holy yum

This was all Holli's creation. And man oh man, it was gooooooood.

Chicken BBQ vegetable pizza- with homemade barbecue sauce, bell peppers, onions, broccoli and a little bit of garlic on top.

mongol xool

The best Mongolian food I get to eat here is definitely the food cooked by the ladies at church.

Seriously, I've never not liked anything they've ever made. soup, rice dishes, pasta dishes- doesn't matter. the only issue ever is the fatty meat and well that's just always an issue in Mongolia.

We had a three-day seminar this past week and I got to eat church food three days in a row. Yum.

Behold dish number 3- two kinds of rice, potatoes, salad made out of shredded carrots and onions and peppers, some meat (mutton, I believe) and there was some bread that didn't make it into the picture.

Church food > restaurant food

cooking for many

i have a scar on my arm as proof of what my summer in Brooklyn taught me about cooking for multitudes of people in hot, crazy kitchens.

Don't try to give directions to high school students while pulling out huge pans of heated leftovers from the oven. It will end badly.

Also, if you ever need taco meat for 70 people, you should bake it in the oven. And pray that you don't flip a circuit in the process, leaving you with half-baked pans of 42 pounds of beef and an hour until dinner. (yes, that really happened. not one of my finer moments)

Since that introduction to cooking for a crowd of hungry teenagers and adults, I've thankfully learned some things. Four years in Dallas taught me how to cook Thanksgiving side dishes for sorority potlucks, my mom's lasagna for my small group girls, new dishes from farmer's market produce for summer dinners with friends and vegetarian friendly options for our weekly Sunday night New Day meal.

But Mongolia? Mongolia has taught me all sorts of new things about cooking for lots of folks at one time.

Our first try at this was a Thanksgiving dinner for 15 folks at our apartment. It was fun and the food turned out delicious, but there was a lot of panicked running around with bloody chicken as we didn't have enough room/time/space to cook all of it at the same time and still keep it warm, etc. Which resulted in the chicken being brought out in shifts as it finished cooking and looking like it had kind of been through a war zone. Live and learn. No one minded and all was well.

Around New Years I cooked for the young adult group at my church here. I was nervous. Stressed. Anxious about not having enough food/things being a disaster. I made more potato salad then one would think humanly possible. As well as an interesting jello fruit salad situation. All was well once again- but I had a hard time enjoying it.

This past Saturday was my second time to cook for all 40 young adults.

And whew, what a difference a few months makes.

Lesson #1- Spread out the cooking and baking. I purposefully did NOT cook/bake everything on Saturday this time around. I went grocery shopping for all of the supplies on Thursday and baked four dozen cookies that day. Then I stuck them in ziploc bags and saved them until the weekend- when all I had to do was arrange them on some plates at the church:

Lesson #2- Pick easy recipes that you are familiar and comfortable with and that won't be super difficult to make. And that are easy to double, triple or quadruple.

On Friday I made all of the focaccia bread dough and then baked half of it then and half of it early Saturday morning. This recipe is easy, I've made it quite a few times now and I knew it would be hard for me to screw it up. Not to mention it's easy to make in large quantities.

the rising dough...I love the smell of yeast and the hard work of kneading.


laying it out and covering with olive oil and spices...warm and crispy and delicious...
so much bread! I made 7 baking sheets worth and cut them each into 10 pieces...bringing us to 70 pieces.

Lesson # 3- Don't be stupid about transporting ingredients. And don't make things harder than they have to be.

I knew I'd have to bring both a 5 kilo bag of flour and a 2 kilo bag of rice to the church at some point. I also knew I'd be bringing a bunch of meat, lots of cans of sauce and several kilos of veggies. So I borrowed Hol's backpack and tried to bring the big things in different loads on different days.

Also- I used the huge rice cooker in the church kitchen instead of making the rice at home in our tiny rice cooker and bringing it with me. That meant I just threw in all 25 cups of rice and let it cook, instead of having to make lots of smaller amounts . Huge time saver. (It pays to double check that you're actually cooking the rice though when the directions/button labels are all in Korean)


Lesson # 4: Make something that can stay warm for a long time. Because nothing will ever start on time (maybe this is only applicable in Mongolia?) Lunch was supposed to be at 12 p.m. (everything was done at noon) and we didn't sit down to eat until 3 p.m.

So...making chili worked out well. Not only can you easily feed 40 people with a huge pot of chili- but it can simmer for hours. Which it did. Out of sheer necessity and not any grand cooking plan.

a bunch of beef, onions and garlic:


I also tossed in several large cans of tomato sauce, a kilo of diced tomatoes, some seasonings and a cup of vinegar.
We poured this over the rice and ate it with the bread :-) Yum!

Lesson # 5- Let cute little ones steal food before mealtime. And relax. There will be enough food. And it will be fun.

I think I'm finally getting to the point where I can do all of those things (well, the first was always a given :-)).

food irony

chopping peppers

dicing onions

sauteing broccoli

pulling fat off the beef

food irony is making Mongolian beef in Mongolia for Mongolians (and Koreans and Americans) when in fact it is not at all a real Mongolian food.
But dang, it's tasty.

bell peppers, our veggie best friend

Nine times out of ten, if you were to drop in unannounced on our Mongolian kitchen you would find bell peppers sitting in our fruit/veggie bowl. We go through them like other people go through daily things like milk or coffee.

They are available at the market consistently, both Hol and I like them a lot and they're easy to cook in a variety of dishes. Hence the bell pepper is our vegetable-version of a best friend here in UB.

A few weeks ago I attempted stuffed bell peppers:

The filling was a mix and match of random stuff we had in our fridge/cupboards, including some leftover tomatoes, rice, half a can of corn, some spices and some onion. I also mixed in a little spaghetti sauce and olive oil for moisture, although these were certainly more on the dry side of stuffed peppers.


I made waaaay too much filling, so I stuck the extra in the bottom of the dish and then set the stuffed bell peppers on top. I stuck them in the oven for awhile and voila- two of our favorite things: bell peppers and rice, together, in something other than stir-fry.