Hungarian Fish, Banana Bread, Florida French Toast and Veggie Pizza

Banana Bread

Simple, simple recipe. When you have an entire stalk of bananas ripen at once (as happened on Saturday) this is a great thing to do with some of the 30+ bananas on that stalk.

As bananas grow on the stalk they start out pointing upwards as you see in this photo.

As they ripen, the fruit sag downward until almost all are horizontal. That's when we cut the entire stalk, wrap it in a large trash bag to contain and concentrate the ethylene gas being given off (which causes the fruit to finish ripening and turn yellow). We hang the bag outdoors in semi shade for a week or ten days and everything ripens almost literally over night. – one day green, the next day yellow.

Now you've got between 20 and 50 ripe bananas. What do you do?

2-4 ripe Bananas, peeled and sliced

1/3 cup melted Butter

1 teaspoon Baking Soda

3/4 cup Sugar – white or brown (1/2 cup for less sweet, 1 cup for more sweet)

1 large Egg, beaten

1 teaspoon Vanilla extract

Pinch of Salt

1-1/2 cups of all-purpose Flour

Preheat oven to 350° F. Butter or non-stick-spray a 4x8-inch loaf pan or six large muffin cups.  My silicon cups are free standing, and are completely non-stick.

In a mixing bowl, mash ripe bananas with a fork. I'm not fond of over-ripe fruit; and I like to leave the banana a bit chunky. Some folks like it almost pureed. Stir the melted butter into the mash.

Mix in the baking soda and salt. Add the sugar, egg, and vanilla extract. Last, stir in the flour. When completely combined, pour the batter into prepared loaf pan.

Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool on a rack.

Homemade Veggie Pizza

Pizza was invented in 18^th or early 19^th century in Naples (the one in Italy, not the one 50 miles south of Fort Myers). Many years ago, I shared an office with a Neapolitan named Luciano Furia, a computer geek and photography aficionado who came to the US as a Fulbright Scholar. “Luke” as he was known worked with us at the University of Utah Computer Center. Since then he returned to his hometown and has become an internationally recognized pizza photographer! Check him out on Facebook!!

Homemade pizza is a LOT cheaper, healthier and tastier than store-bought! Of course you can make your own dough from flour, water, eggs, yeast, etc. But that takes time I didn't want to use. So for this one I used pizza-crust-inna-tube from the chill-chest at my local megamart. They also have, in the Bakery, one pound bags of ready-to-roll-out dough. That's a bit much for just two of us. Although we like pizza, a pound of dough would make either a very large or very thick crust.

The crust-inna-tube gave us a decent size pie and cost about half that of a pound of Bakery dough. Plus the bakery dough had too much sugar in it for my taste. I pre-baked the crust according to instructions, and then began building our pie.

For the base I brushed on Alfredo sauce rather than the usual overly sugary marinara sauce.

For toppings, I started with the idea of a Pizza Margherita – tomato, fresh basil, and mozzarella. I used yellow tomatoes because Sally prefers them. To this I added red bell pepper rings, mushrooms and diced green onion. I topped it all with shredded mozarella and took it for a trip in the oven. A few minutes later, dinner was served!

My photo isn't in the same league as Luciano's by any stretch of the imagination.  But the end product was pretty darn tasty!

Hungarian Fish Dinner

Continuing my theme of Eastern European dishes, inspired by Sally and Holly's trip to Croatia and the Czech Republic, here's a Hungarian style fish dinner. I used Flounder, because we got a good deal on a bunch of filets.  In Hungary they use a lot of freshwater fish, notably carp, because it's available and very tasty.  Not the same carp we have in the US at all!

I also used my favorite fish rub spice; the Fish Rub from Pride of Szeged tm which you can find online. For the side vegetable to counterpoint the fish I served some of that great Sweet & Sour Red Cabbage that I gave you the recipe for last week.

I pan poached the fish on lemon slices over a courtbouillion (poaching liquid) of water, white wine and lemon juice.

Sally even likes that cabbage as a topping on her lunch salads, along with a ranch or other creamy dressing.

My Florida French Toast

I just had to show this one off. I use Challah bread cut 1” thick, and leave it out overnight to dry and get “stale”. It soaks up more egg-cream the next morning, a trick I learned from Alton Brown!

I dust the cooking toast with Mace rather than the more common cinnamon. Then I serve it with real Cane Syrup handmade by a good 'ol boy near Clearwater. This time I added a sliced fresh strawberry and a small sliced banana from the giant bunch (see above).