Banana bread

This is a very forgiving recipe that has a lot of room for slighlt wrong amounts, different sized bananas, and tolerance for coooking time. It's a bit of a slow cook but not tricky at all. We make this a couple of times a month, sometimes doubled recipe and freezing some.

Start off with

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup sugar

Cream together. I use a stand mixer but whatever.

Add in and mix well:

• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 very ripe bananas

Next add and mix:

• 2 cups flour (up to 1/2 cup whole wheat)
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or chocolate chips

In our household, adults always use walnuts and kids always bake it with chocolate chips.

Pour into oiled/floured loaf pan. Or multiple pans. Or make muffins.

Bake 45 minutes to an hour at 350°F. Use the clean toothpick test. Smaller cooks faster, so cupcakes may be 30 minutes, big loaves closer to the hour mark.

Mixed lentils

After a day out on Alameda Island, I stopped at a store to buy some drinks. I happened across an interesting looking corner market and went in. Although not clearly stated as such, it appeared to a Turkish shop and I could have spent a good while perusing the shelves. Instead I grabbed some cold drinks and picked up a bag of Sadaf mixed lentils. The lentils caught my eye with such a pretty mix of faded pastel colors.

Trouble is, I had no recipe and found none while searching. So I needed to improvise. The following is a recipe that evolved from my spicy dal recipe. The general plan is cook lentils in water for a long while, then in a separate pan cook some seasoning. Mix the two and enjoy. Like that dal, this can be eaten hot or cold.

• 3 cups water
• 1 cup mixed lentils (Sadaf's mixture seems to be about equal parts green peas, yellow peas, green lentils, and red lentils)

Rinse the lentils and put in a suitably sized sauce pan on full heat. When it reaches a boil, lower heat and skim off the foam. Add then cover (with slight vent) and simmer:

• 1" to 2" ginger, peeled and cut in thirds
• 1/2 teaspoon tumeric powder
• 2 or 3 bay leaves

Let that go for a while. Figure 30 to 60 minutes depending on how low your low heat is. Give it a stir every once in a while and add more water if it seems prematurely dry. What you are looking for is some of the lentils to have broken down to create a thick broth and some to still be whole.

When it seems about ready, time start the temper. Get a small to medium fry pan heating with:

• 1 tablesoon of oil, or substitute ghee for all or part of the oil

When hot add one at a time:

• 1 teaspoon of whole cumin
• a pinch of asafoetida powder (aka "hing")
• 1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper

When the cumin has been toasted for 30 seconds or so, add

• 1/2 medium yellow onion, diced
• 5 or 6 cloves garlic, minced

On medium-high heat, cook mixing frequently until the onions start to brown. Then it's time to look back to the lentil pan. Turn off heat and fish out and discard the ginger and bay leaves. With those out of the way, add all of the contents of the frying pan to the sauce pan. Mix the temper into the lentils along with:

• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 3/4 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

I've eaten it as a side with rice and curried vegetables, and as a cold spread on warm pita, like I would have hummus. As a main dish, I'd find it wanting some more texture and some more greens. And unfortunately, the colors cook out to leave basically just a light green.

Grilled Pizza

I've cooked a lot of pizza over the years. These day's I'm using the Ken Forkish Same Day Straight Pizza Dough recipe, but I was using a simpler one of my own for a while:

• 3 1/2 to 4 cups flour
• 1 1/3 cups warm water
• 2 oz, plus some olive oil
• yeast
• dash of sugar
• 1 tsp salt (or to taste)

Mix the water, sugar, and yeast and set aside. Measure out 3 1/2 cups flour and mix in the salt. Pour in the oil and yeast water together, stir to a dough, and knead in more flour until it is not sticky, then knead some more. Pour some more oil in the bottom of a bowl, put the dough in and rotate to cover the dough surface with oil, cover with a damp cloth and put aside to rise. The oil, both in the dough and on the surface, and the damp cloth help a lot. Let rise a while, how long will depend on temperature, at least one hour but probably two, refrigerated it might take eight. Then divide in half and shape.

I developed that recipe after getting a pizza stone for Xmas in maybe 1997. The stone broke after three to five years and I got a better stone which is still going strong. Usually I preheat the oven as high as it will go and give the stone at least twenty minutes at that temperature to soak up heat. I generously use coarse corn meal (sometimes called "polenta") on the peel to keep the dough from sticking to the peel or the stone.

But today was not usual. Today it was very hot and I decided to try the barbecue grill method I've heard about. I have a propane BBQ with a cast iron grill that I cooked directly on. First off was an extra thorough cleaning of the grill, then preheating it. With a shaped but untopped round of pizza, put it directly on the metal grill and cook for two minutes. Then scrape it off, which was pretty easy. (I used a metal pizza peel, but spatulas would work.) Grill mark side up, top it, then return to the grill for five minutes. At this point the dough was cooked, but the cheese could have used a little more heat, so I finished it with a hand propane torch.

I have a trigger start propane torch that is intended to sit on top of a 14oz tank, Ace Trigger Start Torch, I've seen nearly the same used in commercial kitchens to cook meringue, so I don't have qualms about using it for food cooking. I just waved it back and forth until the cheese was nice and bubbly and it came out great.

I expect I'll be cooking pizza this way again.

I also made, with leftover dough from the recipe, a BBQ focaccia (not pictured).

Grant Loaf

A variation of Doris Grant's 1940s no-knead "Grant Loaf". This is a dense whole wheat bread good for toast.

Line a loaf pan with baking paper. I used a 8"x4"x4" "Pullman" pan, which has a lid to use during baking. Recipe in grams and baker's percentages.

Add to a bowl:

• 450 g wholemeal bread flour (100%)
• 5 grams salt (1.1%)

Whisk together to mix and aerate.

Mix in another container:

• 450 ml warm ("hand hot") water (100%)
• 7 grams dried yeast (1.5%)
• 7 grams molasses (1.5%)

Pour the wet into the dry, and mix with a wooden spoon for three to four minutes. The dough will be very wet. Transfer into the pan and cover to rise. I waited about an hour.

While it is rising, preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). When adequately risen, bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Remove from pan and return to oven for 5 more minutes to give it a better crust.