One of the bartenders at my local tavern is a good cook, and for Saint Patrick's Day she brought corned beef, cooked carrots, mashed potato with cabbage and bacon, and red potato. Someone else brought a Mexican style chicken dish with whole jalapeño peppers, and I contributed my homemade Irish Cream cheesecake that was flavored with Irish cream liqueur and had Irish butter in the crust. The top photo shows my savory lunch plate after I helped myself, and the bottom photo shows my cheesecake before some pieces got eaten and the rest mysteriously disappeared. This was a good and memorable Saint Patrick's Day meal.
Location: Escapade Tavern, 12347 Palm Drive, Desert Hot Springs, California. Date: March 17, 2024.
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If you order a chocolate chip cookie for dessert in a restaurant, this is the one you want: It's baked to order and served piping hot with chocolate oozing. This is not your stale cookie disguised with a scoop of ice cream. This oh so fresh cookie is chocolatey, a little salty, and oh so good!
Location: Spaghetti Western, 50048 29 Palms Highway, Morongo Valley, California. Date: January 28, 2024. My sister and I ordered this delicious dessert with a glass of their house-made limoncello which they make from the lemons on their lemon tree in the restaurant's parking lot! It was sweet, bitter, and very lemony without the sour. The cake featured ladyfingers soaked in limoncello, cream, and a topping of white chocolate curls. Better than tiramisu? The jury is out.
Location: Dattilo, 2288 E Florida Avenue, Hemet, California. Date: January 27, 2024. I've been waiting to blog one of these, and this made from scratch version was a good one. It was moist, lemony, not too sweet at all, and it was garnished with a lemon slice, a blackberry, and a spearmint sprig. It usually comes on a bed of lemon curd, but they were out and so they gave me a scoop of vanilla bean gelato with it. I could taste the olive oil and the lemon, and it's a great combination. The cake was light but not fluffy. It was, in fact, perfect.
Location: Spaghetti Western, 50048 29 Palms Hwy, Morongo Valley, California. Date: January 20, 2024. I think this cake is going to be my holiday tradition from now on. It takes almost three months to make, but the result is magical. I used raisins, prunes, and dried cherries and brought them to a boil in spiced rum and sour cherry brandy with cinnamon stick and star anise. After an hour of soaking, I removed the spices and made a paste out of the fruit in a food processor. I then added this to the cake mixture, sweetened only with brown sugar, and after baking one bastes the cake with the rum and brandy along with some sherry wine. You wrap it up and store it for ten weeks or so, basting it once a week. It's dense but moist, and it's not too sweet. I took the tin you see in the pic to Escapade Tavern for their Christmas potluck today, and even people who claimed they didn't like fruit cake seemed to like this boozy version.
Location: At Home in Desert Hot Springs, California. Date: December 23, 2023. This is a Greek pastry made from phyllo dough wrapped around semolina custard. There are many variations in Greece, but the one we had was a little crunchy on the outside, somewhat creamy in the middle, and it was flavored with citrus rind and dusted with powdered sugar. There was some syrup on the bottom, but it wasn't too sweet at all, maybe because in Greece it's considered to be a breakfast pastry rather than a dessert. Our waiter said it was his favorite, and I wouldn't hesitate to order it again.
Location: Koutouki, 73675 Highway 111, Palm Desert, California. Date: November 22, 2023. The menu had this as Skillet Brownie but on the bill it was called Cowboy Brownie; either way, it's an homage to the Wild West by the Italian couple who own this western themed Italian restaurant. This baked to order brownie in a cast iron skillet is the best I've ever had. It's crispy on the outside, still moist on the inside, and you can get it with a dollop of vanilla gelato ice cream. The contrast of the cold ice cream and the warm brownie is luxurious. The brownie is not too sweet, a little salty, and very chocolatey. It's the owner's mother's recipe that was perfected at the restaurant. This restaurant is historic. According to the hostess, my sister and I enjoyed our dessert in the Al Capone room. He was here in the 1930s and to be safe he apparently had escape tunnels constructed from what was then known as the Casino. “If only the walls could talk,” said the hostess.
Location: Spaghetti Western, 50048 29 Palms Highway, Morongo Valley, California. May 11, 2023. I was looking for an evening snack, and I found this five-pointed star of semi-sweet spice cake topped with slivered toasted almonds and sesame seeds at a little shop around the corner from my hotel. The nuts and seeds made the tender cake quite chewy. I broke off a little piece in my hotel room and poured some Nicaraguan rum on it, and that was good! I tried to save a piece for my morning coffee, as this would have made a great coffee cake, but I couldn't resist pouring more rum on it and eating it all at once.
Location: A little tienda on 4th Street NE, Leon, Nicaragua. Date: February 24, 2023. These are available on the streets of Leon along with other pastries. If you miss the street vendors, and you need a late night snack, you can get these at little shops. The slightly salted dough was a little tough, as it probably has to be to survive the street, and I wasn't sure that I'd have gotten pineapple from the jam if I hadn't been told; however, it wasn't very sweet (which I appreciate), there was a little tartness from the jam, and it bailed me out for very little money when I needed a snack in the evening. This has inspired me to try some of the other street pastries in Nicaragua.
Location: A street in Leon, Nicaragua. Date: February 22, 2023. This was a stunningly gorgeous cappuccino decorated with a chocolate syrup design on really thick foam; it gave the cappuccino just enough sweetness so that sugar wasn't necessary (not to mention that stirring would have destroyed the art). Nicaragua grows some really good coffee, and the flavor of this cappuccino was almost as good as it looked. I wasn't expecting a work of art when I ordered it, so it was a very pleasant surprise. Paz de Luna has a pet dog whose name is Coffee!
Location: Paz de Luna, a block and a half north of Iglesia de la Recoleccion, Leon, Nicaragua. Date: February 15, 2023. |
AuthorChef Roland has been a legal resident of seven countries and has travelled in over thirty, documenting food along the way. He currently resides in the desert in Southern California. Categories
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