I found this recipe through Tastespotting last week and immediately determined that grilled bananas with chocolate would be an essential part of our weekend. It’s the simplest dessert imaginable — bananas stuffed with chocolate, then grilled. Just slice the length of the banana down to, but not through, the bottom, load with chocolate, and grill until the peel darkens and the chocolate melts.

We had bittersweet chocolate chips on hand, so that’s what I used, but I’m sure any chocolate you love would be great in this. Perhaps even, dare I say it, Nutella?

If you look closely, you can see where the juices are still sizzling between banana and peel. I’m sure this would be amazing over ice cream, but we enjoyed them scooped straight from the peel.

Oh, boy, do I ever love summer — buying berries by the quart doesn’t require a loan, and the best desserts are the simplest, like this blueberry and blackberry galette.

<Sigh> It actually makes me a little sad, knowing this will come to an end so soon. </Sigh> Guess I’ll just enjoy it while I can and take lots of pictures to tide me over during the long winter to come.

And hey, there’s always apple crisp season to look forward to!

recipe after the jump

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I don’t think I’m being especially controversial by saying our food preferences are largely culturally-influenced. My dad traveled to China on business quite a bit during his career, and came back with stories of food that often sounded delicious, but also occasionally made my toes curl. Being raised on alligator (usually dry, stringy and flavorless), frog legs (pretty darned good, if a little tough), and boudin (head cheese and rice stuffed into a sausage casing, and slap-yo-mama-good), I’ve had my share of strange looks when talking about meals that aren’t so popular outside of Louisiana. Yet the very same people who introduced me to those foods somehow make the poo-face at tongue, a meat popular at both hole-in-the-wall taquerias and Jewish delis in this part of the country.

Boggles the mind.

OK, maybe not so mind-boggling when I put it that way. Check out the underside.

But the gross-out factor aside, tongue is damned good eating — rich, moist, tender, and so, so flavorful. I realize I tend to wax rhapsodic about certain things, but I fell in love with this cut of meat probably 20 years ago and that’s a long time to go without shouting it from the mountaintop. Those were the years before Food Network, so I was still in my PBS cooking show phase; one of the many programs in the rotation was The Frugal Gourmet. Not my favorite by a long shot, I watched mostly to see how badly Jeff Smith would treat his poor assistant, Craig; I found it fascinating that someone so prickly could’ve been both a minister and a successful TV host. And it was on one of his shows that I was introduced to the wonders of the tongue taco. If you remember his enthusiastic proclamations at all, you’ll understand why I sought it out at the earliest opportunity — at Taqueria Corona in New Orleans. Those tacos never disappointed, and I even managed to turn on a few of my more adventurously-paletted friends to their charms.

But oddly enough, I’ve had trouble finding an equally good version here in New York (in Chelsea, specifically, since I don’t have much time for lunch). Sure, there’s a decent place across 6th Avenue, but the meat is too gamey for my taste. So when I saw tongue for sale at the Snoep Winkel Farm booth at the farmers’ market, I picked some up to try my hand at recreating the experience.

After exhaustively researching the topic, I decided on a simple approach — braising the tongue for four hours on the stove, cooling it overnight in its cooking liquid, then baking it in the oven for another hour the next day. That protracted cooking time is magical, so just step back and get ready for an experience you won’t forget.

To serve, I heated some corn tortillas in a cast iron skillet until they were lightly charred, then topped the tongue with a mixture of onion, cilantro, and lime juice, a sliver of avocado, shredded lettuce, and copious amounts of Cholula hot sauce. We had it for lunch and dinner yesterday, which should tell you how good it was.

And Santa Maria Pinquito beans were the perfect accompaniment, though I didn’t do anything special to them. After an overnight soak, I cooked them for a couple of hours with the usual cast of characters — beer, bay leaf, jalapenos, onions, garlic, and a smoked pork hock. At that point, I added cumin, paprika, chile powder, and salt and let everything simmer for another hour.

So if you’ve never tried tongue and don’t feel comfortable doing so, please give it a shot. For me? Pretty please? You won’t regret it.

recipe after the jump

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted a Rufus Report, mostly because we’ve settled into a nice routine and there really hasn’t been much to report.

But!

A few weeks ago, Gil and I decided to get serious about Rufus’s training, so now we have a dog that understands he needs to sit or lie down to to get a treat. These baby steps are actually great strides when you remember that this is what we were up against. He’ll even lie on his bed while we’re eating dinner now instead of nosing his way over to our plates.

It’s made life much more relaxed for all of us:

Hi, everyone. My apologies for the lack of frequent updates here, but the next two months are going to be just brutual at work, so you can expect short posts, and mostly on weekends. But I didn’t want to let much more time go by before I told you about our Italian weekend because it was that good.

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The comments section of a well-traveled food blog can be a pretty useful and interesting place to visit. For the same reason I enjoy reading letters to the editor in a magazine, I’ll at least skim comments on a post that has caught my attention.

Sunday morning, I found myself back at Smitten Kitchen’s pancake tutorial because I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do more with my blueberry stash than to toss them in a big stack of pancakes for breakfast. (My runner-up would’ve been a galette, but you know how I feel about pastry dough, and I just couldn’t face failure so early in the morning; I find it sets a bad tone for the day.) And even though hunger was calling and I wanted to eat close to immediately, I started to skim the comments section out of habit. Good thing, too, because one of them left a rave review of another recipe that sounded more intriguing than the traditional buttermilk pancake. I googled it and was off!

This recipe was posted by The Wednesday Chef, who adapted it from the NY Times Magazine. I adapted it further, substituting blueberries for the cranberries, and loved it; Gil even nodded his approval between bites. The cornmeal in the batter gave these pancakes just the slightest crunch, the hefty amount of baking powder made them light and fluffy, and because the batter wasn’t too sweet, topping them with a goodly amount of maple syrup didn’t send us to a sugary slumberland. At least not right away.

recipe after the jump

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After the success of the grilled salmon with blueberry salsa, I decided to try my hand at a similar combination over the weekend — grilled shrimp with peach salsa. (The original plan was for pork and peaches, but we had dim sum Saturday, which pretty much topped off our pork tanks for the week.) And “meh” doesn’t even come close to describing it. I’m practically dozing off just writing about it now.

It was a good idea in theory — ripe peaches with brandy, cilantro, red onion, cumin, and jalapeno. What could go wrong? I blame the peaches, which were ripe and smelling quite peachy, but tasted like not much of anything, to be honest. I tried doctoring them with pineapple juice and a touch of brown sugar, but to no avail. The best parts of the salsa were the red onion and jalapeno, which do not a complete salsa make.

So it’s back to the drawing board. I’ll try the peaches at the market again this weekend to see if they’re better this time around, and if the weather cooperates, I’ll grill them, too. But perfecting this one’s going to take some work, I can tell…

“Your eyes are bigger than your stomach” was one of my dad’s favorite sayings — which never got old, by the way — when I was a kid. Of course, by the time I hit my teen years, that saying was defunct, as I became an eating machine and the “hollow leg” jokes started (which also never got old).

I still have issues with my eyes being too big, mostly when I visit the Ringwood Farmers’ Market on weekends. I know I won’t be cooking much during the week, but I just can’t help myself with all of that gorgeous summer produce on display. Surely I’ll find a way to use blueberries and cilantro and beets and tuscan kale (and about 10 other things) before next weekend, right?

Well, not always, or even usually. But last night I was determined to at least make a dent in last weekend’s haul, so I started researching recipes for salmon and blueberries and kept coming upon one that sounded promising and had the benefit of only requiring a quick stop at Garden of Eden for a jalapeno pepper and a grapefruit (both easily toted on the bus).

I gotta say, this salsa rawked! Assuming frozen blueberries were recommended for a reason, I used about 1/2 cup of frozen and supplemented with about a cup of fresh, but otherwise stuck to the recipe. I’d like to replace the grapefruit with pineapple next time to sweeten it up a bit more, but this version was so good Gil and I dug into the leftovers with a spoon.

I grilled the salmon (and the asparagus, now that I think about it) with nothing more than a slick of olive oil to keep them from sticking to the grate, but the blueberry salsa and a sprinkling of fleur de sel knocked ‘em out of the park.

I’ll keep the fruit salsa solution in mind for this weekend. Pork loin with peach and basil salsa doesn’t sound half bad, and I think they’re still pretty good after only a week in the fridge…

recipe after the jump

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This only reflects my most recent posts, but I’m still pretty happy that the word “ribs” is the largest in this word cloud.

Image courtesy of Wordle.

When Gil and I visited Milan last year, we had quite a few memorable meals, as you can imagine, and most of them were within walking distance of our hotel. The pizza at a nearby trattoria (run by Chinese immigrants in the dead-after-dark financial district) was leagues better than anything we’ve ever tried in the States, and the revelatory salumi at Osteria del Treno still makes it challenging for us to completely enjoy local cured meats (though I do have my eye on a couple of mail order purveyors). But my favorite dish of the trip, the one I recall with a sigh, had to be the parmesan flan at Joia.

The soft, cakey exterior of the flan spilled its secret as I cut my first bite and discovered a pool of parmesan flooding out to greet me. Much like the moment of piercing a poached egg yolk and realizing there are only a few fleeting seconds to truly enjoy the sensation at its finest, it filled me with delight and longing. But the ephemeral joys of these dishes are part of the reason we love them so, aren’t they?

Cooking Light published a recipe for parmesan flan in their most recent issue and I considered making it, but didn’t think it’d come even close to what I remembered, so I hit the interweb looking for a better more sinful recipe. I found it at Weir Cooking in the City. I did like CL’s idea of using fresh tomatoes as a topping, though, so I prepared a few heirloom tomatoes from the farmers’ market in my favorite summery way — doused with fruity olive oil and balsamic vinegar and shot through with minced garlic and slivered basil, with salt & pepper to taste. It’s simple and delicious as a bruschetta topping, on crackers, as a topping for fish or pasta, or even eaten on its own in great spoonfuls. Yum.

I forgot that convection ovens cook a little faster than regular ovens do, so the flans were a little crusty on top, but still completely delicious. I’ll keep looking for a recipe that duplicates that glorious parmesan flood, but until then, this flan is staying in the rotation.

recipe after the jump

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