Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

I love banana bread. I hate old bananas. Win-Win! I also love Mark Bittman's recipes. I have all of his cookbooks. Including "How to Bake Everything". He has this great recipe for banana bread you can find here on the New York Times cooking website (opens in a new window -if you have subscription). Or you could buy Mark Bittman's cookbook or app "How to Cook Everything." I'm not giving away his recipe for free. I will tell you I hate nuts, so I sub chocolate chips. Not as healthy, but certainly more delicious!

Here is a photo of my attempt! (Don't forget to serve it with milk!)

Enjoy!

Easy No-Knead High Fiber White Bread

I love bread. I love all bread. I love eating bread. I love baking bread. I even love the place and bake Sister Shubert's rolls. But I especially love chewy crusty white bread. And yet, I had a problem. My husband is on a high fiber diet. How can you possibly have high fiber white bread? After all, white bread is white because the wheat germ has been removed. A little Pinterest, a little experimenting, a trip to the Mother Earth News Fair bread lecture, and a lot of baking have resulted in this lovely bread recipe! It has flax seed meal to make it high fiber and add some color, but feel free to leave it out.

The only catch is that it tastes best in a dutch oven, so try to have one handy.

Ingredients:
3 c. all-purpose flour, plus 1/4 c. for the cutting board
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baker's yeast (a packet contains 2.5 tsp, so you will use about half a packet)
3 tbsp ground flax meal (optional)
1 1/2 c. warm water (do not use chlorinated water, so buy bottled if you must).

Directions:
Mix all ingredients in a bowl. It will look like this:

Add, the warm water and stir to mix thoroughly. The dough will be slightly tacky and appear over moist. It should stick to the sides of the bowl. If it isn't damp enough, add a little more warm water 1-2 tbsp at a time. If you don't use the flax seed meal, you will probably not need the extra water. 

Then, allow to rise 8-24 hours covered in plastic wrap or a damp flour sack towel (really, it can't over rise...I accidentally left mine for 48 hours once, it kind of tasted like sourdough...kind of). The dough does prefer a warm spot.

After the bread has risen, preheat the oven to 450 degrees Farenheit with the dutch oven and lid in the oven! You want the dutch oven to heat slowly.

Meanwhile, turn the dough onto a floured cutting board. Roll into loaf form. Cover with plastic wrap or a damp flour sack towel. Let rise until the oven has preheated, about 30 minutes.  

Carefully transfer the bread to the dutch oven (the dutch oven will be hot!). Bake for 30 minutes with the lid on. After 30 minutes, remove the lid and bake for 5-8 more minutes. When you remove the loaf, it should look like this:

Now, this is the hard part. Do Not cut into the loaf for at least an hour. I know you want fresh baked bread. However, the moisture in the bread needs a little time to settle. So, have patience and wait. Unless you plan on eating it all within the hour. That works too.

Enjoy!

Honey Peach Cake

When you are dreaming of summer and want to use lackluster peaches, when you are in summer and are overrun with peaches, or if you just love peaches...honey peach cake!

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Honey Peach Cake

Ingredients:

1 c. unsalted butter, at room temp

2 ½ c. all purpose flour

1 ½ tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

1 c. sugar

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 tbsp. honey

Pinch nutmeg

Dash allspice

2 tsp. vanilla extract

3 large eggs, at room temp

1 c. whole milk

1 c. diced peaches (1-2)

Directions:

1.    Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter pans with butter wrappers or spray with cooking spray.

2.    Line pans with parchment, butter again, and dust with flour. Tap out excess.

3.    Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice together. Set aside.

4.    Beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer on medium high until fluffy.

5.    Beat in the vanilla and honey. Then the eggs, one at time, scrapping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.

6.    Reduce mixer speed to low. Add the flour in 3 additions and the milk in 2 additions, beginning and ending with flour. Do not over mix. Gently fold in the peaches.

7.    Transfer to pans and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

8.    Cool the cakes in the pans for 15 minutes, then transfer to a wire wrack to cool completely.

Baking Times:

Two 8 in rounds: 25-30 min.

Two 9 in rounds: 22-25 min.

9x13 rectangle: 25-30 min.

24 cupcakes: 15-20 min.

Buttercream Frosting:

Ingredients:

1 stick butter, softened.

3 c. confectioner’s sugar

1 ½ tsp. vanilla extract.

1-2 tbsp. milk.

Directions:

1.    Blend butter and sugar.

2.    Stir in vanilla and milk.

3.    Beat until smooth and of spreading consistency.

Will frost 2 layers, 24 cupcakes, or a 9x13 rectangle.

Add 1-2 drops food coloring as desired.

Cake recipe adapted from Real Simple September 2010

Buttercream recipe adapted from Betty Crocker.

Enjoy,

Suzanne

The Quest for the Indian Taco

Now that you know how to make Indian fry bread (see my blog post here) and Ranch Style beans (see my blog post from March 9, 2018) you can make Indian Tacos!

Take a fry bread

top with Ranch style beans,

then add cheese,

and lettuce as desired.

Make note: this is a knife and fork dish!


Ingredients:
Indian Fry Bread
Ranch Style Beans (canned or homemade)
Lettuce
Tomato (I left this off-they looked very sad at the grocery store this week)
Shredded Cheese (I used 4-cheese Mexican blend)
Sour cream (optional)
Green onions (optional)

Directions:
Top your fry break with the beans, lettuce, cheese, and other toppings as desired. That's it!


But, if you decided to make your beans, add about 8 hours cook time. Also note that it takes about 40 minutes to make fry bread.

Enjoy,
Suzanne

Ranch Style Beans-The Quest for the Indian Taco

So, when making an Indian taco, the beans are key...Ranch Style Beans. That doesn't seem too hard, you could just go buy a can of those at the grocery, right? You could, but then, would they really taste authentic?

After searching Pinterest, the internet, and many websites, I finally read the back of a can. Then went home chanting, tomato paste, onion, garlic powder, smoked paprika, spices. -Wait-What spices?!

I thought about it, and decided it must be some sort of pepper. So, here it goes: Ranch Style Beans. 

First, source really good beans. I used Santa Maria Pinquito Beans from Rancho Gordo. You can find them at this link on their website (opens in a new window).

Then you need to cook the beans. I am a huge fan of the crock-pot method.

Place rinsed and sorted beans (you have to remove pebbles and things) in a crock pot with 1/4 c. dried onion or 1/2 c. diced fresh onion.  Add a bay leaf, 2-3 tbsp of fat (sunflower oil, olive oil, lard, or unsalted butter) and cover with enough water to cover the beans. Cook on high 4-6 hours until beans are soft. Do not salt the beans or add acid at this stage!

One minor change-for ranch style beans, crumble a dried cayenne pepper into the crockpot. 

Now Ranch Style beans:

Ingredients:
1 cup dried beans, softened as above (pinquito, cranberry, pink, or pinto work well)
1 6oz can tomato paste
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cumin
salt  to taste. 

Directions:
Once beans have softened in your crock-pot, add remaining ingredients and stir. Turn heat to low on crock-pot. Cook for 2-4 more hours (bean sauce will thicken as it sits. If it gets too thick before serving, stir in a little water). 

That's it! Enjoy,
Suzanne

Indian Fry Bread--the Quest for the Indian Taco

Once a year, I attend Mountain Heritage Day, a festival hosted by Western Carolina University. As an alumni of WCU, Mountain Heritage Day is my absolute favorite event hosted by the school. Football certainly isn't much of an attraction as 1) I hate football and 2) WCU hasn't won more than half the games in a (good) season in the last 20 years or so. WCU does have an excellent marching band though, in case you were wondering!

Back to Mountain Heritage Day. A large part of Appalachian heritage is the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation. Officially called the Qualla Boundary, the Cherokee live on the "reservation" where historically, their people were held until the Cherokee were able to buy back the land (and then some, over the years) the was theirs originally. During the time that the Cherokee were held on the reservation, they were given "rations" to survive. One of those rations was flour, which the Cherokee didn't have a great idea of what to do with. This was standard on all Indian Reservations in the 1800's by the way. It lead to the advent of Indian Fry Bread, sometimes called Navajo fry bread (though it certainly wasn't exclusive), which most Native American tribes still serve today.

Once a year, at Mountain Heritage Day, I wait in line for an hour (yes, an hour!) to eat this treat. Preferably served as a "taco". Traditionally served with beef, ranch-style beans, lettuce, tomato, and cheese. This year, I was super excited to see that the Cherokee Fry Bread taco was being served vegetarian style!

So how to make it? Part one...track down a recipe for fry bread. I tried Ree Drummond's recipe on her blog: The Pioneer Woman. (Follow the link for the recipe). It came out amazing! Note: While this recipe is from Oklahoma and uses milk, the Cherokee are often lactose intolerant and do not use milk in their traditional fry bread recipe. But as a home cook...well, go for it. -Also, I didn't have shortening so I used lard. 

Part two...figure out the beans....because Ranch-Style beans aren't the easiest thing to find. More on that in a couple of days.

For now...here is a picture of the fry bread I made. You should try it!

Enjoy!

Suzanne

Teriyaki duck and roasted vegetables

I am not a meat and 3 kind of girl. On occasion, I might get talked into fried chicken and mashed potatoes, especially the skillet fried chicken at The Blue Rooster in Clyde, NC...or maybe the fried chicken breast with mushroom gravy at Homegrown in Asheville, NC. But given the choice, I'll choose a burrito or stir-fry. If it can be done in one pan, even better. 

But sometimes, you just want that traditional meat and vegetable. Right? So I make duck breast and roasted vegetables, because duck is as normal as it gets.

So here it is: Duck Breast!

Ingredients:
2 fresh duck breasts, skin on
1 c. teriyaki sauce
1 sweet potato, diced
1 blue potato, diced
1 small head cauliflower, in florets
1 small head broccoli, in florets
sunflower oil, or other neutral oil
1tsp thyme leaves
orange, sliced in half-cut one half into 4 wedges

Directions:
1. Marinate duck breasts in teriyaki mixed with juice of half an orange for 1 hour.
2. Meanwhile, toss potatoes with 1-2tsp oil, salt, and thyme. Place on cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Remove from oven. Stir.
3. Toss cauliflower and broccoli with 1-2tsp oil, salt, and juice of orange wedge. Add to cookie sheet. Return to oven for 20 minutes. Stir halfway through.
4. Heat a little oil in a skillet on medium high. Add the duck breasts and marinade. Cook, 5-6 minutes until starting to sear. Flip duck breasts over, and cook another 3-4 minutes, until medium (unlike chicken, duck is often served medium or even medium rare)
5. Plate and Serve with orange wedges for garnish!

Enjoy,
Suzanne