May 2018 – Table For Two

May 26, 2018July 9, 2018

Baking Banana Bread

Eww, the bananas have all turned black! I like mine with a few freckles, but streaks? No merci. There’s only one thing to do, bake a loaf of Lauren’s grandmother’s banana bread for dessert.

One of the most important rules of baking is to get a nice slippery pan. Non-stick sounds nice, but butter-flavored Crisco is our stand-by way to grease without worrying about the waxy PTFE coating wearing off. Actually, the man who invented it was a chemist trying to replace Freon. It was a mistake that later became known as Teflon. There are cooking sprays out there, but let’s be realistic. Have you ever heard anyone say, “Mmm, Tastes like Pam!”…I didn’t think so.

Banana bread pre-baked — A nice shot of our banana bread before it went into the oven.

Bananas go with your wet ingredients. Ripe ones are SO much sweeter and easier to mash. Is anyone else remembering baby food, besides my mom? It’s pretty much the same thing; pureed bananas that come to a finger-coating mush. Lauren, could that be a substitution if you don’t have bananas around the house? Would it give it an apple zest? That sounds like an experiment for another day. I’m getting distracted-back to the bread.

Believe it or not, there’s a difference in softened and melted butter, but once you’ve softened it and then add it to the batter, it will melt the rest of the way gradually. Melted is a bit more concentrated for a one-shot spike.

Check this out: Mixing your wet BEFORE combining with the dry saves you the hassle of trying to mix it in enough later without activating the gluten too soon. It also helps to FOLD the batter once it’s combined instead of beating it so that your bread comes out smooth and soft.

Whisking the wet before the dry get added in. — Mom whisking the wet ingredients.

Sugar may be dry, but as Grandma’s recipe calls, we added it in with the wet. It dissolves evenly as you fold and the sugar cuts through the butter. Nobody wants a butter blob sitting in their stomach. A clump of sugar in one place is one thing, but not having sugar in the other is an imbalance for your sweet tooth. Most recipes use a full cup, but we’re only using a half because bananas are loaded with sugar naturally. Yeah, A 7 inch banana usually has 14 grams for Pete’s sake!

Let’s get the dry bits in order. Flour is a grain, which makes it vegan-friendly. Try leveling the cup inside the bag instead of setting up towels and making a mess all over the counter. I love the way that Rumford baking powder has that little lip at the opening like a soda can so you can level it off adding it in. Baking powder needs to be sprinkled so it doesn’t clump. If you don’t dust it and just plop it in, you’ll have a better chance of getting a sour, bitter and disgusting wad. I’ve had that sort of taste in my mouth from licking Mom’s biscuit spoon as a kid. It’s almost salty and makes you want to drink a liter of water on the spot.

Combining wet and dry — Wet + Dry = Banana bread batter

If it’s one thing about walnuts, (chopped or not) they can be bitter on their own in large quantities. We chopped some pecans while we were at it. Do you have a preference when it comes to nuts? Do you like to mix them up? Tell us in the comments, please. If you or someone you’re serving has an allergy, you can choose to use butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, or peanut butter chips instead of nuts. Maybe you’ll want to try white chocolate chips.

chopping some nuts — Time to chop up some nuts.

Just for fun, we threw in a cup of dark chocolate chips. Milk chocolate is far too sweet for this. Had we used milk instead of dark, the total sugar content would have been through the roof!

Finished banana bread batter — A little chocolate won’t hurt.

350 degrees and minutes later, time for the moment of truth, 35 minutes for cake, 45 minutes if you want it as bread. Hmm, a banana bread birthday cake…It might just be an idea for a zoo themed party with a monkey design.

Of course, we had to flip it out and let it cool on the rack…

Hot and ready banana bread — Yummy banana bread hot and ready

Lauren! Don’t om-nom-nom it all! Save some for us!

May 26, 2018July 9, 2018

Spring into Shrimp Salad

It’s transitioning quickly from winter to summer now, as is usual for New York around this time of year. In my experience, I am no longer craving hearty meals during this season. If I am going to be running around outdoors, I don’t want to be carrying around heavy food in my stomach which will only slow me down. Something lighter more refreshing will do. While scrolling through my news feed on Facebook the other day, a friend of mine posted a link to a simple recipe that fits the bill for me and Lauren. The name is “Avocado Shrimp Salad” which already wins the two of us over. This is a simple yet delicious salad that fits perfectly with this time of year and is easy on the budget, another plus.

Serving avocado Shrimp Salad — Serving my darling and myself some avocado shrimp salad.

This is a very straight-forward recipe. All you need is some good shrimp, greens, avocados, and veggies. By “good”, I don’t mean little tiny ones used for stir-fry. (Sorry to Natasha, but I like my shrimp a little bigger) But at the same time, we found out after the fact, that huge shrimp are not the way to go either, unless you cut them up first before serving. Since this is billed as a Cajun dish, big bright flavors are essential – lemon juice, chili pepper and cumin, the works. The avocados serve to cool down some of the spiciness, if you are not a big spice junkie such as me.

The dressing should not be very heavy, something delicate to tie everything together. We followed along with a simple olive oil base, cilantro and lemon juice. In my opinion, cilantro is the bacon of the herb world. You can add it to just about any non-dessert dish, the smell is strong enough to distinguish it from parsley and it packs a punch in the flavor category!

It was my turn to “mise-en place” (French for “Put in place”) the vegetables and tomato this time while Jeremy handled the hot shrimp. We didn’t have any corn or red onion available, so we substituted with jalapeno and poblano peppers, but still had avocado, cucumber, tomato and lettuce. (Don’t you just love how a salad can be so adaptable?) Knife cuts have a three point check list.

Use the right knife for the job. The wrong knife can make it harder to cut through and/or look sloppy, especially soft and juicy foods like tomatoes or bread.
Cut on a clean cutting board. Keep it kosher and don’t let germs spread all over.
Cut evenly so that everything looks similar and cooks at about the same pace. You “eat with your eyes” first.
Don’t they look even? Everything so nice and neat?

I had the loco-motion going smoothly in the wrist. I think of it like my arm is the main rod on a train car cranking the wheels. With a little attention to sizing, my julienne was straight on.

Peeling a cucumber — Can’t you smell the cucumber?

The first sign that shrimp are fully cooked is in the color. They go from gray and black to a peachy pink with red tails. After that, the middle has to cook through until it’s tender and slightly firm. If it gets to be rubbery and chewy, you’ve gone too far. 160 degrees F and opaque are your main goals. You want them to curl up like a “C”. When they’re raw, they kind of stretch out. Betty’s Kitchen Quick Tip #40 shows this in action. Sometimes, you can let them rest off of the heat and let it cook the rest of the way through with the residual heat if it just needs another 30 seconds. You don’t want to accidentally cook the juices out of it. Whenever I cook with chopped garlic, it chars or burns more than I’d like it. The rest period might help with that too. If anyone has any advice on this problem, please comment us your solutions.

Our 8 seasoned shrimp fresh out of the skillet.

Once the shrimp finished cooking among the spices, it was time to put our 2 halves together and toss them around so that the dressing could seep through.

The shrimp was seasoned perfectly, but we could’ve cooked them about a minute longer. The dressing was just right. As it turned out, I forgot to cut all the way through the slices and had to separate them by hand! How embarrassing! Everything else seemed crisp, dynamic and perfect for a summer-like spring day.

Toasting to spring salads — Toasting to spring. *Clink*

May 26, 2018May 26, 2018

The Greater Guacamole

Hola, everyone! Lauren here, and Jeremy. One of my favorite green foods is the avocado. It’s creamy and full of healthy fats that can calm a craving quickly, as opposed to reaching for that vanilla ice cream in the back of the freezer. Now that you’re hungry, let’s have a look at my favorite green dip, guacamole.

My mother and I have 2 very different ways of making guacamole. I’ll go first. I like zesty flavor combinations when it comes to Mexican and try to always have a sense of finesse in my cooking style.

1 avocado

1 ½ Tbs. Plain Greek yogurt

A smidge of chopped cilantro

¼ cup diced jalapeno

All the juice from ½ a lemon

Mine came out very creamy with a pleasant pastel green color to it. I could taste the yogurt too much versus the avocado, but it did cut back on the heat of the jalapeno. Having diced the jalapeno, it gave it a chunky level of texture, so it wasn’t one note. The lemon juice really complimented the spice and herb making it a tad brighter. There was a sequence to the taste. First was the lemon, then the avocado-yogurt, (The combo tastes like cheese to me. I don’t know why.) ending with the spices. Since the yogurt was so powerful, it masked half of the avocado. I think my next attempt will take it down to only ¾ Tbs. Overall, I would give it a 4 out of 5.

Mom took a much simpler route to her guacamole, as suits her usual “less is more” cooking style; keeping the integrity of the main ingredient by using only the necessities and a gentle hand when seasoning.

1 avocado

Lime juice

1 garlic clove

Finely chopped onion

A pinch of pink salt

Hers seemed a bit one dimensional at first taste. There wasn’t that same surprise heat which I’m sure would be appreciated by some. Mom’s classic onion and garlic duo complement each other well with the pinch of pink salt, but the question lays in how much is masked by the avocado. It takes some effort for that onion to come through. Note that she used a finely chopped onion rather than the flakes or powders. I couldn’t help but re-think the texture. If it were me, I would have probably gone with the more traditional route and diced up a purple onion to throw into the mix, maybe even a roma tomato or two too. That way, you get the nice acidic note to cut through the creamy fattiness of the avocado giving the guacamole more dimensions to its taste. Hers was thicker and didn’t have the overwhelming creaminess of mine, but not enough to call it pasty either. The element of acidity in hers was pretty much the same, but hers hit in a more concentrated way, as opposed to being bright like the lemon. I would call hers smooth, familiar and satisfying.

If I didn’t know better, I would very easily mistake hers for the guacamole served at “Mexican Connection” in Saratoga. http://www.mexconx.com It was the exact same texture and color, but theirs was missing that slight sour kick. There was that same sense of consistency and no tricks out of the hat to throw me off-guard. It was a normal, elementary, and easily recognized guacamole. The fact that when Jeremy and I opened up our leftovers the next day and saw that it had already started to brown tells us right away that this was home-made. No preservatives or additives were added anywhere. It goes to show that with real guacamole, you either eat it now, or throw it out 3 days later.

If we had to rank the 3, we would definitely put Mexican Connection’s on the bronze podium. It was a nice creamy bite to cool me off after a dunk in the hot sauce. It tasted great with the tortilla chips they were serving by the buckets, but there was nothing exciting about it to tempt me to take another bite.

Her mom’s guacamole would be in second place because hers had all of the same great points for taste, texture and uniformity, but with that slight kick of acidity to please more than just an avocado craving.

Mine I would put on top because it had a trio of flavor, and a few different sensations that went well together. But since it came out unevenly and the yogurt was a blob too much, it’s no run away. There is work to be done with mine and much to be said about when it is too much and when to stick to the basics.

The winner of the unofficial guacamole contest — The winner of our unofficial guacamole contest!

What do you think of these dips? How you do make a guacamole grand? Tell us in the comments! We would love to hear from you. Adios!