Independence patriotism

Sat, Jul 9th 2011, 12:27 PM

Every year it's the same thing -- the final two weeks of June leading up to July 4, the red, white and blue of the American flag is everywhere.  Homes are draped in the color and as the people come together to celebrate, the food and cocktails offered up at parties and barbecues are all made up in shades of the colors.  This year I'd had enough and wanted to show my patriotism just as proudly as Americans, and showcase foods at my home in the black, aquamarine and gold that is the colors of the Bahamian flag, so I challenged six chefs -- pastry as well as hot food chefs -- to come up with food items that proudly displayed those colors in all their splendor.

The dish that they came up with could either feature food items that were naturally black, aquamarine and gold, or they could use food colorings to produce the desired effect and tint the foods.  Or if they wanted to just go easy, just proudly affix an edible flag to whatever they could imagine.  Whatever they came up with the dish had to portray the Bahamian flag in some way, form or fashion.  I just wanted dishes that put our colors on display and made me feel proud to be a Bahamian.

None of the six chefs I challenged had ever even composed a food item depicting the national colors of The Bahamas and were a little taken aback at first.  Depicting the colors of the flag in food was something they really had to think about.  But when the flour and grits had settled, two of the six chefs I'd challenged rose to the occasion -- Cheesecake Heaven proprietor Chef Jameel Lightbourne who produced a cheesecake he calls his National Treasure Cheesecake and Platinum Pastry proprietor Chef Bernard Bodie who iced a picture of the Bahamian flag onto one of his classic pound cakes.

As the colors of the Bahamian flag aren't what you would find everywhere in foods Chef Jameel Lightbourne says depicting the beautiful, strong colors wasn't easy at all.  He pondered for a week-and-a-half before coming up with his National Treasure Cheesecake.  "It wasn't easy at all deciding what to do," says Chef Lightbourne.  "Actually, it was quite difficult because the colors we have in our flag are rich colors, but they're not colors that you would find everywhere in food sources."

As he thought about what to do, the chef says he wanted to represent with a cake that would showcase the strength of each color in the flag for what they mean.  "The black represent the strength of the people, and I wanted to replicate the boldness and strength of that black and not many things you get in black, so I went with the Oreo cookie which is the darkest I could get and it's a good representation because it's a strong bold flavor that you can recognize.  So the Oreo cookie I chose as the base, and it comes up the sides of the cheesecake and holds everything together, just like the people are the base of the country."

It was a no-brainer for him to use fresh mangoes to depict the gold in flag.  It's also the flavor of the cheesecake itself.  "TheB gold in the flag stands for sunshine which I say is a ray of hope.  At the end of every dark tunnel is that bright shining light and that mango had to stand out, so mango was the choice for the gold, and that's the cake itself."

The toughest color for Chef Lightbourne was replicating the aquamarine that represents the water.  "Straight off the top of my head I knew what I was going to use pertaining to the gold and the black, but it was the aquamarine that I had to sit down and think about.  It took about a week-and-a-half for me to figure it out.  Because aquamarine isn't something normally found in food sources, I used a local fruit the guinep to make a guinep nectar [similar to tamarind sauce] which has a salty sweet taste to it, which I felt would stand as a good representation of the sea.  I had to alter the color of the guinep nectar, and I did that by using all-natural food coloring to get the blue and greens to get the aqua color just right. I put a thin stripe of the representation of the ocean in the middle of the golden cheesecake, so the top and bottom is golden mango and the stripe represents the beautiful seas of The Bahamas."

The beauty in the cheesecake that Chef Lightbourne created is in the cutting.  From the outside you see an Oreo crusted cheesecake topped with luscious slices of mango, but you don't see the aquamarine slice until you actually cut into the cake.  But he threw a few pieces of aquamarine Jordan almonds on top just for the visual.

Each flavor of the National Treasure Cheesecake stands on its own and doesn't overpower the other so you get a dark, musky chocolate flavor from the cookie, sweet, fruitiness of the mango and a mild, flavor from the guinep that blends everything together.

The National Treasure Cheesecake is easy enough to make if you apply yourself says Chef Jameel, but if you don't want to take the time to make it, Chef Lightbourne encourages you to call him up and he'll have one ready for you for your Independence celebration.  "Americans go all out to celebrate their Independence, Bahamians now need to start doing the same thing," he says.
 
 
 
CHEESECAKE HEAVEN'S NATIONAL TREASURE CHEESECAKE
(Golden mango with an aquamarine guinep and sea salt center on an Oreo crust)
Recipe: Chef Jameel Lightbourne
 
5 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1 and 3/4 cup white sugar
6 eggs
8 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup ripe mango, peeled and pureed
Mixture of blue/green food coloring (25 blue/8 greendrops)
¼ cup guinep nectar
Pinch of sea salt
25 Oreo cookies, crushed and centers removed
1 block of butter, softened
1/4 cup white sugar
1 cup guinep nectar
1/3 cup white sugar
2 cups ripe mangoes, peeled, pitted, and diced
 
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Mix Oreo crumbs, butter and sugar together and press into a 9-inch springform pan and bake for 10 minutes, then let cool.
In a medium bowl, mix sugar into the cream cheese. Mix in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla.
Remove 2 cups of batter from mixture.  Add coloring mixture, salt and guinep nectar and set on the side. Add pureed mango to remainder of batter.
Pour half of the mango batter into the Oreo crust followed by all of the blue guinep batter, then the remainder of mango batter, and smooth the top.
Bake in preheated oven until the edges have puffed up but the middle still jiggles, about 2 hours. Allow cheesecake to cool for 1 hour, then refrigerate until cold, overnight.

While the cheesecake is baking, pour guinep nectar and sugar into a saucepan, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, dissolving the sugar. Place diced mango into a heatproof bowl, and toss with the sauce. Allow to cool to room temperature, then pour over the cheesecake.

Serve cheesecake cold with sliced mangoes and blue chocolate covered almonds.
To make guinep nectar:  Shell guineps and place into a sieve, press fruit with a spoon or fork to extract liquid.  Alternatively, put guineps into a small pot of water, add sugar to taste and let simmer (do not bring to a boil).  To thicken, add a little cornstarch, or allow to simmer until liquid thickens.

Platinum Pastry chef Chef Bernard Bodie decided to go easy on the home cook, and says to make things easy on yourself, simply make a pound cake and spruce it up with a pastry and fruit-filled cream, then top it off by piping the shape of the flag on top and pipe in the beautiful colors.

"I decided to make a pound cake and decorate it with one of the most beautiful flags in the world.  You can use a recipe for a pound cake, but a moist pound cake is best for this where you can blend all your ingredients together.  And I did a flag on top, so something like this will be easy for the home cook. "

To make the cake, Chef Bodie says to ensure that your oven temperature is right.  If the oven is too hot, he says your cake will dome up and you don't want that.  For his pound cake, he says 350 degrees is the perfect temperature, and the cake should be baked for 50-55 minutes.  Once your cake is cooled, he suggests always shaving the edges and tops with a serrated knife to remove what he calls the "sugar" which also levels off the cake, to get a perfect round.
"Sometimes if you bake a cake too long, it has a heavier crust at the bottom so you can shave that off too.  But don't shave too deep.  Just remove the browned crust," he says.

If you're icing your cake with buttercream icing, he says the cake must be chilled in the refrigerator first and then crumb-coated with a thin layer of icing  first before being fully iced.  If you're using a different type of icing, you don't have to crumb coat the cake first.

He says you can frost your cake as is, or go a little fancy by cutting the cake into three layers, which is his preference, then layering the cake with pastry cream filled with fruit filling of your choice whether crushed pineapples or strawberries.  "I love filling in my cake because it gives it a better flavor," he says.

To ensure ease of icing, place cake on top of a turntable that allows you to spin and ice your cake with a thin layer of icing.  You don't want a thick layer of icing to finish because you already have filled layers says the chef, and you don't want to overwhelm your cake with icing.  For the piece de resistance, the drawing of the Bahamian flag on top, Chef Bodie fills a pastry bag with chocolate then draws a square.  He then draws a triangle within the square and then the two strips.  He does this freehand, but says if you feel nervous doing this, he says you can sketch out the flag shape with a toothpick or knife into the icing first and then follow the outline with chocolate and then stay in the lines as you fill in the required zones with colored icing, piped with a number two tip.  To finish the cake he suggests using a number zero star tip and pipe icing around for the final touch of covering the borders.

If you make a mistake while icing your cake -- like getting a little aquamarine into the gold, he says you can easily correct the mistake by taking more icing and piping it on top of the mistake, so there's no reason the cake should not be pretty.  As you prepare Chef  Bodie's Ode to Independence Pound Cake, he says home cooks should avoid common mistakes like not beating their cake mixture long enough and not whipping their icing long enough. He says too often home cooks try to rush and spoil what they're trying to make.

You can either make Chef Bodie's Ode to Independence Pound Cake at home, or he says he's happy to make one for you at his store located on Bradley Street, off Carmichael Road in Sunset Park.  And while you will get a beautiful cake resplendent in the national colors, don't be surprised to see a few red dots on your cake as that is Chef Bodie's signature decoration.  Every cake that leaves out of Platinum Pastry has red dots to signify the cake was made with love.  He also places a single chocolate dipped strawberry on top for the same reason.
 
 
 

PLATINUM PASTRY'S ODE TO INDEPENDENCE POUND CAKE
Recipe: Chef Bernard Bodie
 
For the pound cake:
3 large eggs
3 tablespoons milk, at room temperature
1 and ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 and ½ cup sifted cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup granulated sugar
¾ cup unsalted butter
For the icing:
1 cup shortening
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoon vanilla
1/ teaspoon almond extract
¼ cup water
8 cups sifted powdered sugar
 
For the cake: Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In the bowl of your electric mixer with a paddle or with a hand mixer, place the dry ingredients and mix on low speed until blended.  Add butter and half of the eggs.  Mix on low speed until dry ingredients are moistened.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Add the other half off the eggs and mix on your mixer's second speed for three minutes.  Bake for about 50 to 55 minutes or until cake is golden brown.  Makes one 9-inch cake.

For the icing: Mix shortening, water, vanilla, almond extract and half of the powdered sugar with a mixer for 5 to 10 minutes.  Add the rest of the powdered sugar and mix for another 10 minutes.

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