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

Bake a Short Cake

Short cakes are not shortcakes, like I used to eat as a child, dripping with mashed strawberries and whipped cream. No, I’m talking about the new craze to serve a small portion of a short, rich cake after a fine, gourmet dinner. Of course, I would serve it with a steaming cup of delicious Boquete coffee!

I just baked a short chocolate cake in a nine-inch round cake pan and frosted it with peanut butter icing. It was easy to make, and everyone really loved the familiar flavors.

Over the last year and especially lately, short cakes are all the rage around Boquete, showing up on dessert menus and at fancy dinner parties. When serving a short cake, make the portions small, they are so tasty and rich, “smaller is better”.

Short cakes don’t need to be served with any garnish, but with a topping of fresh fruits, a sprinkling of confectioners sugar, whole nuts, or a dollop of whipped cream, they will be remembered forever!

This recipe is one of my favorite short cakes, “Date Walnut Cake”. I found it many years ago in Gourmet Magazine and adapted it slightly. It’s fairly easy to make for a large dinner party, and I like serving it with real whipped cream.

Host Chef Renny Kranich taught me to whip cream with my big whisk in a stainless steel bowl sitting in ice water. No sugar is needed when you serve fresh, whipped cream atop your short cake.

Date Walnut Cake

1/4 cup boiling-hot water
1 1/2 cups pitted dates (1/2 lb), finely chopped
1 1/2 cups walnuts (5 oz), toasted and cooled
3/4 cup sugar, divided
2/3 cup Panko or fine bread crumbs
1 tablespoon grated orange zest
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs, separated, at room temperature

Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle. Generously grease a 9- by 2-inch round cake pan with softened butter or vegetable oil and dust with bread crumbs, knocking out excess. Pour hot water over dates in a large bowl and let stand 15 minutes to soften. Pulse walnuts in a food processor until chopped, then add 1/4 cup sugar and pulse until nuts are finely ground. Add Panko, zest, cardamom, and salt and pulse until combined. Beat egg whites with a pinch of salt in a bowl using an electric mixer at medium-high speed until they just hold soft peaks. Add remaining 1/2 cup sugar in a slow stream, beating until whites hold stiff glossy peaks.

Whisk yolks into date mixture. Fold one third of yolk mixture into whites, then fold in remaining yolk mixture gently but thoroughly. Fold all of nut mixture into batter. Spoon batter into cake pan and bake until golden and springy to the touch and cake just begins to pull away from side of pan, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool in pan on a rack 30 minutes, then invert onto rack and cool completely.

“Peach Buckle” is another of my favorite short cakes. It’s quick to make and I top it with peaches and cinnamon crunch before it’s baked. No need for anything else! You’ll find the recipe for “Peach Buckle” in the Boquete Gourmet Community Cookbook, which is a gift to all ticket-holders at the Cookbook Party #2 – SALE and SWAP coming up on Friday, August 26, beginning at 3:00pm. And, you may be able to taste my “Peach Buckle” at the party.

Get more information by clicking “Register Now” on the calendar at the right above. Chef Renny will prepare her famous “Pico de Gallo”, Chef Juan will cook up some “Bunuelos”, Chef Betty will serve up her “Boquete Tamales”, and Chef Dede will be grilling watermelon at the party, just to name a few.

Yolanda will be mixing “Pisco Sours”, Betty will bring her rich and delicious “Espresso Cheesecake”, David will “Pickle Eggs”, Anita will bake her very tasty “Olive Cheese Balls”, and many other celebrity chefs featured in the cookbook will be there presenting dishes to the party-goers. Live music, free cookbooks, Cookbook Sale and Swap, and lots of other fun activities will be available, so come and party with us!

Cora

What’s a “Cookbook Party”?

That’s a very good question, I haven’t known of another “cookbook party” since the one Boquete Gourmet threw last year to celebrate the arrival of our town’s first culinary collection, “Boquete Gourmet Community Cookbook”.

On that occasion, everyone contributing recipes to the new cookbook, plus the entire Boquete community were invited to attend a cookbook party that included samplings of several of the dishes made from recipes published in the book.

The party was a huge success! Most of the fun was in getting cookbooks signed by the contributing chefs, and at the same time, the chefs were trying to get their books signed by all the other chefs, “round-robin” style. The food seemed secondary to meeting and sharing enthusiasm and camaraderie with each other.

This year’s Cookbook Party is quite different. The main events will include cooking demonstrations of many of the recipes from the book, actually being prepared by the contributing chefs. Party-goers will taste dishes as they are ready for presentation, enjoy live entertainment, and have an opportunity to buy, sell, and swap cookbooks of all sorts.

You’re invited to come to this very special party, to be held on Friday, August 26, at 100 El Santuario, Boquete, beginning at 3pm. You may bring cookbooks to sell, trade or donate to charity, if you like. Rare and unusual cookbooks from the The Book Mark Bookstore in Dolega will be on sale during the party, and Irene will bring a special cookbook collection just for this occasion. You’ll be able to pick up new titles not seen before in Boquete.

Five local charities contributed recipes to the community cookbook; Loco por Leer, Buenos Vecinos de Boquete, Animales de Boquete, Lions Club of Boquete, The Handicap Foundation and Unexpected Moments of Magic Foundation. Come and meet representatives from each group, and savour their dishes.

Tickets to the party are only $10 each, and include activities mentioned above, plus a copy of the 2nd edition of “Boquete Gourmet Community Cookbook”. Click “Reserve Now” on the calendar at the right of this post, and proceed to order your tickets while they last.

And, if anyone has ever been to another Cookbook Party anywhere in the world, I’d love to hear all about it!
See you there!
Cora