Banana Shake

While in Ubud, Bali, Meghan, Liz and I got a little overheated as we walked around and decided to make a stop at the first restaurant we saw, Clear Cafe.  It looked promising based the large number of shoes left outside the front door... it was a good choice.  

A breezy, hippy haven of tasty organic and raw foods and beverages, we were quite happy to stumble upon it...  Meghan was particularly excited about the banana shake she ordered, which was so good that I ordered a second one and promised to try to recreate it at home.  

Below is my version of the creamy, slightly icy banana-licious drink.  I think I nailed it.

Here's how I did it:  

1. Freeze an oldish banana overnight (peel it first and stick it in a baggie!  I made the mistake of not peeling it and almost froze and/or cut my fingers off trying to cut the frozen peel off)

2. Throw it in your blender (or use your stick blender, as I did)

3. Add  3/4 to 1 cup of cold milk, a splash of vanilla extract (maybe 1/4 to 1/2 tsp?) and some honey (1 tsp? I used palm sugar syrup because I didn't have honey)

4. Blend until smooth

5. Drink

New (To Me) Tips, Techniques and Recipes

Here are some easy but interesting tips and techniques, as well as a couple new recipes that I tried out this week... excuse the unattractive photos- all of these techniques were implemented after dark! 

Skillet smashed potato technique:

Pretty cool, easy and fun technique for making potatoes a little bit more exciting.  I boiled mine in chicken stock and a pat of butter until tender (based on this recipe), then smashed them lightly, seasoned with salt and pepper and threw them on a hot cast iron skillet to crisp up on the outside. Yum.

Vanilla-scented sugar:

I had scraped the seeds out of a vanilla bean for my coconut/vanilla rice pudding earlier this week, but didn't want to let the still-fragrant vanilla pod go to waste, so I stuck them into my sugar.  The pods release their remaining seeds and awesome vanilla scent into the sugar.  It's pretty intoxicating to open up the jar every morning to get sugar for my coffee.  Give it a try!

Creamed spinach:

Tim bought some fancy Australian filet mignon at our neighborhood butcher, so I seared them on the cast iron skillet and served them alongside this tasty creamed spinach from Tyler Florence.  I loosely interpreted it since I had frozen spinach and wanted to add some shallots. I sauteed the garlic and shallots first, then added in the cream and spices per the recipe and then dropped in the frozen spinach, which I had defrosted in the microwave and then de-watered by squeezing it with my ricer.  The spinach soaked up the cream, so it doesn't look very creamy, but it tasted rich and delicious.

Nutella banana pancakes:

I needed to use up one lone overripe banana we had hanging around, so I decided to make these super easy, extremely light and fluffy nutella banana pancakes.  So good!  The key to these pancakes is to not over mix them.  Leave the lumps. Don't be tempted to try to get a smooth batter.

 PS: Tim made me take a picture of these particular pancakes he made because he was proud of the perfect color and shape he achieved. 

Creamy parmesan salad dressing:

 Quick and delicious creamy parmesan salad dressing, based on the house dressing from a famous chain restaurant.  Takes about 3 minutes to make and tastes awesome.  So much better than pre-made salad dressing.

Coconut Rice Pudding with Mango

For some reason I had the most intense craving for rice pudding last week... I rifled through my cabinets and the internets and decided that I could make a combination of these two recipes.  Good plan... the end result had the homey, spicy feeling of a traditional rice pudding mixed with flavors reminiscent of mango and sticky rice.  Mmmmmm.  

Here's what I did:

- I used the risotto method from Joy the Baker, but substituted one cup of milk with coconut milk.

- I used brown sugar as the sweetener.

- I added the vanilla bean and cinnamon Joy suggested, as well as the 1/4 cup of freshly toasted coconut from the Evil Shenanigans recipe.

- Finally, I topped it all off with diced mango and some more of the toasted coconut, then ate it for breakfast.  Pretty tasty!

I think next time I might cut down on the cinnamon to let the other flavors stand out a little bit more.  My only complaint.

Tin Roof Ice Cream

Ben and Erin invited us over to their place for a barbeque yesterday after Tim and Ben returned from mountain biking in Sentul City, just outside of Jakarta.  Ben made some awesome barbeque shrimp, beer boiled brats and barbeque chicken.  My contribution was an arugula salad with goat cheese, walnuts and cranberries, but more importantly, dessert.

Since we still don't have an oven in our apartment, I decided to bust out my ice cream machine (plugged in via transformer, of course).  Since peanuts are so prevalent here in Indonesia (kacang in everything from satay to dessert!), I decided to make something that involved them.  Tin roof ice cream it was! 

Rich vanilla ice cream (vanilla beans are so cheap here!!) with streak of fudge running throughout, scattered with chocolate-covered dry roasted peanuts.  Mmmmmm...  as usual, David Lebovitz's's ice cream recipes are perfection.