A little bit of this, a little bit of that

Pan-fried toast with fresh tomato slices, an over-easy egg, and mustard sprouts.

I went to a family medicine conference at the end of last week.  It was in my hometown, so I got to stay at my mom's house and be pampered by her.  While I had a lot of fun--scoping out all the residency displays and picking up a farm's worth of animal-shaped stress squeezie-things, hanging out with a friend from far away--it was still nice to come home to my own apartment.  However, knowing that I would be gone for a couple days, I had let my groceries dwindle pretty low.  So when I woke up for breakfast this morning, I found one egg and a weird assortment of veggies in the fridge.  A paw through the freezer turned up a little frozen bread buried in the back.  With a pat of butter in the pan, I managed to turn fridge leftovers into a pretty passable breakfast.  In other news--I definitely need to go to the store today.

~Lindsey

ULTIMATE Banana Bread

Two weekends ago, I was enjoying some rest and relaxation and watching way too many PBS specials. I learned about travel patterns of wolves in Yellowstone, how to scorch eggplant directly on grill coals, and best of all, how to make Ultimate Banana Bread on America's Test Kitchen. Since I don't have cable but have a wicked, silver, spaceship-shaped TV antenna that gets every PBS station known to man, I have grown to love America's Test Kitchen. This has been my summer fling. I don't have time for much TV during the study season, so I'm taking in as much summer-lovin', recipe-learnin' as I can!

This banana bread looked amazing on the show & it just so happened that I had amassed a half-dozen black bananas in my freezer over the course of the year. You may be thinking, "you can make two or three loaves with 6 bananas!". Au contraire mon frere! This delectable loaf takes 6 bananas. It's so packed with banana flavor that you don't want to stop eating it!

I'm sure you're dying to know how to make it. Well, here is the recipe, my friends (from America's Test Kitchen http://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipes/detail.php?docid=25349&extcode=M**ASCA00):

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups (8 3/4 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon table salt
6 large very ripe bananas (about 2 1/4 pounds), peeled (see note)
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter , melted and cooled slightly
2 large eggs
3/4 cup (5 1/4 ounces) packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup walnuts , toasted and coarsely chopped (optional)
2 teaspoons granulated sugar

So, if your bananas are frozen, let them thaw and they will release their luscious juice. If they're not frozen then you have to nuke them in the microwave.

I'm getting ahead of myself.
1. First turn on your oven to 350F, spray a loaf pan (9"x5" or 8 1/2" x 4 1/2").
2. Whisk flour, salt & baking soda in large bowl (first time I made it I mistakenly put in baking powder, which causes you to have a much denser loaf. Still delicious, you just won't have as much rising action).
3. Here's the fun part! You get to microwave your bananas (skip if your bananas were frozen and already surrended their juice)! So, place FIVE (save the sixth - it's for decoration) bananas in a micro-safe bowl, cover with plastic wrap, poke holes, & microwave for 5 minutes. Make sure you keep an eye on it because the first time I did it, it boiled over and I had banana goo all over the turntable in my microwave.
4. Once they've juiced themselves, place them in a strainer, which I like to place directly over a [cold] saucepan on the stove. Leave them for ~15 min and stir occasionally. This gets all the juice into the pan.
5. Then place the bananas into another bowl where you will be mixing in more ingredients. Reduce the banana juice on the stove for ~5 min. It smells AMAZING at this point & you'll want to drink it. At least, I did.
6. When reduced, pour back into bowl of bananas and mash! Then whisk in butter [MELTED], eggs, brown sugar, and vanilla.
7. Gently fold this into the dry ingredients mix. It's okay if there are streaks of flour because they will go away when you add walnuts (if you choose) next!
8. So gently mix in your walnuts. Don't go nuts (hah)! You don't want to over-mix!
9. Pour into your loaf pan, cut up a banana on the diagonal and shingle along the edges. You may have the urge to cover the entire loaf with bananas, but it will not rise if you do that, so contain yourself! :-)
8. Lastly, sprinkle the top with 2 Tb of granulated sugar. This gives it a nice crust on the top.
10. Pop it into the oven for an hour or so (55-75 min. for the 8 1/2" pan and 50-70 min. for the 9" pan).
11. Let it cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 min, then remove and let it continue cooling for as long as you can stand without cutting into it & trying it! It won't be very long, I can assure you.

I took this to work for a birthday celebration and everyone went crazy. It's also been known to woo men. As we all know, the route to a man's heart is through their stomach! ;-) Enjoy ULTIMATE Banana Bread!

Love,
Whitney

"Shallot" by Jeff Friedman

There's a website I subscribe to that publishes a daily poem, and yesterday's was a beautiful little ode to a shallot.  You should read it here but my favorite part is the end:

Now you wait for me, 
shimmying in a sleek pan—
your streaked layers translucent 
in the glissando of sizzle—
giving up your bitterness 
to the peppery oil.


So much sibilance! Such great assonance, too, with the combination of short i and s sounds sound exactly like shallots in a pan.

Enjoy!
Lindsey

Say it with me: Rat-ah-too-ee

Ratatouille.

Is there another more enigmatic food word?  For me, (thanks, Disney/Pixar) it conjures up visions of a happily contented foodie-rat who moves to Paris to pursue his dream job as a chef.  It also makes me think of summer vacation, hot and humid days, and the south of France.

Ratatouille is a Provençal dish that really says everything summer: fresh as can be produce, thrown together with a few glugs of olive oil and some s&p, and baked until everything's tender and simmering in their own juices.  Sometimes when I want a quick pasta sauce, I do a riff on ratatouille in a saucepan and throw in some spaghetti or linguine and toss it around.

This ratatouille was inspired by smitten kitchen's excellent recipe for it here. If you are moderately good at slicing things, you're good to go.  If you have a mandoline, even better and you won't have to meticulously cut every slice yourself.  If slicing things carefully and consistently isn't your thing, dice everything the same size and throw it on a baking sheet or in a casserole and cook it anyway!  The original dish from Provence is pretty rustic and forgiving.

Ingredients:

1 baby eggplant

2 small or 1 large summer squash

1 medium zucchini

2 roma tomatoes

1 yellow onion

1 large or a couple small garlic cloves

olive oil

thyme

salt & pepper

I was feeling stripey.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375.

2. Slice the eggplant, squash, zucchini, and tomatoes thinly into rounds.  Cut the onion in half (or quarters) and slice the same thickness as the other veggies.
3. Pour 1-2 T of olive oil in the bottom of your casserole.  Grate a clove of garlic into the oil (thank you, microplane! or you could mince it.) and smush it around with your finger (or a spoon, I guess) so it gets into the olive oil and all over the bottom.

4. Layer the veggie slices in concentric circles in the baking dish.  

See how pretty?  I love the bright colors and the pattern the veggies make.

5. Drizzle a couple tablespoons of olive oil over the top, sprinkle with dried thyme or a few sprigs fresh if you have it, and salt & pepper generously.

6. Bake for 45-55 minutes until vegetables are tender and just starting to release some juices.  Bake covered the first 25 minutes and uncovered for the rest.

Voilà!

That's it!  Really, the hardest part is slicing the veggies thinly, and even that isn't that bad.  Plus, it looks so pretty as you arrange it in the dish that everyone will be impressed when you put it on the table.  I made this for a community potluck on Tuesday night and got so many compliments that I'm taking it tonight for a potluck with friends.

Update: There was just a little left over, so I saved it and had it for lunch over quinoa with another tiny drizzle of olive oil.  Yum!

Enjoy your summer veggies!

Love,
Lindsey

It's aliiiiiiiiiiiive! Part 2

Okay, so things got out of control.

I was just going along my merry way, feeding my little seed culture daily and watching it bubble and foam.  Finally, it was the last day for feeding the seed culture.  Now, good ol' Reinhart warned me that it should double in six hours or so, and that it might even triple.  But I didn't really believe him.  I sort of imagined that I might get a double rise but surely nothing bad could happen if I left the culture out overnight.  Well, see for yourself:

This is after six hours or so.  See the saucer?  This was my overflow insurance.

In a related note, sourdough starter, once dried, is surprisingly difficult to clean up: tacky, gooey, but also slightly crusty at the same time.

This was the next morning.  Whoops!  I guess I didn't think the wild yeasties had it in 'em.

Luckily, the culture survived, I made the barm, and then finally--after a week! I was ready to make bread.  Reinhart's recipe makes a huge bowlful of dough, so I got two baguettes and two smallish boules out of one recipe.  I made mine with half whole wheat and half bread flour, and the resulting bread...well, it had great flavor but I'm not sure that it tasted any better than Reinhart's other bread methods, like pain à l'ancienne.  But, now that the starter's made, I can keep it in the fridge, let it mellow out for a little bit, and feed it again when I want to make bread the next time!  Plus, this is perfect timing--I was just about to run out of yeast anyway.  Good thing my apartment air obliged!

Love,

Lindsey