nodrogeo

ABC cake

March 15, 2012 by nodrogeo Leave a Comment

I started to write about my experiences with Dominican cooking, but realized I was really writing about cooking in the Dominican, which is all together different. I love cutting out the recipes you find on boxes and packages. I always cut them out but for some reason seldom use them. I found a recipe written in a spanish variety of english on a bag of Dominican flour. I do not see many wheat fields here so I assume they import the ingredients and package it, although the company is based in Santo Domingo and deals in breads, cakes, candy, chocolate, cocoa, flour, honey and sugar. Now the way I see it, if you have a company that specializes in pancakes surely you would have the ultimate pancake recipe on the side panel, or if you produce chocolate chips I would thiink the posted chocolate chip recipe must be the absolute best in the world. Imagine if all you did was sell chocolate chips and you put an awful chocolate chip cookie recipe out there. Plus I figure there might even be a bonus that the recipe has been tested over time and almost impossible to make errors. A fools proof perfect recipe is what I would put on my gingerbread house factory packages. So this has to be the best flour cake recipe in the world on my dominican bag of flour.

The first challenge was to convert the ingredient list to volumes as the flout and sugar were listed in pounds and I did not have a scale. I tried to cheat and buy a one pound bag of sugar, as I did not have a scale, but all they had were two pound bags. One does not like to overstock ingredients like flour and sugar around here as it is the most favorite delicacy of the Dominican red ant and they come running, on all six legs and thirty joints, running out of the jungle once they smell it, even a teensie tiny morsel.

So flour and sugar have different densities so different weights per cup and different sugars and different flours have different densities so it is not a brush off question. My favorite recipe experts of all times, ATK, say that we are silly to use volumes as the consistency needed for great baking comes from weight and using a scale. Well I have no scale today and have come up with some alternative ways. Nice to know the Spanish are already using the preferred method.

This recipe is so simple. The problem is you have to have a strong stomach to make yourself quite miserable. Miserable that is if you know about healthy eating. This si not about healthy eating. It is about rich egg yolks, far too much sugar and carbs and just things that are plainly not good for you. As you stir and assemble the list it is not like a great stew or stock where the incredible smells make you want to orgasm. This is about gooey heart unfriendly doughy sticky messy ………… you get the picture.

Well maybe not so simple after all:

Ancel Blanquita Coconut cake
1lb Blanquita flour (3.6 cups)
¾ ib butter
5 eggs
4 egg yolks
1lb sugar (2 cups plus 2 TB)
2 TB baking powder
1 TB lemon zest (1TB orange concentrate)
1 TB vanilla
1 17 oz can Ancel grated coconut in heavy syrup

Cream butter and sugar, then incorporate the eggs two at a time.
Sift flour and baking powder over top of lemon zest
Add to the batter and mix in the milk and vanilla at the same time

Use a 10” greased bake tray in preheated oven at 350F (225C my gas oven)
Cook on middle shelf for 30 min or until clean with toothpick
Cool for 40 min
Spread top with ancel grated coconut right out of the can
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh so good

Actually it is the topping that started all this unhealthyness in the first place. I was planning to make something from the almighty coconut that abounds on my property where I reside. Oddly it is hard to find shredded coconut here so I decided to make my own. The research required a bit of time as I had never done this before, In the meantime I noticed a can of this Ancel grated coconut on a shelf in a local grocery store. I have learned from experience that you grab something as soon as you see it as it might never be inventoried again once shelf supplies run out. The ingredient list included sugar as number one on the list and also included corn syrup. It is a not a good read and not recommended. On lugging it home I looked it up on line and discovered some locals spread the goo all over top of cakes as icing and since I had already found the perfect Dominican cake recipe I had to, just had to try it. You only live once and some of us not as long.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Fishin’ Magician

March 14, 2012 by nodrogeo Leave a Comment

We were sitting at a restaurant along the shoreline and suddenly appears this magical man. This beach restaurant is situated in basically a laid back easygoing town. Easygoing as in without the hawkers and bothersome beggars associated with so many destinations and touristy restaurants. Out in front of our table without warning along comes this fishin’ magician. What a treat to watch someone earn a living using a combination of a bit of luck, mixed with lots of skill and a simple fishing net.

He had this intense stare deep into a small portion of a large ocean. What this person saw was something no one else could see. Suddenly after the longest time standing without movement, his net was cast.

It is so strange that sometimes the people that can bring you the greatest pleasure in life you never really meet. Someone’s special touch on life allows them to stand out and impress without them even knowing they are special.

And of course a great magician always draws an admiring crowd.

Filed Under: just plain living

A Very Lazy Banana

March 13, 2012 by nodrogeo Leave a Comment

When you have a lemon you make lemonade (well here actually you find more limes and you use them to support your favourite fresh fish recipe). If you have a banana tree you All Postseat bananas. You never tire of bananas here as they happen to be so fresh (not gassed like those imported ones northerners taste) and just so sweet and succulent.

You have not likely ever tasted a sweeter banana. You do feel you could never tire of the taste, but if you suspect you need a change, what they say about life applies to fruits too, so here is a very unhealthy way to prepare a healthy fruit but at the same time just sooooooooooo yummy!

I used this recipe from America’s Test Kitchen and I plagiarize so seldom, and I don’t really think it is plagiarzing anyway, as I am giving them due credit. The secret, shhhhhhh, is freezing the bananas so you get rid of extra juices that destroy texture during baking and at the same time you up the banana flavor to extreme levels.

Start with five ripe Dominican bananas (ATK didn’t start with the best banana) and freeze them overnight. It is when they thaw they release the juices that would otherwise ruin the texture of this supercharged loaf. Thaw them in a bowl in the refrigerator and let them release all those sweet and sticky juices over time. Eventually you drain the banana liquid and simmer it to concentrates to about half its original volume. Then you pour the concentrated banana syrup back in with the drained bananas and mash them all up into a mixture as creamy or chunky as you like your loaf to feel. Voila!! You now have the most incredible base to start on the journey of creating the most remarkable banana bread. One that will bring smiles of incredibility to all your friends fortunate enough to secure their piece. I have friends and family that now make reservations for their personal pieces (they wish, only one each and get back in the lineup) once they get wind of the next creation day.

Ultimate Banana Bread

Freeze five over ripe bananas, bring to room temperature and drain liquid off
Simmer banana liquid on med/hi to reduce to ¼ cup (about five min)
Mash the bananas with the reduced juice

Whisk
1 ¾ c all purpose flour
½ tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Mix
2 sticks of butter (1 cup melted)
1 tsp pure vanilla
2 eggs
3/4 c brown sugar (stir in until dissolved)

Add liquid to dry and do not over stir as it increases gluten
Optional – ¼ cup of toasted walnuts

Pour into 8 1/2 X 4 ½ loaf pan sprayed with oil/flour spray

Slice a sixth banana on the diagonal 1/4 “ thick
Add down each side on top of batter
Sprinkle 2 tsp sugar over top for a crust

Bake 1 hr moderately hot 350F oven on middle rack
Rotate @ 30 min mark
Cool 15 min before taking out of pan
Cool additional 20 min before serving

ENJOY and SHARE and have a happy banana day!!

Filed Under: recipes and cooking

Happynook and the Earthquake Question

March 11, 2012 by nodrogeo Leave a Comment

Your friends ask, “how do you feel about earthquakes?” I was fixing a screen in a guest bedroom the other day. A guest had stuffed some plastic is a hole in the bedroom screen to keep out mosquitoes I presume. I took out the screen to do something a little less unattractive but the screen just wouldn’t fit quite right. I hate the screens and windows here as they never seem to fit quite right. It was this particular day it suddenly dawned on me the most likely reason the screen was not coming in or out or sliding properly was because past tremors from earthquakes and after shocks had shifted the building. One day I do remember an earthquake was so strong you could feel the entire building sway. And mind you I am talking about a three story large poured and block cement building.
This is not only a massive amount of heavy cement and steel rebar but also build on solid rock. I would think it would take a bit to sway this building.

NEWS FLASH Calgary Herald March 11, 2012 ” VANCOUVER — Anacla, a First Nations village on the west coast of Vancouver Island, is moving up, heading for higher, safer ground. A new “big house” has been built 50 metres up from the pounding surf of Pachena Bay. And there are plans to replace the 49 houses on the beach, which could be swallowed by the sea with just minutes’ notice. It has happened before, says Tom Happynook, a hereditary chief with the Huu-ay-Aht First Nations, recalling how the village in the bay vanished in 1700, when a quake kicked up giant waves off Canada’s West Coast. “The village was completely wiped out,” says Happynook.”

I find the odd crack in a swimming pool wall or a cement railing and I look at it fondly like a new wrinkle in an old friendly face, and try to put a story to it. Face it, our ground shifts regularly, we have a hot molten center for a planet (so they tell me) and the cracks amuse me when they involve neat things like hot springs.

Now it seems earthquakes are not a safe haven by staying in Canada and in fact they are everywhere http://www.moorlandschool.co.uk/earth/images/Earthquakefaq.htm and frequent too. It is a strange feeling to feel an earthquake sway your house with sufficient force to sway a hammock or a handing light fixture but it settlles and life goes on and often I worry about my Canadian friends living in coastal BC cities and Vancouver Island.

The most recent earthquake I felt was a 5.3 off the coast of Puerto Rico, a Commonwealth country and unincorporated territory of the United States. My hammock in the West Indies feels pretty safe these days. As for the advantages of watching a tsutami from a hilltop location, well that’s another post.

Filed Under: just plain living

On the long and twisted road to Las Terrenas

March 8, 2012 by nodrogeo Leave a Comment

Sometimes in the middle of the humid, muggy night, especially one like we have now, tonight with a full moon that seems far too large to be just handing in the night sky, I find myself pondering far too much.

It was a night just like this almost five years ago I lay on the beach of a paradise words just cannot quite describe. I woke up in a tent of all places. On a beach. In a strange land. Walking down the most incredible beach one only finds in dreams I stumbled on a small office where an American sat behind a fancy desk. He had a three D model in front of him of a different beach with tiny palm trees all laid out and water painted blue on plywood. “You might want to see our villas already built” he says. I can get my VP of sales to show you around.

Little did I know at the time it would change the course of many years of my life and the lives of others. This is the story of the twisted road to paradise and hell and back again.

Filed Under: recipes and cooking