This recipe is an old Estonian one that I modified.

Ingredients:

• 1-2 smoked fish, cleaned
• 1 large or 2 medium boiled plantains
• 2 eggs
• 1 onion
• salt, pepper, Monterey steak spices
• bacon or oil for frying onions and later patties

As you see, one main ingredient is my favorite – plantain. I substituted boiled potatoes and it worked wonderful. Obviously potatoes can be used, if it is more convenient.

You need one large or two small smoked fish, any will do.

Clean fish and peel the plantains. Chop onions small and fry with bacon or in oil until soft and golden. Let cool. While onion is cooling, grind the fish and plantains. I use old fashion meat chopper for that purpose, but I am sure food processor works as well. Mix all the ingredients together and add spices to taste. Form small patties and fry in oil 2-3 mins per side. Serve with smashed plantains, or Ratatouille, or any other favorite vegetable side dish.

This here is not really a recipe but more of my method of preparing the dish.  It all starts with the bunch of plantains:

For the garlic mashed plantains, pick all the green ones and boil them in their skin like potatoes for 30 – 45 minutes, depending how skinny or fat their are.  We will cook them some more before eating, hence it would not be a problem if they are slightly undercooked.  This step can be done a day or two earlier and cooked plantains can be refrigerated until ready for use.  In fact, I usually boil a big pot of them at once, so that I have them ready to make a dish when ever I want. I have stored boiled plantains in the refrigerator for a week or more and have found no problem using them.

For mashed plantains, for two people, here are the steps:

• Take as few as 2-3 garlic cloves or as much as half a garlic, clean, cut to pieces and simmer in cooking oil while preparing the plantains.
• Take 4 cooked plantains, peel them, cut them to small pieces and put them in the pot on the stove top, almost cover them with milk and get the milk to simmer and simmer them for few minutes.
• Add salt, pepper, any other spices you like in your smashed potatoes, add the roasted garlic and as much or as little of the cooking oil as you want to the plantain mix. The oil will have slight garlicky flavor. Once cooled it is great for salad  dressings or cooking other veggies. It should not go to waste even  if you do not want rich smashed plantains.
• Turn of the heat and smash everything, as you would your smashed potatoes.

And that’s it. You have a wonderfully flavorful, healthy (plantains are really good for you, better than potatoes) and easy side dish to impress yourself, your family and friends. Bet, if you do not tell, they will not even know it is not potatoes

Ingredients:

1. Wash Yucca and boil 30 min

2. Chop eggplant and zucchini, cover with salt for 30 min, wash off salt

3. Dice eggplant, zucchini, plantain and mushrooms, soak in 4 tsp olive oil for few hrs

4. Peel yucca, chop, add spices and soak in olive oil for few hours

5. Dice carrots, saute in 2 tsp butter for 15 min on medium heat in large pan

6. Dice onion and mince garlic add 1 tsp butter add to carrots for another 10 min or until the onion turns translucent

7. Meanwhile heat up the broth until it begins to simmer, add to large pan and stir

8. Add eggplant, zucchini, yucca, plantain and mushrooms to the mix, add 1 tsp butter, cook 15 min on medium heat

9. Stir in spices keep on low heat for 2 min

10. Serve and enjoy

Ingredients:

• Homemade Turkey Stock, 3 cups,  (can be also chicken or beef stock)
• Celery, 2 stalks, large (11″-12″ long)
• 1 Large Onion
• 4 Garlic cloves
• Beans, black (cooked) , 1 cup
• Chickpeas (garbanzo beans)- (cooked), 1 cup
• Del Monte Diced Tomatoes, 1 can, drained
• Chili Powder, 2 tablespoons

Cut celery, onion and garlic to small pieces and saute couple of minutes in little it olive oil. Add drained diced tomatoes, cooked beans, stock and the chili powder. Get it up to boil then turn down and simmer for an hour.

Serve with sour cream if desired.

Note about beans. First off, you can use different beans than I did. You can use just one kind, or you can use even more variety. Second, dry beans are very economical but they take a long time to cook. I always cook a large pot at one time and then measure them out to small sandwich bags and then to large freezer bag to freeze. When ever I want to make a dish with beans, I just grab the number of bags and the type of beans I want to use, let it unfreeze, or if I am in a hurry, just dump the frozen beans into the hot mix and soon I have delicious and economical dish.

]]> http://banyantree.us/SimplePleasures/?feed=rss2&p=164 1 http://banyantree.us/SimplePleasures/?p=147 http://banyantree.us/SimplePleasures/?p=147#comments Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:49:20 +0000 LoveToCook http://banyantree.us/SimplePleasures/?p=147

In making this bread, I do not use any special equipment, just plain old oven, the pan that came with it, some old cookie sheets, and 5qt plastic bucket that I got by buying ice cream in it. The secret of the best outcome is the hot oven and steam that is produced by adding hot water to the pan for baking. This incredibly tasty bread is very easy to make, extremely affordable but needs a little planning ahead to have ready when you want it. Like everything in life, you cannot get cheap, fast and well done all at once. In this case, this bread does not take a lot of time to make but requires couple of days (each time just minutes) to get the result desired. OK, ready to make some bread…

• 3 cups of lukewarm water
• Yeast, 1 tables spoon ($ 0.05)
• Salt, 0.75 table spoon ($ 0.01)
• Flour, whole wheat, 0.75cup ($ 0.13)
• Rye flour, light, 0.75 cup ($ 0.24)
• Flour, white, 4.5 cup ($ 0.48)

Total cost $  0.91 or $ 0.23 per loaf.

Mix all ingredients in the 5quart ice cream bucket or any other large enough bucket with lid.  Cover with lid and let stand in the room temperature for 2 hours.

The dough should have at least doubled by the time two hours has passed.

Dough is supposedly ready to be baked at this time but I have never attempted that. I always leave the dough in the refrigerator for overnight.

When ready to bake, take one quarter of dough and shape to your liking (This recipe makes four 1 pound loves).  Dust the dough with some flour and make sure your hands have flour as well, that makes it easier to shape and help the dough not stick to your hands. Put the shaped dough on the lightly dusted pan to rise ( I use cornmeal for dusting).

Let stand in room temperature for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile preheat oven to 450°. Once the oven is ready and it has been at least 30 minute for the dough to relax/raise, dust the dough with flour and slash,  get as hot water from your tap than you can and as quick as possible ( so that oven does not cool) put the hot water on the pan on the lower shelf and put the dough baking on the upper shelf.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Try to wait a little for the bread to cool before cutting. I know it is hard but you will not burn yourself and it will be little easier to cut the bread as well