On the cob or in a cone?

New York City: the culinary capital of the western hemisphere and the destination for a recent girls trip celebrating the upcoming nuptuals of my good friend and fellow enthusiastic eater, Sarah. My last trip to NYC was a raging gastronomic success, but since food wasn't the focus of this trip I had tempered my expectations a bit and was narrowing in on consumption of the alcoholic variety.

But the Big Apple had some surprises in store for me.

The first thing I learned was that good food has a way of finding you in New York, even when you aren't looking for it. The second thing I learned is that corn is a delicious flavor of ice cream. Yes, corn. As in... on the cob. Our fabulous NYC hostess led me into a little ice cream shop in the West Village called Cones, where they had an intriguing selection of flavors (Johnnie Walker Black label comes to mind). But once I spotted the corn flavor, I had to try it. Turned out to be a pretty darn good, a nice combination of earthy flavor and creamy texture. It definately outranks the cereal flavored ice cream I had on my last visit, so who knows what I'll find next time...

Sisters, Breakfast and Refined Carbohydrates

You may or may not already know that I learned my passion for food & my skills in the kitchen from two very important women: my mother and my sister. Someday I will post a recipe of my mother’s, but today I want to share one that my sister taught me long ago when I was temporarily living with her and her husband in Virginia. Today my sister is studying dietary nutrition and would gasp (in fact, I’m hopeful that this very post will incite a scathing comment – stay tuned) at the ingredients in this breakfast treat, but it has remained one of my occasional Saturday morning indulgences despite the high concentration of refined carbohydrates.

You only need 5 ingredients to make German Puff Pancakes, all of which are standard kitchen staples, plus it takes less than 20 minutes start to finish, so it’s perfect for spur of the moment urges. You do need a pan that can go from stove to oven, such as a cast iron skillet (or check out my Calphalon in the pics). To be honest, if you don’t already have a pan like this, just go get one, its amazingly useful.

There are only two tricky things about this recipe; the first is coating the sides of the pan with melted butter. Tilt the pan so that the butter pools on one side and slowly keep tilting until the butter is right on the edge of the pan. Then gradually rotate the pan around so that the entire pan in coated. This allows the batter to creep up the sides of the pan when it’s baking. This step is a little scary the first time, especially if you are hovering over an open gas flame as I usually am, but after you’ve done it once you will be ready to show off this move for an audience. Trust me on this, they will be impressed and you will feel like a professional.

The second tricky part is pulling this gorgeous thing out of the oven. Try not to ruin the awe of your audience by grabbing the blazing hot handle with your bare hand. In my years of making these I have only done it twice, but your hand (and your ego) sting pretty bad.

As long as you’ve got those things down, you’ll come out with a quick, impressive and hopefully pain-free breakfast for you and a friend or two. Everyone has their own preferences, but (much to my sister's nutritional dismay) my favorite toppings are powdered sugar and a squeeze of lemon, or just a sprinkle of cinnamon & sugar.

What the crepe is up with Parisians?

As part of my recent trip to Croatia, I found myself with two 24-hour visits to Paris on my way to and from my destination country. The first visit focused mostly on seeing Paris sights and fell hopelessly short of experiencing French cuisine. I did however have a borderline life-changing experience when on the way home from the Eiffel Tower I stopped and got a street crepe. I watched the vendor heap a heart-attack sized scoop of butter (yum) onto his hot plate, and then fold it up with cinnamon and sugar. I swear my life will never be the same.

My second visit to Paris had much more of a culinary focus: I was on a mission. We found a small café serving specialties from the Burgundy region, including boeuf bourguignon and duck confit. The meal itself was a memorable study in the art of French cooking, but the highlight was actually before we even started eating. The waiter brought over a plate of small savory pastries that I recognized as gougeres, a Burgundy specialty that I have been working on perfecting for about a year and a half! I pointed at them and said to the waiter, “Gougeres?” To which he replied “Oui.” (I did learn that Parisians have this innate ability to say “oui” but really mean “stupid American with stupid questions.”)

Since he was obviously keen to engage in friendly discourse, I continued, “I make these.” Apparently this was not what he was expecting from the ignorant American woman, as all he could manage to stammer was “but… where?!?” My equally brilliant response: “um, in my house.” Thus was the end of my culinary dialogue with the locals. Anthony Bourdain would have been mortified; good thing I don’t invite him on my travels.

My mission was still a raging success as far as I'm concerned: between bites of pain chocolate and almond meringue, I managed to quickly procure enough contraband to make a customs agent blush. While I don’t have pictures to corroborate, I flew home with a backpack filled with copious amounts of Camembert and Roquefort, one baguette, two bottles of French wine, and an unabridged copy of Les Miserables. C'est une bonne vie.

The distances I will travel for good pizza

On recent international travels, I had the pleasure of dining in two of the top-ranked culinary destinations in Europe. You can probably guess one of them was France. But unless you happen to have read recent foodie travel articles or are on top of the travel documentary scene, you may not have guessed the second: Croatia. I’ll tackle France in a separate blog post, but let me be the first to tell you that Croatian food is the best-kept secret of culinary travel in Europe. Well… except of course for all of the other better-kept secrets I’m not privy to yet.

The Dalmatian Coast of Croatia is really what I’m referring to, and as it is all coastline and islands, it’s not surprising that much of their food showcases delicious fresh seafood. The highlights that really stuck out to me were mussels, squid and lots of grilled whole fish. What was a little surprising to me however, was their pizza. I suppose that Croatia’s proximity to Italy may have tipped off other food-savvy tourists, but not this gal. I foolishly thought pizza was an out-of-place tourist food, and was floored to find out that not only is it is part of the local cuisine, but it’s really tasty!

Croatian pizza features fresh and original toppings (arugula, or “rocket,” comes to mind), and chewy crispy crusts. I even now have a theory that Croatia is where the “anchovies on pizza” idea really came from, but feel free to dispute. We had pizza almost every day while we were there, and my husband and I have recently been experimenting with our own pizza in an attempt to replicate. Stay tuned for a future post where Mr. Food Adventurer shares his pizza dough recipe and techniques.

Salmon salmon everywhere...

As you may have noticed, I cook a lot of animals killed by my husband. Its very cavewoman, but I actually enjoy it for the most part (exception: the pheasant - it had an actual piece of a shot pellet in the flesh, it was just disturbing). When Jeff went on his annual salmon fishing trip and came back with about 40 pounds of fresh caught fish, I was excited for the chance to cook (well, mostly to eat) such a fantastic treat, brought home to me by my caveman. Now, 30 pounds of salmon later, I am running out of ideas. We've grilled, baked, sauteed, and even fried our bounty, and we've tried about 10 different recipes for salmon cakes. Enough already! A woman (or cavewoman) can only eat so much fish - even if its been hunted down by her man.