My Personal Author's Kitchen Trivia Quiz

Answer: Vitello tonnato

Vitello tonnato is a typical "surf and turf" recipe, mixing seafood with meat. Essentially it is some veal with a sauce made of tuna, olive oil and capers. First you cook the veal in a chicken broth (with fresh soup vegetables such as leek, onion and carrots, and some seasoning). Then you make the sauce: mix egg yolks, olive oil, lemon juice, tuna, capers and anchovies. Serve the veal with some sauce.
It is recommended to make this first course the day before, so the flavours in the sauce can mix well together.

Answer: Mixed paella

Another surf and turf recipe. I suppose almost each Spanish family has their favourite variation of this recipe, but a bit of saffron is absolutely needed in this one. Paella comes from the Spanish region of Valencia, and many locals prefer either the meat recipe (without the seafood) or the fish recipe (without the meat). Outside of Spain, the mixed paella (meat and seafood) is very popular. There are also vegetarian variations.
Basically a paella consists of rice and the other ingredients all sautéed in olive oil and then cooked in broth.
Here is one of the many recipes found on the internet: heat olive oil in a large frying pan, shortly bake some gamba, chicken drumsticks, chorizo in little dice, calamari, onion. Add rice, paprika and saffron, and braise a few minutes, until you smell some of the rice has been baked at the bottom of the pan (this toasted rice is a real treat according to the locals). Then add white wine, chicken broth, peas and mussels, until all ingredients (especially the seafood) is quite done.

Answer: Borscht

Borscht is a soup very popular in the eastern European countries. Typical borscht is made with beetroot to give a specific tart taste.
As with all recipes in this quiz, you may find millions of recipes on the internet. Here is only one of these.
To make borscht, you need of course a broth. You may make the broth with water, beef shank and soup vegetables such as leek, carrots and onions. Fry garlic, beetroot, turnip, onions, carrots, potatoes and cabbage for a few minutes, then add the broth, the beef shank, and some lard. Add seasoning such as salt and pepper, bay leaf, thyme and nutmeg and cook for at least one hour. Remove the meat, cut it very fine and add it again to the soup. Serve with sour cream.

Answer: Irish coffee

The original recipe for Irish coffee (as protected by Irish law) is a mixture of (strong) black coffee, heated Irish whiskey and some brown sugar, topped with cream (no whipped cream). To make the cream better float on the coffee/whiskey mixture, it is recommended to use cream that has been matured for 48 hours, no fresh cream.
There are of course many variations. In some countries one prefers the coffee and the whiskey to form separate layers, and in some tropical countries there is a variation with chilled coffee.
Replacing the Irish whiskey with other alcoholic drinks would render other 'gourmet' coffees, such as Highland coffee (with Scotch whiskey), Jamaican coffee (using rum), Italian coffee (with amaretto) or Hasselt coffee (with gin).

Answer: Tiramisu

Tiramisu is an Italian dessert of which the origin is unclear. Some claim it was invented in the 1960s, other have found traces to a similar treat in the seventeenth century.
However, this is one of the many available recipes. Make a pot of strong coffee, dip some ladyfingers in the coffee and use these cookies as a base. Add a cream made of mascarpone cheese, whipped egg yolks and sugar. Make several layers of biscuits alternating with cream, ending with the creamy mixture. Top with cocoa.
Variations include mixing the coffee with marsala wine or amaretto (or even non-Italian alcoholic beverages), replacing the ladyfingers with other cookies or cake, or mixing some fruit in the cream.

Answer: Pizza Margherita

This is one of the simplest pizzas in the world. Make a pizza dough, top it with three ingredients, and bake. The three toppings are tomato sauce and/or fresh tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and fresh basil leaves, representing the three colours of the Italian flag: red, white, green.
Pizza Margherita was probably invented in Naples around 1800, but only got its name when Raffaele Esposito made a pizza for Queen Margherita of Italy in 1889.
Adding other toppings will give you other variations of pizzas. Today one can find more different pizzas than you would imagine. The most expensive pizza I found was topped with buffalo mozzarella, caviar, lobster and pink Australian sea salt.

Answer: Crepe Suzette

Well, these are not all the ingredients needed to make Crepes Suzette. First you need the eggs and part of the butter along with flour, milk, salt and vanilla to make pancake batter. Make the pancakes. Meanwhile, use the rest of the butter with the orange juice and zest of orange to make a topping. Top the pancakes with the butter-orange mixture. Sprinkle a bit of Grand Marnier and a bit of brandy over the pancakes and ignite the alcohol. The flambée (igniting the alcohol) was according to some sources an accident, which happened to the British Prince Edward and a French girl named Suzette in 1895 in Paris.

Answer: Cassoulet

Cassoulet is a French regional specialty. The industry has made canned cassoulet, but industrial cassoulet is quite inferior to the original, hand-made version.
The specific taste of the cassoulet comes from the goose fat in which different kinds of pork (pork sausages, lard, pork shanks, smoked pork sausage) as well as the tomatoes and vegetables are baked.
Here is one of the many recipes I've found. Bake the sausages in the goose fat. Bake some onions, carrots, lard, garlic and tomatoes in the same fat. Add the beans, chicken broth, pepper, salt, thyme, laurel, rosemary and paprika, as well as the shanks and the smoked sausage. Let simmer for an hour, add the "ordinary" sausages and stew for another two hours. Garnish with chopped parsley.
Variations use mutton to add with the pork, replacing the goose fat with duck fat or even partridge fat, adding duck meat, using the leftovers of the previous stew to start another one, and so on. In the US the name cassoulet is used for any stew including beans, even if the meat is fully replaced (for instance by salmon).

Answer: Beef Wellington

Beef Wellington was probably not named after the Duke of Wellington, but after the city where it is said to have made for the first time. The recipe doesn't ask for many more ingredients than I've mentioned here.
Start with the beef: season with salt and pepper and fry for a few minutes, just enough to enclose all the juice within. Then chop the mushrooms, as well as some garlic, parsley and shallot. Fry the shallot and garlic, and then add the mushrooms and the parsley. Cook until all the liquid has evaporated. Season with salt and pepper. Then you make a roll: ham, mushroom mixture, beef, and wrap all this together in the puff pastry. Cover with a mixture of egg yolk and water and then bake 40 minutes in a preheated oven.
Variations include adding or replacing the seasoning with other herbs and spices. Similar recipes exist using other types of meat, fish or even vegetarian meat replacements (tofu, quorn...)

Answer: Baked Alaska

This quite interesting dessert is known as Baked Alaska in the US and UK, or as omelette siberienne or omelette norvegienne in continental Europe.
This is the simplest recipe. Beat the egg whites with sugar to a very stiff meringue - you have to be able to turn the container upside down without losing any of the meringue. Then put some ice cream (most recipes ask for vanilla ice) on top of a slice of pound cake, cover with the meringue (sometimes at first with the remainder of the cake and then with the meringue) and bake in a preheated oven. The meringue acts as a thermic isolator, so even if the meringue is coloured dark brown by the heating, the ice cream inside will stay frozen until served.
Some variations include replacing the pound cake with sponge cake or Christmas pudding, including various fruits in the ice cream, replacing the vanilla ice by other flavours of ice cream, or flambé with alcohol. To gain time, you may even caramelize the meringue with a Bunsen burner instead of baking the whole concoction in the oven.