Banana chocolate chip muffins

This week seems to be a little about cleaning out my fridge. I found a banana that was fully brown, but, it was still firm. As in, not rotting. But there was no way I'd be taking that thing out of the fridge to eat it. So, banana bread! My justification for turning this bread into muffins this time is that I didn't want my oven on for that long, and muffins cook faster than a loaf of bread. Plus then they're just so perfect and bite-sized...

Anyway, I sort of made up the recipe, but it seems to have worked. The picture isn't really much to look at... I suppose walnuts would have been a nice addition, but I was feeling lazy. They're not very sweet muffins, due to me not having any sugar, and not wanting to use up ALL of my honey. But they are good, in a not-too-sweet sort of way.

Banana chocolate chip muffins
Made 11. You would get 10 if you fill the muffin tins more fully
2 eggs
1/4C yogurt
2 tbs oil
1 ripe banana
1/4C honey
1/4C white flour
1C white whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4tsp salt
1/2C chocolate chips

Grease a muffin tin and preheat your oven to 400F. Mash up your banana with the yogurt, eggs, honey, and oil. Dump the flour on top of this, and the baking powder and salt on top of that. Lightly mix the flour with the salt and baking powder, without mixing it into the wet stuff. Once the dry is mostly combined, fold it into the wet. This makes a pretty sticky, thick batter. You could go with more yogurt or less flour to thin things out... but it works well enough as is. Fold the chocolate chips into the batter, and spoon it into the muffin tins. Once you put the muffins in the oven turn the temperature down to 350F. bake for 15-20 minutes.

Crab with mango-avocado salsa

Mango-avocado salsa is definitely one of my favorite things to eat. Especially in the summer when its really hot out, sort of like right now. I've probably mentioned that I can sit there and eat this with a spoon, but I thought I'd mix things up today. I'd add CRABMEAT! I don't know how appealing this sounds to you, but I thought it was a darn good idea.

The idea took shape a couple weeks (months?) ago, when I bought some crabmeat. It was frozen, so I didn't think much about putting it in my freezer, but then I realized that it was still in my freezer, and its not like it gets any better the longer I leave it there. So, I decided that now was the time to thaw it out and see if it was worth paying eight times (I kid you not) per pound what you pay for the imitation stuff. I wasn't sure if it were cooked, I sniffed it and it smelled a little fishy, so I figured I'd saute it a while in some butter. Because that makes most things taste better. After a couple minutes in the pan with butter, salt, pepper, and a little lime juice, it smelled much more appetizing, and it tasted good too. Lets talk about the taste for a minute. When I took my first bite, I was like, "wow. This is good". I slowly savored that mouthful, and then took another one. This time, I was thinking more "this is good. But its not really $30/lb good". I have had softshell crabs before, and those are totally worth the price. I'll be going that route from now on. Anyway, my point is that this real crab stuff was good, but definitely not worth the cost to me.

Not one to be discouraged, I figured I'd forge ahead and just not think about how much every bite was costing me. There was also the fact that I'd bought the avocado from Whole Foods, so it was a $2.29 avocado, which is about $1.69 more than I'd like to pay. I stood there for a solid two minutes agonizing about buying this avocado. In the end, it was worth it, because it was a delicious avocado. But boy. This was an expensive one.

Price aside, I totally recommend this dish. I could see it being a really good appetizer type thing. I ate it for lunch, but I also sometimes eat leftover salad for breakfast, so I'm no standard to live by. I had leftover tortillas in my fridge, the big burrito kind, that were definitely on the hard side of things. So, I cut them into wedges and pan-fried them until they were crispy and golden. That went really well with my crab-avocado-mango salsa. I cooked one side in the oil, then when that side was golden, I flipped them and salted the other side. It took about four minutes per batch.


You can get the recipe for the salsa here, so I won't write it again. Except this time I used an entire lime and only one mango. Just mix in some crabmeat, and then if you want it to look pretty, pack it into a bowl, and invert the bowl on a plate.

Cooked Endives

We've been cooking endives this way for a while, but I think we eat them too fast for me to take a picture of them. Basically, it takes a slightly bitter lettuce (if they're even lettuces) and slowly cooks them until they're sweet and salty and delicious. What I love is that although you don't add much oil, they taste incredibly rich. This is definitely one of my favorite ways to eat a vegetable.



We changed things up this time 'round and added some cheese, which was good, but I think I like these guys just the way they are, with a little salt, pepper, and olive oil.

Cut the endives in half, lengthwise. Put a little olive oil in a pan that has a fitting lid, and put the endives cut-side down in the pan. Sprinkle some kosher salt and pepper on top of the endive, turn the pan to medium-low, cover, and let it cook for 5-10 minutes. Check it occasionally, but it shouldn't be burning. Once the bottom is looking pretty golden, flip them over and cook for another five minutes or so. I don't know how Ed got the cheese on top, but I think he just left them cut-side down and put the cheese on top. He might have put them in the oven to get the cheese brown? That sounds like too much work though.

With or without the cheese, these little guys are GOOD! Don't hesitate to expand your endive horizons... they're good for more than salads!

Pasta in a brown butter sage sauce*

*with roasted cauliflower, caramelized onions, and chickpeas



There is no point to listing out all the ingredients for a pasta dish in the title, because it just makes the title really, really, long. Hence the asterisk. This was another one of those pasta dishes where everything in the fridge gets cooked and put on the pasta. I thought it was good, the butter tasted nutty, in a good way (although can anything be nutty in a bad way? I love nuts). I think I'm slowly learning to enjoy butter. I still won't dip artichokes or lobster in it, but if you use it to cook mushrooms or to brown and put on pasta, its alright. I've always liked it in cookies, no issue there...

Not much by way of explanation here. Give yourself at least 20 minutes for caramelizing the onions and roasting the cauliflower, but those are the only long parts. The chickpeas aren't really necessary, they didn't add much, but I like chickpeas, and they were in my fridge, and needed eating. The pasta used here was whole wheat, hence its dark color. And the onion was a red onion, which is what those purple things are.



Pasta in a brown butter sage sauce
Serves two relatively hungry people

1/2 box pasta
1 cauliflower, any color works, but the carnival cauliflowers are more colorful (purple, green, yellow)
1 onion
1-2 tbs butter
olive oil
1/2C chickpeas
3 tsp dried sage (fresh would work too if you had it)
salt to taste

Preheat your oven to 400F. Thinly slice the onions, so that they make long strips. Put the onion and some olive oil in a frying pan, and add a generous amount of salt. Stir it around so that everything is coated (add more oil as needed), and cook on medium low for about 20 minutes, until the onion is soft and starting to brown. If you taste it, it should be sweet.

Meanwhile, slice your cauliflower and let it crumble into little pieces. Toss the cauliflower with some oil, then spread it on a baking sheet. Sprinkle some salt and about a teaspoon of dried sage on top. Put this in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until the cauliflower is cooked through and a little brown on the bottom.

After you've popped the cauliflower in the oven, get a pot of water boiling. Once it boils, dump in the pasta and cook it until its just a little crunchy. You don't want it fully cooked since you'll finish it in the pan with the butter. As its cooking, make the brown butter sage sauce - I used the same pan as the onions pan. Melt 1-2 tbs of butter, and once its melted add the dried sage. Cook this for a couple minutes (should take about as long as the pasta), and take it off the heat when the butter starts to turn just a little tiny bit brown. You don't want burned butter... you want browned butter.

Once the pasta is at the barely-crunchy stage, drain it, reserving a little liquid just in case you don't have enough butter for your sauce. Add the pasta to the pan with the butter and the onions. Add the chickpeas, and toss everything around. Sautee this stuff until the pasta tastes done - you'll have to keep tasting. Mix in the cauliflower and a bunch of salt (to taste) and you're good to go.

Aaaaand another pasta dish in the books... =)

Buckwheat Scallion Pancakes

I've made scallion pancakes before, and they were good. I've made buckwheat crepes before, and they were good too. So I figured I'd merge the two. I made buckwheat scallion pancakes! I ended up baking them, just because its easier than standing there flipping things in hot oil in a pan (but not by much. neither technique is all that hard). The dough was pretty sticky to work with - I think that was the buckwheat, but it actually made it easier to roll the pancakes out.

I don't exactly remember the recipe - something along the lines of 1C water, 1/2C regular flour, and 1/2C buckwheat, and a whole bunch of scallions. Mix the flour and water together, and knead it until its smooth. I remember needing lots more flour to keep it from sticking. Divide the dough in two, roll it out flat like a pancake, and sprinkle with sesame oil and scallions. Roll it up like a cigar, and then roll it again like a rug. Roll out the rug to make a flat pancake, sprinkle with more sesame oil, salt, and red pepper flakes, and back for ~20min. Then cut it up and enjoy!

These weren't quite as flaky as the regular scallion pancakes, probably because the buckwheat sort of makes a batter rather than a dough. They were actually really good that way, though, since they were crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. And salty and spicy on the outside, too. Yum.

Next time, though, I think I'll keep the crepes and the regular pancakes separate, though. They were better on their own than mixed.

A sort-of Whitney Cake

Whitney cakes are the ultimate simple cakes. I probably have the recipe wrong, but its a Bullitt recipe, and its something along the lines of 1C flour, 1C sugar, and 1C liquids. I think the liquids are egg, milk, and butter, and there is probably some baking powder and salt too. I wanted to make a whitney cake, with some cherries, since I had some cherries and they weren't getting eaten fast enough, but then I made a half recipe, and I don't even know if its a real whitney cake since I just sort of made it up. I also didn't have any milk, so used yogurt, and I didn't feel like melting butter, so I used oil. But, it tasted delicious. I'll do this one again. I feel like it would work well with any fruit, so peaches are next...

Cherry Almond Cake
Made one small heart-shaped pan (~1.5 C batter?)

1/2C flour
1/3C sugar
1/8tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
2 tbs yogurt
2 tbs oil
1/2 tsp almond extract
~4 cherries, cut in half and pitted

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Put the sugar, flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl. Mix it all together. In a separate bowl, mix together the egg, yogurt, oil, and almond. Add the dry to the wet, and stir it around just until its mixed. Pour into a well-greased pan, in my case I used a small heart-shaped pan. This isn't much batter. It makes a thin layer.

Cut the cherries in half and remove the pits. Artfully arrange them cut-side down on the top of the cake batter. Bake the cake for 15-20 minutes, start checking it after 15 minutes.

I hesitate to say this serves more than one...

Everything soup

Ed made a soup, and it was delicious, so I took pictures. As with most Ed-recipes, who knows what the recipe actually is. Hopefully I'll be able to get you close, though. Basically, we fried a bunch of things, and then added them to the hot soup of noodles and dashi and daikon. It might not sound glamorous, but it was tasty, and relatively cheap as far as our fancy meals go.

The fried things on top were tofu, spicy red peppers (the long skinny kind, but not the thai red peppers, these were pretty smooth-skinned), and oyster mushrooms. We put them in a pretty dish, which precipitated me taking pictures and putting this on a blog. The soup broth was entirely dashi, which is little pellets of tuna, with some julianed daikon, a little kale, and egg noodles. We happen to have dashi because Ed discovered that you can get a giant box of it at the super88, and it goes really well as a broth for cold soba noodles. I'll do my best with a recipe...

Asian-flavored everything soup
Makes approximately 4 servings

1 bunch of fresh egg noodles (about half a pound to a pound? the measurement doesn't matter too much)
3/4 daikon root, julianned
4-6C water
3 tbs of dashi (look at the instructions on the package)
~1C kale, chopped finely
~9oz firm tofu
~2C cooking oil
2 long skinny smooth-skinned red peppers, sliced crosswise into little pieces
~4C oyster mushrooms, chopped coarsely
~4 tbs butter
Salt

First, you need to press the tofu. If it comes in a block, the way ours does, slice it into thirds, and place it on a dish towel. Fold the dish towel over the top of the tofu and put a cutting board or something else thats big and flat on top. Then add a couple cookbooks, maybe 15 pounds worth of weight, and let it sit for 20-30 minutes.

Start cooking your mushrooms, because they take a while. Salt them liberally, and add 2-3 tbs of butter to a pan. Cook the mushrooms on medium high for about 20 minutes, adding butter as needed, until they're nice and crispy. Don't be afraid of the salt, a lot of it gets used to draw the water out of the mushrooms.

Meanwhile, put about an inch of oil into a wok or other big pot. Get the oil hot by putting it on high heat, and before it starts smoking, turn it down. Add the pepper slices, and toss them around just until they're cooked - you don't want them to turn brown. Take them out of the oil and set them on a paper-towel-covered plate to drain. Don't skip this step, the deep-fried peppers are really awesome. It kind of takes away some of the heat so you can actually taste pepper-ness. Its good. I was able to taste the peppers once they were cooked without running to the fridge for a glass of cream.

Take the books off the tofu, and slice it into bite-sized pieces. Add the tofu to the oil, turning up the heat as you add the tofu, and then turning it down a little once its back up to heat. You sort of have to just use your intuition on this one. Stir around the tofu once or twice so it doesn't stick, and take it out when its golden brown and crispy looking. Add it to the paper-towel-covered-plate.

Your mushrooms will be close to done by now, so set a pot of water on to boil, with the dashi and the daikon and kale. Once the water is boiling, these things are mostly done, so you can add the noodles, which cook really quickly since they're fresh. Taste them after a minute, you want to take the soup off the heat while the noodles are still pretty chewy, so that they don't turn to mush.

Serve the soup in a bowl, with the crunchy things sprinkled on top. Enjoy!