News You Can Bruise for 2004 August 31 (entry 0)

(3) Tue Aug 31 2004 08:45 PST: By request, here are recipes for the things I served at my Sunday night dinner party:

• Pasta: regular penne with a pesto sauce. See pesto post passim.
• Corn: corn soaked in water and then grilled on my tiny charcoal grill.
• Dip: based on this recipe. I used Fontina instead of Monterey Jack because I think Monterey Jack has no flavor, even though it's the only cheese named after a place in California. I used garlic instead of garlic powder because I don't have any garlic powder. I didn't use salsa because I find that idea kind of creepy, and also I wanted to make everything from scratch. Not having a slow cooker, I baked it in the oven for about 30 minutes.
• French bread: sliced very thin and served with the dip. I used the recipe from The Baker's Apprentice, which is pretty basic. The secret the book taught me is to make half the dough the day before and let it ferment in the fridge, then mix it in with the other half. It presents this as two separate recipes due to the structure of the book, but that's what it boils down to.
• Salad: this was a disaster so I did not assemble it and we did not eat it. However I was able to salvage part of it later in the evning, when I baked the jicama slices in the oven and made jicama chips which were much tastier than raw jicama. I've had jicama in restaurant salads and it was delicious, but they must marinade it or something because when I tasted it raw it was disgusting. Let's move on.
• Ice cream pie: Graham cracker crust made using the America's Test Kitchen recipe where you toast unsweetened coconut and whirl it in the food processor along with the graham crackers. I used chocolate graham crackers. You don't see enough graham cracker crusts. I think it's better than a pastry crust for just about any kind of pie (and it's certainly easier), but maybe that's my American cook heresy.

  Two batches of ice cream: chocolate on the bottom (flavor stuff = 1 cup grated chocolate), and butter pecan on top. Also hot fudge sauce, where I abandoned my family's traditional fudge sauce for a recipe I can't find at the moment, but it thickened the sauce with flour, like a roux. I was a little dubious about this but I like the extra thickness.

  As we were eating the ice cream pie we started talking about Dr. Graham and his crackers. Seth said that Graham was ahead of his time. "He said you should eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, and whole grains, and not eat sugar." There was a long pause, and then Riana raised her bowl full of hot fudge ice cream chocolate graham cracker pie. "Here's to Dr. Graham!" she said.

Comments:

Posted by Susie at Tue Aug 31 2004 12:41

What is jicama? I thought it was a type of ham, but it appears I am wrong. Your pie sounds yummy and I agree about the graham cracker crust (and graham crackers in general).

Posted by anonymous at Tue Aug 31 2004 13:15

Jicama is kind of a pale sweet potato from South America.

Posted by anonymous at Tue Aug 31 2004 19:58

Don't be to hasty to heap the title of sole Californian cheese name on Monterey Jack. There are several places in California called Colby and there's a cheese called Humboldt Fog.