Is Grilled Watermelon Hot?

The answer is YES, it’s served hot and it’s one of the newest, “hot” sensations to hit the culinary scene. Fine restaurants around the globe are beginning to serve tiny chunks of grilled watermelon on fancy, little plates and charging huge prices just to get a minuscule taste of this “hot”, food fad.

Author Kirsten of The Hungry Cow was lucky enough to be served an amuse bouche of grilled watermelon at Le Papillon Restaurant in the Red Dot Museum in Santa Clara, California. Can you imagine how much this little tidbit cost?

You can cut and arrange the grilled watermelon in lots of creative ways. Kirstin served her grilled watermelon salad stacked up, and she used mint as her garnish.  You could present your salad many, many ways.

How about making a salsa using grilled watermelon, tomatoes and chopped red onions?

Boquete Chef Dede Basden grilled watermelon at the Boquete Gourmet Cookbook Party recently, and it was a big hit.

I recently served watermelon as part of a skewer of fruit at Finca Lerida’s Underground Dinner and sprinkled it with real maple sugar. It was a huge hit, especially when it sat atop Executive Chef Danilo Moran’s mesclun greens served with 2 dressings. You’ll read more about Chef Danilo and his “Up-to-date Old House Dinner” in a post coming soon. Below is a photo of Finca Lerida’s Old House. Is that a watermelon patch in the foreground?
Thanks for the idea of grilling watermelon Dede, it is a most unusual, very trendy, and “hot” taste treat.
Try it!
Cora

Panamanian Bunuelos de Yucca

On page 61 of the Boquete Gourmet Community Cookbook, Chef Juan Linares shared his favorite recipe for Panamanian Bunuelos, made from yucca.  My first question was “What is yucca?” Then, “What is a bunuelo?”

Wikipedia gives the distribution range of Yucca, over 49 species, as covering vast areas of Central America, and it’s very plentiful in Panama.  Just from my experience in Boquete, the growing conditions are perfect here for yucca, subtropical, woodland, and mountainous.  Almost every market carries yucca and it only 29 cents per pound.

This vegetable isn’t very pretty, but when it’s peeled, boiled and shaped into a bunuelo, it’s quite lovely. Bunuelos are similar to beignets, the donuts for which New Orleans is so famous.
At our recent “Boquete Gourmet Community Cookbook Party #2″, celebrating the 2nd printing of the cookbook, Chef Juan was one of 12 chefs who prepared and served their recipes to party-goers.

This is the recipe Chef Juan used to make the best yucca bunuelos you can imagine, and he served them with syrup made from block sugar, available in most Latin American markets.

Panamanian Bunuelos de Yucca

3 pounds yucca, peeled and cut into 1-inch slices
1 egg
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon anise seeds, crushed
3 cups dark brown sugar or blocks of panela cane sugar
1 cup water
7 whole cloves
Vegetable oil for frying

Cover the yucca with water and boil for 20 minutes, so it’s tender enough to grate but not too tender. Grate the yucca and add the egg, salt and crushed anise seeds. Knead and let rest. Meanwhile, make a syrup with the water, sugar and cloves and boil until it turns syrupy. Wet your hands and roll yucca dough into 1-inch balls. Fry them until golden brown, about 2 minutes, and drain on folded paper towels. Serve with warm syrup. Makes about 30 bunuelos.

If you’re looking for a fun activity to share with your dinner guests, get some yucca, prepare the dough ready for frying, and place it in the refrigerator. Make the syrup, but keep it at room temperature.

When dessert time is near, heat up the oil, ask guests if they’d like to help roll the balls, and fry away! Everyone will love them! You could also serve bunuelos dusted with powdered sugar or a mixture of cinnamon and sugar, my favorite topping.

Thanks Juan for sharing your recipe, and thanks Betty Dabney, for photographing Juan in action. After thinking about it, why not “eat dessert first”?
Cora

What Color is Mulligatawny Soup?

I’ve heard of Mulligan Stew, with it’s mixture of whatever was available at the time, sometimes beef, potatoes, left-over vegetables. But, Indian Mulligatawny Soup is new to me.

One of my favorite cookbooks is Betty Crocker’s “New International Cookbook”, which was updated several years ago to include nutritional information. I keep a copy of the book on my shelf for easy reference, it’s full of authentic dishes from 81 different regional cuisines, each with well-tested, easy-to-follow recipes.

Betty includes a recipe in that book for this most unusual, misunderstood and controversial dish. Yes, as I began to research this traditional Indian dish for the Boquete Gourmet upcoming “Exotic Flavors of India” cooking class, I was surprised at what I discovered.

I found the flavor, texture and color are very different in EVERY SINGLE RECIPE I found! It seems impossible for Host Executive Chef, Lauretta Bonfiglio to include any Mulligatawny Soup recipe in her upcoming cooking class. It would be just too complicated to explain how to make this “authentic” dish. It would be controversial, and it might be “off-color”.

Consider a thick yellow Mulligatawny soup shown in the top photo, with lots of yellow saffron, celery, butter, and curry powder cr.

Or, think about the creamy red Mulligatawny soup with tomatoes and red peppers found here.

I even found the smooth green Mulligatawny soup pictured below.  It is made with eggplant and other green ingredients.

Each of these recipes and photo credits can be found by clicking the color of each soup.

After all that research, I really like Betty Crocker’s recipe for “an Indian spice-filled soup adapted to British tastes in the days of colonial strength”.

Indian Mulligatawny Soup

2 1/2 – 3 pound fryer chicken, cut up
4 cups water
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon curry powder (homemade, if possible)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon each ground cloves and ground mace
2 medium onions, minced
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 medium carrot, sliced
1 apple, chopped
1 medium green pepper, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
Parsley for garnish

Heat the first 6 ingredients in a Dutch oven, cover and simmer until chicken is done, about 45 minutes. Remove the chicken and broth from Dutch oven and add enough water to the broth to make 4 cups. Remove bones and skin from chicken and cut into pieces. Cook and stir onions in butter in the Dutch oven until tender. Remove from heat and stir in flour. Gradually stir in broth, then add chicken, apple, green pepper and tomatoes. Heat to boiling and reduce heat. Cover and simmer until carrot is tender, about 10 minutes. Serve in shallow soup bowls and garnish with parsley.

Would you like to guess the color of Betty Crocker’s recipe? Try it and you may be surprised.

To help make the soup turn out to be the color you would like it to be, you can use your own blended curry powder you make in Chef Lauretta’s upcoming “Exotic Flavors of India” cooking class. See details about the class on the calendar at the right. Click September 22.

Hope to see you there!

Cora

The Rye Guy

Boquete Gourmet Host Chef and Artisan Baker, Mort Rabkin has made a big name for himself among rustic bakers all over the world. First, Mort loves to bake, which is truly a passion with him. Folks from Ohio to Panama know of his love of baking, the attention he pays to details, and his passion for sharing his knowledge with others.

Mort has presented eighteen classes in bread-making in the Boquete Gourmet Host Chef Program, more than any other Host Chef. He has taught bakers how to make sourdough from scratch to use in French breads, pancakes, bagels and foccacia. Mort enjoyed sharing his holiday bread recipes, including challah and festive fruit breads.

Since his arrival in Boquete almost 3 years ago, Mort designed and, with the help of his wife Barbara and many friends, built a wood-fired clay oven behind his riverside home. Ever since completing the oven, Mort’s passion has been fueled for his newly-found “avocation”, baking rustic rye and sourdough breads.

The building and refining of Mort’s oven wasn’t easy in Boquete, as not many locals had ever heard of such an oven. To see actual photos of the building procedure, you may click here.

The oven took many weeks to complete.  A design had to be developed, construction materials assembled, builders hired and supervised throughout the entire procedure. Mort had to  dry the bricks, clay and mortar. After that, it took quite awhile to warm up and “season” the oven so it could be used to get consistent results.

Before he could even think about teaching, Mort had to perfect his recipes so he could produce the most delicious, crunchy and authentic artistic breads possible in Panama, especially at high altitudes. It took many weeks to develop the exact loaf of bread that Mort had been dreaming of baking.

Finally, Mort was really enjoying his new-found avocation, making authentic rustic rye and sourdough breads and teaching others how he does it. Some of Mort’s fellow bakers are helping to check the progress of their newly-created breads. Aren’t they loving it?

Doesn’t this loaf of Mort’s warm rye bread look like the best bread you have every tasted? All you need to add is a slice of tender ham, Manchego cheese and a little Dijon mustard, and nothing could be better!
If you’d like to get a loaf of Mort’s freshly baked bread or to learn about other breads Mort bakes, visit his website at www.theryeguy.com.  If you’re interested to learn how to make another of Mort’s favorite breads, traditional French baguettes, click November 17 on the calendar at the above right for information about Mort’s next class.  You’ll learn how to make baguettes using the classic “wet” method.

Thanks to Mort, Boquete residents are able to enjoy authentic rustic breads, and we’re learning how to create amazing breads at home in our own ovens.  Above all – everyone is HAVING A GOOD TIME doing it.

Come join the fun!
Cora