Cheesecake de Maracuyá

     The Maracuyá is an imperfectly ovaled, freckled handful of smooth and sometimes cratered, thick rind. Inside, it´s intensely tangy, mildly sweet, full of crunchy, edible seeds tangled up in pulp oozing juice. It compares to nothing else in taste, texture, smell, or appearance. 

     There! I´ve described the undescribable,  tamed the essence of all that is Passion Fruit into 1 mighty paragraph. Cream cheese does something similar with the Maracuyá; it takes the tang down just a notch and adds a comfy creamy element. They complement each other quite nicely and the result is, for lack of a better term, bad-ass! Move over, Strawberry Cheesecake!

     Maracuyá at the farmer´s market.

    The seeds are held in a litttle cocoon of protective skin, which is as delicate as the white  

    part of the orange or the casing around the pomegranite seeds.

     .The Recipe.
      For the filling
      2 pounds of good cream cheese
      1 large maracuyá
      zest and juice from 1 lime, tangerine, or other citris
      1/3 cup of cane sugar
      1/4 cup of Maple syrup
      a generous drizzle of vanilla extract 
      2 eggs
      
      For the crust
      3/4 stick of butter at room temperature
      230 grams of graham crackers <--I used the ever ubiquitous galleta Maria, which
                                                                                         doesn´t really qualify as, or compare to, the graham cracker,
                                                                                         but  it worked just the same>
        For the Topping
      1 large maracuyá
      1 Tspo water
      1 Tbsp corn starch
      3 Tbsp sugar (depending on how tart and tangy the maracuyá is)


     .Preparation.
      
     While the oven is preheating at 350ºF,  process the graham crackers until they´ve turned into fine crumbs. In a large bowl, rub the soft butter into the crumbs until it´s evenly incorporated. Get out the pan you´ll be using to bake the cheesecake and start building the crust along the bottom of the pan. Press firmly after each addition of buttery crumbliness, and try to get the crust as even and level as possible. Bake for about 10-12 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Set aside. 


 In a large bowl with the mixer on high, mix the cream cheese, sugar, and maple syrup until  fullly combined. Add the lime zest, lime juice, and the vanilla extract. Mix for 1 minute. Slice the Maracuyá in half and spoon the pulp into the bowl. Mix 2 minutes and then add one egg at a time, making sure that the first egg is well combined before you add the next one. Pour the mix into the pan with the golden crust. Prepare a water bath for the cheesecake by filling a large oven safe pan with water and placing the pan with the cheesecake inside it so that 3/4 of it is submerged in water. Bake at 350ºF for about an hour and a half. If the center is a little wobbly when you're ready to take it out, don´t worry! It should be. Let the cake cool while you prepare the topping.


In a sauce pan, combine the sugar, cornstarch, and tablespoon of water. Mix for about 2 minutes on medium heat. Add the pulp from the other Maracuyá (seeds and all!) and stir consistently until it reaches a thick syrup-like consistancy. Taste to make sure there´s enough sugar (it depends on how acidic the maracuyá is!). Slowly pour the syrup over the top of the cheesecake and spread evenly. Refrigerate overnight. 

Blackberry Banana Bread

         Here the blackberries are firm little pouches of bitter sweet seedy juiciness. Okay, ¨bitter¨ might be an understatement. It´s more like your tongue meets the berry and you wonder who bit who. Being that they are so boldly tart and tangy, they often make their way into pastries, pies, smoothies, jellies, and popsicles(!)- anything that serves to disguise and sweeten up that sass that they are so full of. I decided to do it with some overripe bananas and maple syrup. The results were gone so fast they ALMOST went undocumented. 
          Other than the sidewalk strawberries (FRESAS, FREEESAS! 3 CAJAS POR MIL COLONES!), these are the only berries that are widely sold in Costa Rica. You can buy them at the farmer´s market on Saturday mornings. Look for the man with purple hands. 

Blackberry Banana Bread
1 3/4 C flour
1 C cane sugar
3/4 Tbsp Baking Soda
1 Tsp ground cinammon
pinch of salt
1 C vanilla yogurt
1/4 stick of butter
2 polka dot bananas
1 C Blackberries
2 eggs
1/4 C maple syrup
a generous drizzle of pure vanilla extract



Set your oven to 300ºF. While it´s heating up, let it melt your butter.

Sift flour, baking soda, cinammon, salt, and sugar into a bowl. Mix mix mix until everything is evenly incorporated.

Your butter should be melted by now! Check it out.

In another bowl, mash bananas and berries with a fork. Depending on how ripe they are, you might want to mince the berries first on a cutting board, but avoid it if possible because you´ll lose some juice in the process. : (  Once the bananas are mashed and have taken on a berrylicious colour and texture, spoon in the yogurt, drizzle in the maple syrup and vanilla extract, and add in the melted butter. Mix gently before folding in the two eggs, and then mix gently some more. As usual, cuidado con los huevos!
Pour your dry mix into the bowl with all the mashed good stuff and slowly mix until all the flour has disappeared.
Pour this mix into a buttered and floured baking pan, pyrex, cast iron pan, or cup cake tin. Give it a kiss and take it to the oven. It´s almost ready when the kitchen is filled with a warm sweet irresistible smell that will make you run giddily to the oven and open it! But! Don´t get too excited. It won´t really be ready until it´s been in for 40 minutes, and the top is slightly golden, and the toothpick comes out clean.

Once it´s out and before it´s all gone, it´s lovely with a cup of tea, for dessert with ice cream, or for breakfast the next day.

Cooking In My Kitchen

We used to have a roommate who would mostly eat cereal but on rare ocassions would put aside his bowl and spoon and decide to eat something that didn´t come from a box, but rather from the ground. This happened so infrequently that when it did, it never failed to surprise/impress me. Though what was even more interesting and strange than seeing my roommate in front of the stove was that he´d do all the prep (chopping, mixing, peeling, etc.) in his room. For a long time I wondered why, and then, alone in the kitchen one day, I realized that this space isn´t for everyone... 

First you should know that the kitchen is small. Let´s just get it over with and call it a kitchenette. It leads to our patio, which is also the size of the kitchen(ette) and home to the rumbling washing machine, the laundry line, old shoes, and, of course, the constant cooooing of pigeons on the roof. Recently the door to the patio hasn´t felt much like being a door but more just a slab of wood that props itself up next to the doorway. The wind takes this as an invitation and sneaks into the kitchen, threatening to blow out the flame on our portable two-burner gas stove. Also, every two weeks the freezer turns into an igloo that only a bowl full of hot water or the man that sells raspados can fix. As for counter space, the dining room table is where it´s at! 

I´m not complaining. I love my little kitchen nook . It´s got the best sunlight in the house in the morning and again around 4pm. My basil and thyme plants seems to like the window sill and so far, a lot of good things have been made here.