Lithuanian Cuisine, An Experience With Plate Culture

I've won a prize from BFM 89.9's Feeding Time with Fay Khoo recently via the Facebook page recently. I was excited as I've heard so much of Plate Culture in the past couple of weeks and never imagined that I was offered an experience to taste Lithuanian cuisine. The person Fay had interviewed was none other than Plate Culture's founder Audra Pakalnyte. If you wish, you can listen to the podcast here.

Plate Culture plays the match maker for diners and their hosts. You can find a variety of cuisines offered by different hosts as stated in the website ranging from Mauritian, Chinese, Malay, Indian and so forth. You can be a diner or a host at Plate Culture.

As a diner, you select which host you wish to visit on the dates the host is available. Plate Culture will give you the information and contact of your host. On the date, go to the host's home and enjoy the home cooked goodness. To be a host, just submit your request to Plate Culture. Eventually, the Plate Culture team will come by to check your place out, your cooking, making sure you're clean and tidy, dishes are delicious :p You'll noticed the words "Vouched by Plate Culture" if the host has been verified. Simple as that.

When I arrived, I was told that Audra is not around and had gone to a neighbouring country. So Vita & her brother entertained us instead. I made friends with the 3 other local diners and it was fun exchanging notes on the different cultures and customs.

We started off with carrot sticks served with a smooth Hummus dip. Not exactly Lithuanian but it's so good that the almost the entire bowl of Hummus is cleared off. Got a bit adventurous too as we tried it even on our mains.



Next we checked out how our first course is made in the kitchen. We saw a large bowl filled with pink liquid, hehe looked like strawberry milk but it's not. Got walked through the process of making the cold soup Saltibarsciai which is very popular during Summer. In the soup there are cubed beetroot, grated cucumber, chopped hard boiled eggs, spring onions and dill. The liquid part is usually made with sour cream but Vita said the supermarket they went to had ran out of it so yoghurt was used as a substitute. It was thinned down with a little milk.



Saltibarsciai is served with boiled potatoes and there's a ritual in serving this soup. We first squeeze in some lemon juice and was asked to give it a taste before adding some white vinegar. Mmmmm, my first spoonful was so delightful. The next spoonful with the added vinegar gave a different perspective to it. As we slurped through we were told that every Lithuanian family will serve this during Summer months even though Summer in Lithuania is rather short. I have so say, I really like this soup... seems refreshing but we were forewarned that it can be quite filling.



For our mains, out came the tummy warming parcels of goodness. We were introduced to Balandeliai (aka little pigeons) which are cabbage parcels filled with minced beef, chopped onion and carrots. The light gravy flavoured with tomato paste.

We topped our cabbage parcels with yoghurt and had more boiled potatoes. Vita informed us that they eat a lot of potatoes and there are many dishes are made out of potatoes. Not sure how they made the boiled potatoes but they're darn nice! One of the diner wiped out the entire bowl of potatoes cos it's just so good. Quite simple I would say to make this and I've told Vita that I will attempt it one day but it will be my own interpretation of this dish :p

Next, for dessert... a log of Tinginys (lazy pal). I can hear the mmmmm around the table as we bit into the slices. It was so delicious that everyone asked what it is! 

As Vita's brother (oops my bad, I'm not sure in spelling his name but it starts with O) explained that there are just 3 ingredients for this dessert. I managed to guess digestive biscuit first; after the second slice, out came condensed milk from my mouth. Somehow I just can't get the third ingredient!!! Nothing is impossible with the wonderful existence of the world wide web hahaha it was cocoa powder! Didn't taste much of cocoa but this reminds me of our kek batik made from Milo.

In the middle of our dessert, out came a bottle of Millers' Bitter which is a kind of herbal liquer. Someone commented tasted a little like Jägermeister. Wow this stuff is strong with 50% alcohol! We had little sips and seems like Tinginys tasted a little different after a sip of this.

I have enjoyed myself tremendously with this new dining experience that Plate Culture had offered. It's a great way to discover a new cuisine and it's wholesome since it's an intimate dinner together with the hosts. We get information of the new cuisine, culture, language, the country straight from the hosts. The plus point is, you can round up your friends to enjoy the dinner together taking it as a private dinner or on the other hand is meeting new people. Well you'll never know what's going to turn up after the dinner, perhaps it was a start of a beautiful friendship?

When you check out Plate Culture's website, don't be surprised to see our pretty Kelly Siew as one of the hosts. I know Swee San is planning to host too! My buddy blogger Chao Kar's Transparent Apron is listed too! I was asked when I'm going to host hahaha ok I did thought of it but it's kinda far now for diners to travel all the way to our home where my friends always teased they needed to bring their passports to visit us. Hopefully one day ok ;-) promised *fingers crossed*

If you're intrigued, please check out www.plateculture.com.

I would like to thank Audra & Fay for such a wonderful experience!