A Homemade Life and a banana bread

I realize I have been absent from my favorite book club for a long time. It does not, however, mean that I haven’t been reading the books that are voted in as the club’s book of the month. I read Caliph’s house and even managed to write a few lines about it on my iPhone while sipping coffee at a McDonald’s and keeping an eye on Jr running around in the play area. This is what I wrote, if anyone doubts it:

If you pick up this book, expecting it to be along the lines of Under the Tuscan Sun, you will be sorely disappointed. While the Tuscan Sun was a loving albeit a laborious exercise in restoring a Tuscan villa, Caliph’s house is anything but. Fraught with jinns, superstitious guardians, unpredictable secretaries and a mobster for a neighbor, the project to restore a Caliph’s house, at the edge of a Casablanca slum, is destined for disaster…

I could have written more but I quickly lost interest in writing the review. Since the book never got better, how much can one write in the negative?

In contrast to TCH, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life. Author of the blog Orangette, Molly writes with an old fashioned, homemade charm about food, family and friends. The book reads like a collection of her blog posts with one to two recipes at the end of each post. There are recipes for soups, stews, salads, cakes and pies, some perfected by her cousins, her dad, her husband and herself.

If you have ever wondered how to word a recipe, from ingredients to method, I highly recommend A Homemade Life. Molly has mastered the art of writing down the most complex of recipes into a simplified, you-can-do-it-style. Reading her recipes, related to the “food stories” that accompany it make you want to step in your kitchen and start making a big pot of soup or bake one of her decadent cakes.

For me, the most poignant of the posts were the ones about her father, his love of all things French that he passed on to her, and her deep connection with him. But there are moments of joy and serendipity and fortuitous connections made over food that will remind you that the common thread that binds us all is also the one that sustains us. That is the reason why so many bloggers blog about food and why there is an entire TV channel dedicated to food.

You may wonder why I have not chosen to cook anything from her book, after praising it so much. For one, after reading through the whole book all I wanted to make more than anything else was Molly’s chocolate cake that she made for her own wedding. This cake uses equal amounts of butter and chocolate, some sugar and just a tablespoon of flour. The recipe is one of those that lures you to make it right away and then consume the finished goods till there is none left.

However, when one day, towards the end of the year, you measure your waist and weight and almost swoon, it is no time to indulge in cakes made almost exclusively of butter, chocolate and sugar. Instead, you start driving towards a very hot Bikram yoga studio and sweat and stretch for 90 minutes until your body feels it has been through the wash, tumble and rinse cycle of the washing machine. After that you indulge yourself in the semi-sweet embrace of a 64% Cocoa Scharffenberger and call it a day.

On the fringe and back

November was a tortoise/ rabbit month for me. I had my final papers due in college, a group presentation, a PP talk at my writer’s meet besides taking care of a friend’s kid for a few days and carting him and my son to school. Of course, other regular chores like cooking, cleaning and entertaining go on as usual. At the end of the day, what little energy I had left I chose to spend on catching up on missed episodes of Fringe instead of blogging. After all, I reminded myself, a wise man once said about blogging “blog only if it is fun”.

It was hard not to blog though. In the eight months that I have started blogging, it has become an extension of me. In the few weeks I have been absent from my blog, I was constantly taking pictures to post and mulling over my text to write. But at the end of the day, sitting in front of my laptop, my hands would pause, the mind would turn blank. I would hit the shut down button and go back to watching Fringe.

If you are into sci-fi/ paranormal genre, you can understand how addicting it is to watch Fringe. It airs every Thursday on Fox but clashes with my other favorite genre, comedy. At the moment, there is nothing more hilarious on TV than NBC’s Thurs nights with The Office and 30 Rock. Thank the technology for Hulu, where I can watch my other favorites the next day, especially if I missed the first season but can catch up with the click of a button.

Did I just digress from blogging to TV talk? Well, that is what happens when you take a break and come back after a few weeks. Hopefully, I am back for good, at least for a while. My college doesn’t start till middle of Jan and even though my next three weekends are busy, my weekdays are relatively free. So, brace yourselves for a barrage of posts (fingers crossed).

Before I leave, here’s a bunch of photos I clicked on my brief hiatus. More details and recipes coming soon.

Methi Theplas with potato cauliflower sabzi and carrot, tomato, onion koshimbeer (salsa).
 

Found this simple but yummy recipe for Eggplant Talasani at Manisha's Indian Food Rocks.
 

Eggless Banana Walnut Bread made with semolina (rava). Recipe on Supriya's Red Chillis.
 

Jammy Biscuits baked from Curry Leaf's Experiments, Emotions, Experiences with Food .
 

"I'll eat the jam first, cookie later."
 All those concerned parents out, don't worry. He didn't get to eat the whole plate of cookies. I took away the plate after he polished off two. So don't send me any concerned, anonymous comments like this one.

Dislike bananas; Love banana chips

Banana Walnut Bread

Very few people dislike bananas and I am one of them. So why would I make a bread out of ripe, old bananas? Well, I wanted to see if I would like them in bread the way I love snacking on banana chips. Also, it was another opportunity to entre Mena’s Banana bread recipe on Tried and Tested being hosted by Kitschow . I love Meena’s Hooked on Heat blog and though she has not written since Dec of 2008, being busy with writing a cookbook, it is an adventure to try her different recipes.

I have not modified the recipe in any way but have substituted pecans instead of almonds and also added ¼ cup of semi sweet chocolate chips*.

Ingredients:

1 cup all purpose flour
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup butter
2 ripe bananas, mashed
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ cup dry shredded coconut
1/2 cup pecans or almonds
¼ cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease a loaf pan on all sides.
Melt the butter in the microwave and add flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda. Stir to mix.
Add the mashed bananas and mix to make a smooth batter.
Stir in vanilla extract, pecans, coconut and chocolate chips.
Pour in the pan and bake for 30 minutes or depending on your oven, till a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean.

Serve with tea or as an after dinner dessert. The bread is not too sweet, loaded with banana flavor and tastes yummy. Yes, I liked the banana flavor in the bread.

This banana bread also goes to Madhuram's Low Fat Eggless Baking event.

*Note: If you add chocolate chips, the toothpick may come out coated with melted chocolate. In that case insert in another part of the cake.