Armchair Dining on DP

So, I have been leaving New England for decades to venture out to my wife's family in upstate NY. Specifically, it is in the Rome/Utica area of NY. We are here now for a wedding and last night, I was for the first time exposed to a local delicacy that I had never really heard of before (which is amazing when considering how long I have been coming here and what a foodie, I am.)

Chicken riggies or Utica riggies is an Italian-American pasta dish native to the Utica-Rome area of New York State. It is a pasta-based dish usually consisting of chicken, rigatoni and hot or sweet peppers in a spicy cream and tomato sauce, although many variations exist.



Really good stuff and I wanted to pass it along! The good news is that when we finally do our DP World Food Tour, it will only be an additional 4.5 hour drive from RI to get to Rome/Utica!

 

You will note from my previous post that I was in the Rome/Utica region of NY last weekend. Well, it reminded me of a candy confection that I doubt anyone else on DP has ever heard of: Turkey Joints! They are a a blend of chocolate and brazil nuts covered with a sweet silvery coating and shaped like the legs of actual turkeys. For the longest time, my wife and I would buy a case or two of them and give them our at Christmastime. For years, people would be confirming weeks beforehand that the Turkey Joints were coming.



They are eaten like candy bars and are VERY addictive. They have other flavors but the Original (pictured above) is the best, in my opinion. An unusual texture for some great tasting chocolate. Unfortunately, they are expensive as I believe that the jar above costs $16 or more now. And, it is seasonal; they only ship the candy between October and May and shut down the rest of the year (due to heat and humidity and its effect on the candy, I suspect.)

I will commit to bringing along a few jars of these delights for snacking while we are on our planned world food-tasting tour. calendar permitting.

 

Here is a Philippine street food, ladies and gents I present to you: the banana cue . This is my favorite afternoon snack and it's very easy to prepare. Just coat the bananas with brown sugar and then deep fry it. Once the sugar caramelize and form a candy-like coating it's good to go!

Fancy restos serve it with vanilla ice cream. So yeah, adding ice cream elevates the dish and you can eat it like a sir

 

Wow, @Vitarank, that looks fantastic! I want to find and try one right now (not likely here in RI.) I think that I would eschew the ice cream and just go for it as pictured above. It's funny I like ice cream (and just about any other sweet treat) but I like it by itself (no ice cream and cake or ice cream and pie, etc., for me.) This treat looks much better than our own Caramel Apples which are a Fall seasonal favorite around here.

Banana cue's are now definitely on my list of cool snacks to try. Need to figure out where I might get one. We do not have a deep fryer to make some ourselves. Will look a little more closely at our own fairs, carnivals, etc. I have seen frozen banana's, deep-fried bananas (batter-covered), and chocolate covered bananas but nothing like this. Perhaps I will plant a seed with some of the vendors...

 

I also prefer to it as it is

Another thing, is that it's pretty cheap. Like, $0.25 per stick - if you are to buy it over here of course .

And oh, no deep fryer? No problem! Just put oil in a wok/pan, enough to submerge the bananas and you're good. This can probably be a gold mine if you are to make a business out of it. Who knows?

 

I am afraid that I would eat all of the profits in this business. Though it seems like it would be fun to have a food truck with some unique sweet snacks and travelling with it from spot to spot. Of course, it always sounds like fun until you find out the actual workload, etc.

I mentioned the treat to my wife and she thought that they sounded like a great snack, too. Perhaps we will try it out when I am off my current low-carb diet. I think that even my super-fussy kids would like this.

Note that over the years, when grilling in the summer and the main cooking was over and the coals were still hot, I would slice a bunch of bananas lengthwise (still in peel) and sprinkle the fruit side with brown sugar and put them on the grill (peel side down, of course.) The banana would get warm and the brown sugar would melt a little and everyone really enjoyed it. So, that is why I am pretty confident that the whole family would like Banana Cue's. Of course, deep frying the coated banana is genius and obviously will take the snack to the next level.

Tell, me do you eat them warm, room temperature or chilled? All temps sound good, by the way...

 

I prefer to eat them at room temp. Coz like, most times if I eat them warm, the inside is still freakin' hot, which of course, is painful to the tongue LOL. Haven't tried it chilled tho.

this reminds me of banana chips

 

Is there a sweet coating on the banana chips or is that the frying process that causes them to glisten? We have banana chips here, but they are dried, not fried. Too hard to bite into and not that tasty.



They are sold here more as a healthy snack. Like eating raisins, etc.

 

Yes, indeed. Here, you can buy it sweetened or salted. And yep! The bananas (unripe/raw) are dried first prior to deep frying them with and then dipped in simple syrup or seasoned with salt

This thread just went bananas!!

 

Yes, and I am once again starving!

I may try frying the dried bananas some time. Salt sounds really good as a topping.

 

Well, it is Saturday morning here and rather than thinking about breakfast foods, I have a sweet treat on my mind. Have not had it in many years, but rhubarb pie is really, really good. My grandparents used to grow a patch of rhubarb in their garden and I would eat it right out of the ground when I was kid. Very tart (some might say bitter) but good. When baked into a pie, it is usually combined with strawberries for sweetness, but I used to like the pure rhubarb pie that my Mom would make. Of course, A LOT of sugar needs to be added to the pie filling as the rhubarb is very, very tart by itself.



Rhubarb is a very hardy plant that can tolerate the New England winters, so I suppose that it is why you find it a lot around here. The pie slice pictured above is paired with a healthy dollop if whipped cream which is the proper way to eat any pie, in my opinion.

 

Oh man, that looks unbelievably amazing.

 

I could eat a few now...

 

Do you have a recipe for this amazing looking dish? I'd love to try it.

 

While I was in the Rome/Utica area over the Labor Day weekend, I only had restaurant-made versions. However, this link takes you to a recipe that sounds/looks very similar to what I had. Really good!

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/166181/chicken-riggies/

 

I would just like to add you guys all can go suck it! lol I am on a diet with the mrs as we are in training for the spartan race here in 6 months and all these pictures of amazing looking food is making me soo hungry! I wish I can go nom nom nom nom nom some of it right now lol!

 

Hey, hey, missed me?! I do apologize for my recent absence, I am trying to enjoy the last summer moments and travelling around
Some amazing looking dishes since my last visit (what a "surprise") and some that certainly have to be tried (food-tasting tour ftw!!!).

Time for me to get back in the game. This time I am taking you off the desert game. Today is Independence Day in Bulgaria but as hard as I thought I couldn't think of any food that might be specific to this holiday. So I'll just pick something traditional for another festivity - St Nicola's Day - the day where all people go mad with fish dishes! Here is one I very much love - stuffed carp



Simple, and yet you can experiment with a variety of stuffings and garnishes. This particular one is filled with stewed rice and onions and some raisins. Seal it with some toothpicks and then make some deep cuts in which you put lemons. On the side you can make some stewed vegetables - peas, sweet corn, carrots, garlic etc. And it is LOVELY!. I do prefer fish/meats with more fats generally, but if you are watching your weight, you can practically do the same stuffing with a different fish, say mackerel.

P.S. This is entirely offtopic but I wanted to ask @jrbiz for the last few days...
So I was reading a BuzzFeed article the other day about why each of the 50 states
sucks hard. Now, typical to the BuzzFeed style, it tries to do it with some humor
that sometimes might be misconstrued but this is what you get for giving authorship
to any user....so the thing mentioned about RI is that the actual name of the state is
"Rhode Island and Providence Plantations". Which was interesting enough to get me
to keep reading about that and found that in 2010 (or was it 2011?!) there was actually
a ballot initiative to change the name to just Rhode Island but the people voted against it.

So is it just that you Rhode Islanders looooooooove to be different or... ?

 

I feel your pain. I am on a low-carb diet, myself (and I am the OP here) and it is brutal! Over the past weekend, I reviewed the entire thread and was ready to begin eating my shoes, I was so hungry.

 

Where do I begin? First, the fish dish looks great! I have never had carp, but I am thinking that it is a very large version of some of the panfish that we have around here like sunfish, bluegill, etc. If that is the case, it will be a very light, juicy and sweet fish that is absolutely unbelieveable. By the way, happy Independence Day!

Yes, we did have a ballot a few years ago to change the name of the state. There were those who felt that "and Providence Plantations" would be offensive to minorities because of the slavery connotation. It mattered not to these folks that the reference had nothing to do with slavery and the fact the RI was not a slave state during the Civil War; just the word, itself, was supposedly offensive. It came from the fact that the founder of the state, Roger Smith, was conglomerating areas that were, in fact plantations at the time. The ballot initiative was voted down quite handily, which was a bit of a surprise to me as RI is a very, very "blue" state (Blue meaning liberal and loyal to the liberal Democratic Party here.)

Welcome back! I look forward to more great foods from your region!

 

I have always had a rule, if the dish still has a head on it - I will pass.