A couple of weeks ago, we were invited to Specjalny Ośrodek Szkolno-Wychowawczy im. Anny Karłowicz, in Pułtusk to cook some easy and delicious traditional dishes from our countries. So Begüm, Toby and I went.
In this adventure, we had help of this two amazing local volunteers with translating from English to Polish. They help us with anything we needed.
We started this cooking session by eating dessert. The school team surprised us with this meal. We had polish apple cake, vanilla ice cream, blueberries and strawberries. So tasty!
We split the kids in two groups and explained them what we were cooking and the ingredients we were using.
Turkey
Begum told us a little bit about this traditional dish and her story behind it: “This traditional dish is called Kısır. In Turkey, when we have big events like meeting with friends or big lunch time, we make Kısır.
I'm going to give you the recipe in a simple way. First, we put special turkish bulgur in a large bowl and pour hot water over it and cover immediately with a larger plate. We let sit for 20 minutes. Meanwhile we fry the onion tomato paste with a little oil. We will mix all the ingredients. Then, we cut the lettuce, cucumber, tomato and parsley. I want to add that with children at this stage they helped so much. We add these ingredients into the bulgur and finally we mixed them all the ingredients.
We ate together, they liked this dish and we talked with them about different topics. We had a lot of fun. I’m happy for this, ın this way they have different experiences.
My mom made Kısır for lunch especially we eat kısır with Turkish tea while chatting. Kısır time is so important for us. I guess when I was 12 years old my mom taught how to make this dish. It’s easy to prepare. I made so long time ago in our flat with my roommates and a lot of people really like it.
if you don’t like cooking, don’t worry you will love to make Kısır”.
Honduras
We did guacamole and accompanied it with tortilla chips. A very simple and quick dish but quite popular worldwide. It’s inherited from Mexican gastronomy and highly eaten in Latin America. 
It’s cheap, healthy, easy to do and very, very tasty. They are a lot of different variations depending the region and it’s eaten as a snack or with nachos, with meat, salads or in tacos. Avocados taste so good that they make a good
This time, I did my favorite and the one it reminds me home. Just avocados, salt, pepper and lemon juice. First we cut the avocados and removes the seeds. Whe separte the pulp of the skin and put them in a bowl. Then, using a fork we smash the avocados until we form a smooth mix. We add sakt, pepper and the lemon juice. It depends how much you like to season it. Mix, mix and mix to combine all the flavors and that's it. Delicious guacamole!
In the whole session the kids were eager to learn how to cook this exotic dishes. We had a lot of fun in the process. Both teams did a great job!
Every time we share with people is a mutual learning experience.
The session went smoothly, at some point it all become intuituve, and also the gestures are very helpful when trying to communicate something. Food was tasty and everyone were happy and enjoyed the meal.
Thanks to my friends, for the amazing team work, to Sylwia and the school for having us. And we'll be happy to come back and cooking more dishes.
-Jennifer Soto
