Because Cream Cheese Icing is a Terrible Thing to Waste…

Lately when I make icing I haven’t been using a recipe, I’ve just been estimating quantities of things that taste good, (like butter, cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla bean paste) and mixing them together.  This means that I occasionally end up with too little icing and have to make more, or I have too much icing and refuse to throw away the extra.  I then I have to find a use for the extra icing besides simply piping it into my mouth.  Piping it into a strawberry and then popping that strawberry into my mouth is so much classier and more socially acceptable…

Banana Dulce de Leche Smoothie

Have you figured out what you’re making for Dulce de Leche Day yet?  February 28th is fast approaching so get those recipes ready!  No need to come up with something extravagant either, (though by all means, go ahead if you want to) you could just make something simple like this Banana Dulce de Leche Smoothie that I made today.  It consists of nothing more than a frozen banana blended with milk, yogurt and a big dollop of dulce de leche.  It’s the perfect post-yoga beverage.  As I mentioned a little while ago, I’ve started doing Bikram yoga because I got a deal on a 25 class pass.  When I first started, I hated it.  It made me feel absolutely terrible but people kept telling me it would get better and that I would start to love it.  Today marks my 14th class and I’ll tell you straight up, I still hate it.  Hot yoga is hell yoga.  The problem is, it’s extremely effective… So even though I’m in agony before, during and after every class and I wonder if I’ll make it til the end, I’m seeing improvements.  I’m also stubborn and determined to use up the entire 25 class pass so I force myself to keep going.  As a reward for dragging my body to yoga I make myself something awesome after each class, like Raspberry & Blueberry Crumb Bars or a Banana Dulce de Leche Smoothie, any suggestions for next time?

As always, a friendly reminder to get your Dulce de Leche posts ready for Monday, February 28th, you’ve got one week before the big day!  If you want to read more about it, click here.

Raspberry & Blueberry Crumb Bars and Hot Yoga

So I’ve started doing Bikram style hot yoga.  Everyone I’d talked to who had done it said how great it was and how amazing they felt afterwards.  They raved about it.  They reported being able to sleep better afterwards.  They called it refreshing and rejuvenating.  It all sounded too good to be true, I had to try it for myself.  Then I saw a deal to get 25 hot yoga classes for $35 and I took it as a sign to jump on board.  The verdict?  All those people lied to me.  It does NOT make me feel better.  After my first class I felt like I’d been turned inside out, beaten up and run over by a bus.  I promptly returned home, showered and went to bed.  This was at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon.  Bikram yoga destroyed me.  I was told it would get better.  The second class was exactly the same.  For those of you unfamiliar with Bikram style yoga, it takes places in a very hot studio, (around 105°F, but hotter when you cram that room full of sweaty wannabe yogis) and is a 90 minute session which consists of 26 postures, throughout which you’re encouraged NOT to drink water, NOT to wipe your sweat away and NOT to leave the room for any reason.  They’re very particular.

It was after my third hot yoga class that I made these Raspberry & Blueberry Crumb Bars.  All I wanted to do was go to bed but I had promised to bake something to bring into work the following day.  Given my post-yoga state of confusion, it’s a wonder they turned out at all, especially as I had to make numerous substitutions to the original recipe.  I had intended on going to pick up some groceries after yoga but I completely forgot in my quest to get home as quickly as possible so that I could collapse.  That meant that when I started to try to put these bars together I realized I didn’t have enough butter or flour or lemons.  Absurd!  What kind of baker doesn’t have butter and flour?  So I had to make changes like substituting cream cheese for part of the butter, ground oats for part of the flour and limes for lemons.  I’ve given you the original recipe with my substitutions in italics.  As for the yoga, I’m persevering and am determined to go to all 25 classes that I’ve paid for, even if it kills me.  As incentive not to die, I’ve decided that I get a treat after every yoga class and these bars are perfect for that.  Besides, they’ve got anti-oxidant rich berries and fibre from the oats.  They’re practically health food.  I’m sure Bikram would approve.

Raspberry Blueberry Crumb Bars, (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

1 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 cups all-purpose flour (1 ½ c flour, 1 ½ cup ground oats to make 'flour')
1 cup cold butter (5 ounces butter + 3 ounces cream cheese)
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon salt
Zest and juice of one lemon (zest of 1 lime + ¼ cup milk)
4 cups fresh raspberries (2 cups raspberries, 2 cups blueberries)
1/2 cup white sugar, (½ cup brown sugar)
1 tablespoon cornstarch

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease a 9×13 inch pan.
On a work surface or in a medium bowl, mix together 1 cup sugar, 3 cups flour, and baking powder. Mix in salt and lemon zest. Use a fork or pastry cutter to blend in the butter and egg. Dough will be crumbly. Pat half of dough into the prepared pan. I lined my pan with parchment paper. It makes it easier to remove the bars when they are done.
In another bowl, stir together the sugar, the cornstarch and lemon juice. Gently mix in the raspberries. Sprinkle the raspberry mixture evenly over the crust. Crumble remaining dough over the berry layer.
Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until top is slightly brown. Cool completely before cutting into squares.

Mini Banana Cream Pies

 It was -22°C today in Toronto, -30°C with the wind chill.  That sort of temperature does not inspire me to want to go outside.  Ever.  Instead I stayed in and thought about all the warm and tropical places I would rather be. And after I accepted the reality that I’m stuck here for at least 2 more months of winter I decided to spend the day baking.  However, deciding what to bake is never an easy task.  As usual, I spent an absurd amount of time scanning recipes and trying to find something that I felt like making and for which I also had all the ingredients, because as previously discussed, there was no way I was going outside.

Then I saw some bananas sitting on the counter and narrowed my search to banana recipes.  I should really have more banana recipes in my repertoire and should make them more often because The Boy likes “anything with banana”.  I mentioned my boyfriend in my last post, (and how he’s not impressed with my oversized male roommate…) but despite the only recent mention, he’s not new and he’s actually existed on my blog for quite some time, albeit in various disguises.  If you’ve been around Jumbo Empanadas since the early days, you may also know The Boy as a certain Ukrainian Princess who refused to eat pierogies… 

Other than that though, he’s a pretty good eater, likes sweets and will generally try anything I put in front of him, (pierogies being the obvious exception).  As I said, he especially likes anything with banana.  He also likes pudding.  Given those two facts, it seems like banana cream pie should be one of his favourite desserts.  While looking at recipes with bananas, I sent him a quick message asking his opinion of said pie, as I thought it odd he had never requested it.  Turns out he’s never had banana cream pie.  How is that possible?

I shouldn’t be surprised though, this sort of situation happens quite often.  I ask him what he thinks of something, he replies he’s never had it and I then add it to the “list of things to make The Boy”.  Unfortunately, despite the fact that I evidently ending up making banana cream pies, they’re still on The Boy’s list.  He lives in another city and didn’t get to try any of these.  But I figure if I keep making banana desserts like this he’ll have to come visit me more often…

 Banana Cream Pie (from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking From My Home to Yours)

2 cups whole milk
6 large egg yolks
1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar, pressed through a sieve
1/3 cup cornstarch, sifted
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, cut into bits
3 ripe but firm bananas, sliced

To make the custard, bring the milk to a boil.  In a separate saucepan, whisk together the eggs, sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt until blended and thick.  Whisking without stopping, drizzle in about ¼ of the hot milk.  Continue to whisk while slowly pouring in the remainder of the milk.  Bring the mixture to a boil while whisking and continue to whisk for 2 minutes at a boil.  Remove from the heat and whisk in the vanilla.  Let cool 5 minutes before whisking in the bits of butter until fully incorporated and the mixture is smooth.  Cover the surface of the custard with plastic wrap and refrigerate until cool.  Remove from the fridge and whisk again before scooping into tart shells, alternating with a layer of sliced banana until you reach the top of the shell.

***I used Dorie’s recipe for the custard only.  For the tart shells I used a 3-2-1 pie dough, fully baked and cooled.  I topped the mini pies with lightly sweetened whipped cream and a banana slice with caramelized cinnamon sugar on top.  There are chocolate curls beside the tarts in the photos, but afterwards I added those on top too.

Bananas, Ice Cream and Mariokart

During my second year of university, I lived in a house that was full of primarily varsity basketball players, (of which, I was one).  I lived in the basement with two other girls from the women’s team and on the first floor there were three guys from the men’s team.  We each had separate entrances so you had to go outside to enter each other’s apartment and talk to each other in person.  There were many times, however, that instead of going outside and around the house to communicate with the guys, we’d just yell through the vents.  The house wasn’t very soundproof so we could easily have entire conversations without leaving the comfort of our own apartments, (this was especially useful during the winter).  There was one thing that would make me go upstairs though and that was Mariokart.

In my younger days I was a pro at Mariokart on Super Nintendo.  I was confident that no one could beat me, whether it be on Rainbow Road or in Battle Mode, I dominated.  But my expertise was limited to Super Nintendo.  I never advanced past that gaming system.  When Nintendo 64 came out, I didn’t jump on the bandwagon and left my game playing days behind me.  Or so I thought.  Enter Kenny.  Kenny was one of the guys who lived upstairs and he had a Nintendo 64 and Mariokart.  We were hanging out one day and somehow Mariokart worked it’s way into our conversation, (as it does…) and I started shooting my mouth off about how good I was at it.  Well Kenny immediately challenged me to prove it and so we wandered upstairs to have a match.

I wrongly assumed that since I was an expert at Mariokart on SNES, I would also be an expert on N64.  I wasn’t ready for a controller with a dozen extra buttons and a rumble pack and all sorts of new things.  On our first round, Kenny destroyed me with bananas.  He would litter the track with them and shout “There are ‘nanners all over the track!” and I would steer my way into most of them, spinning out and ultimately losing race after race.  Gradually I got somewhat better, but Kenny and his bananas continued to get the best of me.  We had many rematches after that, usually sparked by Kenny yelling down the vent “Bri! Nanners! Briiiiiii!” and me bounding up the steps.  Ever since those days, I can’t help but think of Kenny and ‘nanners all over the track whenever I start to bake with bananas.


Banana Sour Cream Cake, (from Mindfood)

125g butter, softened
¾ cup castor sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs, room temperature
¾ cup sour cream
¼ cup milk
1 cup mashed bananas
2 ¼ cups self raising flour
¼ tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly grease and line a 20cm round cake pan with baking paper. Using an electric mixer, beat butter, sugar and vanilla until pale and creamy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Using a large metal spoon, gently fold in cream, milk and banana. Sift flour and baking of soda over batter and gently fold through.

Spoon batter into cake pan and smooth.  Bake 50-60 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.  Stand for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.

*****Mindfood suggests a sour cream and white chocolate icing which I should have made, but I used a sour cream, icing sugar and butter recipe instead.  It turned out ok, but not amazing so I’m not going to post that.  To make the cake look pretty I sprinkled it with dried edible flowers and served it with a Brown Sugar Balsamic Swirl ice cream from Bon Appetit, which was pretty awesome and deserving of a post all to itself. 

PFB Voting and A Story About Pavlova

It’s time to vote for your favourite contestant to advance to the next round of Foodbuzz’s Project Food Blog. Hopefully that’s me! You’ve got until September 23rd to make your vote count and can do so right here.

And for you, I’ve got a little story about food and travel! Back in university, I did a semester abroad at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. A lot of my memories from those 6 months revolve around trying new foods and seeing new places. One of my favourites finds was the New Farm Farmer’s Marke. It was there that I tried Greek yogurt for the first time, sampled wine on Saturday mornings and learned to actually enjoy eating olives. Aside from my market finds, one of my many food discoveries in Australia was the pavlova. A wonderful dessert that every Aussie I met, fiercely defended as being Australian in origin. I had no reason to doubt them at this point although I thought it a bit odd that they were so adamant that pavlova came from Australia.



Fast forward 5 years and I found myself in New Zealand, once again eating and traveling around and enjoying myself immensely. That is, until one night when I was cooking with friends and the topic of what to make for dessert came up. Someone asked me if I’d had a pavlova since being in New Zealand. I foolishly replied “That’s the Australian meringue dessert, right?” Uh oh. Now Kiwi’s are generally pretty laid back people, they don’t tend to get angry very often but there’s a limit to every Kiwi’s patience and apparently I crossed the line when I dared to suggest that pavlova might come from Australia. Clearly, according to the kiwi’s I was with, it’s a Kiwi invention. Only Kiwi’s could come up with something as delicious as pavlova, not bloody Australians!


Upon my return home I decided to test out my pav making skills with a bit of seasonal Canadian flavour. I topped my pavlova with a maple syrup infused whipped cream and some fresh peaches and blueberries. Maybe I can now start claiming that Canadians invented the pavlova?

Pavlova, (from the very Kiwi, Edmonds Cookery Book)

3 egg whites
1 teaspoon vinegar
3 tablespoons cold water
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup caster sugar
3 teaspoons cornflour

Preheat oven to 150 C. Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites until stiff. Add water and beat again. Add sugar very gradually while still beating. Slow beater and add vinegar, vanilla and cornflour. Line an oven try with baking paper. Draw a 22 cm circle on the baking paper. Spread the pavlova to within 2 cm of the edge of the circle, keeping the shape as round and even as possible. Smooth top surface over. Bake pavlova for 45 mins, then leave to cool in oven (Do not open the oven while it is baking! It may deflate!). Carefully life the pavlova onto a serving plate. Decorate with whipped cream and fresh fruit.

Serves 6.

Silent Sunday: Waffles with Blueberries, Peaches and Maple Syrup

New Discovery: Tamarillos!

I am currently suffering from what must be a combination of the worst jet lag ever, sleep deprivation and all the gross germs picked up while on board 4 different airplanes. As much as I love traveling and seeing new places, there are certain things that I could do without, such as 36 hour journeys to get from one side of the world to the other and flight schedules that have me narrowly missing my plane and being the last person to board. And then there’s the repercussions of said schedule, like ending up in the sickly condition in which I currently exist. It’s not pleasant. But, back to the good bits of traveling; discovering new foods!


While in New Zealand I was always on the lookout for foods not normally found in my Canadian kitchen. One of the fruits that I discovered was tamarillos. They’re also known as tree tomatoes, however in 1967 the name was changed by the New Zealand Tree Tomatoes Promotions Council to distinguish it from garden tomatoes and to increase its exotic appeal. Tamarillos can be eaten like a kiwi fruit simply by scooping out the insides with a spoon, however, the skin and the fruit closest to it are bitter and should be avoided. The black seeds on the inside are edible, like those of a passion fruit. And the taste? My first bite made me think of gooseberries, red currants and plums. Tamarillos are quite tart and as such are good when baked up with a little sugar, but can also be used in savoury applications, like chutneys and relish. As is often the case with me, I went the sweet route and make tamarillo jelly as well as some tamarillo muffins. The jelly was especially easy to make as it was nothing more than tamarillos, sugar, lemon juice and a vanilla bean, cooked on the stove top for an hour and then bottled. Although at the price of tamarillos, unless you’ve got your own source, you may want to go the cheaper route and just make muffins…


Tamarillo Muffins, (adapted from the New Zealand Tamarillo Growers Association)

½ cup sugar
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 egg, beaten
½ cup milk
100g butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
3 tamarillos, peeled and chopped
1 tamarillo, peeled and thinly sliced

Preheat oven to 200C. Line and lightly grease 10-12 muffin cups.
Sift together sugar, flour and baking powder.
In another bowl, combine egg, milk, melted butter and vanilla.
Add liquid ingredients to dry ingredients and stir just to combine. Add chopped tamarillos.
Pour batter into muffin cups and top with a slice of tamarillo.
Bake 16-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the centre of the muffins.

Rhubarb, Rhubarb, Rhubarb

A couple summers ago when my little nephew Alex was visiting we were all entertained by playing a game with him called “What Do You Like More?” It was a pretty straight forward game, we would simply name two items and ask Alex which one he liked more. My brother especially enjoyed replacing one of the items with Auntie Brilynn and asking him questions like “What do you like more… Bear or Auntie Brilynn?” or “What do you like more… Cookies or Auntie Brilynn?” or “What do you like more… Mosquitoes or Auntie Brilynn?” or “What do you like more… Dragon flies or Auntie Brilynn?”. For the record, I tied with Bear, (his favourite stuffed animal) lost to dragon flies and beat out both cookies and mosquitoes! You can find out all sorts of interesting information by playing this game with other people, not just a three year old. For example, if you were to play this game with me and compare everything to rhubarb, rhubarb would probably lose every time.

What do you like more… Rhubarb or chocolate? Chocolate.

What do you like more… Rhubarb or lobster? Lobster.

Ok, so maybe those ones were obvious, but if we keep playing, you’ll notice the rhubarb hating continues.

What do you like more… Rhubarb or three day old stale pizza? Pizza.

What do you like more… Rhubarb or doing the dishes? Dishes.

What do you like more… Rhubarb or chopping herbs and shucking oysters? Finally, a victory for rhubarb!

It’s not that I actually hate rhubarb but given the option of eating rhubarb or something else, nine times out of ten I’ll choose the something else. Despite this, rhubarb intrigues me. Possibly in part because it brings back fond memories of plucking a sun warmed stalk of rhubarb from the garden and proceeding to eat it by dipping the end in a cup of sugar between bites. These days I want to pair it with more savoury dishes, perhaps in a tangy bbq sauce or a chutney? Even though I’m harbouring thoughts of savoury rhubarb, I’ve been making nothing but sweet things in the form of Strawberry Rhubarb Ripple ice cream and Strawberry Rhubarb Mousse. If you asked me what do you like more… Strawberries or rhubarb? Strawberries would clearly win.

Unfortunately there aren’t recipes to accompany these dishes. The ice cream was made as an afterthought. I had made strawberry rhubarb jam and decided that I wanted to swirl it into a vanilla ice cream base. So I did. And it was good. It was extra good when eaten out of Cinnamon Tuiles, which I will provide a recipe for. Those were sort of an accident too. I had to make tuiles for a dessert at work and I’d never made them before so I did a trial run at home first. It just so happened that it paired great with my ice cream. The Strawberry Rhubarb Mousse was adapted from a recipe for cherry mousse that I found in Food & Drink magazine, which I’ve touted before as a great free publication put out by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. I made that one for Mother’s Day as Mom requested ‘something with rhubarb’ and I grudgingly complied.

Cinnamon Tuiles, (Adapted slightly from Gourmet, November 1998)

1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter

1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

3 tablespoons light corn syrup

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a saucepan melt butter with brown sugar and corn syrup over moderate heat, stirring occasionally until sugar is dissolved. Remove pan from heat and stir in flour, cinnamon and a pinch of salt until smooth.

Drop batter by the tablespoon full onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Leave a lot of space in between as these cookies spread immensely. Bake cookies in middle of oven 6 minutes, or until golden.

Once you remove the tray from the oven, let the tuiles rest for about a minute before you try to remove them. If you try to pick them up too soon, they’ll fall apart. As soon as you’re able to gently lift a tuile off the parchment without tearing it, they’re ready to mold. You can mold them any way you like, I’ve pressed them into muffin tins as well as draped them over coffee cups and small bowls, it all depends what shape you want. Cool cookie completely and then transfer to an airtight container. Tuiles keep 5 days in an airtight container at cool room temperature.

Blueberry Maple Fro Yo

Favourite fro yo
Yummy blueberry maple
In chocolate cup

***************************************************************

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator

Blueberry Maple Frozen Yogurt
1 750ml container of yogurt, (whatever % you feel like using)
Maple sryup, to taste, (I start with maybe 1/4 cup combined with the blueberries and add more when I mix it into the strained yogurt if I think it needs more)
Blueberries, as much as you want, (maybe a cup and a half is a good place to start)
Vodka, a splash
Strain the yogurt overnight. On the stove stop, combine maple syrup and blueberries and cook until the blueberries release some juice and soften. Chill completely and stir this into the strained yogurt. Add a splash of vodka. Pour into ice cream machine and then freeze.

Vita-Mix Giveaway!

Oh yes, you read that correctly, I’m giving away a Vita-Mix! After a long dreary winter we could all use some cheering up and in an attempt to make one lucky person especially happy, I’m giving away a brand new Vita-Mix 5200. If you’ve never heard of Vita-Mix then you live under a rock. Seriously. It’s a high powered blender that can chew up virtually anything. How do I know this?

Quick Raspberry Ice Cream

Recently the wonderful people at Vita-Mix offered to let me try one out and I jumped at the chance. I love kitchen toys and this is a particularly awesome one. After playing around with it for a while, (and pretty much throwing everything in my fridge and cupboard into the canister just to watch it blend) I decided it was selfish of me to keep something so great all to myself. But I didn’t want to give it up though either. So I asked Vita-Mix if they would be willing to give away another blender to one of my readers. They graciously agreed and there you have it.

Silky Smooth Pumpkin Soup

I’m not the only one who thinks highly of Vita-Mix. Michael Ruhlman lists their blender as one of his favourite kitchen gadgets, (besides his hands that is). And I could give you a list of all the things you can do with your Vita-Mix, but we’d be here forever.

Almond and Lemon Macaron

Here are a few random suggestions:

• Grind your own almonds and then proceed to make Almond and Lemon Macarons.
• Whip up a homemade prune and Armagnac bbq sauce and then smother it on ribs.
• Whir together some cream, sugar and frozen fruit and you’ve got soft serve ice cream, freeze it a little longer if you want to be able to scoop it.
• Smoothies, smoothies, smoothies.
• Soup! You can make hot soup, from raw ingredients in about 5 minutes. And the texture is out of this world, super smooth.

Homemade BBQ Rib Sauce In Blender, After Blending and On Ribs

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Want a chance to win? There are lots of ways:

1. Leave a comment on this post telling me your favourite Spring recipe.
2. Twitter about the giveaway, linking to this post and leave me another comment to let me know. Or follow me on Twitter! @jumboempanadas
3. Post about the giveaway on Facebook, linking to this post and leave me another comment to let me know.
4. Post about the giveaway on your own blog, linking to this post and leave me another comment to let me know.

I'll give you an entry ballot for each way that you enter the contest. Unfortunately the contest is only open to readers in the USA and Canada, (but I love you all equally). Make sure you leave an email address,(or link to your blog if you have one) so that I can contact you if you win. The contest will run until Saturday, March 28th, at which point I’ll use a random number generator to determine a winner. Good luck everyone! Happy Spring!

Banana Berry Smoothie

Monthly Mingle: Caribbean Cooking

In my quest to find inspiration by resuming participation in food blogging events I thought it seemed only fitting that I partake in one being hosted by Meeta of What’s For Lunch, Honey? Her Monthly Mingle was the first blogging event that I ever entered and when I saw that the theme for this month was Caribbean Cooking, I decided I should definitely be able to figure out something to make for it.

When I think of the Caribbean the first thing that comes to mind is Cuba. Cuba, si! It’s the only place I’ve been in the Caribbean and I’ve been three times. Although I can’t believe over two years have passed since I was there last, (and according to that post, over two years since I started baking from Dorie’s book!). I need to go back. I need to feel that soft white sand between my toes and sip on a mojito, or perhaps a Cuba Libre at inappropriately early times of day, (ie- 10am). I need to spend some time walking the beach, floating in the ocean, playing a little volleyball and then returning to my room to find swans made of towels. What else do I need? Tropical fruit! And that’s where the Monthly Mingle comes in. Despite the fact that I dislike pineapple upside down cake, I love pineapple, particularly fresh pineapple. Ideally I would eat all my pineapple fresh from the tree, but given that I live in cold and snowy Canada and it’s still the middle of winter here, that’s not going to happen. What that means is that by the time a pineapple has travelled from the tropics to my house, it’s likely not at the pinnacle of ripeness. Fortunately, it can still be salvaged with the addition of sugar, dark rum and roasting. While we’re at it, let’s throw in some more tropical flavours with coconut and bananas. What do you get? Roasted Pineapple with Coconut and Banana Ice Cream. It’s as close as I’m going to get to the Caribbean anytime soon and it’s delicious!

If you’re hosting a food blogging event, let me know! And Peanut Butter Boy? Don’t worry, I’ve got something planned for The Great Peanut Butter Exhibition…

Roasted Pineapple (Adapted from Michael Smith)

1 Pineapple skin and ends trimmed off and cut into rings, core removed
3 tablespoons brown sugar
½ cup dark Cuban rum
1 teaspoon ground allspice
½ cup flaked coconut
Banana ice cream, preferably homemade :)

Preheat oven to 375°F. Place sugar, rum and allspice in a bowl and stir together. Toss pineapple slices in mixture and lay into a 9" by 13" baking pan. Pour the remaining syrup overtop. Roast for 1 hour, or until pineapple is caramelized and tender, flipping half way through. When pineapple is completely tender sprinkle a little extra sugar on top and stick under the broiler to caramelize. Put a slice of pineapple into a bowl, sprinkle some coconut onto the middle and top with a scoop of banana ice cream. Serve immediately.

Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: Five Courses, Five Primary Tastes

It’s time for another round of Foodbuzz 24, 24,24, whereby 24 bloggers post about 24 different meal experiences in 24 hours. This month I proposed to make a five course meal, with each course highlighting one of the five tastes, which are bitter, salty, sour, umami and sweet. The folks at Foodbuzz thought that was a good idea so here we are! Let’s get right into it.

European Imported Beers

The first taste that I wanted to highlight was bitter. The bitter taste can also be described as sharp and can be detected in chocolate, coffee, olives, beer, bitters and some leafy greens. Since it’s my dinner to host I’m allowed to say that liquid courses count! That means it’s time for beer. To whet our appetite for more good things to come, we sampled some European imports. Beer always makes me hungry for snack food so it’s a good thing the salty course was up next.

Roasted Potatoes with Bacon, Cheese and Parsley

Salty tastes are produced predominantly by the presence of sodium ions. My favourite example of the salty flavour is bacon and I seriously debated for a while about just serving a few different slices of homemade bacon on a plate. Who wouldn’t love that? My somewhat rational side eventually vetoed that idea but only because I decided to enhance bacon with other delicious things like potatoes and cheese. Roasted Potatoes with Bacon, Cheese and Parsley from Gourmet complimented the beer perfectly and it began to become clear why it’s essential to combine all five tastes for ultimate enjoyment.

Lemon Raspberry Sorbet

After all of that saltiness we needed a palate cleanser. Sour taste buds to the rescue! Sour is the taste that detects acidity. The most common food group containing sour tastes is fruit like lemons and limes but wine can also have it. One bite of this mouth puckering Lemon Raspberry Sorbet is all you need to know exactly what sour tastes like. It’s definitely not dessert and you wouldn’t want a whole bowl of it but it was a great way to prep the mouth for umami. U-ma-what??? Just keep reading.

Roasted Veal Chops with Morels

Umami is the 5^th taste, although it is only as recent as 2002 that it has been included in culinary textbooks and literature as such. The concept, however, is not new. Escoffier identified sauces made with veal stock as having a flavor distinct from the four primary tastes although it took another hundred years before this fifth taste was finally accepted as valid. The word umami is Japanese and can mean yummy or delicious and has been described in English as meatiness, relish or savouriness. The umami taste is produced by compounds such as glutamate and is commonly found in fermented and aged foods, among others. Some examples of food containing glutamate are beef, lamb, mushrooms, parmesan and Roquefort cheese as well as soy sauce and fish sauce. I decided to take a cue from Escoffier and made Roasted Veal Chops with Morels to give my main course that umami taste.

White Chocolate Cheesecake with Chocolate Crumbs and Candied Kumquats

Finally, we end our meal with the sweet taste, one that is generally regarded as a pleasurable sensation. Sweetness is found in sugar rich foods and naturally in things like fruit, honey and maple syrup. I chose to go the less than natural, (but still very sweet) route with White Chocolate Cheesecake with Chocolate Crumbs and Candied Kumquats. Even the sour foods have been made sweet in this dessert, as kumquats are transformed into candied bites of sweetness with the aid of a simple syrup. I usually find white chocolate almost too cloyingly sweet to bear but combined with the tanginess of cream cheese it was actually quite enjoyable. Which reminds me, although each of the primary tastes can be delicious on their own, they’re at their best when combined with one another for a more complete and well rounded flavour. And although I enjoyed my five courses of tastes, I like how they play off of each other best as opposed to being sampled separately.

Be sure to check out the other 24, 24, 24 meals, there are sure to be some interesting ones that no doubt make full use of all five primary tastes. And if you’re looking for umami, look no further than the following recipe for Roasted Veal Chops with Morels.

Roasted Veal Chops with Morels, (From Gourmet, Adapted from Jean-Jacques Rachou and Charlie Palmer)

1 1/2 cups boiling water

1 1/4 oz dried morels (about 1 1/3 cups)

2 (1 1/3-inch-thick) veal rib chops

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 garlic clove, smashed

1 thyme sprig

1 tablespoon finely chopped shallot

2 tablespoon Cognac

1/2 tablespoon chopped chives

1 teaspoon chopped tarragon

Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle.

Pour boiling water over morels in a small bowl and soak until morels are softened, about 30 minutes. Transfer morels with a slotted spoon to a medium-mesh sieve set over a bowl. Press on morels with back of spoon to remove excess liquid (be careful not to squeeze out all the moisture), then add to soaking liquid and reserve. Rinse morels to remove any grit. Reserve morels and liquid separately, allowing liquid to settle.

While morels soak, let veal chops stand at room temperature 30 minutes.

Pat chops dry and season with 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper (total). Heat an ovenproof 12-inch heavy skillet (not nonstick) over medium-high heat until hot. Add oil and heat until smoking, then add veal chops and sear underside well, 2 to 3 minutes. Turn chops over and sear 1 minute.

Add butter, garlic, and thyme to skillet and baste veal with melting butter. Transfer skillet to oven and cook, basting every few minutes, until an instant-read thermometer inserted horizontally into center of chop registers 130 to 135°F for medium-rare, 10 to 15 minutes.

Transfer chops to a plate to rest. Discard garlic and thyme, keeping juices and fat in skillet, and return to burner over medium-high heat. (Handle will be very hot.) Add morels and sauté 1 minute. Add shallot and sauté 1 minute.

Remove from heat briefly and add Cognac, then return to heat and deglaze, stirring and scraping up brown bits, until most of liquid has evaporated. Slowly pour in reserved soaking liquid, being careful to leave last tablespoon (containing sediment) in bowl. Add meat juices from plate and boil until liquid has reduced to about 1/3 cup.

Stir in crème fraîche, swirling to incorporate, and boil until morels are lightly coated and liquid is slightly thickened. Stir in chives and tarragon and season with salt and pepper. Serve chops smothered with morels.

Poached Pears and Random Musings

The recipe for these spiced poached pears with ginger crème anglaise and chocolate sauce comes from Simple to Spectacular: How to Take One Basic Recipe to Four Levels of Sophistication by Jean Georges Vongerichten and Mark Bittman. I got this book out of the library, did not make nearly enough out of it before returning it and now I need it back. What that means for me is a trip to the library. What that means for you is that there’s no recipe today and instead I’m subjecting you to Random Musings…

• Just because I can complete Jessie’s Girl on expert on Guitar Hero does not mean I can play the guitar. Nor does it make me particularly good at the rest of the songs on GH.

• Snow would be so much more awesome if it weren’t so damn cold.

• I like using wooden spoons in the kitchen, especially homemade ones. Substitutions for wooden spoons are always inadequate.

• Backhanded compliments make me angry.

• No matter how good I am at tennis I will never be as good as a wall. (Ok, so that one belongs to Mitch Hedberg, but you can’t help but agree with him).

• Ducks are funny.

• Sometimes I like to drop random comments into conversation just to see if people are paying attention.

• Ice cream should totally be marketed as a breakfast food, especially if there’s fruit in it. Who doesn’t need a serving of dairy and fruit to start their day?

• I don’t always tell people I have a food blog because I don’t want to think about censoring my writing based on who I know is reading.

• Poached pears are surprisingly good. I will make them again. Maybe with red wine next time.

The floor is open, any thoughts?

The Kids Are Alright

My friend Pete is a News Editor for The Homer Index, a newspaper serving the Homer and Litchfield areas of Michigan. (If this sounds familiar, I’ve previously mentioned Pete in this post about roasting chicken). Every week I have the pleasure of opening my inbox to find a copy of Pete’s most recent Word on the Street column. This week Pete wrote about Ryan Michaels, an award-winning journalist who does movie reviews for Heritage Newspapers, Inc. What’s the big deal about an award-winning journalist? This one happens to be 11 years old and he received an honourable mention in the Michigan Press Association’s 2008 Better Newspaper Contest in the category of Local Columnist for a weekly paper with a circulation under 4,000. My friend Pete did not. Of course his initial reaction was to be depressed, and really, who could blame him? Being beat by an 11 year is almost as bad as that time he was beat by a 15 year old girl in a foot race…

But I digress… I could feel Pete’s pain because earlier in the day I had listened to a CBC radio interview with Luke Hayes-Alexander, (you can listen to the podcast in the archives under Eating and Dining Locally). Who? That would be 17 year old Executive Chef Luke Hayes-Alexander who plans the menu and cooks using locally sourced ingredients at his restaurant Luke’s! in Kingston, Ontario. He’s only 17 and he's a phenomenally good chef. What's more is that he's articulate and humble about that whole thing too. He became obsessed with food at age 11 and took off from there. And what am I doing with my life? Certainly not running things like Luke.

After initially hearing the interview I had the same reaction as Pete, depression. But after thinking about it for a while I came to another conclusion; that this might actually be a good sign. Maybe the kids are alright after all. Given all the horror stories told on the news involving the youth of today it’s kinda nice to hear that they’re not all bad. An optimist could even go so far as to hope that these youngsters are starting to become the rule as opposed to the exception. I can’t say that I’m not jealous of their success, but I’m happy they’re having it nonetheless. Pete also eventually admits that although he may have lost out on the award, he’s fallen to a worthy foe. Yes, the kids are alright. You should check out Pete’s website to read more of his articles which are always entertaining, informative and written with a sense of humour that I just can’t get enough of, (case in point: this article about Pete’s ongoing fight with Canada which began a few years ago when he, an American, voted in a Canadian Federal Election).

But back to the food… In honour of the little ones, I’m going against my ‘Go Big or Go Home’ slogan and posting a series of mini pies. They’re all made with Dorie’s Good for Almost Everything Pie Dough and were created to use up leftover dough or ingredients from other projects. None of them have recipes to go with them, other than the star pie which is actually Dorie’s Thanksgiving Twofer Pie, (pumpkin and pecan in one). I made a large version of that for Canadian Thanksgiving, which was this past weekend. The trio of pies are apple with maple caramel inside because I had leftover maple caramel and decided pie was the place for it to go. And the other pie is actually more of a pear crisp set on a pie shell, with sugar dusted pie dough scraps as garnish. I called it Pear Pie for One and was inspired to make it after watching Flight of the Conchords one night and hearing Bret sing about making a Lasagna for One. So there you have it, mini pies to salute the kids. I know I can’t beat them, I can only keep doing what I do and hope that the young ones will continue to flourish and subsequently support me when I get old. Or better yet, maybe I should consider becoming a cougar so I can snag one of those go-getters for myself… Hello Life Sponsor!

Bowl of Cherries

Unless you’ve never visited here before, you should know that I love cherries. If you’ve ever posted a cherry recipe on your blog, chances are I’ve left a comment somewhere along the lines of “That looks awesome, I love anything with cherries in it!” I practically have cherry juice in my blood. I think I was weaned off breast milk and onto cherry juice. It’s just always been a part of me. That’s because my grandparents have a cherry orchard and every summer, (except this past one, tear) I’ve worked in the orchard, picking, sorting and selling cherries. This year the season wasn’t very long and I was busy with school and work and sadly didn’t make it to Niagara. I was lucky though that my aunt and uncle delivered a basket of cherries to me after they made the trip so I at least got a taste of my favourite fruit. I savoured every one of those cherries and ate them all myself without sharing. But it wasn’t enough! I’ve been going through cherry withdrawal lately and it’s not pretty. I’ve been getting the shakes and everything.

Most years I gorge myself on cherries when the season comes, plucking them straight from the tree and always making sure to tuck a few baskets worth into the freezer to enjoy later on. I didn’t get that opportunity this year and for the first time in my life I had to buy cherries. A little piece of my soul died as I handed over the money to buy cherries that had spent time on a truck and hadn’t been hand picked with love and care by myself or a family member. My soul died, but my taste buds rejoiced as soon as I washed the cherries and began popping them in my mouth. Béa of La Tartine Gourmande remarked on a recent post of hers that she’s been walking around with noyaux, (pits) in her mouth all day lately and that’s exactly the way things should be during cherry season. And that’s the way things are when I’m in the orchard, a mouth full of pits, cheerily spitting them out wherever I please. It’s much harder to spit pits out, willy nilly, when you live in an apartment, I had to at least make an effort to aim for a bowl or garbage pail. I even tried to freeze some of the cherries that I bought but when I ran out of fresh ones I raided the freezer before they even had time to get cold. Sigh, no cherries during the winter for me.

But wait! That’s not exactly true. This year was a particularly wet cherry season which meant there were a lot of splits in the cherries. Split cherries are still perfectly edible, but many people throw them out because they think they’re bad. Splits are just cherries that absorbed too much water, too quickly and consequently didn’t have enough time to grow to accommodate it all. Split cherries are sweet and juicy but not the prettiest ones in the basket. When you work in an orchard though there comes a point when, as much as you want to, you can’t shove anymore splits in your mouth. When that happened this year, my family started drying the cherries. What a wonderful idea! As soon as I heard this I began planning all sorts of cookies and bars and ice creams that involved dried cherries. I’m being rationed with the dried cherries though. Mom gave me one bag and kept the rest to dole out later because she knows I’ll plow through them in no time if they’re within my grasp. As a thank you, I made some of David Lebovitz’s Chocolate Ice Cream and enhanced it with Kirsch Flamed Cherries. Mom’s favourite cake is black forest, so this was a perfect flavour combination for her, (which I actually served on her birthday alongside a black forest cake). I am also indebted to my aunts who halved and pitted cherries to put in the dehydrator and will be making chocolate cherry cookies or bars for them as a thank you. All in good time.

Kirsch Flamed Cherries

½ cup dried cherries

¼ cup Kirsch

¼ cup water

Put the dried cherries and water in a small saucepan over medium heat and cook until the cherries have soaked up most of the water. Remove the pan from heat, add the kirsch and light it on fire! When the flames die out, pour the cherries and any leftover liquid into a bowl in the fridge to cool completely. Add it to your chocolate ice cream during the last couple minutes of churning so that it’s fully incorporated.

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Cherries + Fruit + Kirsch + Ice Cream + Chocolate + David Lebovitz