Banana Coffee Bread - Yum!

Does your household suffer from bananas going bad syndrome? This is what I usually make when our bananas reach the stage where they are getting freckles, and on the path to turning full blown brown and no good to anyone.

Now, here is a weird little secret about me: I hate bananas. But I will eat this coffee bread because it's so darn good. Honestly, I think it's a texture thing from childhood because my mother, God love her, used to cook vegetables within inches of their lives until they were limp and colorless, so anything that is mushy is an immediate no-go for me. Which probably explains why I'm not a big fan of fruit - most of it is mushy and stringy and I just can't handle the texture. Anyway, it's rainy and cold here in Southern California, so it's a great day to be baking this - plus we have two bananas that are definitely on their way South.

So, without further ado, here is the banana coffee bread recipe. I must thank my good friend and old boss, Jill Guabello, for sharing this recipe. It's moist and delicious. I have played with it a bit, and based on my experiments with it, you can substitute any nuts you want for the walnuts. I've had success using ground almonds, ground hazelnuts, and ground pecans with this and all options were great. You can also opt not to use nuts at all - my family prefers nuts and it brings the protein in the bread up a notch, so I always use some. It's up to you. I've also substituted applesauce to cut down on the sugar while experimenting, but remember that doing this will increase the baking time to about 45 minutes if you opt for it.

1/2 cup shortening (I use butter-flavored Crisco because it is better than butter cholesterol-wise and seems to have a more stable texture. It also doesn't have such a low scorching point).
1 cup sugar (or 1 cup applesauce)
2 eggs (egg substitute also works here)
3/4 cup ripe mashed banana (about 1 huge or 2 smaller ones)
1 1/4c sifted all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (or nuts of your choice)

Preheat the oven to 350. Cream together shortening and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in banana. Sift together dry ingredients and add to the banana mixture, beating well. Pour into greased 9x9x2 inch pan. This is important - you cannot use a loaf pan for this recipe. It doesn't bake all the way through and burns on top if you do. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes or until the middle doesn't jiggle when you pull out the pan. Top should be golden brown and bread should be set. Toothpick should come out clean when inserted. Cool and slice into approximately 12 squares.

I went on to Fitday to see the calorie cost for this one. As listed, the cake per slice contains 230 calories, 11 grams of fat, 29 grams carbohydrate, 3.2 grams of protein. If you opt to substitute applesauce for the sugar, you will save some calories and carbs. Brings it to: 175 per slice, fat doesn't change, 15 grams carbohydrates, and protein also doesn't change.

Later, oatmeal raisin cookies. Because it's a baking kind of a day.

Hot Cross Buns!

Hey, it's almost Easter time, and you know what that means: hot cross buns, people!!!

OK, folks, you need to try these if you like breads. The recipe is from Cooking Light magazine, April issue. Pretty easy to follow, and the resulting buns are really quite tasty. They have the texture of a good panettone, and you can taste just a slight hint of the orange/cinnamon/nutmeg combination. The frosting is super-sweet, but there's only a little bit of it and it offsets the other flavors.

Recipe link: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/hot-cross-buns-50400000120213/

This is a definite keeper, and will make this again (and again). I changed the recipe a bit, as my family doesn't do well with fruit rind or currants. So I doubled the amount of golden raisins, and it worked out just fine. I also didn't use the quick rise yeast the recipe calls for, as I despise using any kind of quick rise yeast in any bread recipes - that stuff makes the dough consistency too dense, the dough tends to rise fast and then flop with no hope of recovery, resulting in a very weird texture, and it will make your bread bake unevenly.

The only issue other people may have with the recipe is the prep time. Make sure you have 3 hours to do these in because that is approximately how long they will take. The end result is worth it, though; I promise!

Two things that I have found over the years that help my breads (any breads, not just the buns): I will only use King Arthur brand flour. I don't know what those folks in Vermont are doing with their milling processes, but it is superior stuff for smooth, consistent breads every time. Yes, I know it costs more, but it's really worth it as you will see from the results you get each and every time you use it in bread recipes. And pizza dough!

I will also only use Fleischmann's yeast - not the rapid rise type, though. Fleishmann's has consistently active cultures and I've never had a problem with it. Another good idea is to keep yeast in the refrigerator, as it stays fresher for longer periods of time than if you keep it at room temperature. The cold retards the active cultures and puts them into a dormant state until you're ready to use the yeast. I've even frozen yeast I've bought in bulk at Sam's Club or Costco and it works great once defrosted.

This recipe rates a solid 5 out of 5 stars for me. I'm not usually a big bread eating person, but I enjoyed these. Good texture, not overpowering flavor, slightly sweet, spicy and fruity. Spring-season tastes!

My family will love these - but Le Spouse is the Big Bread-o-Phile in this household. I sent him a picture of the finished buns, and I could literally feel the drool through the smartphone. He's probably panting to get home and try some. I anticipate a major dent in the 24 buns this recipe yields by bedtime tonight.

Hope you like the recipe, and the picture above is what my results looked like. Oh, the only thing I'd be careful of is the cooking spray in the muffin tins - I'm not sure if it's my oven that did this or what, but the bottoms of the buns are slightly burnt which I don't like. I suspect it's my oven, though - it is newer and I'm still adjusting to its quirks.

I'm currently working on getting a food truck together, so stay tuned - I am finally going to begin the business that I've been dreaming about for years and years.

It's a Jersey Thing

I'm deviating from my normal food blog containing recipes today to talk about something that is a staple in New Jersey households: Taylor Ham. Or, Taylor Pork Roll. What you call it depends on where in NJ you reside - northern NJ-ers say "Taylor Ham" and southern NJ-ers say "Pork Roll".

It's a Jersey Thing. Now, how can I describe it to you?

It's rolled pork - but it's not ham, not bacon, not Canadian bacon, and not Spam. It's a salty, hammy, bacon-y, porky tasting delicious piece of meat that I miss terribly. To call it Spam would be to imply that it's fatty, which it isn't. To call it bacon would imply that it has smokiness - which it doesn't. It is a mad, flavorful combination of everything that is good from a pig, with salt added to it.

I'm on this rant today about it because my good friend from many years ago, Joanne, sent me a care package containing TWO GIANT ROLLS of the stuff. I'm hoarding one roll in my freezer and I sliced up the second roll this morning and cooked some of it for breakfast.

Normally, people in NJ/NY/PA will eat it on a Kaiser roll with cheese and a fried egg. Some people will also put ketchup on it, but to me that's an abomination. I'd rather taste the ingredients all dancing together on the roll without the ketchup, thanks. You should too, if you are a Taylor Ham Virgin and haven't tried it yet. Then add ketchup later if you really want to put that stuff on your eggs.

People where I reside now in California think I am Taylor Ham Obsessed. Actually, my child does, too. How can I explain my Passion for the Porkiness?

I grew up eating it - it's a childhood memory. Do you remember that scene from the animated movie "Ratatouille" where Remy makes the ratatouille for Anton Ego and he takes one bite and is instantly transported to the farmhouse kitchen of his youth? That's exactly how I feel about Taylor Ham. Great food like this will always give you an out of body experience that transports you somewhere. If it doesn't, it's not worth eating. This is probably why I'm fat, by the way. Waaay too many out of body experiences for my own good.

I picked up the box from my mailbox yesterday and was literally drooling on the way to the car. DD asked me what I was so freaking happy about and I had to tell her it was because this was a giant box of delectable porky goodness and we were going to slice it up and make it last for awhile. She still thinks I'm nuts. And I actually shared two precious slices with her this morning. I AM nuts, I know.

So, to make a proper Taylor Ham sandwich, here is what you need to do:

1) You must find the right roll. I've noticed as I get older, I'm getting more picky about how my food tastes and how it's cooked, or maybe that's just the chef in me coming out. I am disappointed in the rolls out here in the west. You can't find good rolls here. You can find rolls, don't misunderstand me, but the textures are wrong.

Anyway, NJ Kaiser rolls are a wonderful taste experience - a proper one is pretty huge, and has a buttery, flaky crust with poppy seeds baked into it. When you cut into the roll, the inside is a ball of chewy deliciousness. The crust crackles and flakes off when you cut it. I don't know how they do it. I've been trying to duplicate it here for years, and suspect it has to do with the humidity level difference and having a proofer to use when making the dough. I've come close, but I still haven't succeeded in getting it exactly right. I'm seriously considering finding a resource so I can import them.

2) The cheese must be the deli style fresh cheese. None of that processed shit, please, or I'll have to hunt you down and kill you. It must be cheddar cheese, preferably a slice of deli style yellow American. Two slices on the sandwich.

3) Fry the egg over medium - you don't want yolk running all over the place, but if you prefer your eggs like that, go for it. I don't like the mess. Salt and pepper the egg very lightly.

4) In order to cook the Taylor Ham, you need to cut 4 little notches around the edges. If you don't, the center will puff up in the pan and the slices will look like little hammy hats. Which is cute, but then your meat isn't cooking properly. They should be lightly browned.

Assemble the sandwich on said Kaiser roll, slice it in half and serve it hot.

Oh my, a little slice of Heaven.

Now go forth and find yourself some of this stuff. DO IT! DO IT NOW!

Split Pea Soup

Maybe not the most dietetic thing in the world, and now I'm actually going to visit Fitday to do a calorie count, but this is what I made today in the good old reliable crock pot. It's the recipe my Grandmother always made, in the days before crock pots. The whole house smells wonderful all day, and then getting to eat it is like a small slice of heaven to me.

She was my mother's mother, and she lived with us when I was a kid. We had a mother-daughter house and I could go and visit Grandma anytime I wanted just by opening a door into her attached apartment. The woman was a FANTASTIC cook. She was one of those old-fashioned ladies that made everything from scratch, used real butter and real buttermilk (she used to drink it - said it gave her glossy hair), and could just pouf up a delicious meal off the top of her head. She lived through the Great Depression, so she knew how to make a meal that could last for a week, and she really knew what to do with leftovers. She was amazing.

God, I miss her. I don't think I appreciated her when she was alive, and I regret that. She was a wonderful lady.

Her recipe also yields a heck of a lot of soup. I just filled up three huge Tupperware containers of it, and put two in the freezer. I know there is no way I'm getting The Daughter to eat anything green, and husband took one look at it and the fact that it had ham hocks in it for flavor and said, "You're not going to make me eat that, are you?" Nope.

MORE FOR ME! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA....they don't know what they are missing.

I'm posting the recipe here in case anyone wants to try it. I just looked it up on Fitday, and the entire thing is hefty in calories and carbs - divided by the number of cups it yields, though - it's really not bad at all.
I'm going to say this recipe yields around 15 servings.

Per serving: 254 calories, 5 grams of fat, 33 grams carbs, 19.5g protein. Calorie and fat-wise, not too shabby --- except the carb count is what's killing me. Figures, because I love it.

Anyway:

2 ham hocks
2 small bags of split peas
5 whole cloves
4 cans of low sodium chicken broth
1 large whole white onion, finely diced
5-6 large carrots, also finely diced

Pre-soak the split peas by bringing them to a rolling boil for 10 minutes, then turning off the heat and leaving them in the pot with the water, covered, for 2 hours. Drain.

In a crock pot combine everything, adding the soaked peas to the other ingredients and cook on low for 8 hours. (If you want a thicker soup, use slightly less chicken broth).

Remove the ham hocks and discard. Remove the cloves and discard. Take the remaining soup and puree in a food processor. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with home made croutons, if desired.

Mine made so much I am set for lunches for the next month.

Until next time... who knows what I'm making tomorrow night, since it's a work day/packing day... and we find out about our mortgage commitment tomorrow as well.
Fingers crossed... enjoy your food!

So much

So much stuff to write about, so little time to do it in. We are in the process of buying a house, packing, and moving (again) so I'm particularly stressed and in the mode of making easy standby meals.

One of my crowd-pleasing dinners here at Chez Moi is the turkey burger. I soup it up a bit, mostly because using ground turkey breast can be challenging due to the lack of fat in the meat, which makes undoctored burgers very dry. I have some tricks I use to make them taste better.

Trick 1: Flavor the meat. Instead of just slapping the turkey breast meat into patties, I find that adding Worcestershire, Soy Sauce, and just a hint of steak sauce to it (about 1 tbsp of each thing), plus a dash of garlic powder and some salt & pepper ... or Nature's Seasonings make the meat more flavorful and moist.

Trick 2: If possible, use an indoor grill. Not only will something like the George Foreman grill leach off that fat, it cooks the burgers on both sides at once, reducing the cooking time. And it gets the nice BBQ taste (although not exactly) which is an added bonus.

Trick 3: Sauteed onions are a must - I slice up a yellow onion and saute it in a nonstick pan using a few spritzes of olive oil and saute until they are translucent. Then add a bit of the Worcestershire sauce to it to give them some zing.

Trick 4: If you are looking for a diner-like experience, add some turkey bacon as a topper.

We usually eat this meal with steamed corn or corn on the cob and I use whole wheat buns on them. You can also throw on some reduced fat cheese for extra zing.

All in all, the burger meal takes me about 20 minutes to make, and it is consumed rapidly by all who live here.

We've been having these once a week at least since Moving Hell has commenced.

I know I haven't been on here much, either but that's due to working, the child, and packing to move and dealing with the builder/the bank/my life. Good times, I tell ya.

I hope to get back to some more experimental recipes after Thanksgiving - although I will also be posting about our Thanksgiving meal, since my young one will not let me get through a year without having a (in her words) "giant turkey".

Be back when I can. Enjoy your food....

Beef Daube Provencale

Another slow cooker recipe, as promised.

Unfortunately, I have now discovered yet another limitation to Picky Spouse's list of Do Not Makes (you know, soups, cream sauces, fish, etc.?) Yup, can't cook with wine, apparently, either. He walked in the door and wanted to know what smelled like feet. This was not an auspicious beginning to the entire meal.

The conversation went:
"It's a version of French beef stew in the crock pot.
"Did you put feet in it?"
"No, there are carrots, onions, olives, and some red wine in there, though."
"That's it - why did you cook something with wine? Have you done that before?"
"Yes, we ate Julia Child's recipe for Beef Bourginon and you loved it. Remember?"
"Well, the house smelled pretty good then but right now it smells like feet."

So, The Spouse is refusing to try this meal at all and is planning on making hot dogs for his supper. I think he'd be perfectly content to live on hot dogs, pancakes, and tacos for the rest of his life because those are really the only things he likes.

The pickiness makes me want to bang my head against the wall. I miss eating things like fish, too. The Daughter has suggested that we start a Good Food Club of just her and I, and we let The Spouse fend for himself for dinners at this point. She, too, misses seafood. And soups.

I will now rate the recipe for the beef with my usual commentary. The Daughter and I both ate it over long grain rice rather than the noodles the recipe recommends.

Link to the recipe is here. Please also note that my stew came out just like the picture. Hooray.

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/beef-daube-provenal-10000000780341/

The Good: Prep time not too bad, ingredients not hard to find, not too expensive, and it cooked within the allotted time and (I thought) smelled wonderful. Don't you just love coming home and having the whole living area smell like stew, especially when it's raining and kind of icky outside (like it was today)? The Daughter and I both enjoyed it - the meat was tender and flavorful, and the veggies were yummy, too.

The Bad: I had to buy cheesecloth in which to put the herbs in the crock pot and of course my regular grocery store didn't carry that, so I had to go to a specialty cooking store to get it (which is a pain in the hind quarters in Southern California as there aren't many of those around. Most people here go out to eat.) The stew also had a very acidic taste to it - like a tang, which you may not be used to if you always eat classic American-type beef stews. I enjoyed it, but people with a taste bud profile like Le Spouse will probably not care too much for it.

The Ugly: See the conversation I had with the Spouse, above. I cannot get the man to try anything new and different lately without an almighty struggle.

I should have known better, considering that the first time I ever took him out for Chinese food, he refused to eat it as he said the plate resembled snot. Green snot, if I recall correctly. I should learn and keep the gourmet experimentation cooking for me and The Daughter, because at least we are willing to try new things.

First time in a Japanese restaurant in California, the Daughter (8 years old) plunged right in and ordered Unagi. And ate it. And enjoyed it. Once I told Le Spouse it was eel, he freaked right out. Not that he'd ever try to eat anything that swims, so it's a moot point.

Anyway, this recipe rates a solid 4 out of 5 stars for me. Easy to prep, easy to eat, and great for a rainy day. It meets the "Will I make this again?" test with a resounding 'Yes'.

I apologize for turning this into the Complaint About What the Spouse Will Not Eat blog, but it's frustrating for me - I will be the first one to admit that I love being a great cook, and hearing people praise my food. Now, I don't say this lightly or with arrogance - I have a lot of experience and I'm pretty good at cooking. I have my failures, like everyone else - but I really love to cook, and it's a labor of love for me. It's like I'm giving the love to the people I feed when I create meals for them. And when The Spouse gets all cranky and toddler-like, I can't give him the love on a plate and I don't receive any love back. Cooking is my love language. Does that make sense?

Well, in any case - that's all for today - may your culinary adventures be tasty ones! Tomorrow, I'll blog about lasagne.

Slow Cooker Recipe - Part Deux

I made another recipe from my experimental slow cooker selection again on Friday. This time, it was Slow Cooker Red Beans & Rice. Recipe link:
http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/slow-cooker-red-beans-rice-10000000443497/

Please note that mine came out with more liquid than they are showing in their photo of the dish. I don't know why that happened, either. The ingredients didn't absorb the 3 cups of water? I also think the flavor could be a bit further improved by substituting chicken broth for the water, but that's just me.

I left out the red pepper flakes because we are not big fans of "spicy" in this house, and I used Hillshire Farm smoked turkey sausage, sliced into thick slices.

The good: It makes a very tasty dish, actually. The Daughter and I very much enjoyed it, and we ended up eating the leftovers from it for lunches over the next few days. I would gladly make it again, because prep time was a snap and it wasn't expensive to buy the ingredients at all.

The bad: The Spouse, however, had a complaint about the turkey sausage I used - saying the flavor was "too smoky" and it "tasted funny", so I cannot make this recipe again for the whole family. Unless I switch sausages to a blander tasting type. He was also not a big fan of the consistency ("too mushy" and the sausages had a "funny skin").

The ugly: Hey, there was no ugly this time around. Overall, it's a dish I can make again that is not too costly, it has a lot of healthy stuff in it, and it's tasty. Just gotta find a different flavor sausage for Mr. Fussy-Spouse.

This one rates 4 out of 5 stars for me. I'd also use brown rice to save a bit on carbs rather than the long grain white rice, but your mileage may vary on this point.

I've already set up the crock pot this evening with this week's experiment - Beef Provencale (not sure if that's pronounced Beef pro-ven-KAL or Beef pro-ven-SAL because I don't speak la Francois) - so far, it smells good but I'm a bit put off by the prep time and I'm also preparing for at least one complaint about the mushrooms involved. I also had to hunt down some cheesecloth for the spices, which was a bit annoying but we'll see if it was worth it tomorrow night after work.

Til tomorrow or when I can get back here again, and may all your culinary adventures be delicious.