Simple Sweets

"My friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana. I said, 'No, but I want a regular banana later, so...yeah.'" -Mitch Hedberg

Bananas. There really is nothing like them. Packed with vitamins, the banana is nothing short of a super fruit. What vitamins, you ask?

• Potassium! Did you know that if it weren't for potassium, our bodies wouldn't even function?! Seriously. The presence of potassium in our bodies is vital for neurons in our brain to communicate and for every muscle in your body to contract- even your heart.
• Vitamin C! Our bodies need certain 'building blocks' in order to make things like collagen (connective tissue in the body) and neurotransmitters (the chemicals that brain cells use to communicate). Vitamin C is one of those essential building blocks. Plus it acts as an antioxidant- a molecule that works against the naturally occurring deterioration of our cells as they go through their day-to-day activities.
• Fiber! Haven't had the pleasure of a healthy passing of stool lately? Perhaps your diet is too low in fiber. Not only does fiber promote regularity of your movements, it also regulates blood sugar, reduces appetite (by making you feel full faster), and reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes.
• Sodium, Fat, and Cholesterol! Just kidding. Not really. In fact, they don't contain any of these, meaning that a diet rich in bananas is great for reducing the risk of high blood pressure.

The long and short of it is that bananas are literally packed with nutrients and virtually no bad stuff. So...why the heck aren't people eating bananas more often?!

Oh yeah, that's probably why. Overripe bananas look gross, and most people don't enjoy walking the fine line between brown spotting and possible rotting. And while bananas tend to run among the cheaper of fruits, it can be disheartening (in my experience at least) to buy a bunch of bananas only to find that they brown too much before you can finish them off.

But wait! Don't throw those overripe bananas in the trash. Not when they can be turned (quite easily) into a delicious and healthy dessert. Mmm...dessert. Are you ready for this recipe? It's going to blow your mind:

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Banana Ice Cream

Ingredients:

• bananas (green/yellow to yellow/brown)

Directions:

1. Freeze bananas in a zip-lock bag until they are completely frozen.
2. Place bananas in a blender or food processor and pulse-blend, mixing occasionally to push solid chunks towards the blades. You'll notice that as the banana continues to blend, it will take on a creamy, smooth texture (like ice cream). Blend until banana is as smooth (or chunky) as you want.
3. Leftovers can be frozen and enjoyed later :)

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Bingo, bango. That was easy! And I'm telling you- this stuff is delicious. Plus, you can mix in whatever you want and create your own ice cream flavor. Karl and I added strawberry pulp that was leftover from our Aguas Frescas (recipe after the jump), but on my next few batches, I plan to add things like honey, chocolate chips, or peanut butter.

Now make some ice cream and go lie in the sun. It's spring, for pete's sake!

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Aguas Frescas

(makes just over a quart)

Ingredients

• 1 lb strawberries, washed, green cut away
• 4 cups cold water
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract (or coconut extract)
• 2 tbsp lime juice
• 2 tbsp sugar
• Ice

Directions

1. Combine strawberries, 2 cups of the water, and extract in a blender and liquify.
2. Strain the mixture using a sieve (or a pair of pantyhose if you're feeling as ghetto as Karl and I were).
3. Add remaining water, lime juice, and sugar and mix.
4. Serve over ice.

Everyone likes their aguas frescas a little differently, so feel free to tweak the ingredient amounts to fit your taste. I went so far as to add a few healthy gobs of honey to my glass :)

My Muse, the Artichoke

"These things are just plain annoying. After all the trouble you go to, you get about as much actual 'food' out of eating an artichoke as you would from licking 30 or 40 postage stamps. Have the shrimp cocktail instead." -Miss Piggy

Oh, Miss Piggy. Yes- I would agree that, as far as veggies go, artichokes rank among the more arduous, but do not be discouraged! After a bit of recipe experimentation, Karl and I have discovered that these little babies (pun very much intended) are absolutely worth the effort.

Artichoke season runs from March to May, so if you want them fresh, check the produce section ASAP. But thankfully, artichokes are typically jarred in a marinade, so you could probably find them any time of the year. I stumbled upon a case of 9 baby artichokes while perusing the produce last weekend and picked them up with the intention of finding something to do with them. Seriously- I have never cooked a fresh artichoke before!

That said, Karl and I spent the evening perusing recipes and trying to figure out how exactly one even cooks an artichoke. And as it turns out, they're really not so difficult. The recipe that we came up with is pretty much an original piece of work- the only thing that's not our own is the Hollandaise sauce. Let us know what you guys think! We want to perfect the recipe, and the more people that give us feedback, the better it can become! :)

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!

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Spring Sausage and Artichoke Saute with a Hollandaise Sauce

(serves 2-3)

Ingredients:

• Italian sausage (4 logs)
• 1 tbsp butter
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1/2 large yellow onion, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• 1 yellow bell pepper, chopped
• 9 baby artichokes, washed
• 1 tsp fennel seed
• 3 tsp thyme
• 2 lemons
• 4 leaves basil, rolled and chopped
• salt and pepper, for taste

For Hollandaise sauce

• 4 egg yolks
• 1 lemon
• 1/2 c unsalted butter (melted)
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• salt and pepper, for taste

Directions:

1. Start cooking your sausage early! In a lightly greased, non-stick frying pan, saute the sausage over low heat. Cooking it like this takes anywhere from 1 to 1 1/2 hours, but the sausage won't dry out and will retain most of its flavor. Turn the sausage occasionally (every ten minutes will do).
2. Prep the artichokes as described below.
3. In a large frying pan over medium-low heat, melt 1 tbsp butter. Once butter has just melted, add chopped garlic and saute 1 min, moving constantly. Add onions and cook 1 min. Add chopped red and yellow bell peppers, artichokes, fennel seed, thyme, juice from second lemon, and chopped basil. Add a bit of salt and pepper here to taste, but remember that the Hollandaise sauce will be eaten over the vegetables, so don't salt too much! Continue to saute vegetables until tender.
4. Whisk the egg yolks and lemon juice together in a stainless steel bowl until it has thickened and doubled in volume. Place the bowl over a saucepan with simmering water, but don't let the water touch the bottom of the bowl. (It's important that the egg not get too hot or they will begin to scramble!) Continue whisking the mixture and slowly add the melted butter. Whisk the mixture until it has thickened and doubled in volume. Remove from the heat, whisk in cayenne, salt, and pepper, and keep in a warm place until ready to use.
5. Once the sausage has finished cooking (no more pink inside), cut it into bite sized pieces and add it to the vegetables, stirring and sauteing over low heat. Allow the sausage and veggies to saute together for about 10 minutes.

Karl and I served the sausage and vegetables with the Hollandaise sauce drizzled over the top. As an appetizer, we had red wine-soaked goat cheese on toast and Pinot Grigio. If you go all out and get the goat cheese, add a bit of cheese and chopped basil as a garnish!

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Artichoke Prep*:

Bend back outer petals, snapping them off at the base.

Continue snapping off petals until the leaves are half green (at the top) and half yellow.

Using a stainless steel knife, cut the top cone of the leaves at the point where the yellow meets the green.

Cut the stem level with the base and trim any remaining green from the base of the artichoke.

Plunge artichoke hearts into acidified water. (A quart of water with 1 lemon's juice.)

Chop hearts into halves or quarters before sauteing.

*Artichoke preparation courtesy of the California Artichoke Advisory Board.

Mother's Day Meal

“Every year the number of new cookbooks increases, but in spite of them the progress made in this most useful of the arts is not ever overpowering. On the contrary, we must regretfully admit that nowadays people no longer prepare the fine and nourishing dishes that our mothers used to make.” -Anna Dorn, Cookbook Author (1834)

First up...

Happy Mothers Day, Mom! I wouldn't be the man I am without you. I love you!

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OK, so anyhow. I am very proud and excited to say that New Chefs has gotten our first request! It reads as follows...

BlondiePicPic writes: You guys are so cute. Can you tackle a good veg-friendly recipie next? I have yet to master the art of cooking tofu properly. Teach me Chef Shawnay!

Well, I was perusing the produce aisle this evening and, perhaps it was because of Mothers Day, but I found myself remembering when my grandma (Nana) would make bell peppers stuffed with red rice. As I passed the red bell peppers, they screamed to me: "Stuff us! Stuff us!" Okay, that's weird. They didn't.

But I did decide to experiment with the stuffed bell pepper idea. I ended up stuffing the peppers with cous-cous and roasting it on the grill, but the recipe after the jump will work in an oven just fine. We ate them alongside grilled chicken (the delicious marinade recipe is here as well) and a salad with guacamole and tomatoes. Yummo!

So there you go, BlondiePicPic. Let us know what you think!

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Cous-Cous Stuffed Red Bell Peppers

• one box cous-cous (cooked)
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 clove garlic (chopped)
• 2-3 tbsp onion (chopped)
• 1/2 c feta cheese
• 2 large red bell peppers
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Cook cous-cous according to box directions. (Sorry I haven't gotten a more from-scratch way of making cous-cous, but look for this box at the store.)
2. In a saucepan over medium heat, saute the oil, garlic, and onions for ~1 min. Add a pinch of salt and pepper here as desired.
3. Mix garlic, onions, and feta cheese into cous-cous.
4. Cut around top of bell pepper and remove. Cut away inner seeds and white parts of the vegetable. Rinsing with cold water in the sink is useful for getting all of the seeds away.
5. Stuff the peppers with the cous-cous mixture, making sure to push it in until the peppers are nice and full. Return the tops of the peppers to close them up.
6. Wipe the outside of the peppers lightly with olive oil. I'd suggest dabbing a paper towel with ~1 tbsp of olive oil so you don't get it all over your hands.
7. Wrap the peppers in tin foil and place on a cookie sheet in the oven. Cook for 40-50 mins or until the peppers are cooked through as desired.

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Honey Soy Marinade

Per 1-2 lbs skinless, boneless chicken:

• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 1/2 c water
• 1 tbsp honey
• 1 green onion, chopped*
• 1 tsp lime juice
• 1 tbsp white wine

Mix ingredients and place in a large, shallow bowl over chicken. Cover bowl tightly and refrigerate 1-6 hours before cooking.

*In case you've never been told (because Karl and I hadn't until recently), when a recipe calls for green onions, use the root end of the onions- not the greens! Don't worry...this is a common mistake!

Stinky Pee: Back in Season

"You know, when you get your first asparagus, or your first acorn squash, or your first really good tomato of the season, those are the moments that define the cook's year. I get more excited by that than anything else." -Mario Batali

In the odd event you haven't quite woken up from winter hibernation, you might not have noticed that spring has sprung! That's right- it's that time of year when the threat of snow is gone and the trees stretch their limbs and drop pounds of pollen on everything. (Seriously...everything.) And while it's safe to say that most people are not the biggest fans of allergy-induced runny noses, few can deny that spring brings with it one of the most delicious vegetables around:

ASPARAGUS!

This vegetable is documented to have been used as a vegetable and medicine as early as the third century AD. The young shoots of the vegetable are what's normally eaten, and this 'superfood' is rich in protein, fiber, vitamins A, C, E, and K, among others. Not to mention that asparagus is low in calories and sodium and contains no cholesterol. Wow!

But what makes asparagus particularly well known is the effect it has on people's pee. Most people who have eaten asparagus know that when one visits the restroom after nibbling on these delicious shoots, your pee will, well...stink. There has actually been debate as to whether or not all people produce this stench after consuming asparagus, as only a fraction of people claim to have noticed it. While some believed that people digest asparagus differently (with some digesting in such a way as to produce the stench and others not), a study done in Israel in the 1980s proved otherwise. The study showed that even if one didn't smell their own 'asparagus urine,' other people could detect the smell. Yes, that's right- these study subjects smelled each other's pee. It's now believed that everybody produces the asparagus pee smell, but only about a quarter of the world population has the genes that allow them to detect the smell!

Fun facts aside, check out the asparagus in your local produce section. The vegetable's season starts in mid-April and lasts just over two months- plenty of time to get asparagus into tons of your meals. To start you off, here's one of me and Karl's favorite recipes:

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Shrimp and Asparagus in a Cilantro Remoulade

Ingredients:

*Most of these serving sizes are really flexible, so feel free to use as much or as little as you see fit.*

• cilantro (you'll want a decent amount- a big handful will do)
• garlic (1-3 cloves)
• lemon
• olive oil
• shrimp (deveined, deshelled, etc)
• asparagus (cut to bite-sized pieces)
• hot pepper
• grape tomatoes

1. Finely chop the cilantro and garlic. Zest the lemon until you have roughly 1 tsp of rind (you can use a cheese grater to get shavings pretty easily).
2. Over medium-low heat, saute the shrimp and cilantro/garlic/lemon zest mixture in ~ 1 tbsp of olive oil.
3. Once the shrimp are cooked, add asparagus and hot pepper. Use as much hot pepper as you want- the more seeds you use, the spicier your meal will tend to be.
4. When the asparagus is cooked to your liking, add tomatoes (cut in halves) and saute briefly- no more than a minute.

And that's it! This meal is delicious over a bed of angel-hair pasta or cous-cous. If you want to change up the flavor, substitute the cilantro with another leafy, green herb (like parsley) or the grape tomatoes with any soft, colorful veggie (like red bell peppers).

Here's hoping your meals are delicious and your pee is stinky! :D

Sweet and Sour Chicken FAIL

"My cooking is so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor." -Phyllis Diller

Karl and I were riding high on our Kung Pao success, so we decided to run with this new-found asian-cooking ability and tackle one of my all-time favorite meals: Sweet and Sour Chicken.

Now I have to be straight up with you. As much as I greatly appreciate really good quality food, one of my guiltiest pleasures is Chinese-from-the-mall sweet and sour chicken. Those perfectly breaded chicken pieces dipped in that neon red sauce makes my mouth water every time. Call me crazy- but I could eat this stuff almost every night. I won't...but I could.

We found ourselves back on AllRecipes, and before long, we had a recipe that looked workable. After a quick trip to the grocery, things were under way. So then...what went wrong? It started when I realized just how low my blood sugar had gotten. We'd pushed dinner all the way back to 9 pm and the heat from the stove was nothing short of grueling. It wasn't pleasant, and I felt grumpy.

Karl took on the breading and frying of the chicken while I tackled the sweet and sour sauce. I'll tell you now- the sauce was more of a learning experience than anything else. Here's why: first up, we bought crushed pineapple instead of chunks- a mistake that was only a problem because the recipe requires the separation of the pineapple from the pineapple juice. Lesson learned? Be aware of what ingredients you'll need. Faux pas number two- I tried adding a bit of corn starch after the sauce had been mixed. A valuable lesson here too: always dissolve corn starch in water before adding it to a mixture or it will likely not mix correctly. In this case, we were left with balls of corn starch floating around precariously in the sauce. Last mistake is what threw us over the edge. It turns out that where the recipe first says pineapple, the writer meant pineapple juice. (There is a difference- I'm sure of it!) This was a resounding reminder to always thoroughly read through a recipe before starting.

At this point, we counted our losses and chucked the sauce. I drove up to the store, bought a can of chunked pineapples, and we tried one more time- this time according to the recipe. The only difference we had was replacing the red food coloring (seriously?) with maraschino cherry juice and 86ing the carrots.

The result? Not good.

Karl ate most of his but ultimately opted for some Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Cereal. I managed to down most of mine as well, but all things considered- it just wasn't that good. Now I could be wrong here- maybe the difficulties in cooking ruined the end result for us- but I doubt it. This was just not meant to be. It wasn't sweet...it wasn't sour...and, oh man, it was just a huge let-down.

HOWEVER- I would really love a delicious, working recipe for Sweet and Sour Chicken. If you have one, I beg you to send it to me and Karl so we can try it out! (newchefs@gmail.com) Or...try the recipe yourself and tell us what you think. Maybe we're wrong about it (but I doubt it).

As always, thanks for reading. Here's the link to the original recipe.

And here's a pic of Lucy the dog to make you smile:

Kick Things Off with a (Kung) Pao!

"Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all." -Harriet Van Horne

At some point last fall, it came into my head that it was time to learn to cook. Like...really cook. Simple stir-fry dinners were growing tiresome, my budget forbade me from eating out every night, and the thought of coming home to a culinary event suddenly seemed, well... refreshing. So I picked up the figurative spatula, convinced Karl to jump on the band-wagon as my sous-chef, and jumped right into the frying pan.

Since then, Karl and I have reached a level of co-chefdom, and we've managed to learn a thing or two about creating delicious food. However, we've still got a lot to learn!

I'll start things off with one of the good and follow up with one of the bad...

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When K and I are looking for inspiration, we tend to jump to All Recipes for ideas. On this particular day, the front page featured Kung Pao Chicken...

"Spicy chicken with peanuts, similar to what is served in Chinese restaurants. It is easy to make, and you can be as sloppy with the measurements as you want."

...and we were sold. Now, to be honest, the extent of my cooking- as far as asian cuisine is concerned- can be written off as little more than sauteing vegetables and chicken in a disgusting amount of soy sauce. But as it turns out, there's a lot more to that token asian flavor then sodium and MSG. K and I found ourselves purchasing a lot of firsts for the kitchen- white cooking wine, white vinegar, and most interesting of all: sesame oil. (As someone whose grown up using either vegetable oil or olive oil every time he cooks, seeing shelves of 'the other oils' was mind-boggling.) That said, sesame oil is not exactly the cheapest... though I'd wager that any local asian market would sell it for a more reasonable price.

We followed the recipe (by Arlena at AllRecipes) almost to a T, but the next night we tweaked things a bit to have more sauce and a hint of citrus. And yes- we did make this two nights in a row! Our recipe and a link to the original can be found after the jump.

Last things to note:

-If you decide to cook rice with this, start it early! We didn't...and had to wait 40 minutes to have a complete meal.

-Big thanks to Jon at Daily Ham for inadvertently inspiring me to start blogging.

-Please feel free to send me suggestions for things to cook. K and I will do the experimenting and get back to you with a good recipe!

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!

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Kung Pao Chicken

Prep Time: 30 mins

Cook Time: 30 mins

Ready in: ~1 hr 30 min (if you're not waiting for rice)

Ingredients

• 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into chunks
• 3 tbsp white wine
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 3 tbsp sesame oil
• 3 tbsp cornstarch dissolved in 4 tbsp water
• 2-4 dried chili peppers, chopped
• 2 tsp distilled white vinegar
• 2 tbsp orange juice (about half an orange of juice)
• 4 green onions, chopped
• 2 tbsp chopped garlic
• 4 ounces chopped peanuts

Directions

1. To Make Marinade: Combine 1 tbsp white wine, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp sesame oil and 1 tbsp cornstarch/water mixture and mix together. Place chicken pieces in a glass dish or bowl and add marinade. Toss lightly to coat. Cover dish and place in refrigerator for about 30 minutes.
2. To Make Sauce: In a small saucepan, combine 2 tbsp white wine, 2 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp sesame oil, 2 tbsp cornstarch/water mixture, chili pepper, vinegar and orange juice. Mix together and add green onion, garlic, and peanuts. Heat sauce slowly until it smells sweet.
3. Meanwhile, remove chicken from marinade and saute in a large skillet until meat is white and juices run clear. When sauce is aromatic, add sauteed chicken to it and let simmer together until sauce thickens.

Original recipe can be found here.