Is Key Lime a Theme? -3/6/09

Some of my favorite issues from cooking magazines have issue-wide themes. For a number of years, the March issues of Gourmet focused on a theme of famous food cities throughout the world. They covered New York, London, Montreal, and Rome, just to name a few. I love experiencing a city through its food.
This year, the March Gourmet did not have a city theme. There is a menu of Korean dishes, an article about the Extremadura region of Spain with only one recipe, an article that extends 2 roast chickens into a week of meals, and 5 recipes with Key Limes as a main component. I think I understand why the editors moved away from the city issue. Right now, the economic recession is on everyone's minds. Travel is low on many people's priority list and saving money is high. But I would welcome the excuse to "travel" to another city through its food. Gourmet, don't try too hard to compete with other cooking magazines that are giving us recipes on the cheap! Let us escape to another place, if only in our kitchens.
With my opinion given, for what it's worth, tonight I made 2 of the Key Lime recipes. Technically, I made the Key Lime Pie yesterday but it needed to chill for 8 hours so we didn't eat it until today. My first recipe was the Steak with Chile Key Lime Sauce on page 110. Easy, easy, easy but not something to rave over. The steak was simply seasoned with salt and pepper and broiled and turned out great but the sauce was way too watery. When I poured it on the cooked steak as recommended, it all just ran off onto the rest of the plate and covered my broccoli and sweet potato as well. The flavor was not bad, an interesting mix of salty, hot and sweet, but it did not have any thickness so it ran like water off the steak and looked strange. I would have liked it to have been thickened either by heating it or adding a thickening ingredient.
The Key Lime Pie on page 17 was a very traditional Key Lime recipe. In fact, the recipe on the side of the bottled Key Lime juice I bought because I couldn't find Key Limes at the store was virtually the exact same recipe minus the almonds in the crust. I haven't had Key Lime Pie a lot. I forgot how tart it is but I really enjoyed it. Richard felt it was a little too sweet but there was no way around sweet when you use 2 cans of condensed milk. The recipe did say it was twice the normal amount of filling. Eyrleigh loved it and I don't mind her having the extra sugar. She had only gained 10 ounces since her last doctor's visit 3 months ago so we need to fatten that baby up a little. Key Lime Pie should help!