Ice Cream Pie

I'm calling this my Ice Cream Birthday.

Not only did I get a copy of David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop and a set of absolutely beautiful glass ice cream dishes, but I've been blissfully treating myself to slices of this delicious ice cream pie. It's a Chocolate Flake Fromage Pie from Murray's. I am truly loved and spoiled.

Las Gorditas & Fig Toasts

This was a day in which we explored our city from one side to the other. We started on one side of the metro, with lunch at Las Gorditas at 844 Central in Kansas City, KS. It's a spot recommended by a friend of a friend and my husband's new favorite stop for lunch. They have other items on the menu (not many), but we were there for the gorditas. (If the place is named after a particular item, it seems rather foolish to order a burrito.) You can watch the ladies making these thick corn tortillas behind the counter, and they're as delicious as they look. We ordered three - one filled with pork and potatoes, one with nopales and chile, and one with a delicious fried chile relleno. The cheese in the relleno was gooey and thick and the pork was perfectly seasoned, moist and tender. My only complaint is that I didn't start with the nopales gordita, which had too much time to sit and become dangerous to handle. It fell apart in my hands, on my table, on my shirt. The cactus, however, was delicious (and thankfully, there were napkins on my table - lots of napkins). We washed it all down with bottles of soda - Mexican Coke for him, orange soda for me. Lunch was around $12 and service, while distracted, was attentive enough. We were the only non-Spanish speakers there at lunch, which is always a good sign.

With many a stop in between, we ended our food adventure at Dean and Deluca at Town Center. Two or so times a year, we go there for nothing in particular. I quickly lose him to the samples and the cheese counter and I can just wander aimlessly, exploring the jars and bottles and boxes and candies and breads. Forget clothes and shoes and compact discs, this is my kind of shopping.

This afternoon I had figs on the brain. Blame it on my current nine-months-pregnant state if you will, but a little something we saw last night on the television made me obsessed with figs. I scoured the shelves until I found a jar of Terrabianca Caramelized Figs, grabbed a wedge of Fourme D'Ambert (a perfectly creamy and mild blue cheese) and a good baguette and got the heck out of there before I spent any more money. At home, we whipped up these delicious little things (I'm calling them fig toasts), parked our rears on the back deck with cool drinks and called it a day. Also, I did lots of bowing and patting myself on the back. These were damn good toasts. Treat yourself sometime.


Fig Toasts

a good french baguette
caramelized figs
caramelized onion
good creamy blue cheese

Crisp slices of bread in 350 degree oven for 5-6 minutes. Remove from oven and top each slice with half a caramelized fig. Spread fig out as best you can - any naked bread can be drizzled with the thick fig juices in the jar. Top with caramelized onions and crumbles of blue cheese.

Cafe Cuba

We couldn't decide on dinner last night - I was hungry, mostly, for food - you know, the edible stuff that you eat when you sit down to a meal. That was about as specific as I could get. We drove down by the Art of Pizza in the Crossroads and it still wasn't open, so we kept going until we got to Westport. I said "Hey - there's that Cuban place," and as the words escaped my lips my husband pulled the car into the parking space right in front. Easy parking spaces can be a hell of a decision maker.
Fortunately, welcoming people who are eager to have you sample their foods also make decisions easy. The lovely young lady behind the counter, in between chatting in Spanish with the rest of the restaurant's patrons, scooped us up little cups of the homestyle Cuban dishes behind the counter to taste. It was all good. We ordered a Cubano Especial sandwich (ham, pork, pickles, cheese and mustard pressed between thick french loaf-style bread until it was super thin and crisp) and a dinner plate with a tender shredded beef, a spoonful of yucca, a huge helping of a delicious bean and rice dish called arroz congris, and a side of tostones (fried plantains). They have fresh fruit smoothies (just fruit and ice) with mango, guava and other fruits, and delicious Cuban pastries. It's really tasty food served by smiling faces - and it's way easier to get parking in Westport than to travel to Cuba anyway.

Cafe Cuba
4116 Broadway
816*531*6060

Please save me some custard.

I saw a commercial for this on the teevee last night and had to share.

KMBC & KCWE are saying "Thank You" to loyal viewers on Wednesday, June 13th with Free Sheridan's Custard. You can get a regular chocolate or vanilla custard with two toppings for free from 11am to 11pm.

Here's a link to the TheKansasCityChannel.com with more details including participating locations.

Don't eat all the custard, I beg you.

Banana Bread

I like my bananas green, with a little bite to them, while my husband prefers them when the skins start to spot and turn brown. So while it seems as though we'd be the perfect banana couple, we're shamefully wasteful when it comes to bananas. If they don't get eaten right away, they develop into the invisible fruit on the counter and by the time we notice them again they're past the point where anyone in our house will eat them, except the dog, who loves them unreservedly and is always thankful to have fruit of any kind shared with him. Even grossly overripe fruit.

I finally figured out, however, how quick banana bread is to make, and how wonderful slices of banana bread taste in the morning when you're sick to death of cereal. This new oven in my new kitchen is making baking possible, for the first time in four years, and I'm tackling baking with a new fervor. (A couple of weeks ago I made the Magnolia Bakery's vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting, and two days later I baked chocolate chip cookies, which I then made into cookie sandwiches using the rest of the frosting. I was like super-duper baking lady.) This recipe, from Simply Recipes, is quick and makes for really moist bread which is only made better with the addition of toasted walnuts or chocolate chips.

Banana Bread

3 - 4 ripe bananas, mashed
1/3 c. melted butter
1 c. sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Mix melted butter into mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the egg, vanilla, and sugar. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and fold in to batter. Mix in the flour last. Pour mixture into a buttered 4 x 8 in. loaf pan.
Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a baking rack.

Em Chamas

My favorite person turned 34 this week, and we decided that the 34th birthday, of all the birthdays, should be a meat birthday. We kicked off the meat birthday with a hot dog party on Sunday and finished it off in grand fashion Monday night at Em Chamas

Brazilian Grill. It seemed, from all the stories we've heard over the past few months, the perfect place to celebrate a birth. With lots and lots of meat.

Anyone who knows me can tell you I'm not a big meat person - in fact, I used to be kind of anti-meat - but I went into this experience with a completely open mind, resolving to try just about anything that came my way. And it was easy to do here - absolutely everything about our dining experience was as pleasant as it could have been. Every aspect of our service was good - from the hostess to the young man who would not let my water glass go empty. And looking around the dining room, it was easy to see that everyone was having that kind of night. It wasn't just our server who was superb, it was all of them. The young men stopping at each table to offer one of 14-15 different types of meat were personable, generous, and charming. It was easy to ask questions and even easier to just eat and fully enjoy our evening.

For the meat-averse, Em Chamas' Gourmet Bar is a wonderful meal all by itself. We had salads with pineapple, garbanzo beans, shrimp, and chewy, spicy calamari. We had cubes of cheese, mussels, large salty olives, and beautiful slices of smoked salmon. There were smooth mashed potatoes, traditional Brazilian black beans and rice, and a tasty mushroom pasta. Our server, Christian, brought us the most wonderful provolone cheese biscuits and slices of caramelized bananas to cleanse our palates. The bananas, baked with cinnamon and sugar, melted in your mouth, and had an amazing effect on the palate.

When you're ready to face the rodizio service, flip your little circular disc on your table from the black side to the yellow and let the meat come to you. They will slice meat from the skewers to your liking - medium to medium-well done for me - and the dance will begin. Top sirloin, lamb, chicken drummettes, turkey wrapped in bacon, pork loin, filet of beef, pork sausages...the list goes on and on. On the recommendation of our server, we tried the top sirloin marinated in garlic and oil and were entranced. It's best to use your little disc as much as possible - take breaks, savor your choices, and plan on spending a couple of hours having a leisurely culinary adventure. We were promised that the desserts were superb, but couldn't even face the sweet choices they had to offer. We slowly spooned chunks of the soft caramelized bananas on to our plates and called it good. And then promptly went home and took a long walk around the neighborhood.

Em Chamas
6101 NW 63rd Terr
in the Tuileries Plaza (I-29 & 64th Street)

816*505*7100

Summer Dip

In my childhood, I don't think I attended a single summer gathering with my Mom's side of the family where this dip wasn't served. I loved it and still love it, and crave it when the weather gets warmer and my arms start getting just a touch brown from the sun. It is, of course, best when the meatiest tomatoes are in season, but you can make do with even kind of scraggly tomatoes because you're just dousing the whole damn mix in vinegar anyhow. Because of the vinegar thing, the dip gets better as all the flavors meld together.

I'm not going to give you proportions because this is a fly by the seat of your pants kind of thing.

Antipasto Dip

Tomatoes, seeded & small diced

Green onions, finely chopped

Jar(s) of Banana Peppers (hot or mild, to taste), small diced

Can(s) of large Black Olives, sliced

Red Wine Vinegar

Mix first four ingredients together in large bowl and douse with lots of good red wine vinegar. Stir to coat all ingredients. I typically make this dip at least a day in advance of serving it and stir it two to three times while it marinates in the refrigerator. Transfer to a serving bowl with a slotted spoon. Serve with your favorite tortilla chips.