Banana-nah-nah...

Many of you know that I am in the midst of rehearsals for a new musical on Broadway. It's called American Idiot and features the music of Green Day. Its freaking awesome and when you combine a lovely cast and over-ripe bananas, what else CAN you get but Banana Nut Muffins!? The recipe is my sisters and I have no idea where she got it. So apologies if someone is not getting their deserved credit! The recipe calls for Walnuts but as I had none and grocery stores aren't open at 2am, I used Almonds. For fun I also added a splash of Almond Extract and the smell was AMAZING!

Banana Nut Muffins
3 or 4 Very Ripe Bananas-Mashed
1/3 cup Butter-Melted
3/4 cup Sugar
1 Egg-Beaten
1 tsp Vanilla
1 TBS Espresso or strong brewed coffee
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 -1/2 cups Flour
1 cup Walnuts

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine Butter and Bananas. Mix well. Add Sugar, Egg, Vanilla, and Espresso. Mix.

2. Sprinkle in Baking Soda, Flour, and Nuts. Mix well.

3. Ladle into greased or papered muffin tins. Fill 2/3 of the way. Bake 25-30 minutes or until top is browned and firm.

Super easy. Super moist. Super tasty!
Enjoy
~K

mmmm...Reubens!!!

So this is not a recipe really but more of a love letter to the Reuben. I woke up yesterday with a killer craving for a Reuben. It could not be ignored! However, my lovely NYC-Dominican-land grocery store decided to fail me for the first time ever. The only Reuben-esque (lol) meat they had was Turkey Pastrami. FAIL! What was there left for me to do but to buy a whole Corned Beef Brisket and boil it up? For those of you how aren't Irish or have never cooked Corn Beef, this meant waiting, at the very least, 3 hours before I would be able to sink my teeth into a luscious pile of fatty meat. Undeterred, I bought it and took it home. As much as I love the taste of Corn Beef the smell of it cooking really gacks me out. Somehow I suffered through and was able to make a pile of deliciously greasy and completely unhealthy sandwiches for my fantastically receptive family.

A classic Reuben is a warm sandwich that, for those unfortunate enough never to have tasted the loveliness, consists of these 5 important ingredients:
-Corned Beef
-Sauer Kraut
-Russian or 1000 Island Dressing
-Swiss Cheese
-Rye Bread
The Rye bread should be toasted and the Beef and Cheese stuck under the broiler to get it sufficiently gooey. The dressing should be generous and the Kraut nice a crisp!

After I have said all this I must admit to a small lie...I'm not a huge Reuben fan in its entirety. I don't like Sauer Kraut. I prefer a version, which at Ella's Deli ( a truly sorry excuse for a NY deli by the way) they call a Slush. A Slush is basically the same except Coleslaw is substituted for Sauer Kraut. Try it! Its AMAZING!

And while I'm busy getting sacrilegious, I should also tell you that I am a HUGE fan of Pastrami and would take a Pastrami Slush over a Corned Beef Reuben any day. BUT in a pinch Corned Beef just HITS THE SPOT!!

Super Easy Marzipan.

For me Marzipan is a memory taste. My mother used to get Dark Chocolate Marzipan eggs from Clausen's bakery every Easter. On Easter morning, my sister and I would find them, as well as intensely rich peanut butter eggs and your standard foil wrapped milk chocolates, in our Easter baskets. We were always warned that we were to save the Marzipan for Granny. Granny loved Marzipan and would always get the first bite and it was not uncommon to come back and find that the second and following bites had mysteriously disappeared.

Since then, I have always associated Marzipan as a homey, happy taste that brings back so many amazing memories of my loving and surprisingly naughty grandmother. I find that Marzipan in stores is fairly expensive or painted oddly bright colors and disturbingly void of chocolate. The other day while trolling my favorite recipe sites I stumbled upon a recipe and decided to try it out. The original source is the Blue Ridge Baker, who seems to have consistently tasty offerings. Sorry the pictures are so terrible.

Chocolate Covered Marzipan

8 oz Slivered Almonds

1 1/2 cups Powdered or Confectioners Sugar

1 TBS Almond Extract

5 TBS Corn Syrup (my sister suggested honey...probably would be tasty...haven't tried it though.)

4 oz Chocolate melted (tempered if you want to be crazy)

1. Grind Almonds in a food processor until a very fine powder. Mine doesn't so that great of a job but I actually like having some small nut pieces in my Marzipan. It definitely does not effect the taste.

2. Add Sugar and Almond Extract. Blend until smooth. Add Corn Syrup and mix thoroughly. The mixture should bind together.

3. Knead the dough until nice and smooth. It can be SUPER sticky so you may need to powder your surface. I used more Powdered Sugar. Form a log, wrap in Saran wrap, and stick it in the freezer.

4. Melt chocolate. Like I said if you want to go crazy you can temper the chocolate which is a lot of temperature watching and time. Tempering the chocolate will create the nice hard chocolate shell you think of when you buy candy from a store. So if you want really authentic beautiful chocolates you really should temper the chocolate. Personally its just a step that is delaying me from putting it in my mouth. I'm impatient. But I also have to keep mine in the fridge after I make it to keep the chocolate hard. If you want to temper it here's a good link http://www.cookingforengineers.com/article/155/Tempering-Chocolate

5. Take dough out of the fridge and cut, roll, or form the Marzipan into whatever shape you would like, the simplest being nice little round balls. Dip your shapes into the chocolate and place on a piece of parchment to set. Like I said, I'm impatient so I throw it in the freezer! (: After about an hour take them out and eat them! Simple and Tasty!

Enjoy

~K

Valentine's Day Quiche.

So this Valentine's Day I decided that it is far more annoying to be in a long distance relationship where your partner is far away, than to be single. I missed my boy very much and made the biscuits in the above picture in his honor (he loves biscuits.) So in order to distract myself, I decided to try out a quiche recipe I have been eyeballing for a while now.

All Things Tasty Quiche- Makes 2
1/2 lbs Bacon cooked and crumbled
1 Onion chopped
2 cloves Garlic
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1/2 lbs Mushrooms sliced
2 Cups Smoked Ham cut into small cubes
10 oz Spinach (frozen is easiest but fresh is tastier)
8 oz Sour Cream
8 oz Monterrey Jack Cheese shredded
8 oz Cheddar Cheese shredded
4-6 oz Parmesan Cheese shredded
8 Eggs
1 -1/2 cups Half and Half
Parsley
Green Onions
2 Deep Dish Pie Crusts
Salt and Pepper

I tweaked a recipe by Clark Hamblen.

1. Preheat oven to 375. Fry up Bacon in Skillet. Crumble and set aside.

2. In frying pan saute Onions and Garlic until soft and translucent. If you are feeling feisty try sauteing with the bacon grease. Add Mushrooms and cook until soft, about 3 minutes. Add Bacon and Ham, remove from heat.

3.Combine Sour Cream and Spinach in a bowl. Salt and Pepper to taste. Divide and spread mixture into the two crusts.

4. Divide and spread the Bacon, Ham mixture in the crusts on top of the Spinach mixture.

5. Mix together Cheeses, divide and sprinkle over pies.

6. In a medium sized bowl, whisk together Eggs, Half and Half, season with Salt and Pepper, a handful of Green Onions, and Parsley.

7. CAREFULLY ladle eggs on top of pies. The egg mixture is in great danger of going everywhere if you are not slow and careful here!!

8. Put pies on cookie sheet to help with overflow and place in the center of your heated oven. Bake 40 minutes or until top is puffy and golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes. Serve!

Enjoy
~K

My Top Three Kitchen Tools.

I thought it might be nice to share with you some of my favorite tools. I use them almost every time I cook. Ive decided to wait until a later post to talk about knives as that could take up pages. So starting from the top.

1. Small spatula.
My grandmother gave me this spatula as a Christmas present one year and it has quickly become one of my favorite toys. It is made of a harder rubber that is heat resistant and I believe came from Orange Tree Imports. It is invaluable for bowl scraping and I even use it to scrape scrambled eggs off the sides of my non-stick pans. I like its small size as it can get very precise and is very easy to handle.

2. Tongs.
Tongs work really well to pick up stuff. What more can I say? I had a really terrible pair for a long time so have only begun to appreciate the amazing-ness of the tong! They are really helpful with precise pan work as well as tossing and serving.

3. Hard Spatula
I love, love, love this spatula. It is an odd hybrid of a traditional hard spatula and a spoon. Its made of a hard old school plastic called Melamine. It is perfect for folding things as well as stirring and scraping in my frying pans. Brilliant tool. However, Melamine can chip fairly easily.

So that's it for tonight. Long day of class today so I'm a little uninspired. Tomorrow a recipe!

~K

Betty Crocker is One Smart Broad!

Whenever I get the baking itch, more likely than not I reach for my brownie recipe. Brownies are stupid easy to make and always seem to come out perfectly. It always amuses me the number of people who have never made a brownie without a box of mix. Homemade tastes so much better and really doesn't take much more time or effort. As a chocoholic, some days I can't fall asleep without my nightly chocolate fix. Tonight is no exception. Therefore, I offer for your appreciation my favorite brownie recipe. I have tried many but none can even come close to the masterpiece that is Betty Crocker's Cocoa Brownie Recipe. For some reason they come out packed with more chocolate flavor than all of the other recipes that call for melted chocolate. And because Embrace Food is all about being a little naughty, I like to sprinkle chocolate chips or chunks on top for a little extra pow! Also I almost forgot to mention..NEVER ice brownies. You want Icing? Bake a cake! Brownies are an expression of pure, simple, chocolate pleasure. Don't mess it up with icing!

Betty Crocker's Cocoa Brownies
1 c. White Sugar
1/2 c. Butter (Yes, I suppose you could use margarine but REALLY?)
1 tsp. Vanilla
2 eggs
2/3 c. Flour
1/2 c. Unsweetened Cocoa (go ahead add a little extra)
1/2 tsp. Baking Powder
1/2 tsp. Salt
Handful of Chocolate Chips (optional)
1/2 c. Chopped Walnuts (optional- I usually don't. Makes em harder to inhale)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix sugar, butter, vanilla, and eggs. Stir in remaining ingredients.
Spread in greased 8x8 pan. Sprinkle chocolate chips on top. Bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes.
Cool and cut into squares.

Note: Brownies are not finicky. Don't worry too much about mixing in every last speck of butter.

In today's recipe I used Ghirardelli cocoa powder but I grew up baking with regular old Hershey's cocoa. Can't say I can tell the difference.

Pour yourself a tall glass of milk and...
Enjoy
~K

Bonus Post! ~ Avocados

Avocados are one of my all time favorite foods! Up here where I live there are two varieties to choose from. On the right side of the picture you can see the most common type of avocado. These usually are grown in either Mexico or California and have a small pit and rough bumpy skin that turns black as it ripens. The avocado on the right is a Dominican avocado. They tend to look more like an unripe mango with smooth green skin and a larger pit.

They also vary in taste. The small black avocados have a stronger, more noticeable flavor and the flesh tends to be greener in color. The large Dominican avocados are lighter and more buttery. Their flesh is more yellow than green. You can get more out of the Dominican avocado but I prefer the flavor of the more common Mexican or California avocado. When I'm feeling naughty I like to eat them straight out of the skin with a little red wine vinegar and salt. Nummy!

Price wise in the Heights the Dominican avocados tend to be on the cheaper side except for today when the black avocados were on sale for 99 cents!! SCORE!