Recipes and Menus

I read a travel tip in a magazine recently that got me reminiscing. The tip suggests to carry blank recipe cards during your travels and any time you come across a recipe you like, write it down. It reminded me of two things.

The first was a menu that I picked up in Vietnam on my first trip there in 1992. Vietnamese restaurants are notorious for listing hundreds of items on their menus. Only a small portion of the items would ever actually be available on any given day. Menu items would include ox penis soup, frog, snake wine and parts of animals that you would be hard pressed to believe they could be cooked and served. As a vegetarian, I was often able to get around having to sample from these menus by explaining to my hosts or new friends, my penchant for Buddhism (why else would one be a vegetarian?). I still enjoyed reading them and on occasion brought them home as a souvenir.

The other thing that this travel tip reminded me of was ordering a dessert off of a menu in a Cannon Beach, Oregon restaurant. The restaurant no longer exists but it was fabulous. They served an item that my beau and I just had to try because it sounded so bizarre. As it ends up, this has become one of our favorite desserts to serve at dinner parties. Here’s the recipe:

Vanilla ice cream
Strawberries
Reduced balsamic vinegar
Black pepper

Reduce the balsamic vinegar down over low heat (stirring often) until it’s thick, like a hot fudge. Slice strawberries and sprinkle them over the ice cream. Pour a small amount of the balsamic vinegar over the ice cream and strawberries and add a dash of black pepper.

(Be careful to not overheat the balsamic vinegar during
cooking, otherwise it will end up more like a thick, pasty, sour-tasting goo.

Happy Travels!

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