Most shredded potatoes find themselves nestled inside latkes and hashbrowns. But if you want to get islandy (or Latin American), something else gets thrown into the mix -- black beans.

Suddenly, that fried and starchy side gets a whole new depth -- the meaty beans offering a thicker and slightly creamier texture and a more substantial latke sort of flavor. Rather than a crisp, thin slab of potato, you get a thicker pancake, crisp on the outside and creamy inside.

Putting together potato and black bean pancakes isn't the quickest task, unfortunately. In the recipe that follows, you must rid the potatoes of their water, chop up a whole myriad of ingredients, let then firm in the fridge, form them, coat them (in ground saltines which gives them a nice, unique taste), fry them and then bake them.

So it's not really the sort of dish you throw together after work unless you like eating really late. But when you've got some extra time or an extra hand or two in the kitchen, this side quickly becomes a nice twist to your meal.

The following recipe is quite basic, relying on fresh parsley and bacon to amp up the flavor, but there are other ways to make these pancakes pop. They're just itching for some hot peppers, extra spices or even a coriander + cilantro twist.

Potato and black bean pancakes after the jump.

If there was one thing that challenged Key West's proliferation of key lime pies, it was rum cakes. For a while, the Tortuga Rum Company had a little shop on the island -- not only offering a proliferation of cakes to purchase, but every flavor waiting in bins to sample. It was, simply, the most wonderful way to pick sweets to buy.

That store is no longer there, but the cakes continue to haunt shelves across the island. Unfortunately, they're not easy to come by in most other areas, unless you've got a good deal of cash saved up to order the $30-plus large cake online.

That means we must do our best to replicate, and at least one recipe gets close -- Recipe Zaar's Almost Tortuga Rum Cake.

Find out how after the jump.

The one thing you realize quite quickly about Cuban cooking is that Cuba knows how to serve a pig. The beef and fish might be tasty, but there's just something about Cuban flavors and pork that was just meant to be.

Having a bottle of sherry in my fridge, one that really needs to be put to use, quickly zeroed in on a recipe for Ginger Sherried Roasted Pork from Cuba Cucina! This recipe is quite simple while infusing a lot of flavor into your run-of-the-mill pork tenderloin.

You just whip together a bunch of ingredients to make a marinade, let the pork marinate in the fridge for a few hours (turning a few times for even marination), and then roasted for 1.5 hours at 325. That's it. Voila! Heck, I'm inclined to bust this out the next time I want to have a tasty dinner, but without the effort. Just get things marinating a day ahead, and you've got a dish that only requires you to throw it in the oven on dinner day.

Hit the jump for the ingredients, and happy pork to you!

Get prepared. Back from a trip to Key West, I'm ready to revel in all things Cuban, tropical, and rum tasty ... until I whimper for the blue seas again and retreat back into my cave.

Above is the sandwich that almost never got eaten. I went to Key West, indulged in as much rum, seafood, and Cuban food as I could handle, and then got waylayed by a freak snowstorm in Atlanta. During my extra day in the sun, I walked the length of Simonton St. and came upon Ana's Cuban Cafe (1222 White St) -- the place I kept meaning to stop at, but never made it to. I'll never make that mistake again, and I hope you won't either.

The cafe is nestled inside a simple corner store, jam-packed with drinks and food. I walked to the counter and ordered a Cuban sandwich -- ham, pulled pork, lettuce, cheese, and mustard pressed between delicious slices of Cuban bread. It was both simple and delicious -- the sort of dish that doesn't need to rely on fancy ingredients because every single one goes perfectly with the next. But the hero of this sandwich is the bread. Cuban bread is wonderfully soft inside, so getting pressed in a plancha, it crisps up easily on the outside, and condenses into almost nothing on the inside. That way, you get the perfect flavor of bread without the stomach-filling weight of a thicker variety. Divine simplicity, just like the cafe itself.

A number of Slashfoodies can't be wrong!

Note: If anyone has good recipes for Cuban bread, let me know. I've tried one thus far, but am still looking for the perfect one.

As I wrote several weeks ago, a pig pickin' is a North Carolina tradition involving a pig, a converted petroleum drum cooker, a bunch of charcoal and a whole lot of time. But a pig pickin' is not the only way to cook a whole hog - cultures across the world have been spit roasting, grilling and burying pigs in hot ash for thousands of years. In many places, pork is the cheapest meal available, making pig roasts an affordable way to have big festive meals for the whole community. Here are a few whole hog traditions from around the world:

Hawaii: Possibly the most famous whole pig preparation of them all, the kalua pig is a staple of the Hawaiian luau. The pig is "dressed" (gutted, the outer layer of skin and hair removed) and salted and placed in an imu - a banana leaf-lined pit filled with hot stones. The pig is covered in more dirt and left for hours until smoky and falling apart tender.

Cuba: Cubans love their lechón (suckling pig), a Christmas Eve tradition. Pigs are often cooked in backyard roasters made from bricks or cinder blocks. One popular version of the homemade roaster is called a "caja china" (a Chinese box), a rather coffin-like device in which the pig is placed on the metal-lined bottom and a tray of coals is placed on top, cooking the meat through indirect heat.

Italy: At the annual Sagra del Maiale festival of pork, Italians grill whole pigs over a food fire and lovingly dis-articulate them to feed the whole village. Skin becomes crispy and meat is buttery soft and succulent. And not a big of the porker is wasted - even the ears and trotters are fair game. Not headed to Italy any time soon? Some Italian restaurants in NYC and other cities have their own Sagra del Maiale.

The Philippines: The image of the golden-skinned pig spinning on a spit over a roaring fire is a reality here in the South Pacific, where Filipinos adore stuffing the pig's belly with herbs and spices, impaling it horizontally, and roasting it until the skin crackles and the meat is meltingly tender. The dish, known as lechon baboy, is a festival day favorite.

The last of the March snow is still on the ground and I was wearing my down coat all day, so The Tasty Island, a Hawaiian food blog, struck me as drool-worthy in two ways - the reviews of yummy Hawaiian food and the amazing palm tree and beach backgrounds in the pictures.

Check it out - coconut shrimp, fried mahimahi, lychee yogurt, takeout Japanese chicken katsu and way more, all rated on blogger Pomai's own Spam musubi rating system (Spam musubi, or spam on rice with seaweed, is an iconic Hawaiian snack) - five Spam musubi means superb, one means average. I'm considering trying to make the sweet, glutinous rice cakes called kakanin with coconut topping, which Pomai describes as the lovechild of a Rice Krispie treat and a mochi (Japanese glutinous rice dessert). I wonder if there are any cheap tickets to Hawaii on Travelocity?

Hawaiian Airlines is apparently stepping up their meal service for first-class customers by offering a new tasting menu during their flights.

The menu will be comprised of twenty different entrees set on a rotation, with five available to choose from on any given flight. For lunch or dinner, customers will choose three of the five, and for breakfast they will select two of three plus will receive a fresh fruit plate.

According to the press release, entrees could include "Hawaiian Crab Cake Tantalizing "Taste of the Island" with a Zesty Pineapple Salsa, Rock Shrimp and Lemon Pepper Ravioli with Creamy Sun Dried Tomato-Basil Sauce and Tri-Pepper Garni, and Chicken Tandoori served with a tangy Makhani Sauce and Sultana Basmati Rice Pilaf." In addition, they will be offering a Pomegranate Passion beverage which was created exclusively for the airline.

The tasting menu was introduced in March on the San Francisco - Honolulu route, and will now be offered system-wide to all first-class customers in May.

Think your imported fish from China or those fancy baked goods from Canada are oh la la luxe? Think again.

ABC news reports that while 13% of the US annual diet is made up of imported foods that include things like frozen catfish from China, beans from Belgium, jalapenos from Peru, blackberries from Guatemala, and packaged foods from Canada, India and the Philippines, a mere 1.3% of all imported foods are actually inspected. That means the other 98.7% of imported foods are released into the American market without a check for filth to unsafe food coloring to contamination with pesticides to salmonella.

What does this mean? Just be careful, ok?

Skyr isn't carried in too many American stores, but the Icelandic yogurt definitely has its fans. It is thicker than conventional yogurt, largely because it is strained, much like Greek yogurt. You are most likely to be familiar with the yogurt if it is carried at your local Whole Foods, where it is packaged into small containers and flavored like conventional yogurts, with berries, vanilla, etc. Despite the generally positive reaction from consumers, Whole Foods no longer promotes the fact that they carry Skyr, or any other Icelandic products, because of the company's offical policy of dissapproval for Iceland resuming commercial whaling last year.

The average consumer, perhaps the average Skyr fan, in the US isn't aware of the whaling issue and because Whole Foods hasn't promoted it, they're not likely to - especially because Whole Foods is planning to stock more Icelandic products this spring. Whole Foods will be carrying Nói Síríus chocolate easter eggs in approximately 70 stores. To entice WF to stock the eggs, Nói Síríus seems to have offered them at almost no cost, as the marketing director of the chocolate company said "There are no profits involved, this is first and foremost a sales experiment." More will be imported next year if they prove popular. Whether Whole Foods will be promoting them now, or in future, is still unknown, though it certainly seems like it would be a good business strategy to promote the products you carry if you're going to carry them at all.

If you're familiar at all with the typical fruits of tropical Asia, you've probably heard of durian. It's a fruit, alright, but it certainly doesn't give off the heavenly fruity scent of regular tropical fruits. According to the reports (I have, myself, never been around the stuff), durian smells really, really, really bad. I have heard phrases like "sewage pipes" and "rotting onions." However, like many foods that are often fairly foul upon first experience, durian is considered a sort of delicacy, and for food blogger Babe in the City, durian is enough of a delight that it was mashed into a pulp and added to cupcakes!

Now the only question is, what flavor frosting goes with "rotting onions?"

Milk consumption in Japan is steadily declining and there seems to be no drop in production, which means that there is a lot of extra milk that needs to be disposed of every year. A liquor shop owner in Hokkaido, Chitoshi Nakahara, began to wonder what could be done about the oversupply of milk when he was struck the idea of combining milk and beer. He dubbed his new product "bilk."

Bilk is 30% milk and took six months to develop with the help of a local brewer. The production process is much like that of regular beer and the resulting brew "apart from a slight milky scent looks and tastes like ordinary beer." It is currently being produced in limited quantities and is available via mail order, but Nakahara says that he has gotten so much media attention that he is totally out of stock for the moment. Despite this, bilk's success won't be assured until the novelty wears off and Nakahara can find out whether people will continue to buy the product.

In the US, Valentine's Day celebrations are generally geared towards couples, with a slight bias towards women when it comes to the marketing of chocolates, flowers and other gifts - a bias that is meant to have women encourage men to buy gifts for them. In Japan, things are a little different. The chocolates and other Valentine's Day items are marketed towards women, but they're marketed for them to buy and give to men, rather than the other way around. Barentain Dei calls for gifts to be given to boyfriends and husbands, as well as for giri-choco, or obligation chocolates, to be given to male bosses, coworkers, classmates and friends. About 80% of Japanese women participate in the tradition, spending an average of $20 on their most chocolate important purchase and $6 on each of their other chocolate gifts, averaging $56 per woman for a total of over $400 million countrywide on the holiday. This doesn't include additional gifts or fancy dinners.

If this all seems a bit unfair, as it is more one-sided than the US version of Valentine's, not to worry. On March 14th, the Japanese celebrate "White Day" as in reciprocation for Valentine's Day, where men buy gifts, from chocolates to expensive jewelry, as a sign of affection

Chef Alan Wong was the guest judge on last week's episode of Top Chef and during the show, he prepared food from a traditional Hawaiian luau for the contestants to try. It was the first time that some of them had had Hawaiian food and they certainly got to taste the creations of a master chef. Chef Wong has one of the best restaurants in Hawaii and was the recipient of a James Beard Award a few years back. He specialiazes not only in Hawaiian cooking and flavors, but on fusing those traditions with the techniques and ingredients from Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Alan Wong's New Wave Luau: Recipes from Honolulu's Award-Winning Chef has a large collection of many of his top dishes, both traditional and innovative. The recipes, as they are the work of a very experienced chef, can be complex, but many are very accessible to the home chef (particularly some of the appetizers and desserts) and there are plenty of beautiful photographs to keep you motivated to work. When followed through, the results are well worth it and you can get an idea of what the would-be Top Chefs experienced on their island lunch before the finale. Dishes include Kalua Pig (pit-roasted!), Li Hing Mui Chutney, Five Spice Risotto, Curried Chicken Lumpia with Mango Salad, Grilled Lamb Chops with Coconut Macadamia Crust, Guava Sorbet and Lilikoi Brulee.

The end of the season for a show like Bravo's Top Chef is always bittersweet. Like a good chocolate, you want to finish it off, but you also sort of wish that it could go on. Come to think of it, this season might be more like the "finishing off" chocolate, since there has been so much drama that it will almost be a relief to see it end. Almost.

Last night was the first part of the show's season finale and it started off by giving viewers a sneak peek into what the chefs have been doing for the past few months during the break between the main taping and the filming of the finale. Marcel and Sam spent the time practicing their technique, with Marcel trying to learn as much as possible about new ingredients and presentations and Sam learning about pastry, which he felt was a weak spot in his training. Elia and Ilan each spent time learning about Hawaiian food, but neither actively tried to learn as much new information as their competitors.