Columbus Cocktail Hour

How many engineers does it take to open a coconut?

During a recent visit to Columbus, Ohio I was shopping with friends Meghan and Chris and came across fresh green coconuts and ripe passion fruit. Who knew Ohio had such a bountiful tropical harvest? I had to get some, and the result was the soon to be famous drink below.

Squid Eye

juice of one green coconut
pulp of one ripe (wrinkled) passion fruit
couple shots of rum
club soda

If you want to get fancy, shake the juice and rum with ice and pour into a few martini glasses. Spoon the pulpy seeds of the passion fruit into the glasses, top with club soda, and garnish with a sliver of sugared fresh coconut meat.

Cue the flowery food poetry: The delicate sweetness of the coconut water is balanced wonderfully by the crisp tartness of the passion fruit. Bubbles from the club soda cause the seeds to move around in beautifully choreographed Dance of the Squid Eye. Playful textures and dazzling presentation make this a cocktail to savour.

Good pho me, good pho you

It didn't take long after leaving New York for me to miss the flavors of Chinatown. Almost any kind of Asian cuisine is available any time for very cheap, and the one I missed most was Vietnamese pho. For $5.00 or less, a gigantic steaming bowl arrives at your table in about 5 minutes, and it's just about the best thing on Earth. Sweet spices, sweet and bitter herbs and a hint of salty fish sauce all in a gelatinous, beefy broth provide the base for a flavor and texture explosion. Being in the heart of Ohio, I had no choice but to try and recreate it at home. Thank goodness for Jungle Jim's, a mammoth multinational market outside of Cincinnati that has just about anything you can imagine. I followed an excellent recipe from the web almost exactly, so I won't reprint it here. Follow this link for the recipe. I used top round for the slicing beef. Thorny cilantro (culantro) made an interesting addition, but it is optional. One thing I added to the equation was tripe. I had never cooked it before, but in my visits with Andy through little Chinese dives by the Manhattan bridge, I came to love its unique taste and texture. I took one honeycomb tripe and sliced it into 1"x2" pieces, scrubbed them well, blanched them in boiling water for 15 minutes, scrubbed well again, and added them to the broth to simmer for 3 hours. The pieces could have been smaller, but they took on great flavor and color from the broth, and they were still chewy but very nice. It took a long, long time to make the broth and prepare everything else, but in the end, I was completely satisfied with my home cooking taste of Chinatown. Once the Captain lands in his new home, this will be a regular addition to the dinner menu. New York, I miss you.