World Cup Food Around the World!

Around the world, as global citizens step up to take the World Cup Food Challenge, food magazines, websites, blogs and cooking channels alike are cooking up World Cup cuisine.

Taking the World Cup Food Challenge alongside us are the Emu Is Emo blog and the folks at Foodspotting. +1 to Foodspotting for offering prizes for participants but -10 for allowing them to cheat with foods like Shrimp Cocktail for Denmark and a New England Seafood Stew for Ghana. We expect a little more research could have revealed all authentic dishes in San Francisco as we did in Houston.

We'd like to congratulate Eilonwy at Emo for being the only other participant creating inspired fusion dishes daily (same as our concept), and even better, providing a diverse soundtrack and wit to go with it. Our favorite thus far is her recipe for Nigerian "Scam-Free" Empanadas.
Equally impressive and fun to follow are the folks over at Cooking vs. Sports, who, in addition to taking the World Cup Food Challenge, also regularly blog about pairing foods with various sporting events. Their Flikr photo stream provides serious eye candy that is sure to work up your appetite.

Several sites have specific dishes from each country pitted up against one another in cutthroat group matches.
The Good Food Channel
Japan is currently winning the largest percent of the vote, represented by Tempura. However, keep in mind, some of the dishes chosen make utterly no sense. Italian Tiramisu vs. Paraguayan Corn Bread? That's as about as fair a match as Saudi Arabia vs. Germany in a really futbol match. Still, the voting is all done by visitors to the site, so if your team isn't winning, you can at least vote for their food!

SecondHelping

Over at this Australian blog each national dish is paired with its respective beer and then pitted against one another. The only problem? The blogger, of apparent Fosters lineage, has horrible taste in beer.

World Cup Food & Drink The folks at this Wordpress blog are cooking up some tasty dishes daily inspired by the day's games.

All competition aside, some focus simply recipes from competing countries and educating the interwebs about varied global cuisines.

Food Network UK

In the World Cup Experience Section, you'll find several countries highlighted each week with informative articles on culture and cuisine and at least a dozen recipes. Picks for the week include South Africa, France and Mexico, with their guide to South African cuisine boasting a tantalizing recipe for Pumpkin Lamb Bobotie that makes me want to rush out and make bobotie tacos again, this time with pumpkin. You have to admit though, our Bobotie was far better looking.

Food Network US, on the other hand, does not appear to have noticed that the World Cup is even going on it all and has devoted their homepage to the likely subjects of reality shows and 50 burgers (because THAT has never been done before).
We even discovered a World Cup Food Challenge from the 2006 tournament, which included many delicious countries that didn't make this years cut such as Ecuador, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. World Cup & Plate is fun to peruse, although recipes are not provided. They also include fun beverage pairings.