Fruity 3-Layer Surprise Tart

Kate expressed an interest in something with chocolate ganache, so after determining that the rhubarb in the garden was looking good, I came up with this. The “surprise” is that with the thick layer of chocolate, you can’t actually see the fruit layer until you cut into it.

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Ode to a Great Teacher: George Raccio

Sometimes life gives you a second chance and so it seems to go with the presence of George Raccio in my life. As Playdate gets ready to do our CD release party this weekend at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, I figured it’d be a good time to reflect a bit about George, who was the teacher presiding over the jazz program at the Educational Center for the Arts, where Wayne Escoffery, Amanda Monaco and I met and began playing together.

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Stuffed-ish Tofu

This recipe began as most of mine do, inspired by a need to use and/or “enhance” an ingredient. In this case, Kate was jonesing for tofu and we had a couple tomatoes that were pretty mediocre but had tempted me (foolish!) on one of my rare visits to the supermarket’s produce aisle. I’ll skip to the happy ending – tas-tee! It was a focal point and primary protein source of this meal but I think it’d work well as a “finger food” if entertaining (it wouldn’t have been much harder to double the recipe). They’re stuffed-“ish” because really they’re actually topped and not stuffed, but if people can pile stuff on a portabella mushroom and call it “stuffed” then I can use the term here. Total cooking time was about an hour from beginning to end.

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