Author: arielleclementine

Sister Showdown!

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                                                                                                                    Photo by Sarah Shatz via Food52

My fried olive recipe is a finalist for this week’s Food52 contest, but that’s not all! My competition is none other than my sister, Helen!!  The folks over at Food52 selected our recipes from the 68 entries for the “Your Best Movie Snack” contest, and then realized that they had created the first ever Sister Showdown!  Helen and I are both thrilled to be finalists.  She’s been super awesome too, asking all our friends and family to vote for me, since she has already won one Food52 contest, and will be in the cookbook for her Figgy Pudding Butter Cookies.  I have a feeling little sister is going to make it two with this one, since her bacon-wrapped, cream cheese-filled hatch peppers are almost universally adored, but it’s been a blast being a finalist with her! Congratulations, sister!

If you have a moment, please stop by and vote for my olives (or Helen’s Devils on Hatchback!) for this weeks contest 🙂

Thank you!

Olivia

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My mom’s in town! To celebrate her arrival, we went to lunch at Olivia.  As it happens, we were at Olivia’s first lunch ever (they’ll be open for lunch every Friday and Saturday from now on).  Man, I love this restaurant. We got there about noon, and were greeted warmly by pretty much the whole staff- there were only a few other customers at this point. 

To start, Helen got the Olivia Salad, and loved it.  When it arrived, she thought she might not like it because it’s just lettuce and vinaigrette (when Helen makes her own salads they are chock full of stuff, a la goat cheese/avocado/nuts/fruit/salmon/etc).  But the smoked tomato vinaigrette was quite the hit with her!  My mom and I each got the saffron-almond soup, and devoured it.  This was definitely my favorite dish of the afternoon.  Beautifully simple with just a hint of saffron, the soup came garnished with a perfect baguette crouton, avocado, and a drizzle of a great olive oil (a beautiful deep green against the vibrant orange soup).  I didn’t take any pictures because we were too engrossed at this point.


And here are the before and after shots of our main courses!

Helen got the simply named Spaghetti, which came with roasted cauliflower, spinach, and an almost carbonara-like sauce with pecorino.   It was fantastic (as you can no doubt tell for yourself by her ‘after’ shot).  The cauliflower made the whole dish feel rich and satisfying, but not at all heavy.  Helen said she felt pleasantly full after finishing it.

My mom got the Pan Roasted Sea Trout with sauteed farm greens.  Holy god, this was delicious. The trout was moist with a beautiful seared crust, the sauteed greens were over-the-top, but that sauce was really magical- bright, citrus-y, and perfectly seasoned.  When you ate these elements all in one bite, the result was spectacular. 

I got the Seared Tuna and Beautiful Salad and it was aptly named.  The greens and shaved apple and fennel were dressed in a sweet and lively lemon-y dressing, and the tuna, seared perfectly and sprinkled with sea salt, was just delightful with them.  So good!

The food was fantastic, the service was fantastic, and the total bill came to $67, which felt like a steal.  It’s a real testament to Olivia that each of us felt that our own dishes were the best of the meal.  Hooray!

B is for Banana Bread

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Half an hour ago, I had one sad, speckled banana languishing in my fruit bowl.   I kept casting sidelong glances at the banana, noting that I must carry the poor thing out to the compost pile.  But instead (partly because I hate walking things out to the compost pile, and partly because I heart muffins) I decided to make banana bread.

Normally, I make banana bread with the recipe from The New Best Recipe.  But tonight, this recipe was too finicky for my taste, and besides, I didn’t have the plain yogurt that it called for.  Instead, I turned to the banana bread from my childhood.  B is for Banana Bread.  From the Alpha Bakery cookbook.  It’s likely that your mom also owns this little book- I think you got it by sending $3 and the bar codes snipped from empty sacks of Gold Medal flour to Betty Crocker circa 1991. Anyway, a quick google later, I was in possession of the recipe! And half an hour later, I was eating a muffin! And it was quite a lovely treat! And if you’ve done any baking in the last 6 months, it is exceedingly likely you’ll have everything you need on hand! Exclamation points!

Couple notes: I only had one banana, which equaled 1/2 cup mashed banana, so I did a half-assed job of stirring up a third of what the recipe below calls for.  The muffins still turned out delicious.  Also, I had a pretty fun substitution- I didn’t have any walnuts in the pantry, which is what I normally use when I make banana bread, but I did have a sack of the honey-glazed pecans they sell in the bulk section of Central Market, so I chopped up a handful of the those and tossed them in the batter.  This shit is good bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

B is for Banana Bread

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups mashed bananas
  • 3/4 cup oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tsp. vanilla
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Directions

  1. Heat oven to 325 degrees.
  2. Grease loaf pan with butter, or line muffin pan with papers.
  3. Mix sugar, bananas, oil, eggs, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients. Pour into pan. Bake until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean (about 20 minutes for muffins, 50-60 minutes for bread).

From The Alpha Bakery Children’s Cookbook, published by General Mills/Betty Crocker in 1991.