grandmas, rejoice!

The Bananas were ON FIRE MUY CALIENTE yesterday at the elegant Silk Bar in Del Paso heights. Do not miss your chance to see them on New Years because like a fine wine, they just keep getting better, and like an aged cheese they just keep getting moldier rinds (not to mention the occasional whiff of ammonia).

I hesitate to share this with you because I want to be the sole guardian of this secret so that I can impress people with my pie crust, but I am by nature a person who cannot keep a secret, so I have to share with you that the soulless robo-cooks over at Cook's Illustrated have for real, created a recipe for the easiest to work with and flakiest and best pie crust ever. The secret ingredient is vodka! Cuz you know how pie crust is a war between moisture and tender flakiness? I personally will always err on the side of flakiness, usually by adding very little moisture and not mixing very vigorously, and subsequently I have ugly pies that are a real trauma to roll out. When I read this recipe I was sooo skeptical. Making pie crust in a food processor? Grandmas everywhere are gnashing their teeth. But they swore that the addition of vodka eliminates the problem of too much water making it tough and they are totally right! It's amazing. The dough is so nice to roll out, it really is like playdough. No stress, beautiful pies and the crust has big shattery flakes. My modifications would be to take out the sugar and double the salt, because I like a salty crust. Here's the link.