You may have noticed that I recently joined the FoodBuzz Featured Publishers program.  One thing I get out of it is a chance for a little extra exposure, but since joining, I’ve heard about various opportunities to write special posts for various causes.  These “Top 9 Takeovers” are events where Foodbuzz asks all their Featured Publishers to post on a theme.  Then, for one day only, all the Top 9 posts reflect the theme.  This time around, it’s banana splits!

Electrolux and Kelly Ripa are partnering with Foodbuzz to raise money for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (OCRF).  According to the OCRF, ovarian cancer is the 5th leading cause of cancer death among women in the US.  Because symptoms are rarely matched with ovarian cancer, most women (81%) aren’t diagnosed before the cancer has spread.  The OCRF’s mission is to fund research to better detect and ultimately find a cure for ovarian cancer.  When ovarian cancer is detected and treated early, the five-year survival rate is greater than 92%.

Just for writing this post, they’ll donate another $50 to the Fund.  If you want to help out, visit Kelly Confidential and build your own banana split.  For each one you do (up to one per day), they’ll donate another $1 to the OCRF.

I’m not always a dessert guy, but this opportunity piqued my interest.  I wanted to create a banana split that was a little different from what you’d get at your corner ice cream shop.  I thought about the tropics, and I thought about Elvis.  I thought about bananas foster and pad thai.  It’s not traditional, but it was tasty.

I started with the defining element: a split banana.  Some small scoops of vanilla ice cream went on top, then I drizzled the whole thing with a brown butter caramel sauce, made super simply by browning some butter, adding in brown sugar, then a little cream to smooth it out.  The wackiest element is the dry peanut butter.  I made this fluffy powder by combining some creamy, natural peanut butter with tapioca maltodextrin (TMD is available on Amazon).  It’s pretty cool stuff, when you put the ultra-light peanut butter powder in your mouth it instantly dissolves into that sticky, peanut buttery taste and texture.  Then, feeling a little inspiration from pad thai, I grated some lime zest over the whole thing.  The color is great, but the citrus flavor also brightens up and enlivens the dish.

I only had two bananas, so I made one for me and one for my wife.  I think if I did it all again I’d add even more lime zest… or maybe squeeze some lime juice over the top.

Some facts and statistics taken from the OCRF page.  I have not and will not receive any monetary payment from FoodBuzz as a direct result of this post, but I do have a chance to be featured in the Top 9 on Monday, July 19th.

Our older daughter was going to attend a week-long Japanese language immersion summer camp in middle-of-nowhere, Minnesota (shout out to the camp, Mori no Ike, which she LOVED, offered through Concordia Language Villages).  Since we were driving and going to stay not too far away from the camp, we left our younger daughter to spend time with grandparents in the Chicago ‘burbs.  She got to enjoy some early 2nd birthday fun with them, as you’ll see in the picture on the right (she thought it was a cupcake just for her).

After seeing our daughter settled in to camp in Dent (a/k/a “middle-of-nowhere, Minn.”), we drove about an hour to the fine city of Fargo, North Dakota.  Before we went, we told people we were going there and they were all extremely skeptical that we’d find anything worthwhile to occupy ourselves for the week we were there.  It’s not a big city, that’s for sure, but like our little gem in central Illinois, it has a lot to offer if you look a little closer.

The first night there, we checked into our hotel, unpacked a bit and headed to downtown Fargo.  We walked around a while to see what was there and unwind from already being in the car for many hours that day.  We settled in to the HoDo Lounge, located in the historic Hotel Donaldson.  I had read about this place while planning some of our meals and looked forward to what they had to offer.

Opening the menu, we were greeted by a long list of local producers that they use.  Nearly every aspect of their menu was represented, flour, lamb, cheeses, and produce.  We ended up sharing a couple salads and small plates to get a good sampling of their offerings.

We ordered two salads, the first being a pretty standard salad made with organic greens.  We followed the recommendation of our server and chose the dressing made with a Minnesota blue cheese.  The dressing was balanced, not too creamy, not too much funk from the blue, and just enough to dress the salad.

The next salad seemed so odd that we had to try it.  Watermelon cubes meet shaved fennel, feta, and kalamata olives, dressed with a sambuca citron vinaigrette.  I wasn’t expecting to really like this, but it was a knockout!  The sweet watermelon and fennel really worked well together.  The feta and olives added some saltiness that somehow brought out more of the richer watermelon flavor.

Oh yeah, drinks!  We were in a lounge after all.  Megan had the cat’s meow, made with a local rhubarb vodka (more on that to come), ginger syrup, and orange juice.

I went with a classic gin martini, garnished with blue cheese stuffed olives.  It could have stood a little more vermouth, but I really enjoyed trying a new (to me) gin, Hendrick’s.

The walleye cake was our introduction to the understanding that this fish is everywhere in the area.  This cake was the best fish cake I’ve ever had, bursting with flavor and really featuring the main ingredient, walleye.  The slaw was light and crunchy, and the lemon caper emulsion should be bottled and shipped across the nation to replace any imitation tartar sauce we’re suffering with now.

Then we have meat, a house-made boudin blanc, made with pork and rabbit.  It’s been browned and served over a warm apple-studded choucroute and drizzled with a thick apple gastrique.  The sausage itself was so well-seasoned and moist, and the texture was spot-on.  I’m not a fan of sauerkraut, but this choucroute preparation was delicate and complex, not just in-your-face stinky cabbage (apologies to the kraut lovers out there).

We were still a bit hungry, so we chose a lemon tartlet for dessert.  The crumbly tartlets were filled with a delightfully tart lemon custard, topped with fresh berries.  The strawberry/kiwi jelly “cone” was a fun and tasty garnish.

All in all, it was a great meal and a fabulous way to start our vacation.  We had drinks here a few more times over the course of our trip, but we had to try some of the other restaurants in town.  I’ll be posting about more of our adventure over the next week(s).

Have you been to Fargo or anywhere around there?  Leave a comment and share where you ate and what you thought of the area.

My wife made baklava the other day to bring in to a potluck at her office.  I’ve had so many soggy, over-sweetened, stale pieces of baklava that I wasn’t so sure of it at first.  One bite later I was a convert.  It was light, flaky, and had just enough sweetness.  The triple-threat combination of almonds, pistachios, and walnuts really elevated it.  Go get some phyllo dough and make this (she used Alton Brown’s recipe).

I was always skeptical of sweet potato pie.  I’m not sure why.  I’d say it was the idea of vegetables in my dessert, but I got over that for the delicious Indian dessert made with carrots cooked down in milk, gajar ka halva*.  I had it at a few different restaurants, still just trying a bite of my wife’s pie selection, since I didn’t want to commit to a whole slice.  I liked it.  It usually had a blend of spices similar to pumpkin pie, and a texture, well, a lot like pumpkin pie.  Some were bland, some were dry, and most had horrible crusts.

Pie crust is hard to get perfect all the time.  I’ve made some really good ones and some less-than-stellar examples of crust, but if nothing else they all tasted good.  The crust that went into this pie was a simple 3-2-1 ratio (as codified by Michael Ruhlman in his book, appropriately titled Ratio) of flour to butter to water.  I won’t go into the gory details of pie crust particulars as there are plenty of other people who can do it very well, like local food lover Anna Barnes in her Smile Politely piece Perfecting Pumpkin Pie.  Ruhlman also gives a lot of great tips in Ratio, and if you love to cook, I highly recommend this book.

The pie crust was initially made for Halloween night, as my wife and I dressed up as Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd from the 2007 Tim Burton musical film.  If you haven’t seen the movies or seen the stage musical, Mrs. Lovett is known for making little meat pies (possibly the worst pies in London) out of Mr. Todd’s unfortunate customers.  Not being a demon barber myself, I made cute little apple pies perfect for two people (or one glutton).  I didn’t remember to take pictures of those pies, but they were cute and delicious (probably the best pies in CU).  If nothing else, we won the costume contest at the party we went to, thanks to my wife’s expert costume-making skills.

I froze the rest of the pie dough, until one day I found myself in possession of two largish sweet potatoes that I had gotten from the farmers’ market.  For whatever reason, sweet potato pie sprung into my mind and I scoured the web for recipes.  I rarely give about.com much attention, but this time it seemed like the best recipe I could find was there, titled Mississippi Sweet Potato Pie.  I sliced the sweet potatoes and boiled them until soft, then (mostly) followed the recipe.  I reduced the sugar, increased the cinnamon, and added a little bit of some of my favorite fall spices like ginger and cloves.  I mixed it up with my immersion blender and got my crusts ready.

The recipe says two pies, but I didn’t believe it.  I think I was just in denial because I could only find one pie pan.  I made one pie and had some of the filling left over.  It wasn’t quite enough for a whole deep pie, but it was enough for a tart!  Thankfully, there was more than enough pie dough to go around, and so it went.  The pie turned out delicious and creamy.  It was moist and sweet, but lots of flavors coming through from the spices.  We’re still working on the last of the pie (which was unanimously loved by all in the house), and the tart will be sold tomorrow at our daughter’s school in their fine arts bake sale.  Since I mentioned it earlier, there’s already at least one person interested.  Here’s a sneak preview of what the buyer can expect.

* I know you might have been thinking pumpkin pie, but pumpkin’s actually a fruit!  I’m sure I didn’t know that as a child, but hey, it was covered in whipped cream.

One of my favorite pastries is the croissant.  They can be found at any coffee shop and pretty much any bakery.  I love the buttery, flaky layers that wrap around and around, but many croissants end up disappointing me.  They are either stale, not done in the middle, or not done enough on the outside.  I like the browned exterior bits the best, tasting almost like a crunchy version of a really richly browned pie crust.

I’ve only made croissants a few times, since it’s a lot of preparation.  The process itself isn’t difficult, just time-consuming.  As I learned this time, it really shouldn’t be rushed.  The recipe I follow is the small-batch version from the Professional Pastry Chef cookbook.  I highly recommend this book as a tome of great knowledge on just about any dessert from meringue to pastry cream, truffles to napoleons.

This batch of croissants didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked, but the basic idea is there, and despite their appearance they are delicious.  These are definitely not the best croissants I’ve made, but they meet what I like in a croissant.  They have a buttery and crispy flaky crust on the outside with just enough soft center to give a contrast.

First you knead butter with a little flour and lemon juice to soften it and give it a chance to stand up to the heat before melting out all over the place.

Next, make a pretty typical yeast dough.  It’s a softer dough than that for bread, and not kneaded as much so it stays much more tender.

Then you roll the dough out a bit bigger than the butter and place the butter on top with the corners of the butter square aligned with the sides of the dough square.  Note how my butter and dough are nowhere near square.

Enclose the butter in dough by bringing up the dough corners and pinching.  This is the first important part.  I always feel like if I don’t close it up right here that all the butter will run out at the slightest increase in temperature.  I think this is one of my first screw-ups, since I left some air pockets in there that ended up forming defects in the finished product.

Now roll it out into a “rectangle”.

Then you do a series of “turns” where you fold it like a brochure.  One third folds in from the left, then one third folds in from the right.  Bring it all together and turn it 90 degrees.  You’ll then roll it out and “turn” it a couple more times.

We’ve now created a laminated (layered) dough.  You start with 3 layers (dough, butter, dough), but in making the turns you create many.  After the first, you have 9.  After the second, 27, then 81, then 243, then 729.  The butter separates the layers of dough and the water within the butter creates steam which puffs it up.  This is how puff pastry gets its puff.

Once we’ve made the dough, it needs to rest in the fridge, but needs to be wrapped tightly, because if the dough dries out, things will crack and break and our butter will escape.

Once it’s rested, you’ll let it come up in temperature a bit, then roll it out, cut strips, then triangles for croissants or rectangles for pain au chocolat.  Roll them up, brush with a beaten egg, bake in a hot oven and try to wait until they’re cool to enjoy any time of day.

My problem was in rushing the process.  There are supposed to be more waiting periods of chilling and/or resting the dough.  I think it would have helped my croissants get bigger.  I also cut them too small, but that just means it’s easier to have more than one!