Baby French Bean Parcels

Once a month I get together with a great group of friends to play Pokeno, a game of chance most closely related to Bingo.  We take turns playing hostess, which means cooking the main course, and everyone else brings salad, side dishes and dessert.  And, of course, a gift for the prize pile. There is laughter and drink and sharing of secrets and home-cooked favorites. This month it is my turn to host but I have no idea what to make.  So I thought I’d share the side dish I brought to Pokeno last month.

Ingredients

1 generous handful of green beans per person

1 slice of streaky bacon per person

1-2 cloves of garlic (or more, depending on how many beans you are cooking)

Olive oil

Sea salt

Black pepper

Toothpicks

Method

Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C.

Put a pot of water on to boil, adding some salt.  Cut the ends off of the green beans and pop them in the boiling water.  Cook for three minutes.

Fill a large bowl with ice and water.

Drain the green beans and plunge them into the ice water to stop the cooking.

Once they are cool, drain again in a colander.

Meanwhile, fry the bacon gently over a low heat, in a non-stick skillet.  You want it still limp enough to bend comfortably.

Slice the garlic as thinly as you can.

Lay the bacon out in the baking tray and put one good handful of green beans on each slice.  Add a sprinkle of salt and pepper and slice of garlic and wrap the bacon up and around the beans, overlapping the ends and securing them with a toothpick.

Drizzle the parcels with a little olive oil.

Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 20 minutes or until the bacon is a little bit crispy.  Use a flat metal spatula to remove the parcels to a serving platter.

Alternative parcels for vegetarians or Muslims (A couple of people I love dearly belong to each of those groups so I make sure to cater for them as well.)  Substitute shaved Parmesan for the bacon and use green onion tops to tie up the beans.  Don’t forget to include the garlic sliver!

Enjoy! 

Light Banana Cake

The only recipe you need for your old bananas! Lighter than banana bread, this banana cake bakes up beautifully as cupcakes, sheet cake or a layer cake.

Hands up if you’ve had this experience: You buy a bunch of bananas. The family eats them all, every last one, in about two days. You buy another bunch of bananas. These remain largely untouched until they are deemed too speckled-brown to eat. Yeah, I figured I was not the only one.

When my girls were little, I made banana bread out of the old bananas. It suffered a similar fate to its main ingredient. Fresh out of the oven, everyone LOVED banana bread. Everyone wanted a warm slice or two. The next day, it might as well have had a poison label attached. Outcast, has-been, rejected. Until I discovered banana CAKE. It’s lighter, fluffier, more desirable apparently, than banana bread. This one they’ll eat for a couple of days, until it’s gone.

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups or 280g flour
1 cup or 225g sugar
1 1/2 cups (3-4) well-ripe bananas
1/2 cup or 115g butter or canola oil
2 eggs, preferably room temperature
2 1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda or bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Confectioners' or powdered sugar to serve

Method
Preheat oven to 375°F or 190°C.

Grease and flour the bottom and sides of your baking pan/s. (Two 8-in round, one 9X12-in rectangle or one 12-muffin tin plus one 6-muffin tin)

Into large bowl, put your peeled bananas. Give them a quick whirl to mash.

Now measure all the other ingredients (except the powdered sugar) into the bowl.With mixer at low speed, beat until well mixed, scraping the bowl often.

Now beat on high for five minutes, occasionally stopping to scrape the bowl again.
Pour batter into pan/s and bake for 20-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center of cake or muffins comes out clean.

Cool cake/s for 10 minutes and then turn out of pan/s.

Serve sprinkled with confectioners’ or powdered sugar.

Enjoy!

Cranberry Cake with Cranberry Glaze

Beautiful buttery Bundt cake made with sour cream and filled with whole cranberry sauce and topped with bright red cranberry glaze.

One of my favorite parts of travel is poking about in foreign stores and markets and lusting over the available ingredients and cookware, only some of which I can bring home in a suitcase. Other people, I hesitate to say normal people because with my new addiction of reading foodie blogs, it appears I am in good company, tend to bring home trinkets and fabric and souvenirs of a more personal or mass-produced nature. Eiffel Tower paperweight, anyone? I went to Switzerland in April and, aside from some chocolate, this is the one thing I bought. From an antique store.

I adore its shape and its potential. I also love that it will always bring back memories of a perfect day in the Swiss countryside, making new friends and reconnecting with one dear friend from many years ago.

Today I am using it to make a delicious, moist cranberry cake – the perfect use for any leftover cans of whole cranberry sauce after Thanksgiving – but good enough to buy a can of whole cranberry sauce, just to make it.  I did. Many thanks to my friend, Lizann, for sharing this great recipe with me!

Ingredients

For the cake:

1 cup or 227g butter

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon salt

8 oz or 240ml sour cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup or 200g sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 cups or 250g flour

1 can (14 oz or 397g) whole cranberry sauce (3/4 for the cake, 1/4 for the glaze)

For the glaze:

1/4 can whole cranberry sauce

1 heaped teaspoon cornstarch or corn flour

1/4 cup or 31g confectioners’ or powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon butter

Method

Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C.

Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  

Still beating, add in the eggs, one at a time.  

In a separate bowl or in the measuring cup, add your vanilla to the sour cream.  Sift dry ingredients together and add to butter/sugar/egg bowl, alternating with the sour cream and vanilla.  

First some dry ingredients.

Then some sour cream. And so on. 

Beat until all is mixed well.

Spoon half the batter into well-greased AND FLOURED tube or Bundt pan.  (If you have a vintage one, perhaps a gift from your grandmother or great-aunt, or a trip to Geneva, take a few moments to recall fond memories while you butter it good! Do not skimp on the butter. You do not want this cake to stick.)



Smooth it out and make a sort of very shallow trench in the middle. 

Mash the cranberry sauce with a fork, just to break up the jelly part.  Whole berries are fine.  

Spoon in 3/4 of the can of cranberry sauce on top of the batter.

Top with remaining batter and spread it around.

Bake for about 55-65 minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean. If the top starts to get too brown, cover it loosely with a piece of foil. 

Meanwhile, the glaze!  Add the cornstarch to the rest of the can of cranberries and stir until it is dissolved.  Add the confectioners’ sugar and the vanilla and stir again.

Put the mixture in a pan on a gentle fire and cook, stirring frequently, until it begins to bubble and thicken.

Take the pan off the fire and whisk in the butter.  Allow to cool until the cake is ready.

When the cake is done, take it out and allow to cool for 10 minutes.  It should pull away from the sides slightly here.  You can run your toothpick or wooden skewer around the edge of the cake to encourage it to turn loose when turned over.

Turn pan upside down on platter and remove pan while still warm.

Drizzle on the glaze after the cake has cooled a bit.  A too-hot cake will make the glaze melt right off.   Enjoy!

Enjoy!

What do YOU bring home from your holidays?  Leave me a comment.  I’d love to know.