Bringing Party Favors to Hell

I'm making an effort to post more often, so today you get baking talk. :) I had some bananas that had gone way past their eat-by date (in my house that's when they have no green left on the skin) and I didn't want to just pitch them, so I figured I'd make banana nut bread. Being a little bored with my usual recipe, I decided to tweak it a bit. I thought chai flavors would go well with banana so I added a couple of teaspoons of chai masala. Then I had a brainstorm and threw in a bit of cayenne. It turned out amazingly well! The kidunit agreed, so I am definitely making this again. I don't have any pictures of it because I didn't think to do that before we ate it all, but here's the recipe in case any of you want to try it.

Spicy Banana Nut Bread

1 3/4 C flour
1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp chai masala*
1/8-1/4 tsp cayenne (a guess- I didn't really measure)
2/3 C brown sugar
1/3 C vegetable shortening
2 eggs
2 Tbsp milk or half-and-half
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 C mashed ripe banana (about 3 small)
½ C coarsely chopped pecans (I usually use more like a cup, because I love pecans!)

Preheat oven to 350 F and grease a 8"x4"x2" loaf pan. I like to line my loaf pan with a long “U” of parchment paper which helps you lift out the loaf without it sticking. I use ordinary binder clips to clip the paper to the rim of the pan and keep it from curling in over the bread while baking.

Stir together dry ingredients, set aside. Cream shortening and sugar. Add the eggs to creamed mixture one at a time, beating until smooth after each addition, then add the vanilla. Alternately add the dry ingredients and the banana to the creamed mixture, beating until smooth after each addition. Fold in nuts. Turn batter into pan and bake for 60-65 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool at least 10 minutes before attempting to cut.

*a blend of ground ginger, cardamom, coriander seed, black pepper & cinnamon used in the making of chai tea. Sometimes it also has bay leaf, fennel seed, and/or anise seed as well. The one I used was an inexpensive mass-produced blend I found at a local Asian market, but if you can't find this locally, it would be easy to blend your own. Or, the Savory Spice Shop has a version for sale online.

And here is a bonus recipe. A friend with a surfeit of green tomatoes asked me for this and since it's the time of year for those (pick them before the first frost!) I figured I would share my grandmother's recipe for a spicy green tomato relish. Gramma used 'farm' measurements which I've tried to convert to more standard ones, but it's hard to find conversion charts for specific produce. It would be pretty easy to halve or even quarter the recipe, if you wanted to.

Damn Hot Stuff**

2 quarts green tomatoes (about 5 pounds)
2 quarts onions (about 4 pounds)
2 pints jalapenos (about 1.5 pounds)
2 pints (4 C.) cider vinegar
2 pints (4 C.) sugar
16 oz prepared mustard (she used plain yellow but you can use your favorite)
1 tsp. salt

Roughly puree tomatoes, onions and hot peppers (she used a meat grinder but a food processor probably works just as well). Don't puree it smooth, there should be lots of chunks. Pour into a large non-reactive dutch oven or stock pot. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Pack in jars, seal. Great with pinto beans, green beans, ham, on hot dogs- lots of things!

**yes, this was Gramma's official name for it. ;D

I had a cooking first last night. Though I've been cooking for decades, I had never made macaroni and cheese from scratch before. It was always too easy to just reach for that box with the radioactive orange cheese powder in it. Recently, though, I keep hearing people talk about the home made kind, and seeing some interesting variations on it, and decided I wanted to give it a shot. So I hunted up a recipe on FoodNetwork's website and got to work. First I had to halve it, because it made a huge amount. Then, I realized I didn't have any gruyere, or parmesan or heavy cream. I did have generic swiss, and romano, and half & half, though. I didn't have any elbo 'roni, but I had a big box of conchigliette. And I didn't have any bread crumbs, but I did have some commercial garlic & butter croutons I could pulse in the food processor to make some. Also, my kidunit always wants some sort of meat substance at dinner, so I decided to add a token amount of bacon. So this is the recipe I ended up with, which is bears only a familial resemblance to the original. ( Read more... )

As you all know, I love Fall, so I won't go on about it, other than to say one of my favorite things about it is that it's finally Soup Season again. I don't know why, but I just don't like to make or eat soup in the Summer. I was craving potato soup last night, which I haven't made in years because... well, I am not sure why! Just haven't. Unfortunately, without a substantial amount of protein in his meals the kidunit becomes The Uber Crank, so I didn't want to make my usual potato soup which is basically just potatoes, milk, and some seasoning. So to increase the protein level I added two of the foods that make other foods better! Cheese, and bacon (mmmmm, bacon!). Then I decided using some broth instead of just milk would increase the protein, too, so I did that. And I had some liebfraumilch on hand so I added some of that for flavor interest. (I really wanted to add some golden beets to this recipe, but the regular grocery store didn't have any and I didn't want to make a special trip to Whole Paycheck to find some. I'll do that next time, I guess.) In the end, the soup turned out really well, so I'm sharing the recipe in case others are interested.

Potato Soup with Cheddar and Bacon

6 slices bacon
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
2 C chicken broth (low sodium)
1 C white wine
1 1/2 C table cream or half-and-half
4 cups diced potatoes*
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
1/8 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

In a 3-quart saucepan, cook bacon until crisp, remove and drain well on paper towels. Remove all but about two tablespoons of the bacon grease. Add the vegetables and garlic to the bacon grease and saute until the onions are soft and translucent, but not brown (3-4 minutes). Stir in chicken broth, wine, potatoes, and spices; bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. At that point, add the cream and cook over low heat for 10 more minutes. At this point, take about a cup of the vegetables out of the soup and mash them in a small bowl with a potato masher (or you could use a blender or food processor) and then return the mashed vegetables to the pot and stir them in to blend. Turn off the heat and stir in cheese until just melted (the soup will be hot enough to melt the cheese without the heat being on). Crumble/shred the bacon into small pieces and add to soup (I didn't add it during the primary cooking process so all the flavor wouldn't cook out of the bacon). Makes about 6 servings.

* I used a mixture of russet and red potatoes so I had different textures. The russets are mealy and will mash easily to thicken the soup, the reds stay firm so you have lots of nice chunks.

If you want to make this ovo-lacto vegetarian, leave out the bacon, substitute olive oil for the bacon grease, and use vegetable broth instead of chicken.

Local Colorado peaches have begun showing up in the stores, always one of my favorite times of year. I love peaches. The ones I picked up tonight were perfectly ripe, fragrant, and bigger than a softball (I swear they were practically grapefruit sized!). For weeks now I've been thinking about a cold fruit soup I used to make decades ago, so since the peaches were perfect, I dug out the recipe and made up a batch, and it turned out even better than I remembered! So, I'm sharing the recipe. It's really simple and delicious.

Cold Peach Raspberry Soup

6 ripe peaches
2 C. raspberry juice (or cran-raspberry if you can't find plain raspberry)
1 C water
1 cinnamon stick
8 cloves
1/8 tsp nutmeg or mace
1 stem (2-3 leaves)fresh basil
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 C sugar
1 C plain or vanilla yogurt (reduce sugar a bit if you use vanilla)
1/2 C white wine (I used a vino verde which has a bit of sparkle and it really worked well)

Peel and seed the peaches. To peel more easily, cut an X in the bottom of the peach and drop it whole into a pot of boiling water for about three minutes. When you take it out, the skin will slip off easily from the cut end, but take care not to burn your fingers. Cut the peaches into quarters, combine peaches, juice, water and spices in a large pot. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer for 8-10 minutes until the peaches are soft but not discolored.

Remove the whole spices. Reserve the liquid in the pan, transfer the peaches to a food processor or blender and puree the fruit with the sugar until smooth. Add the puree back to the liquid in the pan, whisk to combine well, and let it cool for half an hour. Add the yogurt and whisk it in until well blended. Finally, gently stir in the wine, then transfer the soup to a sealable container and chill for several hours before serving. You can garnish it wish fresh raspberries and mint or basil leaves if you like. If you make too much, the soup freezes very well.

Just some rambling...

I was disappointed to watch the first ep of the new Ice Road Truckers season and find that neither of my faves from last season are back this year. On the other hand, it's cool that they're based out of Inuvik this time. I found myself looking for Ray and Fraser in the background, then I remembered... they're fictional. ;P I'm continually amused that IRT has been lumped into the History Channel's "American Originals" series. I suppose if you take "America" to be "North America" not "United States of America" it works.

In Top Chef news, I am absolutely disgusted that Antonia is out and squinchy-faced black-cloud Lisa is still in the running. Gah. Why her? Other than that she makes a good bad guy? ETA: Tom Colicchio explains it all. I guess that the "lucky-dog-who-keeps-skating-by-effect," in which a chef of decent, but not stellar, skills gets lucky and doesn't screw up at precisely the moment that one of their more gifted opponents does." makes sense.

I've watched the first two eps of Next Food Network Star. I am not impressed with any of them. Also, is it just me or does Lisa Garza (another odd chef named Lisa?) bear an uncanny resemblance to Sandra Bullock? (separated at birth, I tell ya!) I keep wanting tell her to step away from the spray tan... yikes! Sometimes she looks like a reverse raccoon.

My Flickers have apparently been chased out of their nest by squirrels. This bums me out muchly but there isn't anything I can do about it. Nature red in tooth and claw and all that. :( In the backyard the feeders are attracting a wide variety of pretties though. Cassin's finches, house finches, house sparrows, chickadees (mountain and black-capped), goldfinches, blue jays, black-throated sparrows, mourning doves, and once I saw a red-headed woodpecker. Oh, and there is also the usual assortment of greedy grackles. I have to move my main feeder to a hook up under the eaves every evening at sunset or the raccoons come and raid it. I could just leave it there, I suppose, but it's much harder to watch the birds there.

I tried a new recipe last night. It was supposed to be an asian pork roast cooked in the crock pot but by the time I got to the store to buy ingredients and then prepped it was too late to do it in the crock pot so instead I cubed the pork and used the sauce recipe with a few additions and just cooked it on the stove for an hour. It actually turned out quite well-- sort of a cross between teriyaki pork and curried pork-- nicely mouth-warming but not painfully spicy. I served it over rice with steamed broccoli and it was yummy! I don't want to forget the recipe so I'm posting it here ( behind the cut )

The return of Jericho is making me happy so far. It does not hurt that I think Esai Morales is v. v. hunky in a kind of rough-edged George Clooney sort of way. I hope Maj. Beck turns out to be an innocent dupe or something so I don't have to feel guilty for finding him attractive. :) Actually, all my current TV is making me fairly happy. Project Runway has been really good this season, and Kyle XY, Stargate: Atlantis, Sarah Connor Chronicles have all been, for the most part, keeping me pleased. Ghosthunters International was kind of lame but at least it's been entertaining watching the incredibly credulous Barry and Brian scare each other half to death. I've been loving Torchwood this season-- it's head and shoulders better than last season, thank heavens. And Primeval is a blast, with its intrepid yet slightly hapless good guys versus CGI dinosaurs, sulpherous worms, and a Wonderbra-enhanced MadMaxian femme fatale! Also, ardent_muses has introduced me to Band of Brothers, which so far (2.25 eps in) is excellent!

Also, this has been a great week, cooking wise. Saturday night I had ardent_muses over for a belated birthday dinner and the Beef Stroganoff turned out perfectly, as did the Guinness Cake for dessert. Actually, it wasn't a real Guinness cake, as I used a St. Peter's Cream Stout instead, but it was just as good. :) Then Sunday night I made a big pot of navy-bean and ham soup. I was so happy with how it turned out, the beans just meltingly tender and the broth all smoky from the ham. Mmmmm. Then tonight I tried reproducing a recipe my kidunit loves at a local restaurant, and it turned out both fairly easy and really yummy. I'm typing up the recipe here so I don't forget it.

( Penne with Chicken, Broccoli and Goat Cheese )

I've been taken to task for not posting these recipes instead of emailing them, so, here, for shrewreader, are a bunch of mint cookie recipes I found using Google. :-)

( recipes behind the cut )

PS: If you have a cookie recipe that combines oatmeal, chocolate chips and crushed candy canes, aukestrel is looking for one!

aukestrel mentioned this recipe in her LJ the other day so I decided to share it. I created it in response to an "Old Bay Seasoning" recipe contest back in... oh, I think it was 1990 or so. Anyway, the recipe didn't win a prize but it was a runner-up and it did make it into the contest cookbook. It's an easy recipe, but not quick. ;)

Kellie’s Old Bay Pork Green Chili

2-3 Tbsp. olive oil
2 lbs pork loin, trimmed and cubed
1 lb. ground pork
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
3-4 cloves garlic
2 28 oz. can whole Italian tomatoes
2 28 oz cans tomatillos*, drained
2 4 oz. cans diced green chilies (or 1/2 cup of fresh roasted chilies, cut up)
3 Tbsp. Old Bay seasoning
2 Tbsp. chili powder
Optional:
1 4oz. can diced jalapeños (or 2 fresh jalapeños, chopped) if you like it extra spicy.

Heat the olive oil in a large dutch oven, add the pork, onions, garlic and spices. Cook over medium heat until the pork is browned. Drain excess fat. Crush the tomatoes and tomatillos in your hands, add to the pork along with remaining ingredients, including the liquid from the tomatoes. Do not add salt, there is plenty of salt in the Old Bay. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 2 hours until meat is fork-tender. Serve over burritos or with flour tortillas as a stew.

*For those of you unfamiliar with southwestern cooking, a tomatillo is a small green tomato-like fruit. You could use fresh tomatillos in this sauce if you have them available, but you'd need to husk, wash, and roughly chop them since you can't 'squeeze-smush' them like the canned kind.

I made the BEST stuff for dessert last night. It was so good I ended up eating the leftovers for breakfast.

Tropical Rice Pudding

2 C cooked short-grain rice (I used Kokuro rice from our local Asian grocery)
1 mango, diced
1 peach, diced
1 C sliced strawberries
1 C. coconut milk
2 Tbsp maple syrup
a pinch or so each ground cinnamon, ground coriander and ground cardamom (to taste)

Stir the maple syrup into the coconut milk, then mix all ingredients together. Taste. Add a little more maple syrup if you want it sweeter. Eat. :-)

(And yes, theamusedone of course it has coriander in it! ;-D)

Had a wonderful lunch yesterday with brywulf and annezo at Sushi Zanmai. We shared veggie tempura and their fantastic seaweed salad, and I had ebi, tako, unagi, and cucumber roll. Then brywulf couldn't finish her Philly Roll (smoked salmon and cream cheese) so I got to have some of that too. We groused about the fact that none of use are feeling fannishly connected right now and got all nostalgic for our old mailing lists.

In other news, I've been sort of half-assedly keeping track of the latest LJ kerfuffle, and mostly I'm just waiting to see how things shake out. I guess if I had to offer an opinion it would be that 1) LJ/6A is abysmally bad at communication and they should really wait to implement new policies until they have all the ramifications figured out first (also, they should muzzle their staff until they have a single official answer to a question!), and 2) Fandom will face the exact same issues currently inducing all the problems at LJ/6A no matter where it goes, once the perpetually panty-twisted in the world figure out where fandom went and follow them there to cause trouble.

Oh, and GIP! New icon-- a photo of the delicious and beautiful waffle served to my kidunit at breakfast the other day at the Southside Walnut Cafe.

I have no idea if people like me posting recipes, but I like posting them so I'm going to keep doing it. :)

Tonight I tried my hand at Pad Kee Mao a.k.a. Drunkard's Noodles a.k.a. Drunken Noodles. I've had them at various Asian restaurants and I always love them so I figured I ought to try making them myself. I took several recipes I found online and mixed and matched to come up with the recipe below. It came out really well, tasting almost exactly like the restaurant version. BTW, there is no alcohol in the recipe-- from what I could gather they are called Drunkard's Noodles either because the spiciness makes you want to drink a lot of beer or wine, or because they are a good hangover cure, take your pick. This recipe is about a medium level of spiciness. IMHO of course.

Pad Kee Mao (aka Drunkard's Noodles)

7 oz (½ pkg) wide rice-stick noodles
½ lb skinless, boneless chicken breast or thigh meat, cubed
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1 fresh jalapeno chili pepper, seeded, sliced thinly (use 2 if you like it very spicy)
1 small Anaheim chili, seeded and julienned
3 large scallions, bulb ends sliced thinly, tops cut into 2" pieces
½ - 1 oz each, fresh basil and fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped
1 lime, cut in half, (leave one half alone, cut the other into wedges)

Sauce:
2 Tbsp each Oyster sauce, Fish sauce, palm (or brown) sugar
1 Tbsp each Mirin (sweetened rice wine), rice vinegar, Maggi (or Golden Mountain) sauce
1 tsp Thai chili-garlic paste (or 1 tsp red chili flakes)
Juice of half a lime (use the un-wedged piece from above)
( rest of recipe behind the cut )

Ahoy, the_haunt! I was going through my recipes today because I knew I had a fantastic-sounding flourless chocolate cake recipe that I'd saved a while back, intending to try it out on my celiac friend. I haven't gotten around to doing so, but I thought you might be interested in it now that you're avoiding wheat. So here it is, behind the cut.

( Flourless Chocolate Cake With Fresh Blackberry Sauce )

My Indian feast turned out exceedingly well, especially for a first attempt. I need more practice making naan though, I didn't manage to get it thin enough, plus I burned one piece. Still, I was very happy. Even the kidunit loved the chicken korma, which I wasn't expecting since the term 'picky eater' is an understatement. (Okay, so the aloo gobi went untasted on that front, but hey, I'll take every little victory I can. )

Also, I really enjoyed The Dresden Files. I thought the actor they cast for Harry was perfect, and even though Bob is a little more... robust than in the books, it was well done and I understand why they did it that way. Hopefully they will keep up the quality in future episodes. (And my due South fan soul thinks it is very amusing that there's a Dead Bob in this show, too.) Altogether it was a really great day, despite the snow.

In case anyone's interested, I'm putting the recipes for Chicken Korma, Aloo Gobi, and Cherry Naan ( behind the cut )

For some reason, even though it's a zillion degrees today, I wanted soup for lunch. But I didn't want any of the pre-prepared soups I had on hand so I decided to make some with what I had on hand. It was incredibly easy and it turned out really well so I thought I'd share. It's sort of like what you'd get if you crossed minestrone with chili.

Super Easy Mexitalian Bean Soup

¼ cup onion, coarsely chopped
3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
½ C. yellow squash, diced
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 15-oz. can black beans w/liquid
1 15-oz. can diced tomatoes & green chilies w/liquid
1 15-oz. can mixed chili beans, drained
1 can cut green beans, drained
1 (or 2) links Italian sausage, cooked & diced (hot or mild as preferred)
⅛ tsp each oregano, marjoram, basil
½ tsp salt (or to taste)

In a medium saucepan, saute the onion, garlic and squash in olive oil over medium-high heat until it softens. Add all of the remaining ingredients and stir well to combine. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for half an hour. Serve. It's really good with tortilla chips. :)

If you prefer it vegetarian, leave out the sausage. I used Eden Organic brand beans & tomatoes, which are salt-free, so if you use a non-organic, salted brand, you can probably omit the salt. Fresh green beans would be better than canned, but I had no fresh ones on hand. You could use zucchini instead of yellow squash, too.

theamusedone was asking for bread recipes with which to test drive his new KitchenAid mixer, so I'm putting 3 of them behind the cut below. If you have one you'd like to share, feel free to put it in the comments.

( Recipes Ho! )

Several people have tagged 'anyone who hasn't taken it' for this meme, and it was interesting so I thought I'd see if I could come up with five quirks, so here goes:

1) I have an irrational fear of finding a dead body in a public bathroom stall, which leads to a moment of trepidation every time I open one. :-) It has also led to a tendency to watch a lot of forensic investigation shows (like The New Detectives) in a vague and equally irrational hope that should I ever actually find a body, I won't be so freaked out.

2) My jewelry has to match. If I have a necklace, I have to have earrings that match it. As a corrollary, if I go out of the house without any jewelry on, I feel naked.

3) I have a terrible time throwing things away. Especially things which were once useful but are no longer, like... worn out clothing, non-functional appliances, cardboard boxes, bubblewrap and other packing material, and zip-lock baggies. Having curbside recycling has helped with some of things, like newspapers and cans, bottles, and plastic containers, but I still find I have a tendency to WASH the empty plastic sour-cream container and put it in the cupboard with my other storage containers, rather than pitching it in recycling bin like I should. I don't have trouble giving away still-functional items to a good home like Goodwill/Salvation Army/VVA, etc., but I just have an awful time actually throwing things out. I blame my mother and her Depression-era housekeeping, which I learned growing up. Never throw away anything that could be useful. Needless to say this is problematic in terms of storage space.

4) I write pornography. (Some people would argue this isn't a quirk, but I think in the eyes of "society" it would be considered one.)

5) I sometimes talk to crows. They're awfully smart birds, and they seem to enjoy conversation. :-)

And then here's that Sex-Role test that's going around. I don't think it's very accurate, because the questions are clearly based on stereotypical archetypes of what is masculine and what is feminine, which are pretty outdated. Still, it was interesting. ( answer behind the tag. )

Miscellaneous randomness: I don't know what strange alignment of the planets is going on, but twice lately while dining out with ardent_muses, once in Denver and once in Boulder, we've ended up with waiters who look like Major Lorne from Stargate: Atlantis. (See icon if you don't know who Lorne is.) oooEEEEEooooo! Not that I mind this occurance. It could even keep happening as far as I am concerned. :-)

Finally, sithdragn asked me for these two recipes, and I thought I'd share. The first is Hot Italian Sausage Dip (aka Heart-Attack in a Crockpot) which is addictive. The folks at my office nearly came after me with pitchforks and torches last year when I didn't bring it in for the annual holiday goodie day. The other is a Quick Fruit & Nut bread (not fruitcake!) that works really well for gift-giving, and office potlucks this time of year. ( Recipes are behind the second cut. )