Banana Boat Desserts For The Lazy, Need-A-Sweet-This-Instant Type.
When you need a fast dessert, you can always count on bananas to help you make something great in a short amount of time. Here are a bunch of banana desserts, including several banana boat options, put forth by the Huffington Post. Check it out!
Michelle has been away on business all week so it has just been Sean and myself home for dinner each night and I let Sean choose some of the meals we would have this week. Naturally he chose things like burgers and pizza but he also wanted us to have some fried calamari this week for dinner. I love fried calamari myself, whether as an appetizer or as the main course, so I decided to make some for dinner for us and I found this recipe from Chuck Hughes on the Cooking Channel that was some calamari with a nice puttanesca dipping sauce. It seemed very easy to make and looked delicious so I decided to give it a go.
Fried Calamari with Puttanesca Dipping Sauce
For the Calamari:
1 pound fresh calamari
2 cups milk
Juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon hot sauce
2 cups all-purpose flour
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 eggs
Vegetable oil, for frying
Lemon wedges, for serving
For the Puttanesca Dipping Sauce:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 anchovy fillets, finely chopped
1/4 cup pitted, diced black olives
1 tablespoon capers
3 tomatoes, diced
Pinch of chile flakes
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
Zest of 1/2 lemon
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the calamari, clean the calamari and cut the bodies into thick rings, reserving the tentacles separately.
Mix the milk and the lemon juice in a large bowl. Let the mixture rest for 5 minutes until it thickens. Add the hot sauce. Add the calamari and allow it to soak in the buttermilk for up to 4 hours.
In a separate medium bowl, mix the flour, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of black pepper, the paprika and the cayenne pepper until blended. In another separate medium bowl, beat the eggs.
Remove the calamari from the buttermilk and allow it to drain. Dip the calamari into the beaten egg and then into the flour mixture to dredge it.
Fill a large, heavy skillet or Dutch oven with 2 cups of vegetable oil and heat the oil over medium-high heat until it registers 360 degrees on a candy thermometer, or if you are using a deep fryer, set the deep fryer to 360 degrees. Fry the calamari, in batches, until they are golden brown and crispy, about 4 minutes. Place the calamari on a plate and pat them dry with paper towels to remove any excess oil. Sprinkle the calamari with salt and pepper. Serve with the puttanesca dipping sauce and lemon wedges.
For the Puttanesca dipping sauce, heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan set over medium heat. Add the shallot and saute for 2 minutes. Add the garlic, tomato paste, anchovies, chopped olives, capers and tomatoes. Saute the mixture, stirring occasionally, for another 5 minutes. Season the sauce with salt, pepper and the chile flakes to taste. If the sauce seems a little thick, add a little bit of water and mix to thin out the sauce. Stir in the parsley and the lemon zest and serve.
you end up with crispy and tasty calamari and the dipping sauce was great. The mix of the anchovy, olives, capers and tomatoes were perfect and made a great compliment to the calamari. Of course, you can always just use buttermilk if you have some on hand instead of making your own as the recipe does, but many people do not always have buttermilk on hand so this is a good quick fix for that. As I said, this is great as an appetizer or an entrée, and we had it for dinner with some rice and vegetables to round out the meal. I forgot to take a picture of the sauce, but trust me, it comes out very tasty and fragrant.
That’s all I have for today. Check back next time for another recipe. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day and enjoy your meal!
Sean has been asking me to make turkey for weeks, but until recently unless you bought a whole turkey around here you couldn’t really get anything at the price of turkey when the holidays are not coming around can be really high so I have been putting it off for a few weeks. Last week when I was shopping I noticed our Stop and Shop and a few turkey breast halves at a really reasonable price. They were about 3 pounds each and one of them easily provided enough for a meal for just the three of us, so I picked up two (one went right into the freezer for later use) and knew I would be able to satisfy Sean’s urge for turkey. As luck would have, the latest issue of Cook’s Country has an interesting recipe for turkey breast that I wanted to try that is called turkey in a pot with gravy.This recipe promises a moist bird with some really good gravy, so it was certainly worth a shot. The original recipe uses a whole turkey breast and I adjusted it down since I was only making a half, but I have posted the original recipe here if you want to try a whole one.
Turkey in a Pot with Gravy
1 (7-pound) bone-in whole turkey breast, wings discarded, trimmed
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 celery rib, chopped
6 garlic cloves, crushed and peeled
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups chicken broth
Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 250 degrees. Using kitchen shears, trim any rib bones that extend beyond the underside of the turkey breast. If any backbone pieces are still attached to the underside of the turkey, remove them as well. Pat the turkey dry with paper towels and season it all over with salt and pepper.
Heat the olive oil in a large Dutch oven set over medium-high heat until the oil is just smoking. Add the turkey, skin side down, and cook until the breast is well browned, about 12 to 16 minutes, rolling it from side to side as needed to make for even browning. Transfer the turkey to a plate and set it aside. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of fat from the pot. Add the onion, carrot, celery, garlic, thyme and bay leaf to the pot and cook until the vegetables are well browned, about 7 to 10 minutes.
Return the turkey and any accumulated juices to the pot, skin side up. Off the heat, place a large sheet of aluminum foil over the pot and press the edges to seal the foil, then cover the pot tightly with the lid. Transfer the pot to the oven and cook until the thickest part of the turkey breast registers 155 degrees on an instant-read thermometer inserted into the turkey, about 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours.
Remove the pot from the oven and heat the broiler. Uncover the pot (be careful, the handles will be very hot as well as the lid) and brush the turkey with the melted butter. When the broiler is heated, return the pot to the oven and broil the turkey until the skin is golden brown, about 8 to 15 minutes, rotating the pot as needed for even browning. Remove the pot from the oven. Transfer the turkey to a carving board, tent the turkey loosely with foil, and allow it to rest while making the gravy.
Place the pot over medium-high heat, bring the contents to a boil and cook until almost all of the liquid has evaporated, about 8 to 15 minutes. Stir in the flour and cook until it is lightly browned, about 2 minutes. Slowly whisk in the chicken broth and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium and cook at a strong simmer, stirring often, until the gravy is thickened and measures about 2 cups, about 15 to 18 minutes. Strain the gravy through a fine-mesh strainer set over a medium saucepan; discard the solids. Season the gravy with salt and pepper to taste. Carve the turkey and re-warm the gravy, if needed, and serve it with the turkey.
Cooking the turkey at the low temperature in the oven after browning helps to ensure that you get a moister turkey in the end and then putting it under the broiler for a bit for some additional browning gives you great, crispy skin as well. The gravy had great flavor as well thanks to the concentration you get from letting all the liquid evaporate before you make your roux. Everything about it was perfect and of course we had some stuffing, mashed potatoes and vegetables for our little mini pre-Thanksgiving meal. There were even some leftovers after just making the half breast so we could have turkey sandwiches for lunch the next day (always a favorite of mine). I may do this again with the other half breast I have in the freezer.
That’s all I have for today, check back next time for another recipe. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day and enjoy your meal!
Sometimes appetizers can make the best meals for dinner, particularly on a weeknight when you may have run out of ideas of what to make, just want something quick and easy or are trying to make use of some leftovers so that you can clear the fridge, make a quick meal and get something tasty. This recipe from New York Times Cooking can do all of those things depending on the ingredients you choose to use. The original recipe is for a grilled flank steak on ciabatta bread with red peppers. I did modify my version slightly, using some leftover steak that we had from one meal and instead of the chopped red peppers I substituted some jarred roasted red peppers I had in the fridge. I think it came out just as well as the original recipe sounds, but I will post the original recipe here for you to use.
Grilled Flank Steak on Ciabatta with Red Peppers
1 1 3/4 to 2-pound flank steak
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons black olive tapenade
1/3 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 red onion, coarsely chopped
4 garlic cloves, slivered
2 large red bell peppers, cored and coarsely chopped
1/2 cup dry red wine
1 large loaf of ciabatta bread, halved horizontally
Smear the flank steak with 2 tablespoons of the extra-virgin olive oil and massage the smoked paprika into the steak. Season the steak with salt and pepper and set the steak aside. Combine 1 1/2 tablespoons of the black olive tapenade with the chopped parsley and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and set it aside.
Heat the remaining olive oil in a large skillet. Add the red onion and saute the onion over medium heat until it is soft, about 4 to 5 minutes. Add the garlic and saute briefly, then add the red peppers. Reduce the heat to low and saute the vegetables gently until they are very tender, about 30 minutes. Stir the mixture occasionally. Stir in the red wine and the remaining black olive tapenade then remove the mixture from the heat.
Heat a gas grill to hot, or alternatively heat a grill pan over medium-high heat. When the pepper mixture is done, place the steak on the grill or the grill pan and sear the steak, about 2 to 3 minutes per side for medium-rare. The timing may differ depending on the thickness of the steak that you use, so you can make a diagonal cut at one end of the steak to check the doneness.
Transfer the steak to a cutting board and place the ciabatta halves, cut side down, on the grill to toast. Alternatively, you can place the ciabatta halves on a baking sheet under the broiler. Watch the bread closely to avoid burning and heat for about 2 minutes on the grill or 3 to 4 minutes under the broiler. Smear the toasted ciabatta with the reserved tapenade and parsley mixture. Slice the steak thin on the bias and arrange the steak slices atop the toasted ciabatta. Reheat the pepper mixture and spoon it on top of the steak. Cut each ciabatta half in six pieces, arrange on a platter and serve.
This is a pretty quick meal to put together if you take some shortcuts. As I said, I had some leftover steak from an earlier meal that I sliced thinly and quickly heated in a grill pan. I used roasted red peppers and some baby yellow peppers I had on hand along with the red onion and instead of using tapenade (which Michelle doesn’t like and I didn’t have on hand), I used some sliced black olives and sliced Kalamata olives in its place and it worked out quite nicely. We had this for dinner along with some rice and vegetables, but this could also be a great item for an appetizer or even for a buffet table if you are having a party. You can put it all together pretty easily and have a nice spread. I really liked the taste of the steak mixed with the olives, onions and peppers and put that all on top of some crunchy ciabatta and it was pretty awesome.
That’s all I have for today. Check back next time for another recipe. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day and enjoy your meal!
Fun, unusual and forgotten designations on our calendar.
Happily Ever After Lives Here
a little bit naughty a little bit nice
Letting Life Lead
Simple and delicious dinner inspiration
onedadskitchen 