What dessert could possibly fit with tonight’s chicken tomatillo enchiladas and use the rest of our Narragansett Creamery ricotta? My mind immediately jumped to “Mexican Cannolis”, and rather than search for a recipe, I decided to improvise. The result was so delicious, I had to document it here! Please let me know if you try it.

I used a disk of Abuelita Mexican drinking chocolate for this recipe. These disks contain sugar, so they sweeten the filling nicely. I happen to have a lot of Abuelita on hand, but if I didn’t, I’d might have opted for the Chocolate Mexicano discs made by Taza in Somerville, MA.

Abuelita by Mike Fischer, from Flickr

Mexican Cannolis
Serves 2

• 2 corn tortillas
• cooking spray or oil
• 3/4 cup ricotta (I recommend Narragansett Creamery)
• 3 tbs whipping cream
• 1 disc of Mexican drinking chocolate, like Abuelita or Taza
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp sugar
• a dash of ground cayenne (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Place corn tortillas on a cookie sheet and spray with cooking spray or lightly brush with oil. Mix cinnamon with sugar and sprinkle on the tortillas.

Chop the chocolate into pieces smaller than petite peas. Usually, since the chocolate is sugary, you’ll get a lot of chocolate ‘sand’ when you’re chopping – that’s great. Mix the chocolate into the ricotta until very well combined. Whip the cream and fold into the ricotta mixture.

Bake the tortillas for 10-15 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a minute or two. Top each with half the ricotta mixture and gently shape into a taco or cannoli shell. (Ours were a good consistency – soft enough to bite, crunchy enough to conjure a cannoli).

In many ways, the most influential part of my college education took place not in the classroom, but at the radio station. WPRB 103.3FM may be housed on the Princeton campus, but it’s independently funded and gives a handful of Princeton students a musical outlet, work experience, and the too-rare opportunity to interact with members of the community. During my time at WPRB, one of these people was Dr. Cosmo, a DJ who had a Friday night show since the early 90s.  Sadly, he passed away last weekend.

Dr. Cosmo (George Mahlberg) left a mark on everyone he met. His incredible radio voice and physical presence were backed with a lifetime of amazing stories to tell. He had a way of relating his adventures that was engaging and not prententious, though many of them were certainly brag-worthy. His life had taken various paths – astrophysicist, DJ, actor, writer…and he was a mentor to my budding Photoshop ambitions, having created the much reproduced “In-A-Gadda-Da-Oswald”, a brilliant retake on Jack Ruby’s assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. (You can spot him in the upper left-hand corner of the photo.)

Copyright George Mahlberg 1996 – for more, see archive.org’s cache of his page about this photo

One of my favorite memories of Dr. Cosmo was from Halloween 2000, when I did a 7-10pm Halloween show (costumed, of course) and he followed at his usual hour. We put on a long track and took a spooky trip up the rusty ladder to the top of the Gothic Holder Tower and overlooked the campus, peaceful in the dark. I don’t believe in a traditional afterlife, but I know he is among those stars somewhere, cosmically continuing his adventures.

WPRB will pay tribute to Dr. Cosmo during his usual 10pm to 1am radio hours this Friday night.

Related links:

• Dr. Cosmo’s personal site: http://doctorcosmo.com
• George Mahlberg on IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0536973
• WPRB: http://www.wprb.com

This St. Patrick’s day, we were on a plane to Kansas. Today, a half month later, I finally got around to cooking our belated Irish dinner. I tried two new recipes that were definitely worth repeating.

• Lamb’s liver with whiskey cream sauce from The Country Cooking of Ireland by Colman Andrews via the Guardian
• Irish heritage cabbage from AllRecipes
• Irish soda bread (I use a mixture of recipes depending what’s at hand – I always include currants and caraway)

At my day job in a university IT department, I’ve spent considerable time thinking about “the cloud”.  In 2010, I helped our school move all faculty, staff, and students from our Exchange mail server to Google Apps for Education.  Early in the process, it wasn’t unusual to hear expressions of uncertainty about data in the cloud.   Will it be secure? Private?  Google’s service was certainly more secure than our self-hosted email server, but I found that many people had an innate distrust of something that wasn’t, so to speak, in our own closet.

cloud coffee: coffee photo mine, cloud photo by aussiegall on Flickr

This distrust of outsourcing services made me think of the other things in our lives we outsource, and not surprisingly, my mind turned to food.  I wondered, why do we distrust the secure hosting of our email when so many of us are perfectly willing to eat a burger made by a pimply 15-year-old in a less than pristine fast food chain? While an email breach would be inconvenient, a problem with our food could literally kill us.

Of course, the reasons we outsource computing and food are similar:

• The provider can do it better, faster, or cheaper than we can
• Providers have access to ingredients or services at a quantity, quality, or price which we cannot access ourselves
• We are looking for something new, be it features or flavors

You could call the move to cloud computing, and the possibilities it offers, revolutionary.  The modern restaurant of the western world has its roots in another revolution  – the French Revolution.   As a result of the French Revolution, middle class citizens were able to access affordable prepared food created by talented chefs who once served the upper class.  This change gave them access to ingredients and preparations that had once been off-limits.  The beginnings of the restaurant also shifted the location of dining from private residences to public spaces.

What begins as a convenience can change the way we live.  Today, we enjoy restaurants for a chance to spend time among others, to see and be seen.  In the same way, shared computing resources are opening new possibilities for collaboration and changing the way we interact with the rest of the world.

As the trend shifts towards cloud computing, our expectations and comfort zone adjust as well – younger generations are often too trusting when it comes to online privacy and security.  On the other hand, in the food world, we’re beginning to question some of the outsourcing we’ve done in the past; growing our own ingredients and preparing meals from scratch is back in vogue.  Which makes me wonder: in fifteen years, will it be retro-chic to host my own email server?

For the last two years, we’ve participated in Zephyr Farm’s CSA.  If you’re not familiar with a CSA, it stands for “Community Supported Agriculture” and is basically a vegetable subscription.   Ours started mid-June and ran through the end of October.

Pickups from the beginning of the season (6/22/2010) and end of the season (9.15.09)

I looked forward to my Tuesday pickups, when I’d walk down the street with my IKEA bag and come back with an Iron Chef-like challenge to imagine a week of dishes with the bag’s contents.  Every second week, we got the most delicious assortment of multi-colored eggs.

This year, we won’t be doing the CSA.  We moved to a new neighborhood, and since J works late and I take the bus, it would be very hard for us to pick up our weekly allotment.  Instead, we’ll be putting aside money to spend at the Saturday farmers’ market, which is luckily in walking distance.  I’ll miss it – maybe one day we’ll be able to join again.

• Zephyr Farm’s blog:
• Farm Fresh RI’s CSA directory:
• Photos from my visit to the farm

Just got back from a 5 day trip to Kansas, a brother-in-law richer (J’s sister got married).

While we were there, we ate more than our share of fried food.  I ate donuts three times, chili cheese fries twice, and two hot dogs (three if you count the A&W corndog bites).  That’s not to mention the nachos, jalapeno poppers…the list goes on.

The donuts above are from The Donut Whole in Wichita.  It’s a cute shop with an Austin vibe.  Our flavors: triple chocolate, caramel sea salt, peanut butter cup, Homer J (mixed berries and sprinkles), chocolate cherry cordial, key lime pie.  The caramel was my favorite, and not only for the icing – the fresh, wholesome dough stood out.  Even though we ate almost three donuts a piece, these were almost healthy tasting and not heartburn-inducing like most of their fat-laden cousins.  According to the Donut Whole website, they’re made with Kansas buttermilk, flour and eggs.

• http://www.thedonutwhole.com
  

Earlier in our trip, we had these donuts from Daylight Donuts in Wellington, KS, a medium sized chain with 900 franchises.  My husband’s favorites are the chocolate Long John, the eclair-like creation on the left (but unlike an eclair, it’s not filled).  I had the pine cone, a clever creation which maximizes the donut surface area.  The giant strawberry fritter just right of center is apparently made from four smashed donuts – it’s a dense challenge to finish.  Except for the fritter, these donuts were sweet and fluffy.

• http://www.daylightdonuts.com

For the last five years, I’ve admired the Washington Post Peeps diorama contest and its colorful entries.  This year, I wanted to give it a try.

I decided to tackle the convenient pun “WikiPeeps”.   A few sketches came to mind, but ultimately, it was the image of Julian Assange interviewed while on house arrest at Ellingham Hall that seemed the most iconic and timely.

I started with a small shoebox which I lined with paper, felt, and a cutout of the mansion.  The mug and camera are made of polymer clay, and I wove the scarf out of embroidery floss on a tiny makeshift cardboard loom.   I recreated the December 2010 Time magazine cover and sewed a miniature version.

Is this a bit silly? Maybe.  Was it fun to make? Definitely.  But I wasn’t just trying to be absurd; for me, WikiLeaks has been one of the most thought provoking things to happen in years.  And what better way to immortalize a moment than with marshmallow?

• See my WikiPeeps gallery on Flickr
• Washington Post Peeps contest winners 2010

After a long break from blogging, I feel like I have so much to say, and I want to say it in more than 140 characters (sorry, Twitter).

In the photo above, my husband and I are the ones with our heads turned.

Our episode of Kitchen Nightmares aired last week – we were diners on the show at DownCity in Providence.   Filming was a fun experience.  We dined on re-opening night, so we didn’t experience quite as much drama as diners on earlier nights.  

You can watch the episode on Hulu – most of our footage was about 37 minutes in.

We celebrated the airing last Friday with a little viewing party. A few of us brought food inspired by DownCity’s menu – we chose to recreate the truffled goat cheese dip, probably my favorite dish of the night.  Ours was tasty too but sadly lacked the homemade potato chips for dipping.

My interview with Abby (the co-owner of DownCity) can be found in the latest Providence Monthly.

Halloween is a favorite holiday in this house, so we hosted a dinner party last night – 8 spooky courses!  One of the advantages of this menu was that much of it could be prepared ahead, so we didn’t have to stay hidden in the kitchen for long.

The table setting, my favorite chef with 3 Liter Duvel, and Escargot

Aperitif: Unicum (drank out of test tubes)
Snack: BBQ Spiced Meal Worms

1: Chouriço Assado -Chouriço set aflame in a terracotta dish (ours is shaped like a pig)
Duvel – we got a GIANT 3 liter bottle!

2: Escargot
White Wine

3: Roasted Butternut Squash Soup
White Wine

4: Blood Red Romaine Caesar Salad
White Wine

- Intermezzo Spoon of Rhubarb Sorbet -

5: Black (squid ink) fettuccine with lemon and caviar
White Wine

6: Roasted spindly carrots and squash
Red Wine

7: Steak Tartare
Red Wine

8: Chocolate Ganache Mini-Tartlets with white chocolate tombstones
Port

- Coffee -

The Southside Community Land Trust plant sale was this weekend.  Knowing how well the plants did last year (some have even happily returned after their winter sleep), I went even crazier this time and loaded up a couple of flats.  Here’s what we found.

Herbs:
Dill
Parsley (Giant, flat leaved)
Borage
Epazote
Marjoram
Sage
Thai Basil

Fruits:
Yellow Alpine Strawberry
Raspberry
Ground Cherry

Misc Veg:
Mexican Sour Gherkin
Purple Tomatillo
Tomatillo
Golden Chard
Ping Tung Eggplant
Red Spinach
Champion Collard

Tomatoes:
Green Zebra Tomato
Cherry Roma
Sun Gold
Red Pear

Peppers:
Lemon Drop Pepper
Serrano Chile
Black Czech Pepper
Volcano Hot Pepper
Bulgarian Pepper
Hungarian Hot Wax Pepper

Here’s how the garden looked in March, April and May. I’ve only planted a few of my new purchases so far – it’s such a cold, grey day and I’m having a hard time leaving the house.