Banana Cake

I have become a baking fan!!!
I was just not feeling upto my afternoon map and decided to try out something new, and thus started with banana cake recipe, and I threw in some blueberries and chopped walnuts too. The result was wonderful, the cake is long gone :)


Ingredients:
All Purpose Flour - 1 cup
Sugar                   - 1/2 cup
Ripe Bananas       - 2 medium sized mashed
Baking soda         - 1/2 tsp
Yoghurt               - 1/2 cup
Chopped nuts      - 1/2 cup, optional
Blueberry            - 1/2 cup, optional
Unsalted Butter   - 1/2 cup
Salt                     - 1/4 tsp (avoid if using salted butter)
Egg                     - 1

Preheat oven to 350F.
Mix together bananas, butter, sugar, yoghurt and egg.
Sieve All purpose flour, salt and baking soda.
Add the flour to the banana mixture, and mix well.
Add chopped nuts and blueberries if you prefer.
Grease the baking pan with butter and flour.
Bake for 30 minutes.

Mushroom Thoran

Today was my first time with Mushrooms in my kitchen, and since its not something on the first few pages of my hubby's favs, I decided to make do with Mushroom Thoran.

I started with watching a few videos on how to clean them. One of them was particularly useful. It said about mushroom's affinity to water and how it will retain water in it making the recipe go bad. Its best to wipe it clean with wet and dry paper napkins instead of leaving it under running water.

Ingredients:
Mushroom  - Finely cut, 1 cup
Coconut     - Grated, 1/2 cup
Curry leaves- 6-7 leaves
Pepper        - 1/4 tsp
Green Chillies - 2(spicy)
Coriander powder - 1/4 tsp
Garlic           - 1 clove
Ginger          - 1" piece
Salt              - As per taste

Mix together all the ingredients except mushrooms, and crush them. If you have very finely grated coconut, then the crushing part applies only for ginger and garlic.
Pop some mustard seeds, and thrown in a little Jeera too if you like the flavour.
Add the mushrooms and saute for a minute.
Add the grated coconut mixture, and mix well.
Cook closed with a little stirring every now and then until done.
This makes a wonderful thoran as an accompaniment to rice.

Chicken Strips

Chicken nuggets are generally deep-fried, and I generally resist the temptation to dwelve into a twenty of them for this particular reason. So decided to bake them cut as strips and evaluate the end product :)

Ingredients:
Chicken breasts cut into long and thin pieces - 1/2 lbs
Salt - As per taste
Pepper - As per taste
Lime juice - 2 tbsp
Egg white  - Of that of one egg (You can use the yolk as well if you feel up for it. For the time being, am sticking to the healthy option :)
Bread crumbs

Marinate chicken with salt, pepper and lime juice. Refrigerate for one hour.
Roll the chicken strips over the egg white and immediately over bread crumbs so that it sticks all around. I used  seasoned crumbs, but the plain ones will be just as good.
In a baking pan lined with a foil, arrange these strips. Spray a little oil(olive oil being my choice).
Put the oven on 'broil' mode, and broil for 7 minutes. Then turn over and broil for an additional 4 minutes. It's always better to check after 5 minutes since the size of the strips you have may vary from what I had.
Once its browned on both sides, enjoy it piping hot with some tomato ketchup and lime wedges (and don't you forget to let me know how it was).

Variation:
If you wish to bake it, bake at 350F for 20 minutes.
Deep frying will make it tastier, if you are game for it!