Bountiful Baskets, Banana Bread, Cinnamon Rolls and Upcoming Attractions, Oh My!

Hi there!

I’d like to start by saying how excited I am the follower count is at five.  Talk about a great way to start the week!!  Welcome to the Kitchen!!

This week is another Bountiful Basket week, and we’ll have to get a little creative.  I have more broccoli than I know what to do with, along with two beautiful bunches of pencil thin asparagus…yum… We also have huge heads of bok choy and Nappa cabbage that are full of promise.  The most random though is a coconut…I have no idea what to do with it yet, but I’m sure we’ll figure out something!

I’ll let you guys know how the basket turns out.  It should be a wild ride this week!

Breakfast Breads

Yesterday I had a dilemma; I had six bananas on the verge.  Now, the banana bread recipe I have is my grandmother’s, and if I remember correctly it was her grandmother’s too.  The perk of this recipe is it assumes you’re using bananas that are almost beyond edible as wells as sour milk, a kind of cleaning-out-the-pantry kind of thing.  I have not used spoiled milk (in fact, I have never made it with regular milk, period) but I have used bananas that were…well…almost frightening.   So I decided to make banana bread.  My recipe calls for 2-3 per batch, and I had six.  So, logically, I figure I’ll make a triple batch. 

My first hiccup came when I realized I was almost out of sugar; that was an easy fix, I substituted brown sugar for regular and it gave a really nice color to the batter.  My second came in the actual amount of batter that a triple batch creates.  How much batter is actually in a triple batch is half again what my stand mixer holds; before adding six cups of flour there was approximately ten cups of batter.  Needless to say it took some careful pouring to cut the batter in half so I had room to add the flour…but the bread turned out good.  I probably should have split the one large loaf into two or possibly three, but it was still good!

This morning brought another baking whim: cinnamon rolls.  While my husband took his turn to sleep in, I split my attention between a new cinnamon roll recipe and our rambunctious puppy.  The dough was a little on the disagreeable side but the rolls turned out amazing.  Granted, they need to bake longer, but they were quite good.

Up Coming Attractions

In trying to keep blog posts flowing, I was brainstorming topics I could write on.  After some thought I figured it would be fun to write on different diets; what fun to explore Vegan and Gluten Free cooking, and further explore Vegetarian cooking.

I plan on starting with Vegetarian, as Vegan expands on the Vegetarian principles; Gluten Free is a whole new ball game for me, so it will take me longer to research.  Check back for new posts on these diets in the near future!

If you have anything you would like me to touch on, whether on the diets or something else, I would love to hear it!  Drop me an email at niaskitchenadventures@gmail.com or leave a comment!

Stay tuned for some fun explorations!

Happy Eating!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Greetings!

  

In true Hallmark fashion most people will have gone all out on Valentine's.  Some of us were content with a quiet meal at home.  While budget constraints and scheduling kept us from a low key dinner at our favorite restaurant, it didn’t prevent us from having a throw-back to our first Valentines in our own place.

A homemade romantic dinner is just the ticket.  This year marks the first three course meal I’ve ever made completely (as opposed to contributing with a group).

Starter

We started with an organic Italian lettuce blend, added slivered almonds and honey-Dijon dressing.  It was simple and quick.  One thing I’ve slowly come to learn is you can’t make the whole dinner complicated; it sucks the fun right of making it and gives all sorts of places for things to go wrong.

Main

Our main was totally from scratch.  Herbed chicken ravioli made with homemade spinach pasta, tossed with a homemade yogurt Alfredo sauce.  The filling recipe is below.  Check out the links for the pasta and Alfredo recipes!  “Yum” says it all!  I haven’t had an Alfredo sauce in years; finding a good yogurt base is amazing, and lets me enjoy a rich, creamy sauce without hating myself later…in calories and with the whole lactose thing! 

I did change the Alfredo a bit; I increased the yogurt and decreased the ricotta.  The resulting ratio was 1:1.  I also added granulated garlic; I toyed with adding roasted garlic but decided against it because of the time it would take in addition to everything else.  It turned out amazing anyway!!

Dessert

Dessert was a two part finale.  From our Bountiful Basket I had strawberries and pears.  At Matt’s request I made the pears into sorbet.  The result was a light and wonderful Ginger Pear Sorbet, and it was incredible.  The strawberries got a chocolate fondue to be dipped in.  Following a recipe in our fondue book, I modified it by adding yogurt instead of cream; it worked wonderfully!  We’ve had chocolate covered strawberries for Valentine’s the last four or five years.  Why break tradition?

We also enjoyed an amazing cup of Greek coffee compliments of Matt.  It was a perfect way to end dinner!

Bringing it all together

All in all it took 2 ½ hours to get it all done.  I think the main reason it all came together so nicely was thanks to writing down the order before hand.  There’s a rhythm to these things, and if you get it right you get dinner done at the perfect time…otherwise you have odd things finishing at odd times and chaos ensues…trust me on that!  This is the first time I actually got it all right!

Sorbet came first so it had time to set in the freezer (the ice cream maker could only do so much).  Next came the ravioli filling, followed by actually putting the ravioli together.  I had pasta left from last weekend that needed a brief thaw and was ready to go; this saved me quite a bit of time!

As the ravioli water boiled and cooked I made the chocolate fondue and got it in the fondue pot.  After pulling my strainer from my pasta pan I used the pasta water for the bottom portion of my improvised double boiler for the Alfredo.  Between getting the water going and the fondue started I got the table set and got the salad ready.

Regardless of how you spend the holiday, have a Happy Valentine’s Day!

East Happy!

Recipe:

Herbed chicken filling

·         1 chicken breast (~½ lbs)

·         Chicken broth, enough to cover the breast

·         Rosemary, chopped fine

·         Thyme, chopped fine

·         2 eggs, separated

·         1/3 Cup Parmesan

·         4 tbs ricotta

~Put broth into a deep skillet or pan

~Boil the chicken in the chicken broth until cooked through, sprinkling with herbs before flipping the chicken breast

~Let chicken cool slightly; chop finely with knife

~Add ricotta, egg yolks and Parmesan to a medium bowl; mix well

~Add chicken.  If the filling is very dry, add the egg whites.  If it is still very dry add some of the stock.  If the filling is too wet it will run when cooked, so when in doubt do dry

~Put one scant teaspoon of filling per ravioli; this recipe will fill ~1lbs of pasta

Bountiful Baskets, Pad Thai and Kitchen Failures

Greetings!

This week is a Bountiful Baskets week.  With the regular basket and the guacamole pack we have even more goodies to play with.

With the produce from our basket, I now have a huge collection of yummy goodness that I need to use.  Some, like the celery bunch, I can do just about anything with.  Things like the spinach though…well…let’s just say it’ll be a new experience.  I’m thinking a ricotta spinach pasta filling…maybe spinach pasta and yogurt Alfredo…or spinach raviolis and yogurt Alfredo…hmm…we’ll have to see if there’s a grocery store run between now and then!

It’s going to be fun to cook based on a random share of food, rather than just meal planning.  It almost seems easier, limiting the possibilities of groceries. Working with new ingredients is quite fun, though.  We’ll see if they present too much of a challenge…but then, where would the adventure be if they didn’t?

Pad Thai

The first of the basket went to an improvised Pad Thai.  The recipe I used from The Complete Book of Pasta and Noodles called for sprouts, shrimp, peanut oil and a few other things I’m missing in my pantry and fridge.  So with a base idea I improvised the recipe, and I’ve included my version at the bottom for your dining pleasure.   Let me tell you, it’s a keeper!  The red pepper was amazing and was a great counter to the hot peanut sauce!!

Kitchen Failures

It’s been a while since I’ve had an epic kitchen failure.  My most memorable failure happened not long after I moved out of my parents’ home.  You would think that something like chicken in a crock pot would be something so simple it would be idiot proof.  I’m here to tell you that it wasn’t.  I still remember three days of scrubbing carbonized chicken out of that poor crock pot.  The experience taught me that simple doesn’t always mean it’s guaranteed to turn out, and that while crock pot liners may be on the expensive side, they’re more than worth their weight in gold.

I’ve heard of other memorable failures involving delicious smelling casseroles interred to the garbage thanks to shattered Pyrex more than once; then there’s another of my favorites, where I ran out of sugar while making a double batch of jalapeno jelly and substituted Splenda for the rest…this only works if you have the right pectin.  Lucky for me the jelly is used mostly as a barbeque sauce foundation or meat sauce, so the runny jelly was less detrimental that, say, a fruit jelly would have been.

I’m not as adventurous as my husband when it comes to throwing together a recipe, but I’d like to think it’s my style rather than fear of failure.  Our mantra is “if all else fails, there’s always pizza.”  We’ve failed to that more often than I can remember.  Not all of my failures are memorable, but the ones that are make great stories!

I’d love to hear any of yours if you’d like to share!  Not all kitchen adventures turn out well.  If they did, it wouldn’t be an adventure!

Eat Happy, and never fear failure!  There is always pizza!

Recipe:

Pad Thai

·         Olive oil (1/8 C -1/4C)

·         1 Chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces

·         1-2 cloves garlic, minced

·         1 bell pepper, chopped

·         2 eggs, lightly beaten

·         ¼ C peanut butter

·         4 T fish sauce or soy sauce

·         Hot  sauce

·         Garnish: bean sprouts, red pepper flakes, peanuts (chopped)

~Heat oil in a non-stick skillet or wok until it shimmers and just starts to smoke

~Add chicken and cook, stirring constantly, until cooked (the smaller the pieces, the faster they cook)

~Add garlic until aromatic (maybe 30 seconds)

~Add the bell pepper, stirring constantly; cook about 1 minute

~Pour egg in the pan; stir constantly (there’s a rhythm here).  Break up any clumps of egg that might form.  Egg should cook within a minute or so; when the egg is cooked…

~Add the peanut butter, fish sauce and hot sauce, stir constantly until the peanut butter is creamy and saucy

~Dish up, and top with any of the garnishes