Tequila recipe ?

Thinking of a DC entry to share with you, but there is a *major* ice storm approaching, and I'm afraid to leave the house in case I can't come back. If you've ever been in a DC ice storm, you know that all hell breaks loose and it's almost impossible to drive, walk, or run to your desired destination. The power and internet go down often, so if you don't hear from me, you'll know its because I'll be huddled up under twenty wool blankets and reading by candlelight. Even though that sounds romantic, I really hope it doesn't happen. 
I went from this:

To this:

Am I crazy? No, I'm here to meet my nephew...and bond with my poor frozen parents.


Therefore, in the absence of a true DC food entry, I'll share this "Tequila Recipe" with you to keep you warm in case you're also freezing in DC. A friend shared it with me yesterday, and I have no idea where it originated, so don't get me in trouble with copyright issues, ok? Thanks.


1 cup sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1 cup water
1 tsp. salt
1 cup brown sugar
1 stick butter
Lemon juice
4 large eggs
Nuts
1 bottle Tequila
2 cups dried fruit


Sample the tequila to check quality. Take a large bowl; check the tequila again to be sure it is of the highest quality.
Repeat.
Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add 1 teaspoon of sugar. Beat again.
At this point, it is best to make sure the tequila is still okay. Try another cup just in case. Turn off the mixer thingy.
Break 2 eggs and add to the bowl and chuck in a cup of dried fruit. Pick up the fruit off the floor.
Mix on the turner.
If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaters, just pry it loose with a drewscriver.
Sample the tequila to test for tonsistency.
Next, sift 2 cups of salt or something.
Check the tequila. Now sift the lemon juice and strain your nuts.
Add one table. Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink. Whatever you can find.
Greash the oven.
Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over.
Don't forget to beat off the turner.
Finally, throw the bowl through the window.
Finish the tequila and wipe the counter with the cat.

Washington DC - Pho

Washington DC in the dead of winter.  I've come to meet my new nephew, so this week's chronicles will be about this great city. The only time I've seen DC as beautiful is when the Japanese cherry blossoms are in bloom in April. As my plane lands in National Airport, a black and white landscape lays beneath us - elegant and speechless. The monuments sit proudly, surrounded by white sheets of snow.


My request as I greet my parents at the airport: pho, please! 

Pho is a Vietnamese soup which is sent by the gods to make all of our hearts jump up in glee and delight in blissful comfort. I had a major craving for the stuff, but not just any pho. I wanted Pho 75 pho. Pho 75 is a chain of restaurants in the metropolitan DC area that has won the Washingtonian Best Bargain Restaurant Award every year since 1987. It only offers pho (20 varieties of it)and Vietnamese drinks and desserts, and is cash-only. The owners run a brilliant business and have succeeded in making most Washingtonians addicted to their soup. If you've lived in DC for any significant period of time, you are most likely addicted to pho.

Pho is served with a choice of bean sprouts, purple basil, green chillies, and lemon. You can also add plum sauce or a red chili sauce called Sriracha, which is also an excellent addition to many dishes.

My father, who travels often to Vietnam for work, told me that he's not tasted such a delicious pho in Vietnam as the one served at Pho 75. The epitome of comfort foods, the pho beef broth has a unique taste, perfumed by the aroma of purple basil. The beef brisket strips are thin and tender, and the noodles are simply delicious. Some opt for the more intense tendon or tripe variety, but I like my brisket. 


So, next time you're in DC...the Smithsonian can wait until you have a nice bowl of pho.

Plantains

Colombians will sigh when they read this entry because it's nothing new to them. However, I want to share this lovely recipe, and hope it motivates someone out there to finally buy those plantains they've seen at the grocery store, but never knew what to do with.


Once again, I was inspired at my local vegetable and fruit stand. This time, the plantains called out to me.

Plantains are much like bananas but much larger. They're part of many Colombian meals. We eat them when they're ripe and also when they're green. When they're green, we make patacones, which are by far my favorite side dish ever, so I'll write an entry about them soon. Patacones are green plantains that are diced, pressed flat, deep fried, and sprinkled with salt.

Bananas vs plantains

This is a super easy recipe, and a great side dish to accompany a steak and salad dinner. 


Ripe plantains
Guava Paste
Butter


Bake in 350 degrees for about 45 minutes until the paste has melted and caramelized, and until they look like this:

Ripe plantains with guava paste 

In the US, guava paste can be found in most Latin grocery stores. In case you can't find it, use brown sugar.


Enjoy!

Mexican raw cacao beans...

Anti-oxidant super stars.


A friend recently brought back some raw cacao beans from Mexico. He stored them is a plastic container, and when I popped the top, the decadent scent of pure cocoa enveloped me. Each bean has a thin shell (like that of an egg), and inside is a small, dark brown bean. They are quite bitter, (at this stage haven't yet been transformed into chocolate) and crunchy. If you are a dark chocolate lover like my husband and I, you will probably be able to deal with the bitterness. If you're used to milk chocolate, you may find it almost impossible to eat. 

I added my son's crayon for dimension purposes.

If you do manage to get past the strong taste, you'll be giving your body a magnificent anti-oxidant and vitamin C boost. Check out this article about how these little cacao beans can serve as the best vitamin pills. 


I love Mexico. I had the pleasure of living there about ten years ago, and as an anthropologist, was fascinated by its past, present, and future. I studied the Aztec and Maya cultures at length, so I appreciate what these indigenous traditions have done for modern day Mexico...and the world. One of the Aztec's most fantabulous contributions to the world...you guessed it...CHOCOLATE! They made a drink from it, and called it xocolatl, in their Nahuatl language. They used cacao beans as currency, and it was not until the Spanish conquest that chocolate was exported to Europe. 


I vote for chocolate to be used as currency once again - can you imagine?


*Try Ghirardelli's Intense Dark Sea Salt Soiree - to die for.

Trinidad and Tobago street food entry #1

Trinidadian street food is a mix of Indian, Creole, and other yummy culinary traditions. This Saturday, my husband and I had a craving for the ultimate Trinidadian comfort food - Corn Soup. 


Corn Soup is sold in giant vats in makeshift tents by the side of the road, or, in this case, at the street food bazaar that magically appears Friday to Sunday evenings at the Queen's Park Savannah. Usually a massive, empty, grassy lot, this part of the Savannah transforms into a kind of tent city, where vendors park their mini vans, open the trunk, put up a tent, and set up shop to sell home made Trinidadian goodies. 

We made our way straight to the corn soup lady before she ran out of the good stuff. Corn soup reminds me of Colombian ajiaco. Both of these soups are heart-warming, guaranteed-to-make-you-smile broths in which corn plays a vital role. Corn soup has a few more spices with a bit of a kick, however, and is served with pieces of corn-on-the-cob and what they call "dumplings", which are small balls made of dough. The soup is made of dahl (red lentils), pumpkin (like the one I told you about last time), corn, and hot pepper. Delish.

Also available at the Savannah street food tent city (I baptized it like this - I don't actually know what its called) were cow heel soup, chicken wings, bbq pork, pig tail, fresh fruit juice, and something called souse. It can be made with different proteins, but the base is usually the same - a kind of pickled cucumber sauce with spices and who knows what else. This vendor was offering chicken feet souse, and to be honest, I couldn't bring myself to taste it. I have tried souse made with a part of a pig I couldn't even identify, and to be honest, it was not my favorite thing in the world. Actually, it was downright nasty. It was like a pork intestine ceviche gone awry. 

Having waved goodbye to the souse, and holding on to our beloved corn soup, we returned to our SUV, opened the trunk and joined the other street food tailgaters on that warm, Trinidadian Saturday afternoon. Children were running around and in the background you could hear the boom boom boom of the soca beat...Carnival time is here. Are you ready?

Did you know you can eat the skin of a butternut squash?

Well, you can!


Yesterday I moseyed on over to my local fruit and vegetable stand to get some inspiration for dinner. 

I found some gigantic pumpkins. There are dozens of varieties of pumpkins in the world, and I have no idea what these are called. I do know that Trinidadians use them a lot and refer to them simply as "pumpkin". I use them to make quinoa and pumpkin soup, which I'll tell you about later. On this day, however, I was overwhelmed by the thought of lugging one of these babies onto my car, up to my apartment, and somehow cutting it up. Can you imagine? If you notice in the photo, the pumpkins are bigger than the bucket on the right-hand side. I would need a machete like the one my coconut water buddy uses. I'm kidding, you can ask for them to be cut up for you. 


But I wasn't in the mood for these big mamas. I wanted something a little more tender, sweeter... I needed a side dish, and butternut squash seemed to make more sense. 


If you have ever doubted buying a nice butternut squash because the thought of having to cut off that hard skin overwhelms you, fear no more. You can eat the skin! So this is what I made:


Roasted Butternut Squash 


Butternut squash
1/4 cup Brown sugar 
Olive Oil


Cut up the butternut squash into one-inch pieces. Place in roasting pan and drizzle with olive oil and brown sugar. Bake for one hour in 400 degrees or until golden and the brown sugar has made the edges of the squash caramelize. No need to peel the squash. You can even leave the seeds - they'll also roast! But you may need more oven time to make sure they are tender enough to eat.

Buen provecho! This means Bon Appetit in Spanish, by the way. Incidentally, how do you translate that into English? 

Pomeracs

Have you ever heard of these little guys? Well, they're beautiful and delicious little bits of tropical heaven. 


I was first introduced to them by our good friend who owns three still life paintings of pomeracs (also known as "malay apples") by Che Lovelace. I fell in love with the paintings and requested Che, one of Trinidad's foremost artists, a surfer, and a friend, to paint one for us. It turns out he had painted a fourth piece in the pomerac series in 2006. Check this out. Our gorgeous pomerac still life and Che Lovelace original which now hangs in our living room:

Che Lovelace pomeracs, 2006

As you can see, they look like little magenta pears. They're in season now, so I finally had the chance to taste them for myself. I picked some up by the side of the road today.  Devon (photographed below) sold me four little pomeracs. I took a bite, and loved it. Underneath the merlot-colored skin is a pearly-white flesh that tastes like tangy pear. I gave my 21-month-old son a taste, and he loved it and asked for more. 

I've not seen them anywhere other than Trinidad, but I've been told they also grow in Suriname. I've read that any food of purple/blue color (eggplants, blueberries, beets, and I'm guessing pomeracs), help reduce the risk of heart disease, reverse memory loss, and may prevent cancer. http://www.thedietchannel.com/Eating-A-Rainbow-Part-4-Health-Benefits-Of-Blue-Purple-Foods.htm


Pomeracs: refreshing, healthy, and simply adorable. Maybe they'll become the next pomegranates? I'm sure they're related.

*About the roti blog...it's coming soon.


Two links to Che Lovelace's work:
http://www.exhibitiona.com/pages/home.aspx

http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/finch/finch4-27-09.asp