The New Chef's Journal

While I am a big fan of banana bread, the primary reason I decided to make this recipe is that I'd forgotten I'd bought some bananas and they had gotten a bit overripe. Fortunately, being a bit too old to be eaten raw made them perfect for baking. This recipe, which I love, comes from simplyrecipes.com . Appropriately, it is a very simple recipe. I added some chocolate chips and you could just as easily add chopped nuts if you wanted. The bread turned out gooey and delicious. It wasn't one of my more challenging entries, but still one that I was very happy with. Ingredients: 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed 1/3 cup melted butter 1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup) 1 egg, beaten 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 teaspoon baking soda Pinch of salt 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour Chocolate chips (However many you feel like) Directions: 1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). 2. With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. 3. Mix in the sug...

Recently, I realized that I've been spending a bit more than I intended to put together these food blog entries. So I decided to go to Eastern Market, a farmers market/flea market in Southeast Washington DC, and shop  for a cost effective dinner option. After looking around I decided to go with some tilapia fillets, which were $7.50 per pound. I'd previously found a recipe for tilapia fingers on onceuponachef.com, which I'd been wanting try, so this all worked out well. This was a really simple recipe and aside from the tilapia I had all of the ingredients ready at home. I was very happy with how this recipe turned out. The fish turned out very crispy and flavorful without tasting too heavy and fried. I cooked it in three batches and realized after the first batch that it's important to make sure to add enough oil so the breading gets nice and crispy. This wound up being three meals worth of food for a very reasonable price. The original recipe suggests making a lem...

I was recently searching for dessert to make my girlfriend for our second anniversary and stumbled across the website eatingwell.com. This site has a lot of good recipes. Their slogan is "where good taste meets good health," but I can't really say that this recipe is healthy in any way. It's a very rich, mousse-like chocolate cake. Mine turned out slightly overcooked. It was still rich and delicious, but probably should have been a bit softer and gooier. The recipe says to bake it for 20-25 minutes and my oven managed to overcook it in 17. I hate my oven. A lot. I picked this recipe for two reasons. The first is that it looked delicious. The second its that it had a very unusual cooking method that I'd never tried before. Rather than simply placing the cake pan in the oven, the cake pan is placed in a larger baking pan partially filled with boiling water and then baked. This method worked out pretty well for me, but it is kind of a death trap. Transporting boil...

Mulligatawny is a traditional Indian, curry flavored soup. I first tried it at White Tiger on Capitol Hill, and that's still my favorite version of it. The recipe I used comes from guiltykitchen.com . My version was definitely not as good as some that I've had in restaurants, but it was still okay. I think that that the big mistake I made was the type of coconut milk I used. I accidentally bought some Trader Joe's light coconut milk, instead of the regular stuff. Real coconut milk would have added a bit more thickness, which my version was lacking. If you try this recipe yourself, make sure you get the right stuff. Ingredients: 2 tbsp butter 1 medium onion, diced 2 carrots, peeled and diced 2 celery stalks, diced 1 granny smith apple (or other tart apple), peeled, cored and diced 1″ piece fresh ginger, finely minced 2 cloves garlic, grated or minced 1 tsp cumin 1 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp tumeric 1 Tbsp curry powder 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper 1/4 tsp freshly gra...

For my birthday my lovely girl friend signed us up for a cooking class at CulinAerie . The class we took was on Indian summertime favorites. If you're looking for a place to take a cooking class in DC, I would highly recommend them. The staff and the instructor were very knowledgeable and helpful and the facility was excellent. The dishes we made included raita, green chutney, vegetable samosas, lamb kathi rolls and butter chicken (murg makhani), all of which were very good. The highlight though, was an amazing mango ice cream. This mango ice cream recipe is incredibly simple, but remarkably good. The result is smooth and creamy with a rich mango flavor. The key to the recipe is to use Alphonso mango pulp, rather than diced or pureed mangoes. This is a somewhat obscure product. You probably won't be able to find it at your local supermarket, but its available online and in some Indian markets. I found it at the Indian A-1 Grocery store in Arlington, Virginia. The there a...

Chicken and broccoli is a Chinese restaurant staple. It was also one of may absolute favorite dishes growing up. My sister and I ordered it from our local Chinese delivery place so much that we just had to give them our address and they knew what we wanted. This recipe from the food network does a really good job of replicating restaurant quality chicken and broccoli. It has a flavorful and rich brown sauce which is absolutely delicious. I was very happy with how this turned out. On the side I decided to make some fried rice, using another recipe from the food network. This didn't come out as well as I'd hoped. The rice was mushier than I would have liked. The culprit may have been the store-brand long-grain white rice I used. A better quality rice may have come out better. I think this recipe is definitely worth another try. Chicken and Broccoli Ingredients: 1 pound chicken breast (about 2 breasts), cubed 3 scallions, whites only, thinly sliced on an angle 2 cloves g...