Niger

Niger, not to be confused with Nigeria, is a landlocked country in Western Africa. I'll admit, I was a little nervous about attempting to cook African food. I've lived and traveled a lot in Asia and Europe, I'm from North America, South American food isn't too strange... But Africa? I had no clue what I was getting into, or how I was going to find recipes, or ingredients, or even make this work. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the recipes for Niger included several things that I really liked! Eggs! Cardamom! However, I was also kind of sad to see two main ingredients that will never be on my list of favorites -- spinach and sour cream. Despite some misgivings, I decided to give it a try.

It's always a good idea to have dessert first, so lets start with the Cardamom Caakiri (which I'm still not sure how to pronounce).

This has the potential to be really, really good I think. I loved how creamy it was, and I enjoyed the cold couscous. Anything that has cardamom in it makes me happy, but I just couldn't get past the sour cream. It was too sour. There was nothing I did that could salvage it. Maybe if I ever work up the nerve to try this recipe again, I'll try adding less sour cream.

The verdict: I'm not sure. With enough tweaking, this could be amazing. But with that much tweaking, does it still count as a dish from Niger? If you like sour cream, you'll probably like this.

The main dish was an egg and spinach sandwich on a baguette.

I was initially surprised to see a baguette show up in a Western African nation, but a little bit of digging revealed that Niger was a French colony from 1900-1958, and French is still the official language of Niger. 

This is a very simple meal. It is a twist on the kind of egg sandwich that I grew up with. This recipe called for spinach, but I think you could put any kind of green leafy thing in there, and it would be pretty good! The possibilities are endless! 

The verdict: I really like the contrast in texture of the crunchy baguette and the soft eggs. The spinach flavor was just too strong for me, and I ended up not finishing my sandwich. But my friend (who doesn't have a weird spinach aversion) absolutely loved this!