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Show . ' A Feast In Ethiopia. , , (Prepared toy tha National Oaocraphla -. toclaty, Waaolnitoo. D. C.) THE! epicure who Is willing to blaze - etartllngly new trails now and then, can have a won-. won-. derful time on a gastronomic trip around the world. Dining In the homes of fcngland and Western Europe, the American attending attend-ing a feast would find the chief dish a reminder of home. Turkey, duck or goose makes the most popular roast In England, while plum , pudding this time with a generously flavored brandy sauce usually tops off ''the meal during cool seasons. ' I ' ' In France aud Spain our American explorer of the world's tables would again encounter the turkey but there he would . find the capon . and the pheasant sharing Its popularity. Methods Meth-ods ot preparation and side dishes, however, would tell him tAmtstakably that he was getting.. farther afield." Truffles, chestnuts and olives are Important Im-portant Ingredients of the dressing ot fowls In these Latin countries. In France snails might be numbered among the viands that supplement the piece de resistance; and In Spain the meal, 'starting, say, with almond soup, would be sure to Include among the secondary dishes . a aopa, rice cooked In olive oil, with tomatoes and other vegetables and "perhaps bits of meat -; T " " ", ".' In northern ".Africa, whatever the date of the feast. It would be sure to have as Its central dish cous-cous, This consists of wheat prepared like fine grains of rice, steamed with lamb or -mutton, and vegetables If the latter lat-ter are obtainable. It Is served In a large, almost hemispherical, basket-dish basket-dish so closely woven that It holds ( water. About this container the diners sit, taking their food with their fingers. fin-gers. Olives, dates, and flgs help to complete the, meal j and on occasion there may be a dish of ' locusts "grasshoppers" prepared with wheat The legs, wings and heads are removed re-moved before the creature are cooked. r Among the Zulus of southern Africa whole oxen or bullocks are "roasted at feast time; and In central Africa the feast of , feasts " la roasted elephant's ele-phant's foot '''. .' - . i V.; In Persia' as , throughout" all the Near and Central East mutton holds first place. There the accepted epicurean epi-curean trick Is to cook the meat In pomegranate juice. Rice Is cooked In grease, and the, two' combined form the famous plluu. With the pilau Is served . the . thin, crisp, t paperlike bread of Persia-, , - ' Raw Meat In Tibet , , If one's culinary Investigations extend ex-tend to backward Tibet he finds a strange combination of a barbarism'' which shows Itself In the ealjng of raw meat the ."higher" and "gamier'' the' bolter and an Ingenuity that hns holds an Important place on the menu. Seaweed, cooked In oil and aerved with allces of, red pepper; and klra-shee, klra-shee, a kind of sauerkraut ere favorite fa-vorite side dishes. The guests eat their portions from little Individual tables. '.. i I;.-How I;.-How They Eat In Japan, In Japan, too, guests at feasts eat from low, small, separate tables, their dishes being served usually, In the kitchen. An exceptional feast Is likely like-ly to be marked by the appearance of the piece de resistance usually fish whole before the guests. - A favorite food for this sort of treatment is a big baked red snapper. It Is placed on a table of It own in the center of a circle of the guest table, and portion are served f roin It by a sery ant 'I' ',. ..'.. . ' ... .. t , , The little tables t. et ., a Japanese feast are packed with a varied array of individual dishes. The guest probably prob-ably will find, clear chicken soup,-the Inevitable covered dish of rice, a slab Of raw fish, roast bird, shrimp fritters, frit-ters, fruit and various pickled greens. He may find, too, the most characteristic character-istic of all Japanese edibles, pickled chrysanthemum petals. For dessert be will have rice cakes and sweetened bean paste, a stiff, jelly-like substance, not unlike Turkish paste. At Japanese Inn the traveler Is told that "Bombay duck" can be bad at a reasonable price. The hungry customer visions a, fat fowl but the waiter brings in pieces of smoked fish about two inches long and as thick as a dime. The menu also Includes pickled seaweed, seaweed jelly, and chutney which resembles pickled citron, cit-ron, but Is almost as hot as Mexican chile. More raw than cooked fish Is eaten by Japanese. Haw baby octopuses octo-puses are particularly popular. "Jani anese Llmburger" Is not a cheese but a Japanese pickled dalkon, or long, white- rndlsh. Traveling still farther eastward on his circumnavigation of the food world, our explorer would still have to pnss through the Pacific Islands before completing ,. his journey. Tahiti Ta-hiti may be taken as typical of thl. region. There . preparation ; for a feast means klll'np the fatted pig. The animal Is usual! roasted whole with yams and native jjlantalns. Coco-.nnt Coco-.nnt sauce and coconut milk complete the feost, which Is served on a, huge banana leaf spread on the floor. The guests squat about this green "board" eating with their fingers, ; Mexico Relies on Corn. . When Mexico Is reached, the traveler trav-eler finds that corn or maize Is the staff of life. But to the American used to his substantial and slznble lonf it Is likely to appear a somewhat some-what frnll prop. Most of the Mexican corn Is not milled Into meal or flour. It Is, laboriously crushed with small stone rollers by hand. In millions of evolved: concentrated , emergency ra tlous. A Tibetan, feast might consist of yak meat, strong tea mixed with rancid butter, and parched barley meal moistened with the greasy tea. Kvaporated and dried yak's milk soaked In tea would constitute the Tibetan "dessert course." In India no Important repast would be complete without quantities of rice and curry. It Is In Java, however, tfiat rice is raised to Its. highest status as a food. If he who goes exploring among the foods of the world is a connoisseur he may well pause In Java, devoting days and weeks to exploring ex-ploring the variations the nuances, one might almost say of that Dutch-Javan Dutch-Javan food . masterpiece, .'the rijst ; tafel (rice table). . - , .- .-'-.-.-' . RJce Is boiled to flaky ' whiteness and spread evenly on platters, each of which is to serve as an Individual dish. Fut this rice, good as It Is In Itself, and later because of Its borrowed bor-rowed savors. Is as yet only the foundation foun-dation of the dish, the "table" as the Dutch have IU On It are placed little lit-tle heaps of choice tid bits limited In variety only by the genius and Imagination Imag-ination of the chef and his master's' pocket book. '.',-.." I . Fenstlng Is something of an Institution Insti-tution among, well-to-do Koreans. Once or twice a year the wealthy rice landlords go to. Seoul, the capital, and invite small armies of friends and acquaintances ac-quaintances to dine with them that their prestige may be heightened In the eyes of their world. Half a dozen or more meats may be served at such a feast beef, mutton, venison, fowls, fish and oysters. Rice, of course. kitchens end dooryards. The crushed grain Is then moistened Into a stiff paste and cooked on a griddle Into what the average visitor from north of ' the Ulo Grande would term a "tough, flabby pancake." These are tortillas, the most generally used articles ar-ticles of food In Mexico. They are cooked In the home. In restaurants, over brawlers In the market place, ot taken cold by laborers In their lunch packets. Nor are they unknown on ! the tables of the prosperous. Wherever Wher-ever food appears In Mexico the tortilla tor-tilla stands well to the fore. Not only does the tortilla look unappetizing un-appetizing to the outsider; It is sure to prove, unappetizing If he follows his first Impulse and treats It like a pancake, for It Is tough and rather tasteless. But. treated as bread, the tortilla will moke a much better Impression. Im-pression. The proper trick Is to" roll It tightly so that It will be manageable manage-able and retain Its heat. It then becomes be-comes a brend stick whose splraled end will melt a bit of butter and fur-, nlsh a really delectable bite. , Corn contributes to another Important Impor-tant Mexican dish, the tnmale. The raw corn paste. Is flattened out as though tortillas were to be made. On the paste is spread a thin layer ot minced meat and pepper pods. The two layers are then folded np so that the meat and pepper forms .an Inner core with a sort of capsule of corn paste about It Each piece Is then wrapped in a corn shuck made pliable by soaking In water. Numbers ? of these are placed In a tin vessel and ! cooked by steam, then served plplnf hot both with fire and pepper. |