Deconstructed Banana Split

Deserts have long been the most terrifying realm of cooking for me. Many of the techniques and flavors I use just don’t seem to translate well into the realm of meal finishing deliciousness, however I have been practicing, and I believe I have been making some progress. Exhibit A, Deconstructed, Bruléed Banana Split

This delicious masterpiece came about because of a brulée torch I was given for my birthday (yes most of the gifts people give me are toys for my kitchen, and yes that is one of the coolest things ever) It started off with just the bananas and a swoosh of Nutella on a plate, but then I decided I could top that, no pun intended . . . okay maybe it was a little intentional. I pulled out some fresh mango and made mango syrup on the stove, essentially just mango, water and sugar. I then put a smooth layer of Nutella in the bottom of one of my desert dishes, followed by vanilla Ice cream, the mango syrup, and finally the two banana halves which I coated generously in sugar, then bruléed with the torch.

The art of bruléeing is still fairly new to me me (meaning I haven’t used it in many dishes) and I am currently looking for new and inventive ways to incorporate it into my cooking, so please feel free to share any tips or suggestions in the comments. Enjoy, and this week, try to take something familiar and make it new!  Brulée

Pizza

Originating in Italy, pizza is one of the greatest culinary inventions to come to America. Of course that is just my opinion. You don’t have to agree of course, though I wouldn’t tell anyone because you might get stoned. This is just one of the Pizzas I have come up with lately which is more traditional then the popular American style pizzas of today, if you haven’t tried one I highly recommend it. For this pizza I took a homemade Italian bread dough, but you could use any pizza dough you like, this is just a little more authentic, I cooked the dough in the oven, on my pizza stone at high heat until it was cooked pretty much all the way through, I then coated it with olive oil, put on some thick slices of fresh homemade mozzarella (Don’t worry, I am working on the tutorial now) spread some fresh tomato around, the sprinkled the top with sun dried tomatoes and fresh basil. Once everything was put together it went back in the oven just until the cheese started to caramelize. Remember to keep the oven hot, you will get a better crust, and more flavorful topping. The point of this method is to try and mimic a pizza oven in your home kitchen. It doesn’t take very long to cook a pizza this way so watch it closely.  of course you can put anything you want on top of your pizza, my favorite is a good barbecue chicken, but there is something uniquely special about the original napoleon flavor

Fruit Tart

Let me start out by saying, though there are some things I bake regularly, I am not a baker, or a pastry chef. This is probably my single biggest short coming when it comes to cooking.  That being said, my wife has spent a lot of time working with pastries and helps me make up for this lack of experience. Actually she is mostly responsible for this post. You see my wife has a tradition of having fruit tart instead of cake for her birthday. So, here is the story It was my wife’s birthday and we were looking to buy a fruit tart for her, and trust me, we searched just about everywhere, apparently people around here just don’t appreciate that kind of thing. Anyways, we eventually came to the conclusion that we had to make our own, digging through our collection of food stuff . . . yes we have a lot of really random food stuff in the kitchen pretty much all the time. . .  we discovered that we had everything except some berry’s and kiwi, so we went to work. I made the pastry cream while my wife made the Pate Sucrѐe , or the pastry dough and made a chocolate crust. We then put it all together and put the fruit on top. It was delicious and definitely better than we could have found in a store .

*Edit* to clarify, yes we had to go to the store to get the kiwi since, as I mentioned that was one of the few things we didn't have.