Americanos in the Kitchen

I have a special place in my heart for food trucks. Malanga Girl is probably at least one part burrito due to the intense and irrepressible cravings I felt in early pregnancy for the Calexico Food Truck on Wooster Street. I had this funny notion that everyone at the office would somehow catch on to the fact that I was pregnant because I was going out for several burritos per week. Now, in retrospect, I realize they probably just blamed my expanding waist line on the burrito addiction.

In any event, the appearance of a taco truck run by a real, live Californian at my local farmers' market was fairly exciting. My order today of tacos de carnitas comes just on the tail end of having finally tracked down a place that sells canned black beans in Paris. (I don't have it in me to make black beans from scratch, sorry to say.) At 4, 50 Euros per can, I was still pondering whether I should save them for a special occasion. So, it was extra exciting to see that my tacos were served with a generous side of black beans today. Not red beans or refried beans, but good, old-fashioned black beans how I like them. Brought to me by a Californian.

Incidentally, I finally located the canned black beans at an emporium of American products called The Real McCoy.  Lest you think I'm thinking of changing the expression to "as American as black beans," I'll leave you with the simple yet delicious apple pie recipe I picked up from a Monoprix circular a few weeks ago. It has been a big hit in our house and I just made it again tonight. My amazing assistant, Malanga Girl, suggested the addition of cinnamon to the original recipe. Genius!

Ingredients
1 box of puff pastry
3-4 apples
70 g butter
sliced almonds (I used about 1/3 cup)
2 tablespoons honey
Cinnamon (to taste)

Method
- Peel the apples and slice
- Put the puff pastry in a pie mold
- Place the apples on the puff pastry
- Bake for 20 minutes (the recipe didn't specify a temperature, the box of puff pastry suggested 210 degrees Celsius, I am still fiddling with the temperature).
- In the meantime, melt the butter, add the almonds and the 2 Tablespoons of honey. Add cinnamon to mixture. Pour on baked pie and put back in oven for 4-5 minutes.
Note that the French are very opposed to serving desserts like this with ice cream, but in the privacy of our own home, we quite enjoyed the pie with some vanilla ice cream.