Some of the best meals I have made literally come from that weeknight Top Chef Quickfire Challenge ***PANIC*** that I have about 30 minutes to get dinner on the table and a small assortment of strange and limited ingredients. Usually things that need to be used that night, and a smattering of leftovers my husband refused to eat for lunch. I'll never forget my daughter breezing in at 6 pm from school, she was probably seven at the time, and announcing that she "felt like something with peanut sauce" for dinner. Well, I like a kitchen challenge, so I busted out some damn good peanut noodles tossed with (leftover) diced pork tenderloin and snow peas. Boom.
Although I didn't have any stray leftovers to use, tonight's dinner was a success, so I figured I'd document it.
I use my iPhone notes section to save all sorts of recipe ideas, menus, and general food-related info that I'm sure I wanted to remember, but subsequently have forgotten why. Today I saw an entry that said Cumin Honey Chicken and Tahini underneath. No recipe, no chef name, no cookbook or website. So tonight I just went for it.
Cumin Honey Garlic Chicken
I like the idea of this spice combo because it can go a few directions with sides -
Latin (I'd serve it with roasted potatoes topped with Poblano Crema)
Middle eastern (maybe with an awesome Fattoosh salad and some tahini-ish sauce)
Moroccan (definitely with curried couscous full of veggies and nuts and currants)
Tonight, I served it with some potatoes that had started to grow eyes (roasted, with a few handfuls of chopped Kale and some sliced red onion thrown in during the last ten minutes of cooking) and a Caprese salad. All things that needed to be used up tonight!
4 bone-in, skin on chicken breasts (or one per person, however many you are)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil (I cook with avocado oil but use what you like)
1-2 tablespoons honey (use 1 tablespoon if you don't like savory things super sweet)
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 cloves of garlic, chopped or through a press
ample salt and black pepper
Preheat oven to 400º
Pat your chicken breasts dry and put them in a roomy baking dish sprayed with something to try and keep it from getting too messy - I use awesome spray coconut oil. (Thanks TJ's!)
Mix all the other ingredients together and pour over the chicken, making sure you coat all sides.
Bake for about 25-30 minutes, depending on the size of your breasts. If they start to brown too much (the skin gets burn-y) then slip a piece of foil over the top. I use an instant-read thermometer and take my breasts out when they hit 155-160º, then cover them with foil and let them rest for ten minutes.
I put my roasted potatoes in the oven about 15 minutes ahead of the chicken and they were done at the same time.
Too bad I am a crappy photographer or I would have included a photo. Maybe the next time I make it for a dinner party, I'll shoot it.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Finally, THE BEST Banana Muffins
Because of my baking business, I'm not posting a lot of (um, any) baking recipes **sorry you're gonna have to buy that triple-layer coconut cake** plus this is a dinner blog, NOT a baking blog. But my daughter and I made some pretty awesome Banana Nut Chocolate Chip muffins tonight and I wanted to write down the recipe before I forgot it.
I have searched for years for the perfect banana bread/muffin recipe but with no luck. When you buy it out at a cafe, it's perfectly moist, thick slices of banana goodness or sky high, fluffy muffins. But the many, many recipes I have tested were generally disappointing.
One thing I did differently tonight is use my immersion blender to blend the wet ingredients. I was really frustrated with mashing the bananas - maybe they weren't ripe enough? Skins were black, but they were still pretty firm inside. So after I mashed them with the potato masher, I put all the wet ingredients into a 4 cup measuring cup and whizzed it a few times. Just like a banana-buttermilk-raw egg-canola oil-smoothie. Yum. You could probably get the same results with your regular blender. Just more parts to wash.
If you know my baking, you may know that I am OBSESSED with buttermilk. Maybe you don't know that, because I don't publish my recipes?! But literally every cake-ish thing I make for the business contains buttermilk. It is magic stuff. It gives a rich tang, a perfect crumb... ah I could go on. But I won't. Here's the recipe:
My BEST Banana Muffins
2 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3/4 cup buttermilk (NO SUBSTITUTIONS, just buy a quart)
2/3 cup canola oil
1 tsp pure vanilla extract (do I really have to tell you **pure**?)
1 large egg
2-3 large bananas, very ripe, well mashed with a potato masher
1 cup chopped walnuts
at least 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 375º
In 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup or another high sided bowl, combine egg, buttermilk, oil and vanilla and mashed bananas.
With your stick blender (Or heck, put all the above in your real blended if it fits) blend until smooth.
In a large bowl combine the flour, sugars, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda and salt then mix thoroughly.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and fold gently by hand using a wooden spoon or my implement of choice, a rubber spatula *** DO NOT OVER MIX, or your will have TOUGH MUFFINS **
Generously spray muffin tins with cooking spray, including the top surface, so when the muffin top rolls over it won't stick.
Use a 2 ounce ice cream scoop to measure out the batter into muffin cups to the TOP. That's right, fill 'er up to the top. Then your muffins will be big and beautiful - finally appreciation for a generous muffin top!
18-22 minutes or until muffins spring back with touched and tops are nicely browned. Rotate mid-way through the cooking time and check at 16 minutes with a toothpick - you don't want to overcook these babies.
Let rest in the pan five minutes if you can possibly wait that long. If you don't, you may burn your fingers getting them out. Slather with butter and eat them all immediately like we did.
I have searched for years for the perfect banana bread/muffin recipe but with no luck. When you buy it out at a cafe, it's perfectly moist, thick slices of banana goodness or sky high, fluffy muffins. But the many, many recipes I have tested were generally disappointing.
One thing I did differently tonight is use my immersion blender to blend the wet ingredients. I was really frustrated with mashing the bananas - maybe they weren't ripe enough? Skins were black, but they were still pretty firm inside. So after I mashed them with the potato masher, I put all the wet ingredients into a 4 cup measuring cup and whizzed it a few times. Just like a banana-buttermilk-raw egg-canola oil-smoothie. Yum. You could probably get the same results with your regular blender. Just more parts to wash.
If you know my baking, you may know that I am OBSESSED with buttermilk. Maybe you don't know that, because I don't publish my recipes?! But literally every cake-ish thing I make for the business contains buttermilk. It is magic stuff. It gives a rich tang, a perfect crumb... ah I could go on. But I won't. Here's the recipe:
My BEST Banana Muffins
2 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3/4 cup buttermilk (NO SUBSTITUTIONS, just buy a quart)
2/3 cup canola oil
1 tsp pure vanilla extract (do I really have to tell you **pure**?)
1 large egg
2-3 large bananas, very ripe, well mashed with a potato masher
1 cup chopped walnuts
at least 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 375º
In 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup or another high sided bowl, combine egg, buttermilk, oil and vanilla and mashed bananas.
With your stick blender (Or heck, put all the above in your real blended if it fits) blend until smooth.
In a large bowl combine the flour, sugars, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda and salt then mix thoroughly.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and fold gently by hand using a wooden spoon or my implement of choice, a rubber spatula *** DO NOT OVER MIX, or your will have TOUGH MUFFINS **
Use a 2 ounce ice cream scoop to measure out the batter into muffin cups to the TOP. That's right, fill 'er up to the top. Then your muffins will be big and beautiful - finally appreciation for a generous muffin top!
Let rest in the pan five minutes if you can possibly wait that long. If you don't, you may burn your fingers getting them out. Slather with butter and eat them all immediately like we did.
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