Jambayz Island Grill - Nice weekend lunch

I heard about this place recently via email. The wife and I decided to check it out on a miserable rainy Saturday. Initially hard to find downtown, but finally came across it. Only one other party was in the small dining area, and we we were greeted by polite and helpful staff.

The decor was classic and not over-the-top. Although not a large dining area, the high ceiling made it seem roomy. The climate was perfect. The menu was slightly smaller than the website menu, but it had what we wanted. The waiter was very friendly and knowledgable and answered any questions we had with enthusiasm.

I ordered the Coconut water and the wife ordered a diet coke. The Coco-water was served in a coconut and had a nice refreshing and slightly sweet flavor.We then ordered the conch fritters as a appetizer, and put in our entrees of the Jerk Chicken and the Saltfish. The fritters came out hot and fresh, served with a mango chutney. They were good, but could probably use a little more seasoning. The pieces of conch were chewy but at least they had conch in the fritters, whereas a lot of places might just have conch-flavored bread.

The entrees came out a bit later. The Jerk Chicken was a thigh/leg combo and another leg. I ordered mine with extra spice. It came with a side of rice & beans and some plantain slices. The chicken was fall off the bone tender and juicy. The flavor was exceptional and spiced just right. The beans and rice were done nicely and were a good complement to the chicken. The plantains were perfectly cooked and melted in my mouth.

My wife tried the saltfish which was mixed with vegetables and ackee, served with breadfruit and plantains. She liked the fish, although the breadfruit was a bit too much starch to go with already starchy plantains and ackee. I'm not sure what ackee is exactly, but it reminded me of spaetzle. The flavors of everything were very unique and delicious.

Overall, the food experience was very positive and we will definitely be going back to try some of the other items.

Lastly, we ordered the sweet potato bread pudding with the rum/raisin ice cream. We got it to go and ate it at home. It was amazing. The bread pudding had a wonderful soft, but dense texture and tasted amazing. Not too sweet and cloying like some bread puddings. It went perfectly with the rum/raisin ice cream, which was a creamy scoop of Heaven in it's own right.

Again, kudos to the young man who waited on us, and to the chefs who put together this delicious food. I hope that business does well for them and they stay open for a long time.

White Star Ale House - Well kept Secret

"I'm so full, I'm miserable." That is what my wife said when we got home from White Star Ale House. We never heard of this place until we went to Jambayz, which is next door, and we saw that the same building housed this hidden treasure.

So after reviewing the menu online, I noticed that this wasn't just some ordinary tavern with the same old bar food. This was medium to high end fare at medium to low prices. We decided to try it out Tuesday night.

The decor was elgant and yet approachable. Definitely not suited for your Friday night fleabags who just want to drink and mow down some fries. The place had class.

We decided on some Wisconsin cheese wontons to start, along with some mojitos. The drinks were tasty by the way. We then ordered the pot roast for my wife, and the Ahi Tuna for me. Our son was along, and he ordered he flank steak.

The cheese wontons came out, and looked fantastic. Not the same kind as Zeppelins or ID, but lighter and filled with molten cheese. Served with a spicier mustard which still had enough sweet to make your mouth water. These scored a 10 out of 10.

The entrees came our shortly after. As the website specifies, these are moderately sized portions. Enough fo satisfy a normal person's apetite. The wife's pot roast was well recieved. Was nice and lean with savory gravy and a side of smashed potatoes. I hate pot roast, but I tried it, and even I was impressed.

My son ordered the flank steak and he ordered it medium-rare. It was already sliced when brought out, but was a little too rare for his liking. Admittedly, I tried it, and it was a bit on the raw side and kind of chewy.

The Ahi Tuna was phenomenal. I haven't had this good of tuna since I visited Miami. Charbroiled and cooked medium rare with a nice sear on the outside, yet pink and warm on the inside. It melted in the mouth coupled with the hot/sweet chili sauce. The cheesy potatoes that accompanied it was the perfect compliment, as well as a wonderful comfort food. Absolutely fantastic.

I would definitely go back and recommend this place for foodies who want more than bar food, but don't want to pay over $100 for some good quality items. Bon Apetite!

Worldwide Kitchen - Cater to the Equator

The next stop on the Alphabet cruise around the globe is Ecuador, which literally means "Equator". For the geographically challenged, it is coastal country in South America. The planning phase for the letter "E" was succinct but wearisome. Only a small handful of countries start with "E", so it was fairly easy to narrow it down to Ecuador, Egypt and Ethiopia. The decision was tough, so I peeked into the future and looked at what some of our future countries might be. Since we will be hitting the Middle East and Africa on several other occasions, we chose Ecuador.

Unlike the last few countries, which had giant recipe repositories online, Ecuador failed to land us a nice one-stop shop for ideas. We had to find and combine several websites to come up with our menu du jour. Having too many websites bookmarked can cause havoc, which I will explain later...

The cuisine of Ecuador varies by which part of the country you're in. If you're not on the coast, you are munching on pork, beef and your pet guinea pigs. Yes, it's true. Well, they aren't pets down there apparently... "Mom, Dad, have you seen Hamlet? Hey, what's for dinner?" In any event, I had an itching for seafood, so we chose the coastal menu, and avoided the pet stores.

Talk about getting out of one's comfort zone. We decided to challenge ourselves because we are getting so damn good at messing up chicken and cake, and we chose to do a Ceviche de Pescado. Ceviche is fish, usually sea bass, tilapia or shrimp, and it is cooked with lime juice. You heard me right! The acid in the lime juice cooks the fish, and no heat gets near this protein. Sometimes you see chefs on the Food Network make it, or you may find it in fine eating establishments, which means you won't find it in Cedar Rapids. But here we were... Mister and Mrs. Chefpants trying to out-do Emeril and Gordon Ramsey. We also went with an Ecuadorian beet salad, as well as llapingachos, which are cheesy potato cakes, and finally a dessert called flan (custard).

Shopping: We actually did a preemptive strike on the grocery store to see what we had to choose for our fish. We wanted the sea bass, but tilapia was a close second. The HyVee had tilapia, but we struck out on the angry sea bass (with lasers attached to their heads). With that in mind, we could finish building our menu. When we finally went shopping several days later, it was the same day as the feast itself. We wanted guaranteed freshness with our seafood, and the Fishmonger at HyVee assured us that Sunday was when they would get in a fresh batch of fishies.

Most of the ingredients for the menu were easy to come by. The ceviche called for tilapia, tomatoes, peppers, onions and a crapload of limes (crapload = 20). The potato cakes included potatoes (duh), Muenster cheese, scallions and annatto oil. Annatto what??? Fuhget about it... Since there was no way on earth to find this, we looked up how to whip up your own version. All you need to do is add paprika to canola oil and let it get all nice and emulsified. It gives the oil a rich, peppery aroma, while turning it red. Voila! The rest of the ingredients were par for the course, including beets, carrots, eggs, and various spices, juices and oils.

Prep: Three words... Mis en place. Yah, it's French. It means "things in place". In our kitchen, it means chopping and dicing the crap out of everything before it gets cooked. We have become prep gurus, whirling dervishes with knives, cutting boards and food processors. I am the Surgeon General and Lauri is Jackie the Ripper. Together we make Vince from Slapchop want to slap himself with some shamwow towels.

But before we get the hardware out, we reflect on past guffaws and decide to cook the dessert early and get it out of the way. The flan was a piece of cake, errrr, not literally of course. Condensed milk, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and rum. Mix it up, throw in cooking dish, top with nutmeg, and throw it in the oven. The most difficult part was caramelizing the sugar to put on the bottom of the dish. It hardened very rapidly and was not easy to spread.

Once the flan was cooking away, we got out the cutting boards and knives. Everything else on the menu required small cut dicing and bite-size chunks. I took on the tilapia, which had to be diced into small cubes. With it being fresh seafood, I had to work fast and get the stuff back in the fridge ASAP. Then it was time to dice up the peppers, onions, shallots and beets. The carrots in the recipe had to be cooked, and we purchased raw carrots, so out comes the steamer. Peeled the carrots, steamed them, then cut 'em up.

As Lauri, the axe-wielding contessa had the situation in hand with the veggies, it was time for me to start peeling potatoes. I don't like peeling potatoes. Peeling potatoes just sucks. Especially those little bitchy Yukon gold ones. The skin is thin and slippery. You can't freaking hold onto them with one hand and peel with another as they keep slipping all over the place. It's like peeling a wet bar of soap. I was fearful of losing my fingers, or at the very least, knuckle-skin. However, I was fortunate and no blood was shed.

Cooking: Now that we had our "mis en place," it was time to cook. I then noticed something awry in reading over our internet recipes. There were two sites bookmarked for Ceviche. One said to soak the fish for one hour (if the fish is steamed first), and the other said for four hours (if raw). Our recipe called for raw fish, and we wanted to do it right, so we had to get that fish soaking in lime juice and wait out the remaining four hours. Not so fast, my friends. That was only the beginning of the problems, as the ingredient list reflected bits and pieces from BOTH websites! Ooops. This is what happens when the old lady is writing down ingredients after having too many Bud Light Limes out in the sun. So we were missing some things, and we bought stuff we didn't need. What the hell am I going to do with all this celery? We have no recipes with celery, so Lauri is going to take it to work and put peanut butter on it. We were also missing Serrano peppers. Since we had time, I hustled back to the store and $.13 cents poorer, came home with three tiny peppers.

Okay, so now we are set. We combined the fish chunks with about 4 cups of lime juice. We bought some limes, but we also bought a bottle of real lime juice to supplement. Then we tossed in some chopped parsley and topped it off with the Serrano peppers (sliced, of course). The rest of the already ready already ingredients were put in bowls, plastic-wrapped and stowed in the refrigger-ator.

The rest of the stuff was pretty easy to put together. We had the cold beet salad to throw together, and since it was also supposed to be chilled, we could toss that together and shelf it along with the ceviche. And we certainly had time, with about three and a half hours to wait for the ceviche to cook. Since the veggies for the salad were already chopped up, we were good to go. Salad done--time for a drink or three.

The only thing left to cook was the llapingachos (potato cakes). With about 45 minutes left to go on the ceviche, I had started the boiling pot of salty water for the taters. I cut them up into small pieces and threw 'em in the pot when the water was at a rolling boil. 20 minutes later, I mashed them up, threw in two cups of Muenster cheese, along with some scallions and made a nice gooey, gloppy mess of cheesy potato goodness. I then made little patties out of the mixture and got them ready for frying.

Speaking of frying, this particular recipe called for annatto oil, which you can't really find in stores. As I mentioned earlier, we found that you could substitute annatto oil with regular canola oil and just add paprika to it as it's heating up.

With about 15 minutes left on the fish, it was time to start frying the potato cakes up. Thank the Ecuadorian lords of wax paper as I tried prying the formed cakes from the surface. It was like unsticking your tongue from a frozen flagpole. If you read my blog on Armenia, you will remember the struggles we, I should say "I" had with trying to fry mashed potatoes. Again, I was tormented by smashed potatoes as they refused to cooperate with me.

Everything was perfect up until now. Our timings in having things done were spot on. Our prep work was impeccable. Our final challenge was to fry up these cakes and somehow not screw it up. The oil was hot and we were ready to drop spud. The cakes went down into the hot pan, and started sizzling. When it was time to flip, I took the spatula and eased it underneath the first cake. What happened next made me want to light my hair on fire... How dare these chucklehead potato cakes ruin the day! The bottom of the cake stuck to the spatula, and as I prepared to flip, I ripped the bottom off the cake and the rest of this potato pain in the asscake globbed into an oily pile of misery. I started sweating as the nightmarish flashbacks of Armenia took hold of my brain. How can this be???

I remained calm (Lauri will beg to differ). I then took most of the oil out of the non-stick pan and tried frying the next batch with very little oil. Thankfully, this yielded success, as the cakes browned without getting soggy with oil.

By the time I got all the cakes fried up, it was time to go fishing. We took the lime-soaked tilapia out, rinsed with cold water, then re-juiced it with fresh lime juice and mixed the peppers, onions, tomatoes, shallots and parsley together. Done. The dish looked just like the picture on the internets. :) The fish was firm, white, and looked good.

Eating: Since the flan and beet salad was already done, and the ceviche was ready to be harvested, all we really had left to do was plate the potato cakes and then take photos.

Neither Lauri or myself have ever had ceviche, so it was a Life Cereal commercial for the first minute or two... "You eat it." "No, you eat it." "Hey, give it to Mikey, Mikey likes it!" So we both tried a bite at the same time. It was actually very good! And more importantly, not raw!

We plated everything together and it was gorgeous. The ceviche was picture perfect and delicious. There was no fishy smell or oceanic flavor at all. The acid from the lime juice eliminated the tuna-can stench, and cooked the tilapia to flaky perfection. The lime and veggies were the perfect accompaniment and the dish was hugely successful. Typically, you would eat this with crackers, corn nuts or popcorn. No, seriously... you heard me right.

The beet salad was light and tasty, again with a citrus base, although this one was lemon juice. This simple sauce, along with some oil, salt and pepper was just what the doctor ordered. Once again, victory over the unknown and untested was enjoyed. Considering I'm not a beet fan, this was a huge win for Lauri, as she is a beetnik, and she had to pull my strings to get me to eat this esoteric vegetable.

Ahhh, the potato pain in the ass cakes. These were a lot of work and aggravation, but damn, they turned out good. Fried mashed potatoes loaded with cheese and scallions... Need I say more? Once I corrected the oil distribution, it was sweet sailing the rest of the way. By the way, I'm going to lobby for Muenster cheese as being the most underrated cheese in existence. More flavorful than provolone and mozzarella, but not quite as sharp and pungent as cheddar. It's a perfect combination of both spectrums of cheesehood.

And finally, the flan. Ahhh, nothing like a good creamy, custardy cup of artery-clogging deliciousness. Flan is basically the same thing as custard, made with eggs, vanilla, sugar, and condensed milk. Throw in a little coconut rum, and you have a party. The flan turned out great, especially if you love sugar. I think every hummingbird and housefly within 100 miles was trying to break in to get a piece of this action. Every chunk of this cloying and creamy toothsome treat had caramelized sugar on the bottom and sugar-cinnamon on top. Two bites were enough to keep Augustus Gloop satisfied, so after about one and a half bites, I was done.

All in all, a very successful South American-themed dinner. Ecuador was challenging in both the search for good recipes and pushing us out of our comfort zone. If it wasn't for this crazy worldwide cuisine project, we probably never would have attempted to make or even eat ceviche. Heck, neither one of us has ever had it, so it was a leap of faith to create this dish as well as consume it. Eat your heart out, Iron Chefs!

I think we are getting pretty good at this--after only five letters, we have certainly made strides in our culinary proficiencies. Cooking 2-3 things simultaneously is no longer an anxiety-laced challenge that leaves us in an exasperated heap of misery calling out for pizza delivery.

Of course now that I say that, perhaps we are setting ourselves up for an EPIC FAIL on future countries? Oui, oui? Yah I said it... F is for FRANCE, and hopefully not for FAIL...

Worldwide Kitchen - Devouring Denmark

Trying to come up with titles for these food blogs is the biggest hurdle in the initiation phase of writing these things. I was thinking, "Denmarks the Spot," and "Denmark my Words," but let's face it, those are weak sauce. Speaking of weak sauce, the recipes for Denmark were very close to flavorless and vapid. Seasoning is optional and at a minimum, less than stellar.

How did we come to the decision to pluck Denmark off the global array of culinary delights? Easy. There are virtually NO "D" countries out there. Kinda hard to believe, isn't it? The letter "D" is a common letter, one of the few that are used consistently on Wheel of MisFortune. Hey Vanna, give me a "D"! Sorry mister wiseass, NO "D" for you! So, the competition for the "D" letter came down to Denmark, Dominican Republic and Djibouti. Whud you say about my booty??? Ehhh, anyway, we decided to opt for Western Europe since we hadn't sampled that geographical area yet.

As always, we scoured the internet for Danish fare and found a site that had a ton of stuff. You can check it out here if interested: http://www.mindspring.com/~cborgnaes/ ... We did find quite a few items on the menu, in all categories, such as meat, poultry, fish, veggie, salads and desserts. Since we haven't used our friend the pig yet, we opted for pork as our protein. It didn't hurt that we also had a pork loin in the freezer, begging to be thawed out and consumed.

After glancing over the many entrees, we noticed that pork and fish were the most common protein items, but most of the fish dishes were pickled in some way. Pickled cod, pickled whitefish, pickled herring, yada, yada, yada... We chose the Roast Loin of Pork, otherwise known as Svinesteg. You dirty SWINE! Tender pork loin, stuffed with apples and prunes, while cooked in cream and red wine. Instead of taters, we picked Flour Dumplings (Melboller) to accompany the main dish. For a vegetable, the Green Beans and Mushrooms (Grønne Bønner) looked good as well. We also decided to do a salad. We saw one that contained Havarti cheese, so we were sold. The salad was called Tivoli Salad (Salat). And since we are gluttons for punishment, as well as for sweet stuff, we picked a dessert as well. In this case, it was the Cherry Cake, AKA Kirsebærkage.

So as we became pickled like the fish described above, we made our shopping list. Nothing too unusual. White pepper and prunes were about the only things that we didn't have lying around. It was as if we didn't have to go shopping at all, but shopping is the fun part, so we made a day out of it anyway. And in our first attempt to create International fare in front of an audience (guinea pigs), we had to stock up on another pork loin. Ohhh you poor Rameys!

Shopping: We ventured out to our usual haunt, the Johnson Avenue HyVee. The parking was atrocious as usual, and the store is set up like Cheech and Chong did the planning after a bender. However, since the list we had was not as challenging, we had an easy time of it. When it came time to grab another pork loin, we decided to try and get one that was as close as possible in weight as the other one that was thawing in the freezer. It had to be about 1.5 lbs. We had planned on cooking both the loins simultaneously, so this made sense. We did cheat a little bit on one of our items. We decided to make pork gravy for the dumplings, but just in case we blundered it, we grabbed a jar of pork gravy as a backup.

Prep: What we experienced as a piece of cake for shopping, we more than made up for it in the prepping process. Prepping was a hardcore pain in the Danish ass. I volunteered to do the Tivoli salad and the Green Bean/Mushroom dish. Lauri took on the Pork loin, Cherry cake and Dumplings. We were all over the kitchen, arm-wrestling over measuring cups, the food processor, the nice ceramic knife, the rum, ummm you get the picture.

The first thing I did was cut the cheese. Yah I said it! No, seriously, I had to cut up the Havarti in small bite size pieces for the salad, and then had to do the same with the other ingredients, cucumber, green pepper, diced ham and tomatoes. Since the salad was supposed to be chilled, I pretty much completed the task of finishing it, then stuffing it in the fridge. Mixing the bite size pieces with sour cream, mayonnaise, white pepper and curry brought the Tivoli salad to conclusion. As I tasted it, it lacked that savory goodness, so I tossed in a few pinches of sea salt.

Since we goofed on cooking cake and chicken for Cambodia by trying to share the oven, we decided to get the dessert out of the way. The cake recipe called for egg whites whipped to a meringue-like consistency, before mixing in with the dry ingredients. FAIL. Initially, we tried using one of those emulsion mixing sticks that look like "shake weights" with a menacing little blade on the end. Lauri whipped the eggs into oblivion, but no firm peaks, so I suggested tossing it out and using a regular mixer. Voila, white peaks of flavorless frappe! We were back on track for success!

In the meantime, I started to get the green beans ready for the veggie dish. We bought whole string beans which needed both ends cut off. More knife work for me. I am getting to point where I think I could do surgery. The beans were ready to be steamed, but it was too early, so I covered them and waited. The shrooms were already sliced up, so I got a reprieve.

Lauri was getting the oinkers ready for their apple and prune stuffing. As we looked at the pork loins, they did weigh the same, but one was thicker and stockier than the other. This would come back on us, as you will find out... Lauri completed the arduous task of slitting and stuffing the loins with apple and prune slices, seasoning them, and then tying off the swine with twine.

Finally, with everything completed as far as we could take it, it was time to assemble the dumplings. At that point, we had cleaned up the mixer, but then the recipe called for more whipped egg whites! DOH! Get the mixer out again, honey!

Cooking: I should preface the cooking part by saying that the TIMING of everything was stupefying. I was rapidly approaching headache mode as I whipped a calculator out to make sure everything got done at about the same time. The only thing that was a not dependent on time was the Tivoli Salad, still chilling in the fridge. The stovetop, the steamer, the oven, the microwave--every appliance in the kitchen was slated for duty.

While cooking is usually easier than prep, this wasn't the case with Denmark. The Pork loin has cook in several phases. Brown the pork, drown the pork, baste the pork, bake the pork, add this, that and the other, then baste again. Madness I say. The green beans had to go into the steamer for 20 minutes, but not before I had to sauté the mushrooms for 15. The salt and white pepper had to wait til everything was mixed together, and then add bread crumbs. Time for a drink and aspirin.

The Cherry cake was finishing up, so we took it out and just let it sit there heating up the kitchen. The pork was about done on the stovetop, getting a nice brown crust on it, then we added cream and let it simmer, while spooning liquid over the whole thing. Eventually, the loins went in the oven to finish for about an hour. We added the wine and let it go. We almost forgot that we needed gravy for the dumplings, so we kept the pork drippings in the pan, added some cream, flour, salt and pepper. It made a whopping half a cup, so we grabbed the store-bought gravy and threw it in. Oh the horror, the horror...

With about 30 minutes left on the pork, I got the steamer started with the green beans, then also started sautéing the mushrooms. We could see the light at the end of the tunnel cake. At that point, our friends had just arrived in time to help us drink more and become more inebriated than usual. I enthusiastically described the steamer we just purchased and how it was the next best thing to an IPOD. I was like a drunk guy on the Shopping Channel, "whooohooo, check this sh*t out folks--it steams stuff! It cooks with WATER!!!" Our friends were sold... They bought a steamer the same night on Amazon.

The beans were then mixed with the shrooms, along with some cream, flour and butter. Finally, everything came together at the right time, and we finished off by poaching the dumplings. They only took about a minute to cook, so it was like an afterthought.

Eating: Time to dig in! Everything once again, looked fantastic and just how we had wanted it to look. After we took a few pics of the items, it was time to carve up those piggly wiggly loins and go to town. We let our friend Chris do the slicing, as he is a master at cutlery and chopping things up with various weaponry. Once the meat was adequately sliced, the chowdown had begun. The first pork loin that was sliced was the skinnier of the two. As I mentioned before, the difference in the pork loins would be discussed. The pork was dry and tough, like my lawn mowing shoes after sitting in the sun for a week.

The other items were mostly edible and delicious. The beans/mushroom platter was like a homemade green bean casserole, but without the fried onions. Had to add salt and pepper, as it was bland, like the food you get at Bishops. However the mushrooms and freshly steamed beans were perfect. The Tivoli salad was fresh, cool and creamy. The ham with the Havarti cheese added depth and comfort to the otherwise light and cool veggies. Then it was time for the dumplings. Little spongy and chewy bread chunks, as dense as a doorknob and the flavor of construction paper. Thank goodness for gravy.

I was somewhat disappointed in the pork, since we worked so hard to do it right. I then decided to cut open the other loin to see what we may have been missing. Sure enough, the second loin was cooked to perfection, moist and flavorful. I told everyone to stop eating the shoe and try the new stuff instead. The evening was salvaged as almost everything was consumed and very little leftovers to bag up.

Finally for dessert, we broke open the Cherry Cake. It looked better than it tasted. As most of the items from the recipes were somewhat dull and lacked flavor, so did the Cherry Cake. The cherries were fine, but the cake was like fluffed drywall. Perhaps putting on some spackle frosting would have gave this insipid flapjack some zip.

All in all, it was a decent feast, with some highs and lows. The fun is in the challenge of creating new and unfamiliar things and the journey from conception to execution. Our mistakes are getting smaller and less noticeable. Speaking of mistakes, when the wife says she doesn't need any help, it means "get the f*** out of my way, old man!" Next time, I will heed that advice and make myself small and stealth-like. We also learned that seasoning is underappreciated and adding spice to your cooking leads to a fulfilling and flavorful experience.

Next up: E is for Ecuador or Egypt... We haven't decided yet! Stay tuned!

Worldwide Kitchen - Cambodian Carnivores

Classroom! It is time to hit our next letter, and if you are paying attention at home, we are on the letter "C." As we sailed the "C's" for something different and new (how could it not be?), we decided to go with Cambodia. We considered the Czech Republic, Columbia and Chile, but since I am already Czech and we have already done South American fare with Brazil, we decided to be daring and original and opt for a little Asian zing...

Once again, Lauri and I raided the internet menus for recipes and we were not disappointed. The website we found had more recipes than Raul Julia Childs. If you are interested in trying some of them out, you can go here: http://www.khmerkromrecipes.com/

In any event, it took us several nights to land on a four course menu that we both agreed would be tasty and non-tragic in its end-results. We landed on a salad, a soup, a main meat course and of course, the dreaded dessert. This time, however, we fixed our gaze on a dessert that gave us a fighting chance at success. We also learned that if you want to do these recipes right, ya gotta run out to a real Ethnic grocery store and leave the HyVee for stuff like cheese and soda.

Our menu consisted of the following:

Chrout Carrot nung thay-thao (Carrot with Daikon relish)
Salor d'um-lon twea (Purple yam soup)
Sach moan ang (Bake plum chicken)
Num tirk doung (Coconut pound cake)

Try ordering that at Eggroll House. FAIL.

Shopping: As I mentioned above, there was no way in Cambodian hell that we were going to find the majority of the ingredients we needed at the local supermarket. What we needed was a road trip to Coralville to the Asian market on the Strip. This was very exciting, as we have never been to this store, and we really wanted to bask in the experience. The items we needed for our feast included a daikon, which is like a giant radish-like root. It is very fibrous, but much milder tasting than a regular radish. Yes, I realize you can get them at the boring old local grocer, but what fun is that?

We also needed purple yams, which are purple on the inside, not the outside. They look like regular sweet potatoes from a distance, but once you peel that bad boy, you got our hands on an exact replica of Grimace from the McDonald's stable of influential characters.

Next on the shopping list was fish sauce and plum sauce. If you know how fish sauce is made, you would run, not walk to get away from this stuff. However, it is very tasty when combined with other scrumptious morsels. We also picked up some Coconut milk for the cake. There were 90 brands of coconut milk.

When we found the items we were looking for, we celebrated by stuffing our shopping baskets with a bunch more crap that looked interesting and whimsical. As you can see in the enclosed exhibit, we were obviously captivated by the bright, shiny colors and the pulse-pounding graphics on the labels. Marketing Genius! To be honest, I don't know what half the stuff is, but I have a feeling that I will find out some day.

The rest of the stuff we obtained at the HyVee, like chicken, shrimp, coconut, green onions, sugar and flour.

Prep: Once again, it made sense for us to tag team and prep all this stuff together. I handled the Carrot and Daichon salad, as well as the Plum Chicken. Lauri handled the Purple Yam Soup and of course, the Coconut Poundcake dessert.

The Carrots and Daichon needed to be cut in julienne strips, so my knife work was put to the test. Actually, I tried to cheat and use the food processor and that turned out to be a royal mistake. Julienne and Shred are NOT the same thing. I cut the veggies into small strips, and as I did so, I kept thinking about Chef Ann Burrell, the spikey-haired blonde from "Worst Cooks in America". I was imagining her slamming me with a profanity-laced tirade to be consistent with my knife cuts. After cutting for what seemed like hours, it was time to mix the veggies with white rice vinegar, sugar and salt. Completed the task, covered and stuck it in the fridge to chill.

In the meantime, Lauri had started on the purple yam peeling. Once we saw the colors, we knew this soup would be ugly, but would probably taste good. The yams needed to be shredded into bits, but again the food processor was not up to task, so she hand-shredded them with one of those old metal torture devices for vegetables (and knuckles). The soup also called for fresh shrimp, which also needed to be ground up. I was thinking "shrimp-burger!" This time the processor got its chance to do some damage and it pummeled those sea-monkeys into oblivion. We added the other ingredients to the shrimp (green onion, basil, salt and pepper) and stuck that in the fridge until it was time to add to the soup.
The next two items (the Plum Chicken and Coconut Cake) were a piece of uhhh cake. You could use any chicken pieces you wanted, so we had three chicken breasts (bone-in). The obnoxiously large chicken breasts were the size of pterodactyls, which will cause pain and suffering later on (you'll see!). At any rate, the chicken just need to marinate in the plum sauce, soy sauce and other herbs/spices.

As Lauri finished up prepping the batter for the cake, it was time to start cooking.

Cooking: We were getting the hang of doing really good and thorough prep work on the stuff before cooking it, which made things much easier for cooking. The shredded purple yams went into a pot of water to boil. Once the poached Grimace was soft, it was time to add the shrimp mixture and polish off with delectable fish sauce.

As the taters were boiling, we noted that the chicken could probably go in the oven (for 45 minutes) at 400 degrees. But then to our horror, we saw that we also needed the oven for baking that coconut cake. The real dilemma was that the cake was to be in the oven for an hour at 350 degrees. Woe is us!!! Our initial solution to have everything done at roughly the same time (by this time, it was already around 7:30 PM), was to have the two items share the oven and set it to 375. Well, it was much too late in the process do cook them separately, so we went that direction with dubious high hopes.

Folks, this where it gets sideways. After an hour at 375, the stuff looked good. The cake was done and the chicken looked good and felt firm. I took the temp of the yard-bird and it read 180, so I assumed it was done.

In the meantime, back to the Purple Rain soup... it was time to add the shrimp and let it cook til pink. We also threw in some fish sauce and topped it with more green onions and parsley. It looked frightful, but smelled delightful.

So everything was done. Or so we thought.

Eating: We took the chilled daikon/carrot salad out of the fridge and served it up first. Very pickly and vinegary, but had a nice sugary sweetness to compliment the sour. The daichon had almost no flavor, but had a good bite and texture to it. Overall, it was a good dish, and I hope Ann Burrell is proud of my knife cuts.
The purple yam soup... This eyesore of a stew was unappetizing to look at, but boy did it smell great. The aroma of potatoes and shrimp filled the room and made our mouths water. We dug in and ladled the soup over some rice. The taste was phenomenal. Surprisingly, the purple yams tasted more like regular baked potatoes and the little ground up shrimp pieces added some nice texture. It was like a baked potato soup/shrimp chowder combo, and it rocked.

And now the Plum Chicken... Looks great. Smells great. First layer of meat - GREAT. The rest of the hormone/steroid chicken breast--UNDERCOOKED. Of course, I blame HyVee's Poultry wrangler. No chicken breasts should be this ridiculously colossal. Ohhh the disappointment of having our first all-around successful dinner, ruined by some pink white meat. I threw them back in the oven, but it was too late... We were full up on Grimace Soup.

Yessir... the ugliest soup in the world was the hit of the evening. I would make this again in a heartbeat. And psssst... this just in: The dessert turned out to be a winner, winner, NO chicken for dinner! The Coconut cake was fan-freaking-tastic.

So although we failed on the clucker, we rose to the occasion on the other three courses. Lessons learned: Give yourself enough time to prep and cook the dessert prior to everything else. Ovens are not made to share or compromise their temperature settings to average things out. We are smarter and better people because of this erroneous error in judgment.

So that does it for the C word... C is for Cambodia and Colossal Chickens. It also stands for Can't Cook Chicken/Cake Coexistently.

Next stop around the world kitchens is D... and D is for Denmark... Stay tuned!

Worldwide Kitchen: Waxing Brazilian

We're on to the letter "B" in our trip around the world of international taste travels, and we have landed in the country of Brazil. We also looked at Belgium and Bolivia. We thought Bahrain might be a little tough to tackle, so we eliminated that off our list early on. Belgium finished a close second though!

Once again, Lauri and I researched the internet perusing several websites for Brazilian treats, and we came across several that had significant samplings of South American flavors. We opted for a seafood dish this time and wanted to take it easy on the yard-birds since we used those for the Armenian feast. We also wanted to make sure we had a vegetable dish, a bread item and a (gasp) dessert! If you read the last blog, you will recall that we blundered and bollixed that dessert like monkeys and footballs. Would Brazilian dessert serve us up the same fate?

So on to the menu... We decided on a shrimp dish called "Vatapa" which consisted of a rue-like sauce with onions, crushed nuts, red chilies, garlic and smooshed up bread served with boiled shrimp over a bed of rice. For the vegetable, we chose a Brazilian potato salad called "Maionese" which sounds a lot like mayonnaise (for good reason, as you will find out). For the bread, we found a popular Brazilian item called "Queijo" which translates to cheese rolls. And then for dessert, we picked "Quindim" which is Portuguese for PAIN IN THE ASS, or otherwise known as egg and coconut pudding.

In this go-around, Lauri and I wanted to make sure the ingredient list wasn't too difficult to come by, since last time we got stymied on currants, and pine nuts were too expensive. Everything looked relatively harmless with the most unusual ingredient being tapioca starch for the, you guessed it, dessert from hell. Tapioca starch, eh? The local HyVee has all kinds of flours, starches and organic ingredients--should be a piece of cake, right?

Shopping: So off we go to the store with ingredient list in hand. The first time we went shopping for our Armenian dinner, we went to the nice, big HyVee with big aisles and helpful smiles. The other HyVee that we chose to shop at this time had tight aisles and harmful frowns, with a side of rudeness and Seinfeld-like jerkstore behaviors from the regulars. What is the deal with people hanging around the end of an aisle blocking the entrance/exit while they look at the plethora of taco seasoning packets? Is there that big a difference between Old El Paso and Ortega??? At $.29 a packet, I'm thinking "just pick both, lady!"

In our usual fashion of wandering down aisles, we hit our first road-bump for finding red chilies... UGH. I asked the produce girl if they had such a thing, and she quipped, "Why no sir, we don't." GREAT. So I hit the salad section and picked up a tube of red chili paste-this will have to do. Everything else was attainable and easy until it was time for the tapioca starch. Ezqueeze me, I baking powder? Yes, we have no tapioca starch today! Again, we strike out on a key ingredient, so after milling about aimlessly in the Ethnic section, we decided to hit the specialty Mexican grocery store downtown. The excitement was back and we bounded out to the car with a renewed sense of purpose... That is, until the Mexican store had NOTHING of the sort. I asked the grocer lady if she even heard of such a thing and she said NO way, Hose Ay. So let's use cornstarch, okay? Starch is starch, right? Wrong.

Prep: Prep was a breeze compared to Armenian night which took about six hours. Brazil night only required about three hours. Once again, we tag-teamed on getting stuff ready. I handled the veggie prep and Lauri got all the dry and wet ingredients in order. Once again, I found myself peeling potatoes and probably a little of my knuckles for about 30 minutes. I also cut and chopped carrots, onions, hearts of palm, olives and green beans. I had quite a nice batch of diced veggies for the potato salad. By the way, this is the first time, we have ever had heart of palm... it had the consistency and look of string cheese and tastes a bit like water chestnuts, but the texture was much softer, like a hard-boiled egg. In any event, stirred all that stuff up into a bowl with an entire jar of mayonnaise and at that point, I figured out why they call this dish "maionese." Once I had the potatoes well-boiled, I cooled them off in cold water, and mixed them up with their veggie brethren, then popped it into the fridge.

Lauri had begun prep on the cheese rolls and egg/coconut pudding dishes. She had to separate an entire carton of eggs and only use egg yolks for the pudding. 12 egg yolks for a snack pack of pudding? Holy cholesterol, fatman! She added coconut milk, shredded coconut, sugar and even more sugar. Into the oven it went, and we were hoping that it would set.

The cheese rolls were a bit easier as it required starch, eggs, parmesan cheese and water. Again, we had to opt for a substitute ingredient and used cornstarch instead of the mysterious tapioca starch, which I am not even sure exists. And once again, we crossed our fingers that these would turn out okay.

And finally, the main course. We used frozen shrimp, (which was already cooked) and just let it thaw. The recipe called for frozen shrimp, but I would recommend raw, as cooked frozen shrimp dries out really quickly when cooking.

In the meantime, Lauri was blending the bread chunks with coconut milk to get that thick saucy goodness ready. I got the trusty slap-chop device out and proceeded to pummel an onion, garlic and red chili paste into oblivion for the rue. I also reduced two cups of cashews and peanuts into a fine powder with this wonderful, as-seen-on-TV device. Once I was finished crushing defenseless ingredients, I had to take a shower. I never knew how much work went into all that cutting board violence. With the shrimp thawed, the veggies and nuts chopped, it was time to start cooking.

Cooking: The potato salad was done and sitting in the fridge getting cold. We already tasted it, and it was exceptional and we will probably make it again. The pudding was just getting done. Lauri stuck a fork in it and it came out clear. AWESOME, we are two for two! Not so fast, my friend... She put it in a pan of ice water to cool and after about 20 minutes, dumped it out onto a plate. SPLAT! That freaking pudding was set on top, but the bottom was still runny and hotter than liquid hot magma. The old lady was beside herself (not unlike me a few weeks ago) and threatened to throw it into the sink. I had to calm her down by offering her a nice rum drink. So we threw it back in the bundt tin, and stuck it in the freezer.

The first batch of cheese rolls had just come out of the oven and they looked like those cheddar biscuits you get at Red Lobster. They had no smell whatsoever and when we sampled one, it was as bland as uhhh, cornstarch. Yes, the damned cornstarch dominated the little biscuits and masked the parmesan cheese. They were also as dense as Jupiter. Still, they looked wonderful.

The shrimp dish was going swimmingly as the rue came together with the sautéing of the onions, garlic and red chili paste, mixed with some olive oil and the smooshed bread. Then we boiled the shrimp. We took the shrimp water and added it slowly to the rue and it thickened nicely. We made some rice to accompany the sauce and it turned out beautifully. Then finally we added the shrimp to the rue mixture and things were looking good.

Until we checked the pudding again... Although it sat in the freezer for a good 30-45 minutes, it still had the consistency of gravy. What is it with us and desserts? We are Oh for TWO on dessert items. However, I wanted to take a picture of everything, so I blended the pudding water with the cooked chunks into a smoothie-like mixture and poured it into martini glasses, and then I put a little whip cream on top. I happened to get a couple snapshots before the whip cream literally sunk to the bottom the glass.

TIME to EAT! Everything looked delectable and we couldn't get our hands on that potato salad fast enough. It was chilled to perfection and ready to hit our gullets. The rice and shrimp mixture was staring us in the face as if to say, "Hey, we are the main course, chuckleheads--EAT US!" To be fair, I plated the shrimp dish next to the potato salad before I dug in. We then begrudgingly took a couple cornstarch rolls knowing that meh... they are a dense, tasteless ball of cement, but we felt obligated to each have one to complete the meal.

The shrimp dish was very tasty, but surprisingly, lacked heat. It was very nutty and earthy with the crushed nuts and onions dominating the flavor profile. You would think with red chilies added, that it would pack a little fire, but alas, the dish was cooler than the Fonz punching Ralph Malph in the arm. It was still tasty and how can you not love shrimpies? The potato salad was definitely the star of the show, as it was perfect in every way. Cool, creamy and chock full of flavors. I ate part of the cheese roll and snuck the rest of it to the dogs who were chewing on them like rawhide before swallowing.

Since we had tasted and sampled so many things before the actual dining experience, we became full quicker than normal. The pudding syrup would have to wait. Then, the unenviable task of cleanup took place and leftovers put away. I packed away some potato salad for my sister and mom and left a little bit for Skye (our son). He ate it the next day and seemed to like it a lot. Then I told him it had hearts of palm, and he turned 3 shades of blue. "You can't even tell it's in there, man!" You know these young people--if it doesn't have cheese, meat or ketchup, it's no good!

So that wraps up the Brazilian Feast, and for the most part, it was a success. Overall, it was less spicy than you would think for South American fare, but delicious nonetheless. Again, there are a few ingredients that are hard to find, or may trip you up if the right substitute is not available.

Viva la Brasilia and keep adding that spice to your culinary experience!

Next up: C is for Cambodia