Recipes Discovered

Banana Bread Recipe

I bake goodies at least once a week for Seth to take to work with him. I have been lucky so far, avoiding major disasters. Until the banana bread. I don’t know what went wrong, but this was definitely not right.
The recipe is from the www.amishcookonline.com website, and I recently saw it published in my local newspaper. It is a straightforward recipe for banana bread. Flour, sugar, baking powder and salt (I didn’t use the nutmeg or cinnamon it called for) are mixed together with mashed bananas, butter and milk. Beat this mixture for 2 minutes and then add eggs and more flour and stir until it’s combined. It’s baked in a loaf pan at 350 degrees for an hour. Simple. I baked the bread for an hour and it looked like it was done, but a toothpick came out still wet. I covered it with a piece of tin foil so it didn’t get too brown on top and I let it go for another 10 minutes. The toothpick was still wet. 15 minutes later and it was still wet. I baked the bread for two hours before I finally gave up and took it out of the oven. I let it cool a bit and then cut it in half to reveal that the bottom half really did not bake. The bread didn’t rise at all either. I don’t know if something was missing in the recipe or if I made a mistake I didn’t realize, but this bread didn’t work out for me.

Fish Tacos with Chipotle Cream Recipe

Every since I had my first fish taco at Wahoo’s a few years ago, I have been addicted to them. I don’t know why I like them so much, but there is just something about the flavor of the fish with the Mexican flare that I love. I’ve had a lot of varieties, but when I make them at home, this is my favorite recipe.

For the Chipotle Cream sauce, I mix together yogurt, mayonnaise and chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. I usually drain the yogurt for a couple hours if I remember. Just put the yogurt in a paper towel and put it over a bowl in the refrigerator. It makes the sauce a little thicker. Chipotle peppers are smoked japepeno peppers and the adobo sauce is just a tomato based sauce with some seasonings. They are hot, but the yogurt really mellows them out, so don’t be afraid to make this. Just be careful when chopping the peppers (don’t touch your eyes).

For the fish, I mix olive oil, lime juice, salt and pepper with the fish (I usually use tilapia). I let it marinate about 20 minutes before I grill it over medium heat for a couple minutes on each side, just until it flakes with a fork. Then I cut the fish into large chunks and put it on a serving platter along with shredded cabbage (or somtimes lettuce), corn, lime wedges, and warmed tortillas. Seth liked his tacos with refried beans, so I usually make them as a side dish. For my taco, I top a tortilla with fish, chipotle cream, corn and cabbage and then squeeze lime juice over the whole thing. The taste is pure magic.

Moo Shu Recipe

Moo shu is basically an pseudo Chinese dish served in American restaurants. Generally composed of pork, shredded cabbage, and carrots mixed with a garlic-soy sauce and served on a tortilla like Chinese “pancake” with hoisin sauce. There are many variations and additions that can be made, but I like to stick with the basics (although I do like to substitute chicken for the pork). I found a really quick and easy recipe in a 30 minute cookbookand have made it many of times. It’s great for a quick dinner with big flavor. I have made it with pork, chicken, and beef and all are good. The recipe calls for packaged coleslaw mix, but sometimes I can’t find that in the grocery store, so I just shred some cabbage and carrots and mix in. I usually find the mixture to need more sauce, so I double the sauce part of the recipe. Try the recipe out and mix and match until you find something you like! It’s a great recipe for experimenting.

Gazpacho Recipe

At a recent “Taste of” event in town, I had a bowl of what I would call cold soup. It was very thick broth with olive oil and pepper on top. I didn’t really know what it was, but it tasted great. A couple days later I caught the end of a Food Network show that had a very similar looking bowl of soup. After doing a little investigating, I found out it was called Gazpacho.

Gazpacho really is cold soup, popular in Spain and Portugal during the summer. While there are many varieties, the basis of the soup is tomato and bell pepper. It can be served either pureed (like I had it) or chunky. The recipe I found said that while fresh tomatoes should be the base, canned tomatoes are okay if you can find good ones. The author recommended Hunt’s Petite Diced tomatoes, which is what I used. The recipe is for chunky style Gazpacho, so only a little bit of the tomatoes are pureed and the rest of the ingredients are just diced. Since the soup I had originally was pureed, I decided to reverse the directions and puree everything except about a half cup of tomatoes. Plus it’s much easier to put everything in the blender than it is to dice it. >> Read more

Creamy Chicken Enchiladas Recipe

While browsing though an issue of the Publix Greenwise magazine, I saw a recipe for creamy chicken enchiladas. It sounded good and I had all the ingredients on hand, so I made them for dinner tonight.

The recipe looks complicated because there are a lot of steps, but it really is quite simple, especially since I had leftover chicken, so I got to skip the first step. I added some chili powder, cumin, and black pepper to the chicken to give it some flavor. I also used frozen spinach, so I just had to thaw that out and drain it. I shredded the chicken and mixed it with the spinach. For the sauce, I mixed yogurt, milk, green chilis, flour, cumin and salt together and added about a cup of that to the chicken and spinach. I spread a little of the sauce on the bottom of a greased baking dish, and then divided the chicken mixture among the tortillas, rolled them up and placed them seem side down in the dish. I poured the rest of the sauce on top, covered the dish with foil, and placed it in 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes. I uncovered them at that point, sprinkled the cheese on top (I like baked cheese), and baked them about another 10 minutes, just until the cheese looked good.

They turned out really well. They had a great spicy but not too hot flavor. The spinach and the chicken went well together and the sauce made them very rich tasting and creamy. I didn’t know Mexican food could taste so good and still be healthy.