Last night was our 3rd quarterly D.I.E.T. potluck dinner, hosted by Emily who chose a Mediterranean theme. Deena brought a poo poo platter of Mediterranean apps including stuffed grape leaves, olives, hummus, mini spinach pies, and cranberry cheese puffs. I’ll overlook the fact that she assembled instead of cooked 1) because she has a toddler in Scarsdale and 2) because the things she brought were very tasty.
For the main course, Emily made tilapia over a bed of whole wheat cous cous. The whole wheat variety gave the grain some additional texture and I’m sure the added health benefit isn’t bad either. Emily marinated the tilapia in chile powder, cumin, and mango/peach salsa. Well, she marinated mine, hers and Deena’s, but Ira – ever the difficult one – does not like cumin or chile powder so the prince’s plain fish was cooked in its own pan. I know he was happy with his fish, but I think he missed out because Emily did a great job with the seasoning. Ira was in charge of the side dish and made roasted Brussels sprouts, which means he bought Brussels sprouts and Emily made them for him. We have now had three of these potlucks and Ira has yet to cook anything completely on his own. Again, I don’t really mind because the food has always been good and the endless entertainment he provides is the real reason he’s invited (the things I now know about New York Sports Club steam rooms, oh my!).
Dessert is officially cursed. Let’s look back on past D.I.E.T. dinners:
1. Deena gets sick and her last minute replacement didn’t have time to bring anything so we ate Ben and Jerry’s instead.
2. Emily’s banana pudding spilled all over the 23rd street E stop so we ate Ben and Jerry’s instead.
3. My attempt at baking was a huge disaster so we ate Ben and Jerry’s instead.
Noticing a theme? Ben and Jerry’s should sponsor these dinners from now on. Allow me to elaborate on my dessert fiasco. I’ve mentioned I am a cook but definitely not a baker; however, there is one dessert that I can actually make: monkey bread. Considering my Mommy’s monkey bread is one of my top three favorite desserts ever (the other two are crème brulée and fruit tarts), I learned how to make it myself when I moved away from home. It’s the one dessert I have mastered. I thought I had it in the bag. So Tuesday night I’m getting the dessert prepped and pre-heating the oven. I forgot I had recently put some pots with plastic handles in the broiler for storage and the next thing I know, I’m ripping my smoke alarm off the wall. I decided the apartment needed to air out so I put the half-baked monkey bread in the fridge and then re-commenced in the morning. I finish baking and think all is good to go, but the bundt pan was still hot from the oven so I was wearing my oven mitts to flip the dessert on the plate. The mitts slipped and my arm smashed against the super hot pan leaving me with a huge burn mark that is now blistering up. So sexy. The burn caused me to drop the pan and some of the monkey bread missed the plate. Fine, I frustratedly thought, I’ll just serve it lopsided. Then I tested the dessert and realized it didn’t cook through entirely (probably a result of both the stop-and-go cooking and the different brand of biscuits I used). Into the trash it went. So to recap, I now have dessert in the trash, a welt on my arm, and a hole in my wall where the smoke alarm used to be. Awesome.
Thankfully, we were able to save the day with an amazing new dessert trick: ice cream bread. This is neither ice cream cake nor cake topped with ice cream. This is actually bread (think banana bread or or some other loaf cake) made with only two ingredients, two cups of ice cream (one pint) and 1.5 cups of self-rising flour. If you don’t have self-rising flour, just add 1/2 teaspoon baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt for each cup of flour and voilà. Let the ice cream soften, mix with the self-rising flour and pop into the oven for 45 minutes at 350. That’s it. Sounds too good to be true, but it actually works. It doesn’t taste like super sweet ice cream, but it has a hint of the ice cream flavor (we used Triple Caramel Chunk) and it comes out nice and moist. It would be a perfect breakfast treat, but since we weren’t having breakfast, we topped the bread with some more Ben and Jerry’s (this time we used Dulce Delish). I think the key is choosing an ice cream that has chunks of something (chocolate, fruit, nuts) so it does more than just sweeten the bread. I can’t wait to experiment with different ice cream flavors.
In just three short months I’ll be hosting the potluck and Ira will be in charge of dessert. I’m hoping he can break the curse, but that would require him to actually cook something all by himself.
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