Banana Bread

I must say, there are few things more delicious and easy than banana bread. I’m not a huge baker, but quick breads I can handle. I find that the flavor of this can really be affected by the ripeness of the bananas. For a sweeter flavor, go with over-ripe bananas. For a more banana-y flavor, go with bananas at the peak of ripeness. I wouldn’t try this with under-ripe bananas, as I don’t think they would blend up well. I baked this in a pyrex dish for exactly 38 minutes and it came out perfect.

Banana Bread
Serves 2

1 ¼ cups flour
1 cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ cup shortening (you can substitute butter in a pinch)
2 very ripe bananas
2 eggs

1) Preheat oven to 350ºF.
2) Sift together the dry ingredients.
3) Whirl remaining ingredients in food processor.
4) Combine until dry ingredients are moistened.
5) Pour batter into greased and lightly floured 9x9 baking pan
6) Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5-10 minutes.

Thai Noodle Salad with Chicken

Another recipe out of Cooking Light! This salad looks so beautiful, fresh and delicious. The original recipe calls for tofu rather than chicken, but we have yet to acquire a taste for tofu. The chicken came out wonderful with the marinade nevertheless. Unfortunately, the noodles came out undercooked. I might actually boil the noodles for a couple of minutes rather than just letting them soak in boiling water. Soaking them is great for stir-frying (see this fantastic Pad Thai recipe) but they were almost unpleasantly crunchy here. Mr. Heart was not a huge fan of the dressing, which he found too strong (which is odd because I'm usually the one to complain about dressings), so for once we had a split vote. I enjoyed this, though it had potential to be better. I'm thinking for next time making a peanut-sauce type dressing.

Thai Noodle Salad with Chicken
from Cooking Light with mods.
Serves 2

1 large chicken breast, cut into strips
2 TBS lime juice
1 TBS low-sodium soy sauce
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 TBS canola or peanut oil

1/2 lb uncooked rice vermicelli

1 cup romaine lettuce torn into small pieces
1/2 cup shredded carrot
1/2 cup cucumber, sliced thinly
salt to taste

1/4 cup lime juice
2 TBS low-sodium soy sauce
2 TBS canola or peanut oil
1 TBS fish sauce
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp grated ginger
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp minced garlic

1) Combine first eight ingredients in a ziplock bag. Seal and marinate at room temperature for at least 30 minutes.
2) Heat a large non-stick skillet over medium heat. Add a tablespoon of oil to the pan and swirl to coat. Heat for thirty seconds. Add chicken and sauté for 5 -7 minutes until crispy, golden brown, and cooked through.
3) Prepare rice noodles according to package directions (something like cook in boiling water for 2 -3 minutes or until just tender). Do not over cook! Drain and rinse in cold water. Set aside.
4) Combine last nine ingredients in a measuring cup and whisk to combine to create the dressing.
5) Toss together lettuce, carrots, cucumber, and rice noodles in a large bowl. Add dressing, to taste. Toss to combine. Top with chicken and serve!

Coming soon!
Step-by-step photos of Asparagus Risotto
Banana Bread
Chocolate Walnut-Date Balls
"Unceremonious" Balsamic Steak

I Heart... Honest Tea

I am a big tea drinker. Someday I will post an photo of my cabinet which entirely filled with tea. So needless to say, I'm a bit of a tea snob as well. Not as bad as some, but it means I don't touch Nestea or Lipton bottled tea with a ten-foot pole. Okay, maybe with a ten-foot pole, but only to knock it off the shelf and push it behind something where no one will find it and make the mistake of drinking it. The fact that it claims to be tea is... well, blasphemy. Most bottled "iced teas" are just not up to par.

However, Honest Tea is amazing. I love it for several reasons:

1) The company was founded and is located in my hometown. If I still lived there I would run to their offices and beg for a job just so I could get free cases of the stuff. And because I love them.

2) The name. Even though it took me 5 years longer than it should have for me to realize that Honest Tea = Honesty. Oh, you genius.

3) Totally organic, all natural ingredients, and very very little sweetener (in the form of cane sugar). And they are big into community, the environment, and fair business/trade practices.

The one thing that saddens me is that they no longer make my favorite flavor, Decaf Ceylon. However, I am now in love with their Sublime Mate (more puns! Sublimate? Sub-lime Mate? Oh Honest Tea...) and their Pomegranate Red Tea. Mmm. Not all of their flavors are my favorite, but they still rock my world.

They also now have Honest Ade and I seem to recall seeing something about them having loose leaf tea as well.

(The only comparable bottled tea is Harney & Sons new bottled iced tea and fruit beverages. They're a little sweeter than I would like and contain... *shudder*... citric acid. However, they'll work in a fix.)

Rosemary-Orange Chicken over Spinach

This dish is from one of my favorite cookbooks, which I will blog about another time. It's called Preventions Ultimate Quick and Healthy Cookbook and I bought it at a used bookstore for $5 and I love it. However, this recipe made me very frustrated because the usual straightforward directions were mired in incomprehensibility:

"Using a sharp paring knife, peel the orange, removing all of the white pith. Working over a bowl, cut between the membranes to divide the orange into sections. Squeeze the membranes between your fingers to release the just then discard them. Pour all the juice from the bowl into a measuring cup, then add additional orange juice to measure 1/3 of a cup."

I stared at this paragraph for like 10 minutes trying to figure out what they wanted me to do. I understood vaguely, since one of the benefits of this cookbook is the full-color photograph of the dish on the facing page. I gathered that I was to remove the "membrane" from the sections and preserve the intact fleshy sections of the orange to top off the chicken, but when I read the directions, that didn't come across at all. I think they left out a sentence or something. So I was kinda on my own for the orange part.

Not to mention how difficult it was to preserve that intact fleshy part of the orange sans membrane. It was impossible. Maybe it's because I was using a honeybell orange, rather than the navel orange it called for. I don't know. I just know I got a lot of juice all over my hands and not along of orange.

So lets just pretend none of that ever happened. I'm going to reconstruct this recipe the way I think it should have been written. Needless to say, the dish was pretty good.

Rosemary-Orange Chicken over Spinach
paraphrased from Preventions Ultimate Quick and Healthy
Serves 2

1 large orange
1-2 TBS orange juice
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
1/4 tsp brown sugar
pinch of red pepper flakes
2 thin boneless skinless chicken breasts
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 lb spinach, washed with stems removed.

1) Zest 1/2 tsp orange zest from the orange and set aside.
2) Slice orange in half lengthwise. Take one half of the orange and peel it carefully with a paring knife, removing all white pith. Separate the orange into sections and carefully slit the membrane along the back and inside of each section. Slip the paring knife under the membrane and slide it along the inside to separate it from the flesh, then peel off the membrane. Set sections aside.***
OR
Take one half of the orange and cut it crosswise into four to six slices so that each slice has sections. Then cut flesh away from the rind. Set these sections aside for garnish.
(I hope at least one of those made sense. Let me know if it doesn't work)
3) Juice the other half of the orange and pour the juice into a measuring cup. Add additional orange juice as needed to reach 1/3 of a cup
4) Add zest, 1 teaspoon of oil, vinegar, 1/4 teaspoon of rosemary, brown sugar, and red pepper to the orange juice. Whisk together and set aside.
5) Sprinkle the chicken with the remaining rosemary, and salt and pepper. Warm remaining teaspoon of oil in a large, non-stick skillet until hot. Add chicken and sauté 2-3 minutes per side, or until a nice golden brown and cooked through. Transfer to a plate and cover loosely with foil.
6) Add spinach to the pan and stir-fry over med-high heat for 1 -2 minutes or until just wilted (add a little oil if the spinach starts to burn).
7) Portion spinach out on each plate. Place a chicken breast on top of the spinach, then place orange sections on top of chicken. Whisk dressing briefly to reincorporate, then pour over chicken and spinach.

***UPDATE: Obviously this is a learning process. Thanks, anonymous commenter, for this handy link! With the photos it makes so much more sense. I would follow these step-by-step instructions rather than my mangled version above.

Key Lime Pie

For Mr. Heart and mine's one month anniversary of dating, I decided to make him a homemade meal, despite the lack of resources available to us in the college dorms. In fact, the dorm room I had at the time did contain a kitchen. However, I had moved into it halfway through the school year and the previous tenants (and my new slob of a roommate) had never once cleaned the kitchen and instead, every surface was covered with pots, pans, boxed food stuffs, and layers of grime.

So to prepare this meal, I hijacked the communal kitchen in a friend's dorm and used their room as a preparation area. The piéce de resistance was to be a scrumptious key lime pie. The recipe I was using was not the one that is below. Instead it was one that required beaten egg whites and 6 hours chilling. That's right folks, I sat on my friends dorm room floor the day before our one-month anniversary, beating egg whites to stiff peaks, with a fork. Do you know how long that takes? That is how much I love my now-husband.

So after a million years of beating eggs and juicing limes and the whole hullabaloo, I put the pie in the communal dorm oven. I let it bake the alotted ten minutes. I go to remove the pie only to discover there are no dishtowels/oven mitts/pot holders anywhere in the vicinity. There are only paper towels. So I wrap my hands in paper towels and hope for the best. I try to quickly grab the pie and transfer it to the stove top. This fails. I drop the pie. Half of it remains in the pie tin. The other half splatters all over the communal kitchen wall. I, who rarely curses, let out a very nasty curse/howl of frustration. And this was just supposed to be dessert!

However, I loved Mr. Heart very much. This is how much I loved him. I went out, bought all new ingredients, and made a second pie. It only got 4 hours to chill and was, hence, like key lime soup, but still. Love folks. The guy still married me. Oh, and the friends who lent me their dorm room and mini-fridge said that the half decimated pie, which had had a full 24 hours to chill, was divine.

When I explained all this to Mr. Heart tearfully over the key lime pudding disaster that was pie #2 he sighed, smiled, and told me he had a much simpler recipe that required no beating, only three ingredients (plus a crust) and hardly any chill time. Actually he said "My mom's recipe doesn't require egg whites." But lets pretend he hadn't just compared my puppy-love attempt at pie to his mother's.

So here is Mr. Heart's super-easy, always reliable, very tasty recipe. It may look similar to the recipe for key lime pie found on the back of various jars and bottles for this very reason. If you can get your hands on some key lime juice, trust me, it makes all the difference. The key limes add an extra zingy sweetness. Heck, if I was hanging out in the warm sun of the Florida keys all the time, I'd be extra zingy and sweet too.

Key Lime Pie
Serves 6

1 can of sweetened condensed milk
3 egg yolks
1/2 cup key lime or regular lime juice
1 pre-packaged graham cracker crust

1) Pre-heat oven to 350ºF
2) Combine the first three ingredients until smooth. The filling will be a pale yellow (No, key lime pie isn't actually green).
3) Pour filling into pie crust. Place in middle rack of oven and bake for 10 minutes or until set.
4) Remove from oven and allow to cool for 15 minutes.
5) Chill for at least 1 hour (warm key lime pie is no fun). Serve with whipped cream!

Ps. Mr. Heart now wears the pie-making-pants in our household. Mmm.

I Heart... Rice Crackers

There are few foods that I could eat, non-stop, for the rest of my life. This is one of them. These were always a treat during my childhood because I could easily have consumed (still would!) the entire package in one sitting. One of my favorite late night snacks was (is!) rice crackers, cheese, and left over roasted chicken. Mmmmm. Nothing like it after a long theater rehearsal or evening class.

This particular brand of rice crackers is, by far, my favorite. They are light, with a crisp crunch, a hint of salt, and the sweet nuttiness of sesame. Other brands, I've found, tend to go heavy on the seasoned salt, and the plain KAME crackers, are, well, a little plain. The sesame variety has a nice balance that. I. can't. get. enough. of.

The other great thing about these crackers is that, as far as crackers go, they're fairly good for your (or at least not bad). Gluten free, low salt, almost no fat or calories, I don't feel guilty eating, say, a quarter of the package at a time. Though maybe the fact that I eat it with slivers of sharp cheddar cheese, negates the health benefits somewhat!

Gnocchi with Asparagus and Pancetta

Homemade gnocchi and I have a history of failure (a story for another time). So when Cooking Light's trio of gnocchi recipes only required the store-bought variety, I jumped at the chance to have successful gnocchi in my home kitchen without the grief off boiled blobs of mashed potatoes.

We tried both the Gnocchi with Chicken Sausage, Bell Peppers, and Fennel as well as the Gnocchi with Asparagus and Pancetta. The former was okay, but was severely-lacking in flavor, despite it's myriad of interesting ingredients, probably do to it's lack of sauce (perhaps uping the liquid content would help), though the fennel was an interesting touch. It's a recipe worth revisiting and modifying. The latter was delicious, though we went a little overboard on the pancetta (a little goes a long way my friends).

Gnocchi with Asparagus and Pancetta
from Cooking Light, with slight mods.
Serves 2
8 oz. pre-packaged (or fresh) gnocchi
1 oz. pancetta, cut into thin strips, about 1/4 cup (I put in, like, 3 oz. which was overpowering)
1 thinly sliced shallots
1/2 pound asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
2 TBS grated Parmesan cheese

1) Cook gnocchi according to package directions. Drain, reserving 1/4 cup cooking liquid. Keep warm.

2) Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add pancetta and sauté 5 minutes or until crisp. Transfer to a paper towel–lined plate.

3) Add asparagus to pan; sauté 5 minutes or until tender. Add shallots and sauté until translucent, about 3 min. Stir in garlic; sauté 1 minute. Add gnocchi, pancetta, 2 TBS reserved cooking liquid, juice, salt, and pepper to pan and cook an additional minute or so until flavors are mingled and the dish is warmed through (add more reserved cooking liquid if pan gets too dry). Divide among boths and top with cheese.