A Global Feast, Part 4

North American and Pacific foods are diverse and distinct. Keep reading to learn more details about North American and Pacific foods.

For more information on other foods around the world, read my articles A Global Feast Part 1, A Global Feast Part 2, and A Global Feast Part 3.

North American Foods

Canada

If any cheese is native to Canada, it's oka. Oka is a semi-soft cheese that's creamy, fruity, and nutty, traditionally covered with an orange rind (a tough outer layer). Other Canadian dishes include figgy duff, beaver tails, and maple sugar pie. Figgy duff is made of water, sugar, flour, eggs, and spices, which are combined and put in a cloth bag to be boiled or steamed, giving it the name "duff." When raisins are added, it's called "figgy." Beaver tails are a sweet treat made of fried dough and cinnamon sugar (they're not real beaver tails!), and maple sugar pie is a traditional French Canadian dessert that contains brown sugar and butter in a pie shell.

Mexico

The world has Mexico to thank for vanilla, avocado, corn, tomatoes, and chocolate. Mexican food mostly uses corn, black beans, chili peppers, fresh vegetables, meat, and rice. Flour or corn tortillas are often served with lunch or dinner. One popular dish is ceviche, which is raw fish and other seafood soaked in lime juice and served with chips. Tamales, another popular dish, are made from a cornmeal paste stuffed with meat or vegetables, wrapped in cornhusks or banana leaves, and steamed.

Pacific Foods

Australia and New Zealand

Typical Australian and New Zealand country dishes are made of meat and vegetables. Meat pies and fish and chips are common in both countries. They also follow the British "tea" tradition involving cakes, scones, and desserts, meaning that they have afternoon tea daily. The people native to New Zealand, the Maori, brought a lot of tropical food from Polynesia (where the culture began), such as sweet potatoes, watercress (a type of cabbage), and freshwater crayfish.

Hawaii and Polynesia

Meat and fish are very important in the Polynesian diet. The most popular fish are salmon, tuna, squid, butterfish, mullet, ruby and crimson snapper, opihi (limpets), opah (moonfish), swordfish, and the famous mahi mahi (dolphin fish). The classic Hawaiian side dish, poi, is often served alongside the meat. Poi is a thick, purplish paste made from the steamed and mashed root of the taro plants (a water plant). Popular vegetables include yams, sweet potatoes, Maui onions, and pohole or fiddleheads. Popular fruits include pineapple, coconuts, figs, breadfruit, bananas, mountain apples, passion fruit, mangoes, kiwis, and strawberry papayas. Hawaiians also have a custom called the luau, where one dish is the sacrificial Kalua pig, slow-cooked in the imu (an underground pit oven) and served with poi.