Emily's Hot Dish

The worst ‘milkshake’ I ever had was in Berlin in 1973.  We were desperate for a taste of home so we stopped at a Wimpy’s Burger.  This was before there was a McDonald’s on every block and the Wimpy’s looked reassuringly franchised.  (Wimpy?  Remember Popeye?  Wimpy was his fat sidekick who would obsequiesly snivel, “I’d gladly pay you Tuesday, for a hamburger today.”  Anyone under 50 may have to Wiki that.)  Anyway, somebody thought that would be a good basis for a burger restaurant and franchised it.  And the burgers might have been OK, I don’t really remember.  What I do remember is that the milk shake came out in a glass.  And it was milk, shaken.  We tasted it again.  It was just milk with bubbles that could only have come from vigorous shaking.  All we could visualize was the night staff standing in the back, poring over a German-English dictionary, shrugging, and shaking some milk for all they were worth.   

Let’s be honest, I steal most of my recipes.  I think we all do.  How many people actually make up something new?  Not many, I’d guess.  (Of course, there was my highly original Pickled Beet Whipped Cream, which, contrary to the scornful derision of my family, wasn’t that bad.) 

Aunt Joyce, a master cook herself, once told me that there were no secrets.  Everything was in a cookbook somewhere.  I mean, with 6 billion people on the planet eating two or three meals a day, that’s a lot of food and people talk.  

But every so often I think I come up with something myself.  Now, this may be a nice bit of self-delusion.  There’s a phenomenon where you get a great idea and a month later read about somebody else with the same idea. Except they market it and make a million bucks.  Did they read your mind?  No.  We’re all subject to roughly the same pool of information.  The same stimulus.  The same events.  The same background knowledge.  That the same ideas would occur to two or more people isn’t strange, it’s almost inevitable. 

Then there’s the Forgetfulness Phenomenon.  You learn something, time passes, you forget that you learned it and it occurs to you seeming like an original idea.  This may have happened when I discovered

The World’s Best Chocolate Malt

It happened at a resort my parents owned back in the 70s.  We were making malts but  they always seemed to lack a dimension.  Fullness?  Richness?   Some were OK but most were disappointments. 

Working  in the resort we had a commercial kitchen and lots of supplies.   At some point I decided to add marshmallow cream to a shake, filled it with chocolate and malt powder, and the gates to heaven opened. 

Really, I mean, this is the malt that your friends will do a double take for.  It’s rich, it’s sweet, it’s creamy/chocolaty/malty . . . it’s really, really good.  It’s so good that we can’t have it at my house.  Once you start making and eating these things, well . . . you gain weight.  It’s the same thing with triple-chocolate cake (cake mix, instant pudding, chips, and yogurt in a bundt pan.)  Good?  Hell, yes.  But just how fat do you want me?  

Nadine and I first met over ten years ago when she was my 8th grade earth science teacher and I was her 6th period TA. The next year she coached the Science Olympiad team and a few years later, when she left to teach at another school, we continued to be friends. We lost touch when I left for college, but recently reconnected through Facebook. She has always been a wonderful cook – very intuitive and creative. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her use a recipe book, though she does have a couple on her kitchen bookshelf. Hospitality is never in short supply at Nadine’s house; I know when I see her I will leave with a full belly and a warm heart.

On a recent weeknight I visited Nadine and her family and she made these INCREDIBLE chicken tacos for dinner. She says that they’re easy to make. I don’t disagree, but I will add the caveat that there is a fair amount of prep work involved. The great thing about tacos is you can do almost all of the prep in advance (that morning, the night before, etc) or you can farm it out to kids/guests so you can get dinner on the table pretty quickly. You can also buy a lot of the ingredients pre-prepped (like coleslaw mix instead of a head of cabbage, or pre-grated cheese). The upside is that it’s faster and easier, the downside is that it’s often more expensive and may not taste as good or be as healthy. 

You will need:
  •1 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs
  •½ onion, diced (save the other half for the salsa verde)
  •3-4 cloves garlic, minced
  •splash white wine
  •½ head cabbage, finely sliced
  •1 lb sharp cheddar cheese, grated (Nadine swears by the Tillamook Special Reserve Extra Sharp, but I really didn’t taste a huge difference between that and the Organic Valley Sharp Cheddar)
  •18-24 corn tortillas
  •1 avocado, diced
  •½ bunch cilantro, minced
  •pumpkin or squash puree (optional, but delicious)
  •1 lime, cut into wedges
  •salsa verde (recipe will be posted tomorrow) 

Begin by heating some olive oil in a large cast iron pan. When the pan is hot add the garlic and onions. When the onions have softened and the garlic is fragrant, push them to the sides of the pan and add the chicken thighs. When they’re cooked on one side, use tongs or a metal turner to flip them. When they’re mostly cooked through, use a metal turner to cut them into small pieces in the pan. When the chicken is fully cooked, add a good-sized splash of white wine and stir to coat. Remove the chicken to a bowl. 

Add some more olive oil to the pan and put in 3 corn tortillas. Put a few tablespoons of cheese on the inside half of each of the tortillas, and then add some pumpkin puree (if using). 

Let the cheese get a little melty, then add a couple tablespoons of chicken to each tortilla. 

Spoon in some salsa verde, sprinkle on some cilantro, squeeze in a lime wedge, and add some avocado to each tortilla. 

Fold each tortilla in half toward the center of the pan.

When the tortilla is cooked to crispy on the bottom side and the cheese is oozy, turn each taco over by flipping to the outside of the pan. Let cook for about a minute more, then remove to a plate. Stuff each taco with cabbage and eat right away while hot and ooey gooey cheesy. 

I'm starting a new feature here at Emily's Hot Dish. Guest Chef Mondays: Wherein I Convince Other People To Do The Blogging For Me. Our inaugural guest chef is my dad, George. He stayed at home with my brother and I while my mom went to work, so I grew up leaning to cook from him. My earliest memory is sitting on the kitchen counter while he cooked dinner, watching as he added things to the pots on the stove. At the time it seemed like alchemy; he has the wonderful skill of being able to go into a fridge that others find nothing worth eating in and 30 minutes later there's a delicious meal on the table. Chickpeas and blueberries in a salad? Oddly delicious. 


He writes: 

OMG!  TBO!  . . . NSM.

I was reading through the March issue of Esquire a couple of weeks back when I turned to page 106 and actually said to myself, “Oh Em Gee, Tee Bee Oh.”  There was a picture of a stack of Banana Bread French Toast. My mother, Emily’s grandmother, the home-ec teacher, mom of the 50s and no-nonsense Midwestern cook had a failsafe recipe for banana bread that she passed to me.  If you’ve got buttermilk and at least three old bananas, you’re in pig heaven.  She said it was really banana cake but if you called it banana bread you could eat more of it.  Practical, my mother.  So, I like banana bread. 

And I like French toast.  All the better since A) we came across the Cooks’ Illustrated version of French toast dip with milk, sugar, and egg, of course, but also melted butter, flour, and vanilla, and B) we decided to (actually, Emily suggested that we) make it with Italian panettone instead of bread.  This is not difficult living in Italy, as we do, and makes really amazing French toast. 

But not like in the Esquire picture.  I mean, French toast made of banana bread?  With syrup and lemon-flavored sour cream on top?  It just screams “TBO”. 

When we lived in Germany our family friend Trudy was visiting us.  A day with her was like three with a mere mortal.  She made things funnier, events more significant, and life more special.  We were cooking, talking, and recording a tape to her brother who was out at sea and we got to the chocolate soufflé portion of the evening.  It came out rather well and upon the first mouthful Trudy exclaimed, “Oh. My. God.  Major TBO.” 

An Army major?  Time Between Overhauls?  I must have looked puzzled as she translated:  “TBO? -- Taste Bud Orgasm.”

Ahhhhh, it made perfect sense.  The soufflé met the description so much so that we decided we should really make another just to prove the first wasn’t a mistake.  And the term entered our family’s lexicon. 

And seemed to fit the concept of Banana Bread French Toast.  I mean, what’s not to like?   Bananas, walnuts, butter and sugar, then everything French-toasty, then syrup and then sour cream whipped with lemon zest. .  .  the sum just had to be better than the parts, and all of the parts were really good to start. 

Plus, it was an Esquire recipe. Esquire is a men’s magazine but not a “cheesecake mag.”  It has more pictures of male Italian models wearing $3000 suits without socks than any undressed women.  But it does do one thing well every so often: recipes that appeal to guys. 

Which is why I thought I’d give the Banana Bread French Toast a try.  So we did.  Karine and Stuart, our upstairs neighbors, were having Eva and Jose over and Stuart’s sister was visiting so we thought it was a perfect opportunity to test-drive a new recipe.  They are friends that deserve something really special but will laugh and forgive you if it’s a spectacular failure.

And it was good.  Really good.  But not great.  Banana-y, walnutty, French toasty, sour creamy?  Yup, all those things.  Did the masses clamor for more?  You bet they did, and demanded the recipe, too. 

But OMG, TBO?  Not So Much. 

A lot of flavor there, but somehow it didn’t all come together.  It didn’t seem as if we’d done it wrong, it just seemed like there were a lot of separate flavors on the plate.  Good.  OK, very good.  But not great. 

Maybe we just expected too much. 

Give it a try and see what you think. 

 Helen’s Banana Bread
½ Cup butter
1 Cup sugar
2 well beaten eggs
3 mashed bananas
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ Cup buttermilk
2 Cups sifted flour
½ Cup chopped pecans or walnuts(or not)

**********************************************

Cream together butter and sugar.  Add eggs and bananas and blend. 

Add and blend the buttermilk

Sift together flour and soda

Add banana cream and blend.

Pour into floured loaf pan.

350 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour. 

The top should be brown and cracking, the sides should be just starting to pull away.  Test center with spaghetti at 50 minutes.  It should come out bone dry when done. 

French Toast Batter
1 egg
2 TSP melted butter
¾ Cup milk
1 TBS Vanilla Extract
2 TBS Sugar
1/3 Cup flour
Pinch salt

*****************************************

Beat egg.  Whisk in butter, milk, vanilla, sugar, flour, and salt.

Do not refrigerate, trust me on this.  The butter solidifies, separates out, clumps up, and ruins your morning.  

Just heat your pan (cast iron or pancake griddle), butter it, turn to medium heat, and fry your toast.  First, of course, soak your bread for a couple of seconds.  The original recipe suggests you soak it for 30 seconds or more.  That assumes you are using a yeast bread that has some tensile strength.  Banana bread, however, is a heavy cake that when wet, tends to fall apart easily.  Dip it with your whole hand and remove it using your spread fingers to support the entire slice.  Once it’s on the griddle, you’re OK. 

The Esquire Suggestion

Before frying the toast, whip some sour cream with the zest of a lemon or two.  Esquire claims that artificial (Mrs. Butterworth’s) syrup is better in that it is thicker on the toast and plate.  Real syrup is thinner and soaks in.  This is, of course, heresy, foolish, and totally wrong.  And with all these flavors on the plate maybe it’s just possible that you couldn’t tell the difference, but why take the chance? 

Toast on the warm plate, a dollop of lemony sour cream, and syrup over everything. 

If you’re serving it to guests, pretend you do this all the time. 

If you're interested in Guest Cheffing, leave a comment or shoot me an email. All are welcome.