I LOVE cooking and baking and - because I'm such a hermit who's mostly uncomfortable with human contact or interactions - I share my love through food.

So I wanted to start a thread I thought some foodies might find interesting.

If you didn't see my intro, I'm in Belize and while I love so many things about the country, food is not one of them. I'm not alone, either. It's among the biggest gripes of all the expats I know here, especially down in the part where I live (Toledo). In some ways, it's pretty cool because you're not gonna have so much access to those preservatives, hormones, chemicals, processed foods, etc. we're always eating up there.

At the same time, you're hard pressed to find the kinda stuff we get in the U.S. as far as ingredients, herbs, spices, and the kinds of proteins and veggies we're accustomed to up there. It sure does leave most of us wishing to GOD we could get our hands on some horseradish or light/dark brown sugar, etc.

We often improvise down here.

Some improvisations I commonly use:

• Blitzed white sugar with a bit of corn starch for powdered sugar
• Rapadura (it's like hardened molasses from the sugar cane) melted down, combined with white sugar for the kind of brown sugar we use.
• Bleu cheese (the real stuff is SOMETIMES here but it's very expensive) mixed with any number of other things to create a dipping sauce.
• My own blackened seasoning (as close as I can get... huge fan of cajun food!).
• Italian sausage to make sausage, biscuits, and gravy (not much in the way of bfast sausage here).
• Gotta grow my own bean sprouts to use in Asian dishes
• Seldom get fresh mushrooms

There are, I'm sure, tons of examples. Aside from ingredient improvisations, I also get random cravings for things and frequently seek out 'copycat' recipes for, say, hot pockets or white castles (or whatever). Any of y'all have any favorite ingredient improvisations or copycat recipes? Would love to hear about them!

 

[Rumah]

Gawd what I wouldn't give for some fresh rhubarb or a stash of pickling spices!

 

[Maryn]

A few years ago I moved from a medium-sized city to a small city, and the list of grocery items I cannot get is fairly large. Can you order non-perishables online for delivery in Belize? (Or have them sent to a friend or family member in the US who ships them to you?)

After some copycat failures, I bought seasoned pan-searing flour and a blackening spice mix for Cajun food--we had blackened catfish just last night--at Amazon, and while I paid more than I used to in stores, it's good to have it available.

Could be they have pickling spices! And whatever other spices your pantry is missing.

Maryn, who still misses Wegmans

 

[Rumah]

A few years ago I moved from a medium-sized city to a small city, and the list of grocery items I cannot get is fairly large. Can you order non-perishables online for delivery in Belize? (Or have them sent to a friend or family member in the US who ships them to you?)

After some copycat failures, I bought seasoned pan-searing flour and a blackening spice mix for Cajun food--we had blackened catfish just last night--at Amazon, and while I paid more than I used to in stores, it's good to have it available.

Could be they have pickling spices! And whatever other spices your pantry is missing.

Maryn, who still misses Wegmans

omg Wegman's... oh my....

Yes I can order non-perishables online and have them shipped but by the time duty and taxes and shipping are paid, it's ridiculously expensive and I'd rather spend that money on some elusive part or new gadget (I know, blasphemy for a foodie) than a box or can or jar of a rare food item.

The blackened copycat recipe I found was pretty spot on and I am quite happy with how it came out. As for pickling spices, I can get almost everything to make my own except mustard seed. And, although I can get everything I need to make my own, the shops down here (locally called "Chiney" because they are mostly Chinese-owned) all carry the same things at different times and it's never a simple matter to remember which one had that thing you needed and swore you'd get back to when you could.... lol

 

[Stytch]

I like to browse real import foods (kinda like the food section in World Market or random independent shops that specialize). As I'm looking at bottles of British ketchup or whatever stuff they have, I often wonder what the US section looks like in these stores elsewhere. Not, like, whatever the foreign American equivalent of Old El Paso is (definitely gringo food made for gringos who want to feel multicultural and not actually anything from Mexico). I've seen some hysterical photos of items in Germany that were like "Authentic American food!" and clearly not, but something close and geared for German norms. I forget what it was, now, but it was clearly not imported. Anyone know what packaged foods are representing the USA abroad? Maybe if you took a trip to a city big enough (sorry, I didn't look up where you were, so this may be a dumb thing to say) you could find an import store? I'm curious for details on what we send abroad.

 

[Maryn]

Maybe my sister-in-law's annoying habit of leaving herself audio notes on her phone while out in public would serve you well--just wait until you step outside. "The Chiney on 2nd street has fresh dill..."

 

[Rumah]

I like to browse real import foods (kinda like the food section in World Market or random independent shops that specialize). As I'm looking at bottles of British ketchup or whatever stuff they have, I often wonder what the US section looks like in these stores elsewhere. Not, like, whatever the foreign American equivalent of Old El Paso is (definitely gringo food made for gringos who want to feel multicultural and not actually anything from Mexico). I've seen some hysterical photos of items in Germany that were like "Authentic American food!" and clearly not, but something close and geared for German norms. I forget what it was, now, but it was clearly not imported. Anyone know what packaged foods are representing the USA abroad? Maybe if you took a trip to a city big enough (sorry, I didn't look up where you were, so this may be a dumb thing to say) you could find an import store? I'm curious for details on what we send abroad.

I'm in Belize.

And while they do import things (some things) from the U.S., what is actually more common is importing from Guatemala. Far cheaper.

However, although these items (clothes, foods, household stuff like towels, etc.) have the same brand name, they are far inferior which is why they import cheaper. So even though it says Kraft...doesn't mean it is.

And, the packaging is identical so you'd never know if you were just visiting.

 

[ChaseJxyz]

You should read Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Norsat. That should help you learn how to improvise when you're cooking to really elevate things lol. Like you must have citrus down there, right? Limes, probably? And salt is everywhere, as is cooking fats, and heat in general. Some intelligent additions of salt/fat/acid at various parts of the cooking process (and using the right kind of heat) will do a lot for you.

Also: what's wrong with Belizian food? I don't know enough about it to have any sort of opinion about it.


For others: I've seen pictures of the American sections, and they tend to have stuff like peanut butter, cereal (esp reeeses puffs lol), pop tarts, candy bars...marshmallow fluff, sometimes. But they're not going to have hyper-regional things like coffee syrup, sponge candy, dutch crunch, or prepared foods like pit beef or cutty bangs. But those last two things you could make on your own easily enough

 

[Unimportant]

Rumah, are you able to garden? If so, you can probably get seeds for a lot of the things you want, like rhubarb and various herbs.