#WeLoveDiversity: Our Scout's recipes from around the world

Food has always brought people together. A way to connect, discuss and learn from each other. So, for our recent Diversity Day (May 26), we highlighted the joys of sharing our favourite meals with each other for an international cookbook. This was yet another opportunity to showcase our diversity – with our Scouts coming from over 50 different nations (as of April 2020) – all under the chosen hashtag of #WeLoveDiversity.

We asked our Scouts to share their favourite and most delicious recipes from all over the world to create this international cookbook. The result: lots of foodie inspiration for our Scouts to explore and cook at home for themselves! 

Recipes from around the world

We collected many different types of recipes from around the world, such as Irish Brown Bread, Serbian Pita, Canadian Tourière, Jordanian Mansaf, Belgian Stoofvlees with Pommes Frites, Austrian Kaiserschmarrn, Brazilian cheese bread, and Rumanian eggplant mousse. So much to discover and take your cooking skills to a new level!

An internal competition was held, with all Scouts the opportunity to vote for their favourite recipes. Of course, we do not want to keep these delicious recipes just to ourselves! So here are two of the featured favourites… 

Ingredients you will need:  

• 1 cup lentils  
• 2 cups pasta farfalle (or another flat shaped pasta) 
• 2 tablespoons pomegranate paste (amount as you like) 
• 1 lemon or 1 piece tamarind (amount as you like) 
• 1 spoonful of tomato paste (optional, for the color) 
• 2 big onions (amount as you like) 
• 5 cloves garlic chopped (amount as you like) 
• Pinch of coriander   
• 1-2 loafs of Arabic bread 
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil  
• 1 big pomegranate 

Steps you need to follow: 

1. Lentils & pasta: Firstly you need to focus on the main ingredients, lentils and pasta, and complete the following: Boil the lentils and when they soften, spray some cold water on it to keep it in shape, so it doesn’t get too soft later.
2. At the same time, boil some pasta until it’s just soft, then drain. Add it to the lentils. Mix and leave them together for around 10 minutes, so that the pasta continues to cook and soften.
3. While the main two ingredients are getting ready, these following steps can be done in any order to create the garnish.
4. Chop the onions into a moon shape. Then caramelize with olive oil until they become golden and crunchy.
5. Chop the corianders. Get the pomegranate ready.
6. Cut the bread loaf into squares and you have two options: either you deep fry it until it’s golden and crunchy. Or mix the bread pieces with one tablespoon of olive oil and put it in the oven tray.

For the sauce: mix the pomegranate sauce, lemon juice (or one piece of Tamarind or both), salt, some of the garlic, some of the coriander tomato paste and one tablespoon of olive oil. Finally, pour it all into a bowl or deep plate and add the garnish on top.

Enjoy your Syrian meal!

How to make the galletes: 

Most people do not own a crêpière, but your biggest pan will do.

1. Make sure your pan is quite hot, at least ¾ to the max, and grease it with butter. Apply just a film of butter on the whole pan, adding butter to the same piece again and again.
2. Pour a ladle of dough on the pan, twisting the pan around to spread the dough evenly. Practice will tell you how full your ladle needs to be. The pancake should be as thin as possible without breaking. Small breathing holes are ok.
3. Let the pancake cook on one side for at least half a minute. You should see the edges lift slightly from the pan. The cooked surface should be a nice brown – some people like it more cooked than others.
4. Flip and let the other side cook the same way.

The classical way to fill a galette complète is as follows: 

1. Place one egg, spreading the white all over the pancake while leaving the yolk untouched (you can also break it)
2. Add ham and cheese
3. Close the galette for half a minute to a minute (closing it in half, taco style, is easiest)
4. Serve with a side of salad.

In the end, fillings tend to adapt to people’s taste, and any filling you can think of works:

• Spinach and smoked salmon with cream cheese added on top of the pancake after you close it
• Replacing the ham with thin smoked bacon and goat cheese (This is Romain’s favourite!)
• Just a ratatouille
• Adding mushrooms and potatoes
• The options are infinite!

Get creative and try out different fillings that you like for your perfect Bretonian galletes! 

A big thank you to all the Scouts who submitted their recipes for our Diversity Day and #InternationalCookbook! We hope to share more recipes with you in the near future.