Frog Guts Pudding, Just Kidding...

Growing up we didn't eat dessert often in my home and as a consequence dessert cooking; pastries, chocolate, etc... was not part of my cooking education. I'm not complaining about this, while I lack many of the kitchen skills to deal with sweet ingredients I also lack much of the weakness to eat sweet foods. Don't get me wrong I'm hardly impervious to sweets but there are lots of them I don't want. For instance: I'll eat most cakes if you put a piece in my hand but I'd rather have fresh fruit and forget the icing, typical icing like you get out of the can on the supermarket shelf I won't touch. Also, I like apple pie but I will actively refuse cherry, banana cream, pumpkin and a whole host of other pies. I'll eat most homemade ice creams but very few store bought. In short I'm a picky dessert eater, I'll eat my greens, no problem, but I don't do a good job cleaning my plate when it comes to desserts.

It was therefore a bit of a surprise to me to find myself playing around with dessert recipes. Mom asked me to make chocolate pudding from a recipe she had in a magazine. Discovering how easy pudding is to make; cornstarch, flavor, sugar and milk, I decided to branch out and experiment with other types of pudding. Given my lack of interest in typical desserts, what isn't so surprising is that I quickly ventured into the unusual.

This is one such recipe. Before you get too concerned it has been taste tested by people with more conventional dessert taste.

Avocado Lime Pudding

This recipe makes 4 servings:

• 1/3 cup masa flour (corn flour)
• 1/3 cup butter (Smart Balance in my case) or oil of your choice (olive or canola)
• 1 avocado mashed
• zest of 2 limes
• 1 tablespoon of lime juice
• 1/2 cup of sugar (I use 1/4 cup brown and 1/4 cup of splenda)
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 1 teaspoon coconut extract
• 2 cups of no-fat milk

To mash the avocado, I put the avocado diced into a plastic bag and add the lime zest and juice then mash the bag until the avocado is pulp. This allows me to completely mash the avocado without any lumps and mixing the lime in keeps the avocado from browning and I don't have to worry about the lime juice curdling the milk.

In a medium sauce pan cook the butter/oil and masa flour as you would a white roux. I wanted this recipe to have a South American flare so I choose to make my pudding thickener with masa flour instead of all purpose flour or cornstarch. If you have never used masa flour to make a roux I recommend it, it doesn't have quite the thickening power that wheat flour does but it is close and the masa flour adds a nice nutty, sweet taste to whatever your thickening. The flavor in pudding is reminiscent of Indian pudding. If you don't have access to masa flour then leave out the butter/oil, and flour. Instead add 4 tablespoons of cornstarch to the cold ingredients.

Once the masa flour and butter/oil have developed into a roux add the rest of the ingredients and stir constantly until mixture comes to a boil and thickens. If the avocado is in a big lump at first don't worry as the mixture heats the avocado will break apart and mix evenly with the milk.

Remove from heat, pour into serving dishes and refrigerate for 1 hour before serving.

A note about this recipe:

We work very hard in this household to limit the amount of fat we eat, so when I started making puddings I used the milk we had on hand which was non-fat. I quickly discovered that pudding needs a little fat. That is how I came to use avocado, avocado has "good fat" and a mild flavor which is masked by most other ingredients. If you are concerned about fat in your diet there are quite a few applications where avocado can be a substitute for cream including most puddings. If for instance you would like to make chocolate pudding combine cocoa powder with the avocado before mashing then add it to the milk, sugar, and cornstarch. Avocado can also be substituted in soups that call for cream. It cannot be a substitute in applications where the "fat" needs to be cooked such as in biscuits or sautes. Mashed avocado is not going to taste just like cream but it is very close, give it a try you might like it.

Chocolate Biscuits

Recently two nice things converged that made this recipe possible, one strawberries were on sell and two we were having company. We have a "fresh produce" stand in my town, I'm very suspicious of it, often the produce it sells is out of season and it carries items that I'm sure aren't grown locally. Sometimes though it does have what I consider fresh local produce, recently it had a big sign hanging across the front, "Plant City Strawberries." Plant City, Florida is a small town in central Florida, which has slowly become a bedroom community of Tampa, however long before Florida saw it's current population boom, Plant City was know for its early strawberry harvest. I have rarely been to Plant City myself and my personal knowledge of it is as a stop between Tampa and Orlando, but my childhood is rich with stories of the Plant City my Grandmother grew up in. As a child I considered my Grandmother an insufferable story teller, time and age has softened my view of this remarkable woman who would tell you in one breath that she was raised as an only child and tell you in the nest breath about her brother Bill. In the stories of my Grandmother's Plant City it was suffering through the transition from a community where cotton was king to the town known for its strawberries. Given my association with Plant City strawberries and my childhood it probably is no surprise that the sign for, "Plant City Strawberries," drew me. I didn't have any reason to buy strawberries but I was sure I could d something with them.

Not long after the sign appeared over the produce stand, Dad asked me to make lunch for some friends that were coming to town on business. Readily I agreed and immediately went out and bought strawberries to make into a desert. The day of the luncheon came and I still hadn't decided on what I would with the strawberries. I landed on serving the strawberries over shortcakes. I felt this was an imperfect solution for desert, because the wife of Dad's friend loves all things chocolate. As I was looking up shortcake recipes I thought to myself, "chocolate shortcakes," and this recipe was born.

This recipe makes 6 biscuits.

• 2 cups of all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup of cocoa
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 6 tablespoons of butter or shortening
• approximately 3/4 cup of milk
• 2 teaspoons of baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Shift all the dry ingredients together so that the cocoa is mixed throughout the flour. Add the butter and use your hands to incorporate the butter into the dry ingredients. Slowly add the milk until you have a firm dough. I use my hands to tear the biscuits off but feel free to roll the dough out and cut it.

Bake for 20 min at 350 degrees.

Olive Tapenade

When I first moved to Atlanta I invested in a library card. I lived at the top of Mount Pace, at the bottom was Vinings with a Cobb County library, I would get up on Saturday, enjoy a cup of coffee on my patio then hike down to town and hit the library, pick up a few books then hit the smoothy shop before hiking back up the mountain. I would almost always pick up a cookbook on these weekend excursions which is how I discovered olive tapenade. I checked out a cookbook dedicated to French vegetarian cooking, this lady's idea was that as a vegetarian it wasn't necessary to give up the European flavors that we are used to. I found it to be an excellent cookbook and although I usually substituted her tofu and bean paste with chicken and fish I could see her point.

One of her recipes was tofu cooked in crushed tomatoes and topped with tapenade. Being a Chipleyite, all be it a worldly one, I had never heard of tap-e-nade but I'm an adventuresome soul so I very dutifully followed the recipe to create this odd stuff to top my chicken cooked in crushed tomatoes. With great recipes as with great adventures there are many places to turn back or turn aside and in this strange concoction I was being lead to make, this tap-e-nade I found many such a trial. There were capers, a thing I had been introduced to in South Florida, which I had determined that I could tolerate but only in small amounts. There were anchovies, I had my first anchovy on the Mall in Washington DC, they were on a salad I was having for lunch. I was hungry and feeling mentally fortified with my mornings adventures in several of the Capital's museums, I felt it was time to put aside my knee jerk reaction to the word anchovy and I felt I owed the chef that prepared my meal the benefit of the doubt so I bravely forked an anchovy with the greens of my salad. The anchovy was furry, slimy, salty, and indescribably IKE, needless to say I only had the one and had steered clear of them ever since. Last but not lest there were lots of expensive, good olives being combined with these other things which would surely be better whole and left alone. Tapenade, however, turned out to be a culinary adventure worth having.

Having discovered olive tapenade, I found that in Atlanta I could buy commercially prepared tapenade which I happily added to my diet. Moving back to Chipley I despaired of finding any on the shelves of my Piggly Wiggly or even the "Big Box" store by the interstate. I was surprised, therefore, to discover tapenade in the pickle/olive section of the later. It caught my eye which scanned back over to it and my first reaction was, "What's wrong with it?" I picked up the jar to have a closer look and found that this stuff was a "zucchini/olive" tapenade, I tell you this to warn you. This is not Olive Tapenade it is a mere sad shadow of the real thing.

Below is my recipe for olive tapenade I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

• 2 anchovy fillets
• 12 oz olives drained (I use green and Kalamata)
• 1 tablespoon capers
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
• salt and pepper to taste

Combine all the ingredients in a blender and process until you have a paste. Store in the refrigerator until needed.

If you would like a quick easy recipe to use tapenade with tonight try New Potatoes and Green Beans dressed with tapenade. Snap the green beans into bit size pieces, cut the potatoes into 1/4 inch cubes and steam them together until the potatoes are fork tender about 10 minutes. Dress them with olive tapenade and balsamic vinegar.