Mexican Train

I have played more dominos in the last seven days than I have in the last seven years. Mexican Train, to be specific. And apparently, dominos have become quite colorful. No more of those dull white tiles with black dots, the dominos I’ve been playing with are color coded. Hot pink and red, turquoise and gray, orange and gold—a good dominos board is quite the site.

 

If you were to judge my dominos skills by my score, you’d have to say I’m pretty bad. But I’d argue that you can be good at the game without winning. Dominos are like a good conversation, or a train of thought. Or a recipe idea. Start with something, say double twelves. Then you might be able to add a twelve with a nine on it. And hey, nine reminds me of that two I’ve been trying to get rid of, and so on.

I like to think that dominos helped me put the pieces together for cornmeal cake with rhubarb compote and sweetened mascarpone cream.

 

I needed to make a good dessert, and didn’t have much time. My friend Chris said rhubarb, that’s in season (think double twelves). Rhubarb compote: easy and nice to look at (twelve and nine). Many years ago I had a rhubarb compote dessert with polenta cookies (nine and two). Rhubarb and cornmeal…..searched epicurious on my phone and found a simple recipe for cornmeal cake.

 

I topped the whole thing with mascarpone cream, to give an Italian flair to the cornmeal. The ensemble was great, and quite the site. Let me know what you think.

 

Cornmeal Cake  Adapted from Epicurious
1 cup flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter
2 tablespoon grated lemon peel
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup whole fat yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla

• Mix flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and set aside
• Cream sugar and butter in a mixer
• Add eggs, vanilla, lemon peel, yogurt
• Mix in the dry ingredients, one cup at a time
• Transfer to 9" round cake pan, lined with parchment, buttered, and dusted with flour.
• Bake at 350 for 30 min

Mascarpone cream
½ pint heavy whipping cream
8 oz mascarpone
1-2 t powdered sugar

• Whip all ingredients until thick

Rhubarb Compote
3 cups chopped rhubarb
¼ cup sugar
2 t lemon juice
½ bottle of red wine

• Boil all ingredients until the rhubarb is soft but still holds its shape
• Remove the rhubarb and boil the remaining syrup until it is thick, about 10 minutes
• Fold the rhubarb back into the syrup.