With so many gorgeous Banana Breads to choose from my Banana bread Bake Off, I have no shortage of great recipes. One of them that caught my eye was Catherine from Clever Monkey Studio who made a Siamese Loaf aka a Curry Pineapple Banana Bread. It was fortuitous that I had a small amount of pineapple left, which was exactly the amount I needed to make this intriguing bread with the rest of the items already in my pantry with bananas being plentiful and inexpensive at the moment.
Another advantage to this is how gorgeously easy it is. Look at the method below and be delighted. There’s nothing more to it that some mixing. I don’t often push recipes on people but I do push this one only because I know that you might be weirded out by the addition of curry powder in a banana bread. But you will be duly rewarded with this unusual but gorgeous loaf.
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March 14, 2009
by Not Quite Nigella
One of the best things about food blogging is meeting fellow bloggers. Case in point is Christie from Fig & Cherry who has proved to be a great blogging friend and a lot of fun to hang out with. We have a lot in common, from obviously loving food, Dexter, pillow menus, hotels to being bossy chatterboxes. So when she read about our visit to Dunes, we got to talking and she mentioned that she hadn’t been to Palm Beach before. It seemed a tragedy for a Sydney-Sider so we sought to rectify this as soon as possible. However the weather gods decided to not let us have our picnic in the end. Such is the crazy weather that we’ve been having lately.
I was watching Food Safari’s episode on England and was fascinated by the way they made Pork Pies. I had one whilst in London and it was delicious, particularly the pastry (just don’t look at the nutritional information, you’ll think it’s a misprint but I’m afraid not!). I had heard that the traditional way to make English pastry for things such as Steak and Kidney pie is through using Suet ( the hard fat around the kidneys and loins in beef and sheep) but I had yet to cook with it. Sure it wasn’t in anyway healthy but I figure a few times eating it in your lifetime can’t hurt. But I dipped a trepidatious toe in the Suet pool by buying a Suet mix where I simply added flour, cold water and salt to create the pastry. If it worked, I’d look at ordering some from the butcher’s. Because I was pressed for time as I was making this on a Friday I took some shortcuts with the pastry and frozen spinach.
We woke on the Saturday morning to a light howling of wind and an overcast day. It seemed that today was not going to be the day to go to Palm Beach so we made alternate plans. As for the fate of this pie? It was my husband’s lunch, well received, and eaten picnic style with his hands. Just in front of a computer.
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February 6, 2009
by Not Quite Nigella
I know, most of us are still in our first few weeks of our New Year’s Resolutions and even so, enthusiasm is waning. Eating healthily shouldn’t be a burden but it sometimes is, especially when confronted with delicious food. A friend asked me to make her some muffins, low in fat and high in fibre for she was absolutely gung ho about her NY resolution to lose some kgs. I humoured her for a while thinking that it would pass but when she kept asking me I realised that she was serious. This New Year’s Resolution was going to stay, however unwelcome it was.
I had made low-fat items before and I knew the best way to reduce oils was with apples or apple sauce. With the fibre I could have added some All Bran but I never have any in the cupboard as I think it tastes only marginally better than the cardboard box it comes in. Then I remembered I was sent a bottle of Fibresure along with a Donna Hay Cupcake kit and a baking tray. Aha by George I think I had my recipe! This recipe is adapted from Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious book in which she suggests ways of incorporating vegetables into dishes. This one has pureed carrot in it although you could substitute it for pureed squash or leave it out altogether as the Fibresure ensures that there’s plenty of fibre adding 20 grams of fibre.
I won’t lie, these aren’t exactly like regular muffins, I don’t think it’s possible to make them with that crumbly, buttery texture without a lot of butter and oil but they’re not bad, especially with the buttery, sweet streusel topping. It all depends on your expectation too. I had friends baulk at the Jessica Seinfeld Spinach brownies only because they had expected a chocolatey, gooey brownie which of course you’ll never get unless you add a lot of butter, sugar and eggs. But if you want something healthy that taste good and wholesome these will definitely satisfy a sugar craving.
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January 18, 2009
by Not Quite Nigella
Sometimes instead of running out to the shops for a new loaf of bread, I find that if I have the time, I prefer to make it. I would never have ordinarily done this a few years ago, pre-KitchenAid and its wonderful dough hook attachment. My arms simply don’t have the stamina for kneading (although carrying shopping bags seems to be an exception to this rule), nor does my mind have the patience so I always bought bread thinking that the rising yeast and kneading was too much of a production. Indeed the feeble attempts that I had made warned me off baking it myself as I’d often give up mid-knead resulting in a cake more than a bread. But now since I have the Dough Hook, bread is no longer my bête noire. I adapted this recipe from Nigella’s How to be a Domestic Goddess, which has to be my favourite ever cookbook, and heeded her comment about how this bread really came into its own with cheese so I thought why not add some cheese throughout the bread?
I’ve often heard real estate agents purport that the smell of baking bread or freshly brewing coffee is a good way to sell a house and whilst I’ve never needed to sell a house, I have been lured by the smell of freshly baking bread. It’s something that even a hardened carb phobic like me finds hard to resist. When this came out of the oven, I took to it with a bread knife and cut myself a couple of slices and slathered them with butter. It was perfection. I then proceeded to cut off some more pieces before I realised that a good third of the loaf was gone. And I enjoyed every minute of being part of its disappearance.
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January 14, 2009
by Not Quite Nigella
Each year for Christmas, we go to the Blue Mountains and rent a house to stay in. And every year I’ve brought a batch of my own Home Made Muesli or Granola so that the healthy eaters can have it for breakfast. Don’t worry, there’s also sky high stacks of french toast and pancakes made, we’re not all virtuous at this time of year. Last year I made a cranberry, macadamia and yogurt coated berry version of this but this year I thought I’d make it a bit more tropical, a toasted muesli studded with dried mango, macadamia and coconut.
Most toasted mueslis or granolas spray the oats with oil so that they crisp up nicely but this also means that the healthy breakfast you were seeking is effectively negated by the generous spraying of oil. Not this one, it gets its crunchy texture via apple juice.I don’t want to give any claims or low fat since the nuts and seeds have fat in them(but the healthy kind) but the fact is that this is free of all added fat. It’s not exactly low in sugar with the amount of honey and sugar in it but I’ll take what I can at this point. It’s fabulously filling and low GI which means that a small bowl will sustain you easily until lunch. If I have a medium sized bowl I sometimes find I don’t even get the urge to have lunch but of course my eyes take over and I see something that I just must eat.
This also makes the most delicious Bircher Muesli, that lovely juice and yogurt soused breakfast. The apple juice and yogurt also plumps up the fruit and gives it a gorgeously cooling quality in the hot weather. A quick way to Bircher-ify your muesli is to take a cup of the muesli, mix in 1 1/2 tablespoons of yogurt (I used a Hastings Valley honey yogurt my friend Lou gave me but plain unsweetened yogurt is also fine) and 1/4 cup of apple juice. Cover and refrigerate overnight and in the morning, it’s absolutely delicious. I make this when I feel like something sweet and dessert like and save the regular crunchy muesli for when I yearn for some crunch. And I find that this coffee cup always makes me smile in the morning. It has the famous Oscar Wilde quote “Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast”. As someone that loves their sleep a bit too much, I wholeheartedly agree.
Bircher Muesli
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January 4, 2009
by Not Quite Nigella
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