Super easy banana ricotta ice cream

Wow! I just discovered a great new, and what is also important, super fast and easy ice cream recipe. We had a long hot and steamy stretch of weather here in Toronto and I looked around for something easy to make. Since I did happen to have a few frozen bananas in my freezer, this recipe at "the minbaker" caught my attention. I did make ice creams with frozen fruit and whipping cream before, but that is too calorie rich to have it too often. This idea of using reduced fat ricotta really works! I made it for the family today and it was an instant success. No time for taking pictures, though... This photo is from the source of the recipe...


Easy Banana Soft Serve

2 ripe frozen bananas
1/2 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon sugar

In a food processor, combine frozen bananas with remaining ingredients. Process until smooth. Divide into 4 serving bowls and serve it right away.

Blog hopping

I have been cooking a lot of East Indian dishes in this past year. As such, I have visited a lot af good blogs that offer Indian fare. The last such successful contribution to my family's culinary experiences came from Show Me the Curry. We had their Chicken kofta curry. It is particularly helpful that they have a lot of videos that demonstrate the right techniques for preparing their recipes.



Another Indian blog with very detailed explanations is Kajal's Dreams. I am planning on preparing her spinach dhokla sometime in the next few days.

I also discovered a set of Jordanian blogs that each focus on certain dishes. One of them is the Hummus blog, another one is dedicated to Falafel, while another one is dedicated to Rice recipes. So I suppose my direction is in the process of changing...

Balsamic Mushrooms

I make mushrooms as a side dish often, but I just found a recipe with a very simple extra ingredient that can make a whole lot of difference. From Cherry at sakurambokitchen. It is very quick, just as good at room temperature as hot off the stove. And it is nutricious. What else do we need?

Balsamic mushrooms

1/4 cup olive oil
12 ounces to a pound of white mushrooms, halved, quartered or sliced
1 tsp garlic
1 corn
1/4 red pepper, diced
3 Tbsp balsamic vinegar (the magic ingredient)
salt, pepper

Heat oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Fry garlic. Add mushrooms, and cook until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Stir in vinegar, salt, and season with pepper. Add corn and red pepper. Cook 1 minute more.

I served it as a side dish for meatballs, with rice.

My best ever scalopped potatoes

This was one of those inspired moments when you add a bit of this, a bit of that, and you end up with a dish that turns out better than any other version you ever prepared before. I must put it up here to make sure I will be able to repeat it again, to make sure I will not upset my family with lesser casserole. This is what I did:

cca 9 lbs potatoes
½ to 1 lb dry sausages, preferably smoked, like a Chabai
½ cup oil
¼ cup bacon bits
5-6 eggs
1 pint (500 gr) sour cream
2 cups milk
1 Tbs chicken soup powder, or Mr Dash, or any other flavour enhancer
salt, pepper

Cook the potatoes, let them cool, then peel and slice them. While the potatoes cool, slice up the sausages and fry them slightly in the oil. This will make the sausages tastier and the oil will be infused with the sausage flavour. When you take it off the heat, stir in the bacon bits, also. Scoop the coins out with a slotted spoon, the bacon bits can stay.

Oil a large casserole dish. I prefer the wider, flatter variety, as that produces a casserole with lots of crunchy corners and surfaces. As you peel and slice the potatoes, they can go directly in the pan. Layer them down alternately with the sausages so that the top layer will be potatoes.

Now take a bowl and whip the sour cream in it until smooth. Add the eggs one by one, then the oil with all the bacon bits. Stir in the milk, eyeballing it to have approximately enough liquid to cover the top layer of potatoes also, then flavour this sauce, making sure that the flavours are quite stronger than normal, because the potatoes will absorb and mellow them.

Pour a spoonful or two of extra oil on the top, and bake it (350F-) until the edges are golden and the top is crunchy. In our family this constitutes a hearty meal, served with pickles, beet relish, or tomato salad.

Pesto crescents

This recipe will yield a relatively large amount of crescents. If you want, you can fill half of the dough with jam, a nut or chocolate filling.

2 lbs flour
2 Tbs fry active yeast
2 c milk
1/2 c white wine (or soda water)
1/2 c butter (margarine)
2 Tbs sugar
2 tsp salt
2 or 3 egg yolks
a jar of pesto (basil, olive, or sun dried tomato)

Knead all these together to get a nice, smoothly elastic dough. If too stiff, you can add a few spoonfuls of sour cream. If sticky, add a little extra flour. Let it rise till double.

Separate into balls and roll each ball into a circle. Cut the circle into wedges, smear a little pesto on each and roll them up. Arrange them on parchment lines cookie sheet and let them rise a little. You may brush the tops with egg wash and sprinkle some Parmesan or sesame seeds over them.

Cardamom coffee cake with almond filling

(Picture) – to follow

flour, altogether 3 ¼ - 3 ½ cups
1 package active dry yeast
2/3 cup milk
6 Tbs butter or margarine
1/3 cup sugar
1 ts salt
1 egg + 1 yolk
½ to 1 ts ground cardamom


Heat the milk, butter, sugar and salt together in a cup. It should be still comfortably warm to your hand. Take a large bowl, put in it 1 ½ cup flour, cardamom, egg and yolk, and beat it with an electric mixer for about 3 minutes. Then add enough of the remaining flour to have a moderately stiff dough. Turn this out onto a floured surface and knead it for another 3-4 minutes. Now put it in a greased bowl and let it rise to double it original amount.

In the meantime prepare the filling:
½ cup almonds
½ cup sugar
1 ts cinnamon
1 egg white

Toast the almonds spread on a sheet of aluminum foil in a toaster oven. When cool enough to handle, grind it in a grinder or blender. Beat the whites to stiff, gradually adding the sugar. Then gently fold in the almonds and the cinnamon.

Now take off 1/3 to ½ of the dough. Roll out the rest into a 10x10 inches rectangle. Spread the filling over it, then roll it up jelly roll fashion. Make a ring and place it on a parchment lined sheet. Now make a rope out of the smaller ball of dough, wet the top of the large ring and form a ring on top of it with the rope. With a pair of scissors snip diagonally into the rope at regular (cca 2 inches) intervals, then twist these leaf shaped sections one outward, one inward, all around.

Let it rise again a little, then bake the cake at 375F for about 25 minutes. You can put some aluminum foil over it if the top seems to brown too quickly. When done, let it cool, then drizzle the icing over it.

Brown butter icing

Heat 2 Tbs unsweetened butter, stirring constantly, until it turns brown. When cool, gradually add 1 cup powder sugar, adding ½ ts vanilla and further easing it with drops of milk to get it to drizzling consistency. Now pour this by tablespoons over the top of the cake and let it dry.

New Year's Day open house

We had a great New Year's Day open house. It is a recent "tradition" that our family started a few years ago. Our doors open at around lunch time (12:30 this year), and goes on for whenever the last guests leave. There is a little detail about this year that I did not appreciate: the first guest arrived at 12:20, ten minutes before the official opening... Please, people, don't do that! (...they are my relatives and I know they won't mind my public disclosure here :) Give a little extra time to the hosts, they are NEVER ready right on time, there is always something forgotten that they remember in the last minute.

Anyway, aside from me still being in the shower when guests started to arrive, we had a successful open house this year. The fireplace was crackling invitingly, the buffet table was laden, the coffee machine was exuding its heady aroma, and the mulled wine was gently warming on the stove. For the earlier guests we had finger food, both savoury and sweet, then around dinner time we had a few warm, more substantial dishes added to the menu.

This is the list of this year's offerings: cold turkey breast stuffed with chicken liver pate, olive pesto rolls, almond rice, cabbage salad. On the sweet side: cardamom coffee cake with toasted almond filling, the all-time favourite Bacardi rum cake, brownie-cheesecake slices, walnut slices, and peanut brittle. For the later warm fare I always make a big pot of chili, because that always tastes even better when prepared ahead and reheated. We also had an artichoke cheese cake that was reheated in the toaster oven, and I had some puff pastry cups that I filled with a salmon-scrambled eggs filling, both prepared ahead of the time, just assembled and heated before serving.

I managed to take only a few photos, I will post those recipes in the coming days.

Happy New Year!

Armenian khurut

Here is a recipe I inherited from my Armenian great grandmother. My grandmother still used to make it occasionally, but my mother did not bother with it any more. I still remember the taste of it and one day I will make some (I promised to myself...).

So what is this mystery food? It is a potted mix that is used to flavour dishes, mostly soups. I did try to look for it on the net without success, so maybe modern Armenians don't bother with it either. If so, then I consider it doubly my duty to post it here as a heritage recipe. Of course, it may happen that in Armenia it goes by another name. I would appreciate if someone who happens to pass by could comment on it. There is another recipe I never found anywhere and which unfortunately I do not own, I just remember it from my childhood. It was called HARSNEMADNAG and it was a cigar shaped cookie. I would very much appreciate the recipe if you happen to have it...!!!

For now here is the description of how khurut was prepared in my great grandmother's house:

Bring 1 liter (4 cups) milk to just below boiling point, let it cool a bit, then mix in ½ liter (2 cups) pure sour cream (which does not contain any gelling agent), cover it and let it stand at room temperature overnight. Next day bring large quantities of milk, 6-8-10 liters, again to boiling point, let it cool and mix the previous day's clotted batch into it.

Cover and let this big pot sit in a warm room for three weeks, stirring it every day. After the three weeks put the resulting yogurt on the stove and let it simmer, stirring occasionally, until it becomes as thick as good sour cream.

Meanwhile get a huge amount of parsley (about the size of a 10 lb bag of potatoes, or maybe even more), pick the leaves off the stems and grind these leaves in a food processor (the old recipe suggests a meat grinder), adding 10-12 celery tops (leaves only), and maybe some fresh tarragon leaves. Put the ground mix into the yogurt and keep simmering while stirring until it becomes as thick as marmalade.

Distribute this among jam jars while still hot, screw the tops on, turn them over for a short while, then store the jars in a dark closet. It will last indefinitely, or at least until next year. They usually prepared it in August or September.

It is used by adding a spoonful or so, mixed with fresh yogurt or sour cream, into soups or sauces, adjusting the amount to get a pleasingly sour taste.

Bean curd rolls

This dish is really nice... in a rustic Chinese way. I like it, my younger one likes it, other members of the family thought it tasted "too Chinese"... It is true that the five spice taste was very prominent. So one can tone that down a bit.

My main problem, though, was not the taste but the bean curd sheets that I used. I bought fresh sheets that do not need soaking. But they turned out to be much thicker than the soakable dry variety, I couldn't wrap the rolls properly, and they did not allow proper steaming to take place. Even after an hour the filling was still uncooked. So I just made balls of the rest of the filling and steamed them separately. You can see a couple of them, behind the rolls on the photo. Then I dried the rolls and panfried them under a lid. This made the stuffing cook nicely and had the sides of the rolls crispen up, but the ends remained chewy.

In the end I also cut the remaining bean curd sheets up into smallish squares, marinated them (dipped them) in the sauce that I prepared for the rolls, and fried them. They came out a bit leathery but tasty. They did not seem to soak up any of the oil. I had to wipe them dry after they cooled. You can see also some on the photo, peeking out from under the balls.

All in all it was OK, there were no leftovers. But I will have to make some further adjustments before repeating it. And if someone can enlighten me as to how to handle the thicker non-dry bean curd sheets, what recipes are they really meant for, I would appreciate a comment about it here below... :)

And now for the recipe (taken from Paula at NibbleDish)

Wrappers:
• sheets of bean curd

Filling:
• 1/2 pound ground pork
• 3 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 2/3 cup of grated carrot
• 1 1/2 cup bean sprouts, blanched
• 4-5 dried shiitake (I used soaked wood ear)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon five spice powder
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 spring onion, chopped
• 2 teaspoons of potato starch

Sauce:
• 3 tablespoon of light soy sauce
• 2 tablespoon water
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon of sesame oil

Chopped spring onions for garnish

Soak the mushrooms, then chop them. Mix all the filling ingredients. If you use dried curd, soak that also first, then cut the sheet into smaller squares. Fill them with the few teaspoons of the filling, arrange them in the steamer and steam them until done.

Home made cough syrup from ribwort

Home made cough syrup can be made using the lowly ribwort, a much maligned weed from your lawn. I just went through a bad case of cold, and while looking for home remedies I found this recipe on Klostersuppe mit Haube. Since I have ribwort growing in abundance on my lawn, it wasn't hard to gather the necessary amount, which I did, the syrup then I prepared, tested, and I can report to you that it worked quite nicely. :)

So now I am going to share with you the recipe in good old English:

½ - ¾ lb ribwort leaves
3 cups water
1 thick slice of a lemon
1 tablespoon lemon juice
½ lb brown rock candy
2 lb sugar (or honey)

Wash well the leaves and chop them up roughly. In a pot bring the water, lemon, lemon juice and and the rock candy to a boil, add the chopped leaves and then let it simmer on the lowest possible heat for 20-30 minutes. Now sieve it through a cheese cloth lined sieve, pressing out the juices thoroughly. Add the sugar to this liquid and let it simmer for about an hour, until it becomes thicker, more syrupy. Pour this syrup into prepared bottles and keep it in a dark cupboard until needed.

Good bye!

Our beloved Mother, Grandmother and Mom-in-Law has passed away this week.

May her rest be peaceful!

Maque choux - a Louisiana dish

After a long period of hurried slamming together whatever ingredients happened to be available in my kitchen, I had a short period of smoother sailing. I used these calmer days to add some new entries to my other pages, but then I did a little coasting around in the culinary world, too, peeking into other people's pots, looking for exotic dishes. That is how I discovered the maque choux. Doesn't this name itself have an intriguing sound?

The original (I suppose Native) recipe sounded too blah, Emeril's recipe needed Emeril's own sauce, so I opted for Nola's New Orleans Maque choux recipe. Of course, I used bacon drippings. I tend to cook healthy, low fat dishes most of the time, noone in my family has cholesterol, diabetes or any such ailment, so the occasional little indulgence does not upset our overall health. The dish turned out very nicely, I will repeat it.

Maque choux, my version

bacon drippings with oil added to measure about 4 - 5 tbs
3 cups frozen corn
1 onion, chopped fine
1/2 cup celery, sliced thin
1/2 cup green peppers, sliced paper thin
1 ts chopped garlic
1 cup canned whole tomatoes, chopped
salt, pepper
a few spicy sausages, I used some chipotle flavoured ones from European Meats in Kensington Market. They sell them frozen in 5 and 10 lb batches.

Saute the onion until glassy, add the celery, garlic and green peppers. Saute a bit, stirring occasionally, for 5-6 minutes, then add the tomatoes, corn, adjust the seasonings, and place the sausages whole on top of the simmering vegetables. Let it simmer simmer for 15 to 30 minutes, then take out and slice the sausages to be distributed and arranged on each plate of food.

For added flavour and colour you can also sprinkle some freshly chopped basil, thyme or parsley on top of the dishes.

Buffet style spaghetti pie

We just had a birthday party, and I have to tell you about one of the most successful dishes I put on the buffet table. It was so successful in fact that I did not manage to get a picture taken at all before it was gone. Instead, I decided to use the photo from the blog where I found the recipe, whose owner by the way is also a magnificent photographer in the Netherlands, and give full credit to her for the whole package. It truly is a package, as it has extensive photo instructions on the whole process of putting the dish together.

So, please, go and visit her blog, What's cooking?.

Beef with fresh mango sauce

12 thin slices of lean beef

Marinade:
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 tablespoon dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon tamarind juice (optional)
2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon rice vinegar (or regular white)
1 small onion (or 2 shallots) chopped

Sauce:
2 ripe mangoes
3 teaspoons of fish sauce
2 tablespoon lime juice
3 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
a few drops of hot chili oil (Saigon) - to taste
chopped basil leaves

Place the beef slices with the marinade ingredients in a zippered plastic bag and let them marinate overnight. Then just before serving fry, broil or barbecue them to desired doneness.
Blend the sauce ingredients and serve it with the meat, accompanied with rice. Sprinkle it with fresh. chopped basil leaves. I served the chopped basil on the side in a small bowl, and I also added grated zucchini as a side dish, sauteed with garlic in a bit of olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Cheesey veggies

Here is a simple dish that one can throw together either for a quick lunch, or as a side dish at dinner time.


4 tablespoon butter
4 tablespoon flour
2 cups milk
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley

2 tablespoon oil
1 medium sized onion
2 garlic cloves
1 zucchini
1 large carrot
1 pound broccoli florets
about two cups cauliflower florets
2 celery ribs
2 tablespoon lemon juice
about 1/2 a pound of Swiss cheese slices

Bechamel sauce:
Heat butter, stir flour into it and keep stirring for a few minutes. Lift it off the heat and slowly stir in the milk. Put it back and whisk it until it thickens a little. Do not bring it to boil completely. Add the parsley and stir a bit more before removing it from the stove.

Now put the carrots and the cauliflower on the stove in an inch of water, bring it to boil and let it simmer for 7 minutes, at which point pour the veggies into a colander and rinse them with cold water to stop the cooking.

In the meantime saute the onions in the oil until softened, then add the cruched garlic and stir it until it becomes fragrant, about 2-3 minutes altogether. Add the zucchini, broccoli and celery, season with salt and pepper, add the lemon juice and cook for 7-8 minutes.

Oil a baking dish and set the oven for 350F. Mix the carrot mix with the zucchini mix and the sauce. Dump the whole thing into the baking dish and cover the surface with the cheese slices. Bake it for 15-20 minutes, until the top turns golden.

I also added some asparagus. It is out of season now but I had one of those tall slim bottles of white asparagus in the cupboard. If you can get fresh asparagus, use about 1/2 a pound, and cook them together with the carrots and cauliflower.

Finally I placed a few sprigs of thyme on top for decoration and a little extra fragrance. They are growing in the backyard. Not for long though, it looks like we are in for an early and cold winter this year.

Sumpoogi aghtsan - Armenian eggplant salad

2 to 4 eggplants, altogether about 2 lbs
1 green pepper
½ red pepper
1 small onion
4 tomatoes, chopped
2 to 3 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
2 cloves garlic, crushed
½ to 1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon chili pepper
2 teaspoons ground cumin
4 to 6 teaspoons olive oil
juice of 2 lemons (1/4 cup)
olives and cheese (optional)

The best way to prepare the eggplants is by grilling over fire, but you can also just bake them or microwave them until they are soft when poked. Remove them, make a slit at the bottom and place them on a cutting board, slanting it towards a plate so some of the bitter juices, if any, can drain. When cool enough to handle, cut each one in two and gently cut and lift away the flesh. If grilled, you have to pick the charred skin off in bits, then rinse off whatever is left on the eggplants. Cube the cleaned flesh and put in a large bowl. Add the peppers, tomatoes and onion, chopped very small (size of a corn kernel) as well as the parsley, and mix them. Don't worry if the eggplants get mushy a bit in the process, it is to be expected.

In a separate bowl mix the spices and garlic with the oil and lemon juice. Pour it over the veggies and stir it well. Taste and adjust the seasonings if necessary. You can also add some olives and some grated hard cheese, like Kaseri.

Foie de veau provencal

I found a little piece of paper among my forgotten recipes with this recipe on it. I remember when we had this dish at the Le Petit Gaston, on Baldwin St. here in Toronto. I am not even sure whether the restaurant still exists or not. This dish was made by its original owner, Gustav Schwalb.


According to Schwalb, the dish can only be its best if we use Provimi liver for it. For a long time I did not know what he meant. Now, thanks to the internet, I was able to figure it out. Otherwise the recipe itself is quite simple.

2 tbs soft butter
1 tbs finely chopped fresh parley
1 large clove garlic
1/2 lb liver
2 tbs dry white wine
salt, pepper, oil

In a small bowl mix together thoroughly the butter with parsley and garlic, and season it with salt and pepper to taste.

In a heavy frying pan heat 1-2 tbs oil to medium heat, then add 1 tbs of the butter mixture. When the butter melts and begins to sputter, add the liver slices and cook for 3 minutes on each side. Remove the liver from the pan and place it on a warm serving dish.

Pour off the cooking juices from the pan, put it back on the stove, pour in the wine and add the rest of the butter mix. Scrape up the browned bits from the bottom with a spatula (deglaze), then pour the hot sauce over the liver.

Quickly arrange on the plate whatever you want to serve it with and serve immediately. The recipe gives you two portions.

Since I did not prepare this dish right now, I looked around for a temporary picture until I will snap one of my own. The one I found on flickr looks pretty close, I hope the owner won't mind. The way Schwalb served it, if I remember well, was simply with some mashed potatoes, and sliced fresh tomatoes and cucumbers drizzled with a balsamic vinegar based dressing. Very simple fare yet very tasty.

Mandarin chicken (New World style)

We love Chinese food, the authentic kind. But today I was hit by a wave of nostalgia, I remembered the first time we, my husband and I, ate Chinese food soon after we arrived to Canada. A new friend invited us out who, poor as we all were in those distant student years, wanted to treat us. What could have been cheaper and tastier than Chinese food? In those days (early 70's) it was REALLY inexpensive. He took us to Dundas, east of Spadina, to a small greasy spoon. Spadina itself wasn't Chinese yet. We were impressed by his expansive knowledge of Chinese cuisine. :) He ordered General Tsao chicken, some greens in oyster sauce, I forget the rest. But quite for a while after that, when just the two of us ventured into a Chinese restaurant we dared to order only their Dinner for Two. Refinement of the palate came with the gradual increase of the contents of our wallet.

Today I was looking around for dinner ideas when I chanced upon the recipe of General Tsao Chicken. I enthusiastically rolled up my sleeves and started to prepare it, only to find that I remembered it wrong, I did not have any canned pineapples in the pantry. Instead I found several of those small cans of Chinese mandarins. So what can one do in such a situation, I replaced the pineapple juice by the mandarin juice. And guess what! It turned out just great.



1 pound chicken breasts (cut into 1" pieces)
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1/4 c. sugar
1/8 c. low sodium soy sauce
1/4 c. mandarin juice (drained from a can)
1/8 c. white distilled vinegar
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp. fresh ginger, finely grated
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 Tbsp. cornstarch, mixed with 3 Tbsp. water
4 green onions, sliced

Dredge chicken in cornstarch and fry in a wok or a teflon skillet over medium heat until golden brown and crispy. Sprinkle cayenne over the chicken and keep warm on low heat. Meanwhile, in a saucepan, combine sauce ingredients (sugar, soy sauce, juice, vinegar, garlic, and ginger) and heat gently. When sauce is smooth and sugar has dissolved, take it off the heat, add cornstarch mixture and back on heat stir constantly until sauce has thickened. Now pour the sauce in the wok and stir to coat the chicken. Serve with hot rice, as well as green onion and hot red pepper flakes on the side, so people can add some as they like it.

I fancied up our rice with chopped celery leaves, white pepper and grated lemon zest. For the greens we had steamed kale in black bean sauce.

Fast and easy way to rid the house of ants and fruitflies.

I found the best way - at least for me - to successfully get rid of these buggers. And the solution is... tra-rah... the vacuum!

It started with a recent invasion by giant ants. No matter how well I cleaned the kitchen, they kept coming. Eventually they got so bold that they tried to climb up to the counter via my leg. In my frustration I grabbed the recently used vacuum hose still lying at my legs and sucked the bold warrior off my shin. And then the idea stuck. I started to vacuum up the other ants, too. The strategy proved to be successful. It seems that there were less ants then I first estimated, I must have kept seeing the same few returning again and again. Well, the bunch is gone now! Apparently they suffocate very quickly inside the bag.

And then it occurred to me that this may work for fruit flies, also. This actually turned out to be an easier task than the hunt for the ants. Ants are fast and smart. Fruit flies are slow and dumb. They like to perch on the wall just above the garbage can in a crowd. When I vacuum them, they just sit and wait for their turn. They can also be sucked up in mid flight.

Not only did I manage to reduce the pesky cloud of fruit flies in the kitchen, I also reduced the number of those that infest our compost can in the back of the house. There obviously was a connection...!