Small Batch Banana Pudding

Only have a couple of over ripe bananas but really want banana pudding? Here is a recipe that works with only a couple of bananas and serves 4.

I like to wait until the bananas are getting rather brown and then mash them with a fork to mix in with the pudding. It makes for better banana taste throughout the dish, too.

Very tasty!

¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
dash of salt
2 eggs, separated
1 cup milk
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
2 overripe bananas, mashed with a fork
about 20 Nilla Wafers

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine ¼ cup sugar, flour and salt in top of double boiler. Stir in 2 egg yolks and milk. Whisk to combine. Cook, uncovered, over boiling water, stirring constantly until thickened, about 10 minutes.

Beat egg whites on high speed until they begin to thicken. Add the 2 tablespoons sugar and continue to beat until soft peaks form.

Remove pudding from heat; add vanilla and mashed banana. Stir well.

Crumble up 10 Nilla Wafers and scatter in the bottom of 4 medium ramekins. Place 4 whole Nilla Wafers along the outside.

Spoon banana pudding evenly between the four ramekins. Place meringue on top, spreading to the edge to cover the pudding. Crumble four more wafers and sprinkle over the top of the meringue.

Place ramekins on a baking tray and bake in an oven for 10 minutes. Let cool before putting in the refrigerator to chill completely before serving.

Fried Mozzarella Sticks

I had the peanut oil out at lunch and, after cleaning up from our meal, took a nap to dream up things to fry in it.

Cheese! And, not just any cheese, but mozzarella.

We didn’t use all the pizza sauce on Friday’s sourdough cast iron pizza so that was our dipping sauce. Below is the basic recipe:

Pizza sauce – dashes of basil and oregano plus a sprinkle of salt in a small can of plain tomato sauce, heated in a saucepan over low heat. Taste after it is warmed and add more of whatever it is missing. If there is a metallic taste from the can, consider adding in a pinch of sugar.

You can definitely season the bread crumbs – as our sauce was flavorful, I didn’t but a little cayenne would have been tasty.

As Mom said of the fried cheese, “It is like a pizza melting in my mouth!”

8 oz Mozzarella cheese block
1 egg
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ bread crumbs
oil for frying – I used peanut

pizza sauce or marinara sauce

Cut the cheese block in half and then each half in six equal size pieces.

Place the flour in a pie plate. Scramble the egg in a shallow dish. Spread breadcrumbs in another pie plate. Coat the cheese sticks in flour, dredge in the egg and then coat with bread crumbs. Place them on a rack above a baking sheet.

Freeze for at least an hour or up to two.

Heat about a quarter inch of peanut oil or other neutral oil in a large skillet. Bring the oil to about 375 degrees F. Fry for about a minute each side or until golden brown.

Serve with warmed pizza or marinara sauce for dipping.

Beer Pretzels

I made my brother-in-law jealous with all the pretzels I’ve been making and not sharing, so I decided to make a batch for him to enjoy (and the rest of us as well, as this recipe makes 12-16 pretzels).

The good thing about this batch is that you can press pause after shaping them and place them in the freezer for later boiling and baking. It means delicious, warm pretzels later without repeating the process. You boil them from frozen, so it is a nice thing to keep around for a craving.

These make soft pretzels with a nice yeasty taste. Pop leftover cooked ones in the toaster oven for a quick rewarming. I gave my sister a bag of unbaked, frozen ones to take home and cook, whenever they want more.

1 cup warm water
½ cup sourdough starter
1 tablespoon rapid-rise yeast (about a package and a half)
½ cup packed dark-brown sugar
½ cup beer
6 ½ cups unbleached bread flour
4 tablespoons coarse salt
½ cup (1 stick) frozen unsalted butter, plus more for serving
Nonstick cooking spray
½ cup baking soda

1 egg, beaten in 1 tablespoon water
Coarse salt

In a medium bowl, mix together warm water, yeast, and 1/2 cup brown sugar; let stand until foamy, 5 to 10 minutes.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, whisk together flour and coarse salt. Grate frozen butter into bowl and mix with your hands until mixture is crumbly. Stir beer into yeast mixture and mix into flour until a shaggy dough is formed and liquid is absorbed.

Using the dough hook attachment, mix dough on medium speed until dough is tight, elastic, and smooth, 6 to 8 minutes. Transfer to a large, lightly oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and place in refrigerator; let chill at least 8 hours and up to overnight.

Remove dough from refrigerator and let come to room temperature.

Roll dough out into a 14-by-12-inch rectangle. Cut dough into about a dozen 12-inch-long strips, each about 1-inch wide.

Working with one piece of dough at a time, roll out each piece into a 24 to 30-inch-long rope (about 3/4-inch thick), starting from the center and working toward the ends. Make a “U” shape with the rope and cross the ends over twice, pinching at the bottom of the “U” to form a pretzel. Return to baking sheet and repeat process with remaining dough.

If you don’t want to bake all your pretzels at once you can freeze them overnight or for several days at this point. Just place the shaped pretzels on a baking sheet and place into the freezer. If you’re not going to eat them right away, place in a zip top bag once hard frozen.

When ready to continue, preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Coat a large baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray and sprinkle lightly with salt. In a large saucepan, bring 8 cups water to a boil. Add in baking soda. Simmer pretzels, one at a time, about 30 seconds, holding them under the surface of the water, if necessary, using a spider or slotted spatula. For pretzels straight out of the freezer, boil for 1 minute. Place on wire rack to drain, then transfer to prepared baking sheet and repeat process with remaining pretzels.

Coat pretzels with egg wash. Sprinkle pretzels with coarse salt. Place in oven and bake for 5 minutes. Rotate baking sheet, and bake until deep brown, 6 – 8 minutes more. Remove from baking sheet and transfer to a wire rack to cool slightly.

Serve warm with butter or mustard.

 

Grilled Sweet Potatoes

I was grilling some Boston butt country style ribs and decided to use the long cook time to grill a sweet potato, too. It is sort of a misnomer as they aren’t really ribs but they take a fairly long cook to melt the collagen so I had about 2 hours of grilling time to play with.

If you’re concerned about the fat, toss the potatoes in olive oil instead of butter.

This method adds delicious flavor to the potatoes plus the addition of smoke, raises things up a level. In fact, I baked an extra sweet potato to completion on the grill (a little over an hour) and then removed it from the skin and mashed it up to put in a later recipe (like mashed sweet potatoes, sweet potato biscuits or sweet potato pancakes). Freeze in 1 cup amounts in a zip top bags so you’re ready to go when the urge for sweet potato hits.

2 large sweet potatoes
3 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon dried rosemary (1 tablespoon if using fresh)
½ teaspoon salt

Wash the sweet potatoes. Set up the grill for indirect grilling by placing a chimney full of white hot coals along one side. While the fire is at its hottest, place the sweet potatoes between the meat and the hot coals. Grill for 30 minutes.

Remove the sweet potatoes from the fire.

Cut into rounds and peel. Place in a bowl with the butter. Once it has melted, stir to coat the sweet potato rounds. Sprinkle on the brown sugar, rosemary and salt and stir again.

When there are 30 minutes left on the meat cooking, return the sweet potato rounds to the grill. I placed them on a grill pan, in two rows with the thickest rounds in the first row and the smaller in the next. If your grill grates are close enough together, you can place them directly on the grill.

Set the sweet potatoes almost but not over the coals and grill for 30 minutes more.

They are done when tender. Serve warm.

Herbes de Provence Turkey Brine

Winn-Dixie had a sale on bone-in turkey breast and so I donned my mask and headed out to the grocery to pick one up. I brined the turkey breast overnight before placing it in my Dad’s Weber over a pan of water and grilled it for almost 3 hours.

We served it with the last of the asparagus and some potato cakes made from potatoes leftover from the shrimp/crawfish boil on Mother’s Day (recipe here).

Lots of yummy, tasty goodness. Can’t wait for sandwiches, though!

This brine is good on chicken, too.

½ cup coarse kosher salt
½ cup brown sugar
juice of 2 lemons, about ¼ cup (keep rind)
3 tablespoons Herbes de Provence
2 quarts water

1 bone-in turkey breast, 4-6 lbs

3 tablespoons butter, softened

Dissolve salt and sugar in three cups of water. Once the salt and sugar are dissolved, add in 1 cup of ice and stir until melted. Add in lemon juice and herbes de Provence. Let brine cool to room temperature.

Cut through the turkey’s backbone and split open in a butterfly. Place turkey in zip top bag with the lemon rinds and add water to the brine to bring it to 2 quarts. Pour into the bag and seal. Place in the fridge for 12-18 hours. If you don’t have a large enough bag, place in a pot big enough to cover the bird. Put a plate on top to keep it submerged.

Remove from fridge while starting to heat the coals. Rinse and pat dry. Use your fingers to loosen the skin. Press pieces of the softened butter under the skin and rub any extra over the skin.

Set grill for indirect cooking – I banked all the charcoal on one side. Add a wood chip like hickory for smoke. Place a pan with water on the opposite side to the coals. Put the turkey on the grate over the pan of water, with thickest part closest to the fire. Grill over indirect coals for at least 2 hours or until the internal temperature of the meat registers 165 degrees F.

 

#FrontYardCookout Beef Brisket

May is National BBQ Month and I’m starting it right with a beef brisket on the grill. On May 1st, I covered a 9lb beef brisket in a Dalmatian rub (equal parts kosher salt and black pepper) and wrapped it in plastic wrap and placed it in the fridge overnight.

Today, I pulled it out of the fridge to come to room temperature. I then followed the ATK method (outlined here) and lined Dad’s Weber Grill with a charcoal snake and lit one side for a slow, 5 hour burn with a couple hunks of hickory for lovely smoke. I placed a pan of water in the center of the grill to keep things nice and humid in there.

When it hit the stall, around 160-170 degrees F, I wrapped it well in aluminum foil and let it continue to cook to 200 degrees F, about 3 hours more. Timing here is all estimates based on weight of the meat and temperature of the grill. Rule of thumb is it takes about 1 hour 15 minutes per pound at 250 degrees F.

Once you remove the brisket from the grill, leave it wrapped for at least an hour and up to three to rest and let the juices redistribute and the meat to relax. I put it in a cooler in order to lessen the temptation to snack on it during this time.

Slice against the grain and give the eaters a choice of cuts from the flat or “lean” portion or the point or “fatty” portion. Anyway you slice it is a truly mouthwatering experience.

Oscar Mayer is encouraging people to get outside while maintaining a social distance of 12 hot dogs apart to cook for a cause. Bring your grill to the front yard and cookout with your neighbors while giving back! The company will donate one million meals to Feeding America, and each time someone shares their cookout on social media with the hashtag #FrontYardCookout, Oscar Mayer will donate an additional meal to the nonprofit organization, for up to one million extra meals.

Here I am in the front yard, cooking out!