Guyana

The very first country that we tried was Guyana, which is a relatively small country in South America.

We chose Guyana because I had all of the ingredients on hand on the night we decided to start. There were two dishes that we decided to make, a mango coconut soup and a chicken curry. Curry isn't usually the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of South America, but apparently this dish is quite popular there.

I quickly discovered several things during this country.

1. Food photography is MUCH harder than I thought it would be, and I needed to go to the nearest library posthaste to do some proper research before I attempted this again.

2. Not all curry is created equal.

3. Too much coconut is a bad thing.

Suffice it to say, it was a less than auspicious beginning to the project. The food was edible, but it wasn't amazing or pretty. At all. I couldn't take a good photo of it to save my life.

Guyanese Chicken Curry

The curry flavor was so mild that I was able to re-purpose the leftover chicken in other dishes without the curry overpowering anything else. I made the green seasoning, and it was MUCH milder than I was expecting it to be, especially since I used a scotch bonnet pepper. I did only use one, which was apparently not enough at all.... It's also January, so we didn't want to go out and grill, which might have helped the flavor of this chicken.

The verdict: It was just ok. I don't know that I will make this again.

Coconut Mango Soup

Isn't that a sad picture? I tried so many things to try to get it to look better. All of them failed. I'm sorry you have to look at such an unappetizing photo. I promise, this soup is much better than it looks! I actually enjoyed it a lot, and would probably enjoy it much more if it were 30 degrees outside. Maybe I should try this one again when it is 30 degrees Celsius.

Pro tip: Don't think, "oh, this is a coconut recipe. I should buy coconut flavored yogurt to make it EVEN MORE coconut flavored." This will end badly. Just stick with the recipe as written.

The verdict: I like it. I'll probably try it again in the summer, especially if I can get fresh mango!

I'm feeling rather bad about the lack of pretty pictures in this post, so here are some pictures of Guyana for you to enjoy!

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