Sombremesa de Banana com Queijo

Here’s something you don’t eat everyday.

I just got home from a dear friend’s wedding/long weekend in Pittsburgh. And while I loved spending time with so many people that I haven’t seen in years, crying tears of nuptial joy, and being treated to multiple sushi dinners by my mom and grandma, this morning, I woke up craving my routine—my morning coffee, hiking, avocado-centric lunches, and the making of foods.

I came across this banana and cheese pudding in the most recent issue of Saveur, and try as I might, I couldn’t resist attempting it. Never mind that I just made a giant layer cake, that Matt and I are “trying to be healthier,” and that I’m deathly allergic to bananas (not true).

Also, Matt and I are moving, (More on this exciting, life-stage leaping development later! No, I’m not pregnant.) and one of the first decisions I made after entering escrow was that this elderly can of sweetened condensed milk that’s been in the cupboard for longer than I’d care to admit will not be making the trip to the new house with us. (That’s right, cupboard lingerers. You know who you are and your time is up.)

Hey, here’s a tip! You might want to stir the sweetened condensed milk and the evaporated milk together before boiling. I combined the two milks, added a cinnamon stick, turned the heat on to medium, and then decided to vacuum the bedroom. Why do I do these things? Also, while we’re on the topic of painful questions: Why must Shawn Johnson retire? What an Olympic-sized bummer.

Point being, if you’re not training for the Olympics, you should make this dessert. It’s the sort of thing Ina Garten would make if she were Brazilian—a dulce-de-leche-esque pudding with bananas and pockets of molten cream cheese, which perfectly cuts all that sweetness. What’s that, Ina? How bad can that be? Well, apart from the super-burnt pan, not bad at all!

Sombremesa de Banana com Queijo (Banana and Cheese Pudding) via Saveur

1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
1 12. oz. can evaporated milk
1 stick cinnamon
4 ripe bananas, cut crosswise into 2 inch pieces, then lengthwise in 1/4-inch thick slices
12 oz. cream cheese, cubed
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Boil milks and cinnamon stick in 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat until reduced by half, about 30 minutes; discard cinnamon. Spread 1/3 reduced milk over bottom of an 8x8 baking dish; top with half the bananas and half the cream cheese. Repeat layering, ending with reduced milk; sprinkle with ground cinnamon. Bake until bubbly, about 30 minutes. (A prettier presentation, as they show in their photo—second one from top—might be to layer all of this into individual oven-safe ramekins and then bake them.)

Baghali Ghatogh

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: any cuisine with a specific name for crispy rice is A-OK with me. So when I read Saveur’s recent feature on the food of Iran, I knew I was going to make one of the recipes. At first, I thought I might go straight for the gold and make Shirin Polow, which is translated as Iranian Rice Pilaf, and which promised a “thick, crisp tah dig crust.” Which reminds me, shouldn’t there be an Iranian food truck called Tah Diggin’ It. Thoughts? At the very least, Matt should buy the URL.

Anyway, at the last minute, another dish, Baghali Ghatogh or Lima Beans with Eggs and Dill, caught my eye. I just loved the look of all that green spotted by the yellow egg yolks and threads of bright pinkish-red saffron. So, Baghali Ghatogh it was!

Before you get too invested in this gorgeous dish, here’s a question to consider: do you like dill? Because this recipe calls for four cups of the fresh herb, which is basically one large bunch of dill, which is a lot of dill. It also calls for soaking dried beans overnight, so plan ahead, friends. 

One last caveat before I talk about the rewards of making this dish: I think the recipe might be slightly flawed. Allow me to explain: it calls for 5 cups of water and then, after 1½ hours of cooking the beans in this 5 cups of water (amongst other things, namely dill), you are supposed to form 4 shallow wells in the bean mixture and then “crack an egg into each well.” Unfortunately, though, at this point, forming a well was made impossible by the fact that the mixture was way too watery. I cooked the beans for an extra half hour thinking they might absorb some of the extra liquid, but it just didn’t help. What did help was ladling out approximately 2¼ cups of liquid. After I did this, it was still more watery than I would have liked, but I was at least able to crack the eggs into the mixture without the eggs sinking down below the surface and losing them forever. Once the eggs cooked through and I turned off the heat, only then did the mixture really firm up and start to look like the photo in the magazine.

Speaking of magazine-quality photos, aren’t these photos beautiful? (Matt takes them so I believe I'm allowed to say that.) I would definitely make it again (sans about 2 cups water) just to revisit this pretty plate in front of me. I served it with Lavash bread and a simple version of Mast-o Khiar (Yogurt and Cucumber Dip). Just mix up some plain yogurt, peeled, seeded and diced cucumbers, a clove or two of minced garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. If you have mint, all the better!

Last but not least, it wouldn’t feel right to mention the cuisine of Iran without mentioning my dear friend Raena who most certainly introduced me to Mast-o Khiar and tah dig about ten years ago and whose father once sent me on a drive home from her house in Philadelphia to the gymnastics camp in the Poconos where I was working for the summer with a Ziploc freezer bag filled with the most delicious fruit I’d ever tasted in my life. I’m talking about fresh figs, Rainier cherries, apricots, strawberries, and a few pomegranates for good measure. It was heaven in a plastic bag. Also, as sidebar, I made the drive in pajama pants and a hooded sweatshirt and as it turned out, that really worried Raena’s dad. Ah, I miss parents!

p.s. Happy Persian New Year! (I just realized it was Persian New Year today. I could never be this timely on purpose.)

Baghali Ghatogh adapted from Saveur
6 tbsp. unsalted butter
½ tsp. ground turmeric
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 cups finely chopped dill
1 cup dried lima beans, soaked overnight, drained
¼ tsp. crushed saffron
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 eggs
Saffron threads, to garnish

Heat butter in a 12 inch skillet over medium heat. Add turmeric and garlic; cook until fragrant, about 3 minutes. Add 3 cups dill and the beans; cook until dill is slightly wilted, about 2 minutes. Add crushed saffron and 3 cups water; boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; cook, covered, until beans are tender, about 1½ hours. (Check in on it after an hour and see if it looks too dry. I don't think it will, but if it does, add more water.) Season with salt and pepper; stir in remaining dill. Using a spoon, form 4 shallow wells in bean mixture; crack an egg into each well. Cook until eggs are cooked over-easy, about 3 minutes. Sprinkle with saffron before serving.

St. Michaels, Maryland: Part 1

In terms of feeling better about life in general, let's face it, vacation works. So much so that I’d like to shoot a commercial for it. It'd be like one of those psuedo-spiritual, super general ads you watch and aren’t sure what’s being pitched until the very end when white letters appear over a calm scene and spell out Nike. Or Cotton. Or Cialis. But at the end of my commercial, that word would be vacation.
This vacation began with a wedding. These guys below? Why, they're the Manhattan boys, of course, pictured clutching their signature drink, The Manhattan.
The following morning it was onward and eastward to St. Michaels, Maryland where we would be staying for the week in a beautiful house sitting on a 160 acre farm on the Chesapeake Bay.

(This is what humidity looks like.)

When the owner of the house stopped by to show us how to use the fairly intense stereo system, he told us that he'd built the house so that the front faced the bay. Matt took the below photo from a kayak-in-motion. The place could probably be described as pretty, no?

Being on the Chesapeake, I had major designs on a crab-related attempt. In fact, that's what I'm thinking about here in my temporary Ina Garten-esque kitchen. So when the owner also told us about the crab pots at the end of our dock, Matt and my heads nearly exploded. You have what now? Tell us more. This sounds like a job for the Manhattan boys. Do you have bitters and a jigger of vermouth?

We quickly learned the ropes of dockside crabbing. Step 1: Purchase chicken necks. Step 2: Fill the pots with our newly acquired chicken necks. Step 3: Give the pots an overnight soak. Step 4: Check the pots early in the morning for terrapins. If you see a terrapin, set it free. No questions asked. Step 5: If you see crabs, grab them with gloved hands and put them in a green bucket, filled with bay water. Also, by no means kick in more than two pots—each dock is allowed two, any more and the professional crabbers will come by and cut your ropes!
This next part was the trickiest. We had to kill them. David Foster Wallace's essay, "Consider the Lobster" immediately came to mind. Namely, the part where he asks: "Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?" Well, having been firmly faced with this task for the first time in my life, I can tell you that it certainly didn't feel all right, which is strange for any number of reasons, but particularly so considering that just the other week I basked in the retelling of the deliciousness of linguine and clams—fundamental to which, is the killing of live clams.

A few pages later, however, Foster Wallace offers this: "The whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it's also uncomfortable. It is, at any rate, uncomfortable for me, and for just about everyone I know who enjoys a variety of foods and yet does not want to see herself as cruel or unfeeling. As far as I can tell, my own main way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking about the whole unpleasant thing." And see, that's the problem with a live crab or lobster. The fact that they are moving and you are the one that is going to stop them from moving ever again makes this notion of you as a cruel or unfeeling person unavoidable. But if we want to eat them, we should, at least in some circumstances, be able to deal with this unpleasantness. Otherwise, we shouldn't be eating them at all, right?

In the end, we killed them. They didn't move around for long. And yes, they were delicious. And yes, it feels wrong to say that. However, I feel I've made some awkward strides in the never-ending journey of understanding the food I eat and where it comes from and tried my best to honor the lives of those blue crabs. Now, can we please talk about the corn? Oh, the corn! The Mexican-style roasted corn! I loved it so much.



There were so many reasons to love this corn. For starters, there was no moral dilemma tied to it. Secondly, it was covered in mayonnaise and topped with cheese, cilantro, chile powder, and lime juice. It was both indulgent and fresh-tasting at the same time, and our amazingly cute nephew, Henry, unexpectedly boasted a perfect toe point during the grilling process.

So much more to come. Stay tuned for St. Michaels, Maryland: Part 2!

Mexican-Style Roasted Corn via Saveur
serves 4

4 large ears corn, with husks still attached
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 1/2 cups crumbled cotija cheese (We substituted shredded cheddar.)
4 tbsp. minced fresh cilantro
4 tsp. ancho chile powder
Kosher salt and freshly ground black
pepper, to taste
1 lime, cut into four wedges

1. Working with one ear of corn at a time, peel back the husks to expose the kernels, leaving husks attached at the base; remove the silk threads and tie husks together with kitchen twine around base of cob to form a handle. Repeat with remaining ears. (We didn't do this step and it turned out all right.) Transfer corn to a large bowl or pot of water and let soak for 30 minutes. FYI: this includes the husks! (We only soaked the corn and the husks kept catching fire on the grill.)

2. Build a medium-hot fire in a charcoal grill or heat a gas grill over medium-high heat. Transfer corn to grill; cook, turning occasionally, until charred and cooked through, about 20 minutes. Remove corn from grill and brush with mayonnaise. Place cheese on a plate and roll each ear of corn in cheese to coat. Sprinkle corn evenly with some of the cilantro, chile powder, and salt and pepper, pressing the corn so that seasonings and cheese will adhere to the mayonnaise. Serve with lime wedges.

Bon Appetempt on Saveur's Sites We Love!

I'm interrupting the Robyn love-fest with a bit of exciting news: Saveur has included this little space as a site they love in part of an ongoing series aptly titled Sites We Love. It's a great series that has profiled some of my favorite food bloggers. Please check out my interview HERE! But first, let me thank you... Thank you so very much for the recent and not so recent outpouring of love and support! Also thank you to the online team at Saveur. They are seriously the best when it comes to recognizing us bloggers.

p.s. Saveur needed a bio photo. Here are two that Matt and I found that didn't quite make the cut.

By the way, who's that woman on the super serious headphone tour?

Oh, it's my mom.

Strawberry Cake & A Big Fat Thank You

Dear Readers, Friends, and Dogs who can read: I'm going to tell you a story about a little cake that tasted like a strawberry Scooter Crunch ice cream bar. (So far I am the only person I know who remembers enjoying Scooter Crunches as a child.) The cake came to me from the pages of Saveur and there was something about it that spoke to me. It called for red dye and strawberry extract, two elements that people might snub their noses at, but I was so drawn to the below photo that the recipe could have called for a cup of hydrogenated soybean oil and a dash of MSG and I still would've made it.

 photo by Todd Coleman

I just love how it's kind of sphere-shaped and how the two layers are so fat and outlined in a coat of darker crust. I also love the jagged cuts, the paper plate, and what looks to be a plastic lid or tray or frisbee that it's sitting on. It looks delicious, fun, approachable, and unreal all at the same time. 

After two trips to two grocery stores and no strawberry extract, I sally-forthed. The extract was for the icing layer anyway, which I wasn't even going to tackle until the following night. In 24 hours, surely, I could find some strawberry extract.

I didn't. And as much as I would love to blame someone for this extract shortage, I have only myself. I simply couldn't make another grocery trip. And so, just like Kristen Wiig's character drives right by that cop (over and over again) in Bridesmaids, I drove right by two grocery stores on my way home from work. Besides, I knew I had fresh strawberries at home. Couldn't I just mash some of those up and use them?

My favorite part of this whole cake was what happened when Matt found it fully assembled and sitting in our refrigerator in the cake carrier. "Wait. What's our cake doing in the cake carrier?" It had been a busy week and I guess I'd forgotten to tell him that I was taking it to a dinner with my lady friends. It was a double blow. Not only did he realize that he was on his own for dinner (hardly very young-wife of me), but I was taking the cake with me too.

And so, that's how I ended up arriving to dinner with the below, what I call the Pac-Man presentation. 

Luckily, the cake was so delicious no one cared that Matt had scored first dibs at home hours earlier. And, if you'd like to see a photo of the cake fully intact with strawberry extract as it was intended to be, hop over to Lottie + Doof. He knocked it out of the park. 

And while I'm directing you to other sites, did you guys see this, or that badge my site is now wearing over towards the right of the screen? I won Saveur's Best Culinary Essay! Many many many thanks to everyone who voted for "In The Kitchen With Grandma" and to Saveur for recognizing all of the amazing blogs that create such great, thoughtful content week after week.

Strawberry Cake via Saveur (with a Bon-Appetempt option)
serves 12

16 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened, plus more for greasing pans
3 cups flour, plus more for pans
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1 cup milk
1/2 cup seedless strawberry jam
3 tbsp. red food coloring (optional)
2 cups sugar
1 cup canola oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3 eggs
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
1 1-lb. box confectioners' sugar, sifted
1 tsp. strawberry extract (or, for the extract-challenged, 1/4 cup mashed fresh strawberries?)

Heat oven to 350°. Grease and flour two 9″ round cake pans; set aside. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside. Whisk together milk, jam, and 2 tbsp. food coloring in a small bowl; set aside. Beat together sugar, oil, vanilla, and eggs in a mixer on medium-high speed until pale and smooth, 2–3 minutes. In 3 additions, alternately add dry and wet ingredients to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with dry; mix until combined. Divide batter between prepared pans and smooth tops; bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle of cakes comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Let cool 15 minutes, unmold, then cool completely.

In a large bowl, beat butter and cream cheese on high speed of a mixer until smooth and fluffy, 1–2 minutes. Add remaining food coloring, confectioners' sugar, and strawberry extract; beat until smooth. Place one cake upside down on a cake stand, and spread a healthy amount of frosting over top. Cover with second cake, top side up; frost top and sides of cakes with remaining frosting; refrigerate for 1 hour before serving. Serve at room temperature.

Saveur's Best Food Blog Awards Nomination!

I have some good news! Bon Appetempt has been nominated under the "Best Culinary Essay" category in Saveur's Best Food Blog Awards! So, first off: I want to say thank you for those who nominated the essay! Thank you very very much! Secondly, I'd like to report that Grandma has read the essay, which I printed out and mailed to her, and she has since written me a letter in which the topic comes up, eventually. Three paragraphs in, she finally says: "I enjoyed the Blog [sic]. I would be interested in the response the readers had." Awwwwwww. Those are high praises from my grandma!

And so before I ask for your vote, I thought now would be as perfect a time as any to post what I find to be a fairly hilarious video of the Kitchen Visit with Grandma in progress. Allow me to set the clip up for you: We are making pizzelles. My mom and I begin pressing the dough in the duo of pizzelle presses set up in the dining room—Mom has brought her press over today to help, but as you will see, it's a little rusty and needs a bit of, well, tweaking. Meanwhile, I am chasing the perfect pizzelle, which to me means one that is the exact size of the mold, but on my path to this perfect pizzelledom, I’m losing some dough that’s popping out of the sides of the press. Grandma disagrees with this method as it is "wasting" dough. Well, you'll see:

Anyway, if you feel so inclined: Vote for the essay here! You have to sign up, but it's painless and easy(!). Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Classic Meatballs

I have so many things to tell you about these meatballs. Starting with: Vegan-say-what? It seems like just yesterday we were putting dry, hard pieces of mochi on our waffle iron and waiting with confused anticipation for it to turn into something resembling a waffle. Clearly, with the title of this post, those days are gone. And not that I had to be convinced or persuaded in any real way, but it should be noted that meatballs were Matt's pick. He had had a particularly rough week at work, and so I gave him carte blanche in picking out the next attempt. I handed him a giant stack of food magazines and loved watching what happened next: He poured over each magazine, flipping down page corner after page corner and then, just to leave no stone unturned, he went through our cookbooks as well, eventually arriving at three different recipes for meatballs: Ina Garten's, Gourmet's (from a 2008 issue), and Saveur's. Saveur won out in the end. Why? Just look at this picture (of a photography by Todd Coleman).

our version:

This marks the third recipe from the issue's collection of 25 Greatest Meals Ever. First, we tried Richard Rodriguez's refried beans with chorizo, which I never posted but still might. Second was the vegetarian chili that saved the writer Suketu Mehta's life. Which brings us to number three, Dana Bowen's greatest meal: classic meatballs.

Meatballs are another one of those timeless foods that every once in a while Matt craves and that I've somehow gone my entire life without making. Speaking of my whole life, while making these meatballs, I was reminded of a test in third grade, which began with bolded directions: Read all directions before beginning. Being a particularly competitive third grader who liked to finish tests first, I skimmed the directions and began doing what the first one told me to do: Underline the nouns. No problem there. The next direction told me to circle the verbs. I know I’m only a third grader, but is it too much to ask for a c-h-a-l-l-e-n-g-e? Verbs circled. What’s next?

So, with all of my burgeoning neurotic tendencies, I completed all directives only to come to the last one: Ignore all above directions. Needless to say, it was a tough lesson. Yet one that didn’t stick with me.

See, as previously mentioned, this meal was for Matt, and Matt requested an early “Meatball Sunday!” dinner. I told him no problem. Let's skip lunch and eat at four. Only, I must have skimmed over the part about chilling the meat mixture for an hour. "Dinner at five?" Then, when I came to mixing in the ricotta, I saw what else I skipped over: 2⁄3 cup ricotta, drained in a strainer for two hours. Needless to say, my ricotta was drained for exactly four minutes, and by drained, I mean, set upon a mesh strainer for four minutes without releasing a single drop of liquid.

Fortunately, I don’t think these mistakes affected the taste at all. Unfortunately, I think they may have affected the texture a bit. The non-drained ricotta and rushed chilling time in the refrigerator equaled a looser raw meatball, and I believe this is what caused a few of them to fall apart during the browning process, and which impeded some of them from reaching a full-level of browning, which I believe would have led to a more discernible difference in the outside texture and inside texture of the finished meatballs. Know what I mean?

I don't think that all meatball recipes call for braising them in red sauce, but I think they probably should. After all the hard work of gathering, chopping, mixing and molding the ingredients into the shape of large golf balls and browning these in hot olive oil, it was a relief to add some red wine, tomato puree, and beef broth and allow yourself to forget about them for an hour and a half. Of course, you can't really forget about them because your entire apartment now smells like delicious meat and marinara sauce.

As the meatballs braised, I reread what Bowen had to say about them. Just why were they her greatest meal ever again? Well, part of it was that they were left on her "porch in a Farberware pot with a loaf of Italian bread and a note that said: 'Figured you wouldn't have time to cook.'" She and her husband had just moved and the meatballs were a gift from their new neighbors. I looked up from the magazine and told Matt what I'd just read. "Wouldn't that be so nice? To leave some of these on someone's doorstep?" We had just watched Client 9 and Inside Job on back-to-back nights and my thoughts on humanity were bleak. This is what the world needed more of—people giving away their home-cooked meatballs! I began to picture it. We didn't know anyone who had just moved but any one of our friends would appreciate some home-cooked meatballs on their doorstep. We could swing by the store on the way and get a nice fresh French loaf too. But before I could go any further with this plan, Matt, looking visibly shaken, spoke up. "These are our meatballs.” I didn't fight him on it. After all, this happened (Meatballs à la Band-Aid?):


Plus, I had promised him meatballs at four, and their ETA was now looking to be about six.

After some clean-up, we ate at six thirty. Not so bad? Right in time for the previously recorded episode of Kourtney and Kim Take New York. What? It’s hilarious and I just couldn’t watch one more documentary featuring that old guy from AIG. Anyway, I'm pleased to report that the homemade meatballs were utterly spectacular and even better the second day.

Classic Meatballs via Saveur
serves 4-6
10 oz. ground beef chuck or veal
10 oz. ground pork shoulder
2 oz. minced pork fat or unsmoked bacon
2 oz. prosciutto, minced
1 1⁄4 cups loosely packed flat-leaf parsley leaves, minced, plus more for garnish
2 tsp. dried oregano
1 1⁄2 tsp. fennel seeds
1 tsp. crushed red chile flakes
1⁄2 tsp. ground cumin
1⁄4 tsp. ground allspice
7 slices white bread, finely ground in a food processor
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2⁄3 cup ricotta, drained in a strainer for 2 hours
2 tbsp. milk
3 eggs, lightly beaten
6 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, plus
more for greasing
1⁄4 cup dry red wine
4 cups canned tomato purée
1 cup beef or veal stock or water
Grated Parmesan, for garnish

1. In a large bowl, combine beef, pork, pork fat, prosciutto, parsley, oregano, fennel seeds, chile flakes, cumin, allspice, and bread crumbs and season generously with salt and pepper. Using your fingers, mix ingredients until combined; set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together ricotta, milk, and eggs; add to meat mixture and gently mix until incorporated. Chill for 1 hour. 

2. Heat oven to 300°. Grease 2 rimmed baking sheets with oil and set aside. Using a 2-oz. ice cream scoop, portion mixture, roll into meatballs with your hands, and transfer to greased baking sheets. Heat 3 tbsp. oil in a 3-qt. high-sided skillet over medium-high heat. Add half the meatballs; cook, turning occasionally, until browned, about 10 minutes. Transfer meatballs to a plate; wipe out skillet. Repeat with remaining oil and meatballs. Return reserved meatballs to skillet along with any juices from the plate. Add wine; increase heat to high and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in tomatoes and beef stock, bring to a boil, and tightly cover skillet. Transfer to oven; bake until meatballs are tender and have absorbed some of the sauce, about 
1 1⁄2 hours. To serve, transfer meatballs to a platter; spoon over sauce. Sprinkle with Parmesan and parsley. Serve with bread or spaghetti, if you like.