Cake or Bread? Hm.

This is the recipe for the Banana Cake I made yesterday. Every family’s got their own recipe that they hold dear, but I implore you, try this one out. Unless you screw it up by adding extra bananas like I did, it will turn out great. (In my family we call it Banana Cake instead of Banana Bread because it’s so moist, but it’s kind of halfway between the two. Sort of.)

Banana Bread

1 1/4 cup white granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup sour cream
1 cup banana pulp (~2 bananas)
1 1/2 cup minus 2 tbsp AP flour (so 1 3/8 cup)
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt

Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs and beat until light. Add baking soda and sour cream. Beat well. Add bananas, flour, vanilla, and a pinch of salt. Mix well with mixer on low power. Bake in buttered bread pan at 350. Start checking on it at 45 minutes, although it may end up taking closer to an hour. It’s finished when a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

So I had company!

Better late than never.

My friend R☆ came over and I made many things. First off, Banana Cake, from a recipe of my fraternal grandmother. Unfortunately, I fell victim to one of the pitfalls of baking- if you change the amounts of things, it won’t bake properly. I added an extra banana that I had swiped from my brother’s house earlier. The extra banana threw off the amount of moisture in the cake, and so it was undercooked when I pulled it from the oven. “Why didn’t you use the toothpick test?” you ask. Well, I have no toothpicks. And after searching through my apartment, I have nothing resembling a toothpick. It’s still good, mind you… it’s just a little gooey in places.

For dinner I made a chicken. I put it into a simple brine for an hour, then butterflied it, rubbed under the skin with garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then broiled it. Yeah, it burned a bit. I think my rack was a little too close to the broiler. So, first the skin was a wee blackened, and then… it too was underdone. Seriously, it tasted fine, and R☆ said it was good, but I was still a little ashamed of my work.

Alongside the chicken I made a salad. The croutons I made out of some cubed bread tossed in the remaining fat after the chicken was removed from the pan. These I broiled for a few more minutes until golden brown and EXTREMELY delicious. (I got this idea from Alton Brown’s book I’m Just Here for the Food.) The dressing was the leftover chicken fat, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, Tabasco sauce, garlic powder, salt, and pepper.

The star of the meal was definitely the croutons. I want to make those again. Actually, I want to make them now, just to snack on. Mm….

Potatoes!

Okay, so I made those potatoes again. And they were WONDERFUL. Time-consuming, but so good. An excellent appetizer.

One tip- when cutting the potatoes in half, cut them so they will stand up and be stable on the baking sheet. This will probably mean you’ll have a lot of long, shallow halves, which is in no way a bad thing. More surface area to brown.

the hussy’s mini twice-baked potatoes

1.5 pounds small red potatoes (9-12)
3 slices bacon, diced
3/4 cup shallots, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp sour cream
1 tbsp buttermilk
3/4 cup sharp cheddar cheese
salt and pepper, to taste

Cook potatoes in boiling water 15-20 minutes or until tender; drain.

Brown bacon in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add shallots and bacon; turn heat down to medium and saute for five minutes or until softened.

Preheat oven to 350.

Cut potatoes in half; carefully scoop out pulp, leaving a quarter-inch shell. Add the butter, sour cream, and buttermilk to the potato pulp and mash with a fork; stir in cheese. Add to onion mixture, stirring well. Add salt and pepper to taste. Put about one tablespoon potato mixture into each shell. Arrange stuffed potatoes on a baking sheet and bake for about 30 minutes. At the end of baking, turn on the broiler and let the tops brown and puff up a bit, 3 to 4 minutes.

Have you ever watched “Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee”?

If you haven’t, you should. You’ll be appalled. It’s terrible. It’s the worst thing ever. How this woman got a show on the Food Network is beyond me. The only good thing I can say about it is that it makes you feel wonderful about your own cooking skills, because no matter how bad a cook you are, if you at least put forth an effort you are better than this woman.

Earlier today, I was browsing through the forums of Television Without Pity. I love the thread for “Semi-Homemade” because it is full of remarkable vitriol. Apparently Sandra was on “The View” this morning. I, unfortunately, did not get a chance to see it, but one of the posters there did and wrote a recap. It’s hilarious.

Man, I’m full.

That’s a problem, trying a new recipe out and being the only one around to eat it. Well, I guess it didn’t have to be a problem. I could have saved the leftovers. But I wasn’t all that thrilled with how this turned out, so I knew I wouldn’t eat it if I stuck it in the fridge, and I don’t like throwing food out.

Anyway, these Parmesan Potato Bites I adapted from a recipe in Cooking Light. I find CL’s recipes are generally pretty good, especially if you use full-fat versions of whatever they call for and add more cheese. Or cream. Or butter. Basically, do whatever you can to unlighten them, and it’ll taste great.

These were tasty, but they were just more time-consuming than I wanted- I was looking for a good, easy appetizer for my parents and brother when they come over this Saturday. This, however, was my fault- the potatoes were underdone when I took them out of the water, so instead of broiling them, I baked them at 350 for half an hour, to try and get the potatoes themselves a little softer.

Parmesan Potato Bites

12 small round red potatoes (about 1 pound)
1 1/2 tsp olive oil
3/4 cup minced onion
1/4 cup or 2-3 slices uncooked, diced turkey bacon (I used real bacon)
1/8 tsp freshly ground pepper
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup (2 oz) grated fresh parmesan cheese
1 tsp rubbed sage (I didn’t have this)

Cook potatoes in boiling water 15 minutes or until tender; drain.

Heat oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion, bacon, pepper, and garlic; saute 5 minutes or until tender.Preheat broiler.

Cut potatoes in half; carefully scoop out pulp, leaving a quarter-inch shell (this was hard). Mash potato pulp with a fork; stir in cheese and sage. Add to onion mixture, stirring well. Spoon about one tablespoon potato mixture into each shell. Arrange stuffed potatoes on a baking sheet and broil 3 to 4 inches from heat 3 minutes or until lightly browned.

“In Tuscany, it is considered the wine of good reception and courtesy.”

On my last trip to Italy (November 2003, I’ll be posting the diary of it eventually), I enjoyed a good deal of Vin Santo. It’s this wonderful dessert wine usually served with biscotti. Kind of tastes like raisins. I bought some today at Beverages and More, one bottle for my brother, one bottle for me. BevMo is the only place I’ve seen it sold at a reasonable price. At Whole Foods they were asking $60. At Gene’s Fine Foods they were asking $30. Although I am sure those are of a higher quality, I am perfectly fine with my $10 bottle.

While J. and I were watching Molto Mario last night, they served a sibling of Vin Santo, which got us a-hankering. I think there are a lot of similar raisin-y wines in Italy with different names according to what region from which they hail.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yay. I’m 24 today. Not feeling great about where I am in life, but that’s not what you all are here for, so on with the food.

I hung out with my brother tonight. We made pizza. I had gotten him a pizza stone and peel for Christmas, and tonight was their christening. We used Alton Brown’s dough recipe. When I’ve used his technique in the past, it has worked well. Tonight, however, it was kind of disastrous. I was bereft of stand mixer and food processor, so I kneaded by hand, and apparently, it wasn’t for long enough. There were many problems with dough ripping. I eventually said, “I’m using a rolling pin, to hell with AB.”

I have to say, although we made a right mess, the pizzas turned out really well. The tomato sauce used was a spicy sausage-mushroom sauce of my brother’s devising, along with some pepperoni, mozzerella cheese, fresh basil, olive oil, and salt. Yummy. I usually don’t put that many toppings on my pizza, but it was damn tasty.

After dinner, we played ping-pong (21-15, he won) and video games (Ratchet & Clank Going Commando and SSX 3), and watched some food programming (Good Eats and Molto Mario) while noshing on cookies (the gialetti from yesterday) and ice cream (Dreamery Coney Island Waffle Cone).