recipes are merely suggestions.

"Recipes are merely a suggestion" 

I'd say that's the motto we've adopted. When preparing for a meal for our Mongolian kitchen, it is not unusual to visit 4 different stores. So, the adoption of this motto comes from some frustrating times of not finding the ingredients we need. Now, we use most of the recipes we find as a guide. In other words...we make it up. 

As of late, that's been a little difficult, though. Our beloved and trusty oven said "NO MORE" and it quit working. After a few weeks of stove-top only recipes, borrowing a microwave and finding out our oven is "unfixable," we finally got a new oven. 

  

I can honestly say the day our new oven arrived was one of the most joyous days of our Mongolian life. 

Prior to the arrival of our new oven, I had already decided we should try making the Korean sushi called "kim-bap" or something like it. We did our best and although it didn't turn out perfect, it tasted good.

This, my friends, is the first thing we baked in our new oven. That's right peach cobbler. Delicious, or amtay as we say in Mongolia.

And this is our latest suggestion-creation. Indian food. After we discovered, became obsessed and had to limit ourselves to a once-a-month visit to our local Indian Restaurant "Hazara" we decided maybe, just maybe we could make our own. Well, we did. This is "Murg Makhani" roughly translated to: butter chicken. It turned out well but WAY spicy. 

We are rockin' our Mongolian kitchen. Watch out America because when we get back to easily accessible ingredients, we're gonna be out-of-control. I'd venture to say even then, we will keep our "recipes are merely suggestions motto." 

-Chef Holli