EatLikeAChef - My fascination with food

I mentioned a few posts ago (pre-plum craziness) that I had a couple favorite banana bread recipes, and promised to write about them. It just so happened that I had three perfectly ripe bananas (spotted but not rotten), so I made a quick batch Friday. I based my bread on The Best Recipe by Cook’s Illustrated. This is a desert island cookbook for me - assuming my desert island had a kickin’ kitchen.

I do a few things differently than their published version and have made it as a vegan bread with success. Read the rest of this entry »

Finally finished my first batch of Chinese Plum Sauce. I made a new batch of the Plum Jam (see previous post) which gave me about 6 cups of thick plum jam. I then added the following:

1/4 c. rice wine vinegar
1 yellow onion, minced very tiny
3 T. garlic powder (you could also use minced garlic, but I thought the garlic powder would disappear in the sauce better)
1 T. cayenne powder
A whole lot of minced fresh ginger - ginger powder wouldn’t have the same zip and the zip is a crucial ingredient. I peeled a big fat piece of fresh ginger, then sliced it up into small pieces. I then put all the ginger through my garlic press to break down all the fibers and to get as much ginger juice out of it as possible. You could run the ginger slices through a food processor with similar results, or use a mortar and pestle.

Tomorrow I’m going to marinate both some pork loin and some x-firm tofu with the sauce and make a stir-fry. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
By the way, both the plum jam and the Chinese Plum Sauce ARE good enough to buy plums for specifically - the recipes would be keepers even without a plum tree outside my kitchen window!