Quenepas

Okay, so I was in Puerto Rico a little while ago and came across these little funny fruits.

They're called quenepas (kay-nay-pahs, but with a Spanish accent). They're sold everywhere - you could buy a huge bunch from random guys walking on the street. That may sound sort of sketchy, but it's not. You eat them by peeling off the skin, then popping them in your mouth and sucking on them until all that's left is the pit.

That's what they look like partially unpeeled. The flesh is sour and sweet and you get juice all over your hands, but they're good. If you eat too many, they leave an almost chalky taste in your mouth. The thing is, we bought them in the tail end of the season, which means if we had come earlier, they may have been even better. Anyway, just wanted to share that little thing with you guys.

Ramekin Pudding Cakes

First off, a quick apology for being AWOL for a while. It's mostly a matter of temporarily misplacing my camera cord, combined with my general laziness. I've still been taking pictures, though, so I'll be putting up lots of my various cooking exploits over the next day or so.

So here is my little ramekin pudding cake. I don't actually have a good name for them, but that's fine. Basically, this recipe came from a little extra cupcake batter and a want for experimentation. When I came up with these, I was at the point in my cupcake baking where I knew the basic recipe by heart and wanted to play around a bit. Hence, these lovely babies.

The basic preparation of the cakes is to make cupcake batter and bake it in the ramekins until it's entirely cooked through - the top will be the pretty golden brown that comes from the caramelization of the sugars and a toothpike will come out clean. While they're cooking, prepare whatever the filling is. When the filling is done and the cakes are cool, you scope out the center of the cake and put the filling in. Ta da!

In this case, I used the vanilla batter from the Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World book. This is actually where I get all my cupcakes and frostings, even though I'm not vegan, because all their cupcakes are wonderful and delicious. The filling was a combination of strawberry compote and chocolate ganache (both from the same book). If you wanted a different combination of flavors, that would be very easy, because it's still the exact same preparation and cooking process.

These cakes were sinfully good. The cake was a little crispy at the top, but still soft inside and wonderfully warm. The flavors of the ganache and the compote balanced each other - a nice mix of sweet and bitter. I fed some of these to some friends of mine and one of them told me that this was something that they could get in a restaurant. Overall, I consider these a great success.

Ziti With Meat Sauce

There is an Italian restaurant about an hour or so away from my house that I find myself at every once in a while. It's sort of an annual thing -  I have lunch with my grandparent(s), and we always go here because my granddad really likes it. They serve this really fabulous bread as appetizers and every year I order the same meal: baked ziti. I swear, this restaurant has the best baked ziti I have ever had. Turns out that they make their baked ziti sauce by combining their alfredo sauce with their bolognese sauce. It's heavenly.

I decided to try a version of this at home. I was mostly inspired because there was ziti in the cupboard and I thought it'd be nice to have something more than just a butter and white wine sauce. So I cooked the ziti, I made white sauce with Parmesan cheese, heated up crushed tomatoes, cooked up some ground meat and then combined them all. I put the ziti in the bowl, spooned some sauce on the pasta and dug in. It was pretty good - warm, rich and filling. Very satisfying, and very delicious. I probably could have spiced it more, or allowed it to come together, but I'd already been working on it for half an hour or so, so I just wanted to eat.

The nice thing about this dish, though, is even though it took a while, it was relatively simple to make, and the ingredients that go into it are available all year round. I could just as easily make this dish in the winter as I have now in the summer. Also, since the components and the preparation are all basic, there's a lot of variation to be had. You could exchange sausage or chicken for the ground meat. You could eliminate the ground meat and make it vegetarian. You could throw in a some wine wine or some vegetables (like mushrooms - I love mushrooms) to add some more different flavors. This is a very simple and useful dish to know how to cook.