Marbled-Chocolate Banana Bread

So I was going to make chocolate chip banana bread with the bunch of brown bananas sitting on my counter, but then Cooking Light posted a link to their best banana bread recipes on Facebook. And they had me at "marbled chocolate."

It's the same basic recipe as the chocolate chip bread, but instead of just throwing the chocolate chips in the batter, you melt them down, mix them with some batter, and then swirl the resulting chocolatey goodness into your bread. I made a few substitutions to the original recipe: I used white whole wheat flour in place of all purpose (so it's, um, healthy?), 2 eggs in place of the egg substitute, and vanilla yogurt in place of the regular.

The note on the Cooking Light recipe says to toast the bread, and smear it with peanut butter. Yes. Do this.

Chicken Involtini with Prosciutto and Basil

Grilled chicken breasts don't hold a lot of appeal for me... if I'm going to bust out the grill (ok, if John is going to bust out the grill), I want something a little more interesting than a bland old chicken breast. These chicken breasts, however, are totally not boring. They are stuffed with prosciutto, cheese, and basil, making them something special. Special enough for company, in fact... it was such a gorgeous day yesterday that we invited our friends over to enjoy some grilling and leisurely wine-sipping on the deck. Maybe it was the wine, but we all really loved these.

The only thing I would do differently the next time I make these is add more cheese! Only one slice is used per chicken breast, which seems a little skimpy. You need at least two in there. Also the grilling time called for in the recipe was 12 minutes... ours took over 20. I'm not sure if it was something with our grill or if I didn't pound the chicken flat enough, but be sure to test yours so as not to give your friends and family salmonella. We did the cut-it-open-and-see-if-it's-pink test, but an instant read thermometer would work too.

Chicken Fried Steak!

This is so good that it totally deserves the exclamation point! I make a lot of Italian themed dishes and all of them are arguably my favorite meal depending on my mood.  This is probably my favorite thing I've ever made that didn't involve tomatoes.  I've had chicken fried steak only a few times, and living in NJ and not Texas, it's hard to find restaurants that actually make it homemade.  Apparently Texas restaurants serve over 800,000 chicken fried steak orders every day!  Needless to say, our next trip to Austin is going to include a chicken fried steak dinner.  So knowing what this dish should taste like, and not what I've eaten in local diners, I set out to find a few recipes.

There were several that looked good, but I settled on a tried and true recipe from our friends at Cooks Illustrated.  Instead of using 6 small steaks, we used 2 good sized steaks, maybe 8 or 10 oz each, but kept the measurements of everything else the same.  This allowed me to use a bit more batter on the steaks, a very good thing.  Being bigger steaks, we cooked them one at a time, much easier this way I think. Another change we made to the recipe was we used a vegetable/corn oil blend instead of peanut oil.  They didn't have peanut oil at the grocery store, and we didn't see the need to track it down just for this recipe.  

As you can see, we served this with some delicious mashed potatoes and Bec's fluffy biscuits.

Tip: definitely use a dutch oven to cook these in. I used our trusty 12 inch cast iron skillet, and it got a little messy. If we had a gas cooktop, we'd probably be posting about a kitchen fire and not chicken friend steak.

Creamy Goat Cheese Pasta with Roasted Asparagus

I had a subscription to Everyday Food several years ago, and this is the one recipe that I've saved and made over and over again. Whenever spring rolls around and I start seeing asparagus on sale at the grocery store, I immediately think of this recipe. It's a snap to make... you combine the goat cheese and a little butter with hot pasta cooking water to make a creamy, no-cook sauce. Then toss it with your pasta and roasted asparagus. Easy peasy.

I usually leave out the chive garnish, just to make this that much easier. John, however, prefers to add crumbled bacon. Do what you will, but please don't make the same mistake I did the first time I cooked this: the recipe says to reserve 1 1/2 cups of the pasta cooking water, but then instructs you to only put 1/2 cup in the sauce (and add the rest incrementally, if needed). Since I often fail at reading directions, I dumped in the entire cup and half of water. The sauce was a little thin, to say the least. 

Wilted Spinach Salad with Bacon and Balsamic Vinaigrette

 

This might sound weird if you've never had a warm salad before, but I promise the spinach really holds up well to the warm dressing (dressing made with bacon fat, by the way). I'm just going to let the bacon convince you. Bacon bacon bacon. Just try it. It's really a very simple recipe without a lot of ingredients (no hard boiled eggs here... why does it seem like every spinach salad has to have those??). The recipe says it serves four as a first course, but John and I took down the whole salad as a side dish to our steak dinner.

Slow Cooker Bolognese Sauce

My slow cooker is an appliance that I really, really want to like, but it constantly disappoints me. Almost everything I've made in it has been completely underwhelming. So, when the America's Test Kitchen people came out with their new cookbook, Slow Cooker Revolution, I knew they'd be able to improve my relationship with the slow cooker. This recipe for bolognese sauce was definitely a good start. I've never made a traditional bolognese, but this was just as flavorful as anything I've had at a restaurant (and John couldn't get enough of it, so it's Italian-approved).

The folks at America's Test Kitchen always come up with creative ways to solve common cooking dilemmas, and this recipe is no exception. To prevent the meat from drying out during the long cooking time, they mix it with a panade of bread and cream before putting it in the slow cooker. The recipe (which I am posting as written) calls for meatloaf mix, but I ended up using a mix of ground beef and pork. I also ended up adding quite a bit of salt once this was done cooking, so next time I will probably add more than the recommended 1/2 teaspoon to the meat mixture before it goes in the crock pot.

I think the appeal of the slow cooker for many people is the time-saving element. On that end, this recipe does take some prep work (chopping and sauteing vegetables), so it might not be an ideal weeknight recipe. However, this recipe saves you time in that it makes a huge batch of sauce: enough to sauce three pounds of pasta! So, you can make it on the weekend and freeze the rest for a busy night. I know John and I are looking forward to eating these leftovers!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Crunch Bars

If Anthony Bourdain were judging these bars on Top Chef, I'm pretty sure he'd call them "perfect stoner food." Because these are basically Rice Krispie treats on crack. The bottom layer is Rice Krispies, pretzels, and marshmallow, topped with a peanut butter layer, then topped with a chocolate layer. And see all that crushed goodness on top? Crushed peanuts and pretzels. Awesome.

I've made these twice since John's sister-in-law, Brooke, posted these on her blog a few weeks ago.  These are so good that John, myself, and two of our friends managed to take down a whole pan in one sitting. Just try to resist the salty, sweet, chewy, crunchy, peanutty goodness and eat only one. It cannot be done.