Bananas, Now in Carbohydrate Form

(counts as a fruit, right?)

Yes, I know bananas, as a fruit, technically already contain carbs. But they're not as carby as banana MUFFINS, which I like to think of as a superior form of both the banana and the muffin. I like banana bread just fine, but it doesn't lend itself to snacking quite as well as muffins do, and I actually like the fluffier texture of these muffins to the denseness of loaf banana bread. I suppose you could add nuts, or chocolate chips. I wouldn't; I love these muffins just the way they are. They've been my go-to dessert/sweet for a couple weeks; I've considered being REALLY crazy and making a cream cheese frosting or something to put on top of them and call them cupcakes (see this post), but like I said, I love them just the way they are.

Banana Muffins
adapted from somewhere on the internet - I wrote it on a post-it and I forgot where it's from
(makes 8 muffins or 6 large muffins; total time ~30 mins)

3 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup sugar
2 soft, ripe bananas
1 egg
1 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

0) Preheat oven to 350 and grease muffin pan.
1) Beat together first 4 ingredients until smooth.
2) Sift together last 4 ingredients.
3) Combine 2 mixtures gently just until entire mixture is wet. Don't worry about lumps.
4) Drop batter into muffin pan cups and bake for ~25 minutes.

Notes: This recipe uses the universal method for making quick breads - combine wet ingredients, combine dry ingredients, mix until both are just combined. If you know this method, you don't have to write anything down for muffin/pancake/etc. recipes except the ingredients and the oven temp/time. Sometimes not even that, as 350 seems to be the universal oven temperature a lot of the time, and you could really just bake things until they're browned and a toothpick comes out clean.

I've been experimenting with the flour and sugar types in this recipe: the incarnation in the photo has 1/2 whole wheat and 1/2 all-purpose flour, and 1/2 Splenda and 1/2 brown sugar. I like the brown sugar with bananas better than white; next time I may try all whole wheat flour. The 1/2 didn't seem to affect the flavor or texture appreciably.

Gah.

Well I had a blog-worthy dinner planned for last night - poached eggs over baked polenta with romaine and parmesan cheese and a side salad. The polenta came together nicely, I smoothed it onto a greased pan to cool, and when it was nearly cool, brought some water to a boil, assembled the salad, and turned on the broiler to prepare for the pan of polenta.

Sometime soon after, my luck turned. I had read several articles about poaching eggs in plastic wrap, which seemed like a great idea, because it's much less mess and I don't own a slotted spoon. So I lined a mug with plastic wrap, cracked an egg into it, and tied it into a little parcel. Rinse and repeat 3 more times. The parcels go into the barely boiling water for 3 minutes. MORE THAN ONE of the places I had read about poaching eggs in plastic wrap had listed the cook times as: 2 minutes for runny yolks, 3 minutes for medium set yolk, 4 minutes for firmly set yolk. In reality (I know, I know) I like my yolks pretty runny, but S (and I know my mother would approve) eyes with suspicion anything undercooked, especially eggs (but even cookie dough!), so I settled on 3 minutes, medium-set yolks.

Meanwhile, I brushed the top of the set polenta with some olive oil and set it under the broiler.
After 3 minutes I removed the eggy packets like giant teabags from the boiling water and placed them on the plates with the salads. All I could see through the plastic wrap was the opaque egg whites. Out of the oven comes the pan of polenta, and I cut it into pieces. The plan was to spatula the pieces of polenta onto the plates, open the plastic-wrap teabags, and dump the eggs onto their polenta beds.

Well. I could tell when I spatulaed the polenta onto the plates that things weren't going as planned. Set polenta is supposed to be firm and relatively dense. (I don't know if you've ever left grits out too long, but that's pretty much it) Set, baked polenta is NOT supposed to be floppy and rubbery and fluffy, much like a light omelet or egg casserole. Not one to be deterred by unexpected flopubberfliness, I slapped those bad boys on the plates and moved on to the eggs. I opened the mouths of the plastic-wrap packets upside-down over the tops of the polenta slices, hoping the poached eggs would deposit themselves nicely onto their cornmealy resting places and we could begin eating. What actually happened was this: all of the cooked white of the first egg remained adhered to the plastic wrap, and its completely unset yolk, along with some clear, snotty, unset white, plopped onto the polenta, broke open, and oozed all over the plate, salad included.

With one dinner down the drain, I turned my attentions to carefully prying open the other 3 egg packets and planning the devastating secret moves I would use against S in our battle over the single remaining plate of food. All 3 had the same problem as the first: cooked white firmly glued to plastic covering, and centers so undercooked even I wouldn't eat them. In defeat, I seized another dish, covered it with what was supposed to be the leftover salad and polenta, and sprinkled both dishes with olive oil and balsamic vinegar (peanut butter and jelly may also have been involved).

I didn't take pictures. They would have been awful anyway. I guess the moral of the story is either don't poach eggs without a slotted spoon, or grease your plastic wrap and boil the HELL out of them. The polenta's still a mystery to me. Who knows what was up with that.

Long Awaited Return + The Musical Fruit

(voted most attractive as well as most likely to be devoured)

Hello my beloved reader(s), and welcome to the triumphant return of Full/Empty! At first, term papers and vacation kept me from writing new posts, but honestly, recently it's been pure laziness. You can thank S for inspiring me to write up a new recipe - it was his lovely plating of the next recipe that caused me to take a photo of it and write it up.

This is a recipe I learned from an online forum; originally it was a black bean salad with quinoa. While I'm sure it's great as is, and quinoa sounds lovely, the fact was I had 1 pound each of 3 types of brown rice in my cupboards, and 0 pounds of 0 types of quinoa, so I took the plunge and replaced the quinoa with brown rice. Turned out great; in fact you could probably add even more rice to the recipe to stretch it a little farther and it would still be great. This is a 'salad', as I said, and I ate it for dinner by itself, but as S demonstrates in the photos, it also makes a great burrito/taco/pita filling. It seemed to taste best at room temperature; we had it the next day for lunch and it just wasn't AS good cold from the fridge. Not that we didn't eat all of the leftovers (and possibly lick the tupperware it was stored in).

Black Bean and Rice Salad
(serves 4)

2 cups cooked rice, cooled
2 cans black beans, rinsed and drained
1 onion, diced
1 green pepper, diced
1 avocado, diced
1 can diced tomatoes
1/2 cup frozen corn, microwaved and cooled

6 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
chili powder to taste
S&P to taste

1) Whisk together dressing ingredients. Place all other ingredients in a bowl, cover with dressing, stir.


(A pitacopia of deliciousness)

This is a great option for dinner or lunch on hot days - it requires very little cooking, it's cool and not too heavy, and has a GREAT flavor/texture combination of creamy, tangy, spicy, crunchy, and rice. I'd imagine it would also be a great side for cookouts or dish to take to picnics; nothing is really in danger of spoiling, and the acidity of the vinegar keeps the avocados from browning. You don't have to keep it ice cold, it's filling, and the vegetarians at your next cookout will love you for it.

The Chinese Feast

(you say gyoza, I say jiaozi, you say dumplings, I say YUM)

My sister, K, came to visit me over spring break, and she loves to cook and eat almost as much as I do! This year, spring break is the week between St. Patrick's Day and Easter (St. Patrick's and Easter in the same week?! I blame global warming), so to properly honor both holidays, I naturally decided to make a huge dinner of Chinese food with K and S. So maybe it's not a feast by true Chinese standards, but a dinner with more than one course and a side dish is a big deal in Spyhopworld. Not only that, but I hadn't made either dish before (well, not by myself), and K and S had even less experience than I. Still, we girded our loins, and soldiered on into the realm of: Egg Drop Soup, Steam-Fried Dumplings, and Rice!

In reality, this whole fiasco began because I had 3/4 lb. of ground pork hanging around my freezer that I wanted to use for something. By itself, 3/4 lb. of meat isn't really enough to feed 3 people, so I was trying to think of what I could do to stretch it, and then I remembered how much I love jiaozi (a.k.a. gyoza). I hadn't had jiaozi in ages - I hadn't even had Chinese food in ages, and I knew jiaozi were a possible make-at-home food because years ago one of my Chinese professors invited my class to her home to make them for Chinese New Year. We made 400. That sounds like a lot until you hear how many jiaozi K, S, and I made (and ate!) in one night: 50. K and I mixed up the filling, and then the three of us sat down and folded up 50 dumplings at the dining table; K steam-fried them in the frying pan (more on that later), and then I whipped up some egg-drop soup (it's easy). The rice pretty much cooked itself, as per usual. If you added some quick stir-fried bok choi and maybe a dessert, this would make a pretty impressive dinner party. So without further ado, on to the recipes!

Steam-Fried Jiaozi (Chinese Dumplings)
(makes 50, total time: ~1 hour with 3 people)

1/2 pound green or napa cabbage, shredded
3/4 pound ground pork
2 green onions, minced
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, minced
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon vinegar (traditionally rice wine vinegar, but I used balsamic)
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 package of 50 wrappers (mine said 'gyoza wrappers' on them)
~1 tablespoon oil for each frying pan batch
2 tablespoon water for each frying pan batch
small bowl of water

Dipping Sauce
soy sauce
vinegar
sugar or honey
chili oil

1. Combine all ingredients except wrappers and sauce in a large mixing bowl. Mix (hands are best) until just combined. Don't overhandle.




2. Place one wrapper flat in the palm of your non-dominant hand and put about a teaspoon of filling in the middle of it.



3. Wet a finger of your free hand and use it to wet half the edge of the wrapper (a semi-circle). Fold the wrapper in half, pinching the center of the two edge-halves (wet and dry) together. Pleat the dry edge on either side of this center point and pinch the pleated edge to the non-pleated edge, sealing the edges all the way around the semi-circle. I know this sounds complicated, looking at the photos should help.


4. Heat the oil for one batch in a large frying pan to the temperature you usually brown meat/cook pancakes at. Somewhere between medium and high. Place as many jiaozi as possible on the bottom of the pan - they can touch each other, but each should be on the pan bottom. Cover and let brown ~3 minutes, then uncover, add the 2 tablespoons of water, recover, and let steam ~5 minutes. This is what's called steam-frying. Repeat until all the jiaozi are cooked.


5. Mix dipping sauce ingredients to your taste, and consume!



Egg Drop Soup
(4 small or 2 large servings, total time: ~10 minutes)

4 cups chicken broth
2 eggs and 1 yolk
ground ginger, salt, and white pepper to taste
optional: ~1 tablespoon cornstarch to thicken

1. Bring broth to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer.

2. Beat eggs and yolk together until consistency is even. Drizzle the beaten eggs into the broth while stirring the soup in a circle.

3. Add remaining ingredients. Told you it was easy.


P.S. Thanks to K for some of these photos!

Confession + Recipe = Confessipe?

(the impostors)



(deeeleeshus)

I have a confession: these are muffins. That's right, I made muffins, perfectly good muffins, and then decided I actually wanted cupcakes, so I iced them. Shocking, I know. But hear me out: what really IS the difference between muffins and cupcakes? I mean I know in general muffins can have things baked in them, like nuts or fruit, and are generally larger than cupcakes, but really, you COULD bake cupcakes with nuts in them and make them really big. In this case, I think the plain muffins were a little less crumbly-cakey than a cupcake would be, but I think the real difference between cupcakes and muffins is frosting. I'm pretty sure if you fed a naive test subject one of my frosted muffins, and told them it was a cupcake, what they would say would be "Mmmmm!" and not "This is no cupcake, this is a MUFFIN IMPOSTOR!"

And now, for side-by-side comparison: the muffin recipe I used and a basic cupcake recipe, both found online at either, recipezaar, allrecipes, epicurious, or cooks.com, I don't remember (oops). P.S. - I multiplied my muffin recipe by 3, because it makes 6 muffins, and the cupcake recipe makes 18.

Muffins...................................Cupcakes
3 cups flour.......................................3 cups flour
3/4 teaspoons salt...........................1/2 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder............2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/8 cup of oil.....................................2/3 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar...................................1 3/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups milk................................1 1/4 cups milk
1 1/2 eggs.........................................2 eggs
...........................................................1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Not identical twins, but maybe sisters, right? Clearly the muffins aren't as sweet as the cupcakes, but once you slap that frosting on top, they're really not lacking in sweetness. In case you were wondering about the recipe instructions, both follow the usual quickbread formula: you combine the dry ingredients (flour, salt, and baking powder) in one bowl, the wet ingredients (fat, sugar, milk, eggs, and vanilla) in another, beat the wet ones well, then slowly add the dry. The muffins bake at 400, and the cupcakes at 350, both for ~20 minutes.

Overnight Bread

(a few slices of bread for sandwiches)

One of the recipes I'm definitely keeping from the Hillbilly Housewife experiment is her recipe for Overnight Bread. I'd never made bread before trying this recipe, but I found it easy and accessible. I've heard a lot of people talk about using bread makers, but for a bread this simple I almost think it would be more work to take the machine out and clean it and start it up. I make two loaves at a time, which works because I only have 2 pans, and besides that homemade bread doesn't keep like store-bought bread does because it doesn't have any preservatives in it. I also make my bread half-whole wheat, and I think the flavor and texture turn out pretty nicely. This is a light bread, and it tends to be a little crumblier than the store-bought stuff I'm used to, but I'm not sure how it compares to other similar recipes.

Oh, and there's a reason for the name. This bread is best made before bed, because of the very long first rise.

Overnight Bread
adapted from Hillbilly Housewife
(makes 2 loaves, total time: ~18 hours)

2 cups warm tap water
1/3 cup non-fat dry milk
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 packet yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 of 1/3 cup of vegetable oil
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 cups whole wheat flour

1. Mix water, dry milk, and sugar in a very large bowl. Sprinkle the yeast on top, and allow to sit for a few minutes.

2. Add salt, oil, and flour. Mix with a wooden spoon until the dough becomes too thick, then use your hands to bring it together the rest of the way.

3. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for 10 full minutes. Coat the dough with oil, replace it into the bowl, cover, and let it rise for 12-18 hours, until it has doubled in size.

4. Punch the dough down, divide it into 2 loaves, and place them in oiled loaf pans. Cover both, and let rise again, 2 hours, or until they've doubled in size.

5. Bake the loaves at 350 for 40 minutes. Cool them for a few minutes in the pans, but then turn them out and cool on a rack until they reach room temperature. I wrap mine in paper towels and place them in large zip-loc bags.

Notes: You could of course use actual milk instead of water and dry milk powder, but first you'd have to bring it to the temperature of warm tap water.

Curry in a Hurry Without Worry

(Yes, this is a picture of the recipe book, and not the food. The book is prettier, trust me.)

Have you ever had one of those days? You know, when you get home from Kendo and you're dog tired and starving and it's almost 10pm? And all you have in the kitchen is half a bag of lentils and half a can of tomatoes? Ok, so maybe that's just me, but anyone can appreciate a dinner you can put together when time and ingredients are lacking. That is why I make Dal. I have this bright little paperback cookbook called Curries Without Worries. I normally cook Thai curry (I know, I know, I'll get around to posting that recipe someday), but this book is devoted to basic Indian recipes. I'll admit I haven't gotten around to some of the more effortful dishes from it - Roghanjosh: the ultimate Kashmiri lamb dish, for instance - but there are two pages of my copy that are well worn. One of them is the primer on how to cook long-grained rice (basmati, etc), and the other is the page labeled "Delicious Everyday DAL."

Dal is essentially lentil curry. All you need are lentils, some type of vegetable, water, and spices. It's so warm! So fragrant! So tasty and spiced and comfort food-y! You don't know how many times lentils have rescued me when I'm saying to myself "Oh my GOD there is nothing in the kitchen to eat. I am SO hungry . . . man I really don't want to go to the grocery store. I'm so tired! Wheat thins are not dinner!"

Delicious Everyday DAL
adapted from Curries Without Worries by Sudha Koul
(4 servings - ok, so I ate half -, total time: 40 minutes)

1 cup lentils
6 cups water
1/2 to 1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon ground ginger
S&P to taste
chili powder to taste

1. Bring all ingredients to a boil over high heat.

2. Reduce heat to low, simmer for ~30 minutes, until lentils are tender.

3. Yes, that's really it.

A few notes: the original recipe calls for more authentic ingredients, like real tomatoes, fresh ginger, coriander, and ghee instead of butter. I'm sure it tastes great like that, but it tastes great like this too. You can serve this with rice or flatbread; most recently I served it with garlic toast, but that's just me.