banana date muffins with coconut oil

I'm in love with coconut oil. I'd been hearing about its magical properties in the removal of Holi paints and this morning as I was rubbing it on Muffin's head, hungry from the toasted coconut smell, I started wondering how I can cook with it. I was going to make banana bread today anyway... could I replace the butter with coconut oil?

Before answering that question, I had to make sure the coconut oil I used was marked "edible." Coconut oil is used in women's hair here and the hair oil is a different grade than the cooking oil.

I pulled out my trusty Pamela's baking mix and got to work.

4 tablespoons coconut oil
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups Pamela's baking mix
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup golden syrup (You can also use granulated sugar or honey, but golden syrup is another new obsession of mine.)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup ripe, mashed banana
1/2 cup chopped dates (You can substitute nuts or another dried fruit if you prefer.)

Mix it all up and spoon into oiled or paper-lined muffin tins. Bake at 350 F / 175 C for about fifteen minutes, until edges start to turn golden and a toothpick comes out clean. My yield was about fifteen muffins, but the muffin papers I've found here a a bit smaller than the usual ones found in the United States.

These were soft and tasty-warm-delicious right out of the oven, and they kept their softness and moisture for a couple days. They are oh-so-yummy, rich with the coconut and banana flavors. I'd love to try dried mango for a full-on tropical muffin.

The answer is yes, I can replace butter with coconut oil, at least in this recipe.

Muffin enjoys her muffin.

(Recipe modified from the banana loaf recipe found on the Pamela's baking mix package.)

jackfruit

Today my driver pulled over to buy some bananas and he asked if I'd ever eaten jackfruit. I hadn't, and as he excitedly negotiated a price for some bananas and jackfruit, because jackfruit is so great I just had to try it, I wondered if jackfruit was the big, ugly spiny melon that was sitting on the cart covered in flies.

It was. But to my relief the vendor pulled out a plastic bag filled with what looked like large, yellow unpeeled garlic cloves. They smelled good, like pineapple. They looked pretty clean. My driver advised me to eat a little of the flesh, peeling it off the large seed on the inside.

Yum! Imagine a pineapple, only sweeter and with less annoying juice and fewer annoying fibers. I gave a tiny bit to Muffin and her head nearly exploded from yumminess. I only ate one pod, thinking it was best to wash the rest before eating them. I'm trying to save some for Mike to try, but it's just too sweet and delicious. I'm popping them like candy corns. 

Jackfruit has vitamins and stuff, and some of the less-sweet flesh is used as a carbohydrate source. People make jams and chutneys out of it and dry it out for chips. I'm just going to be eating it from now until it goes out of season. I can go buy one every day if I want to! I'm thinking they'd be a great addition to my smoothies.

Find more information at Jackfruit Basics. Image from Jackfruit Basics.

At the Steak House

Yes, you heard me correctly. Steak in Hyderabad. Tender, juicy, perfectly seasoned grilled tenderloin. Decent, and even passable, steak is difficult to find here. Hindus and Muslims don't eat a lot of beef and the cows aren't raised for eating purposes. The few times we've bought beef to roast or grill ourselves it's been tough and no amount of pounding or marinating has made it tender enough to be enjoyable. And for some reason I always think of buying a steak for Friday night dinner, but you can't buy beef on Fridays (all the Muslim butcher shops are closed).

Since we arrived our driver has been pointing out Chef Inam's Steak House to me every time we pass it and one night Mike and our neighbor stopped there on the way home from work to pick up some take-away. Mike met Chef Inam, tried the steak, and has been insisting we get back there right away. Inam lived in the United States and took culinary classes at Johnson and Whales (Yay Rhode Island!) and has brought his American steak-grilling skills back to India. On Friday night I packed up Muffin, we went to pick up Mike at work, and we went at Chef Inam's for a steak.

This is not a steak house like you'll find in the United States and I can see why so many expats get their steak for take-away. It's a little hole-in-the-wall with a couple tables and plastic chairs. Inam grills on the street in front of the facade. There's a cooler full of sodas and water. It's a dive. But we pulled out our hand sanitizer and ate there anyway.

It was worth it. Mike got a French-style peppercorn-encrusted steak and I had what Inam calls his Boston steak, covered with herbs and English mustard. They were perfectly cooked (rare for Mike, medium rare for me), tender, and deliciously seasoned.

We took Muffin outside to watch the grilling. She was fascinated. We even gave her a few bits of meat to chew on. She loved it until she got a peppercorn. She was getting tired by then, so instead of her spitting-out yucky face, she screamed. Luckily the place was getting full of men talking and laughing loudly so no one else could hear her. We paid the bill and made a quick getaway.

Speaking of the bill, the steaks were about five or six dollars each and the serving was big enough to fill Mike and for me to eat half and bring the rest home.

Don't let Muffin's reaction deter you from Chef Inam's Steak House. She's just a baby. And we're the stupid parents who gave her spicy peppercorns, then stopped to take a picture of it.

Cross-posted from Where in the World Am I?

almond meal and other gluten-free monthly specials at bob's red mill

Almond meal is great for baking with. It adds a little something special to muffins, quick breads, and pancakes. I also use it in brownies. I'm not saying brownies are health food, but a little almond meal will give you a boost of healthy fats, vitamins, and fiber.

This month at Bob's Red Mill almond meal, rice bran, hemp seeds, chia seeds, raw shelled sunflower seeds, and brown flaxseeds are on sale. They are all part of a fiber-rich, heart-healthy diet and they are all 20% off this month.

Note that not all products on the specials page are gluten-free and not all products are processed in Bob's strictly gluten-free facility. Read product descriptions carefully for making informed decisions.

*I was not compensated in any way for this post. Products are purchased by me for personal consumption.

roland quinoa and other grains on sale at amazon.com

I love quinoa. It's the supergrain that the Aztecs warriors ate. It's packed with protein and for the pregnant ladies it's a good source of folic acid. Roland quinoa, along with polenta and rice, is on sale from Amazon.com. Throughout the month of March, select Roland products are 15% off with the coupon code ROLAN655. You'll save an additional 15% if you sign up for Subscribe & Save.

Note that not every product on this page is gluten-free, so read descriptions carefully.



*I am an Amazon affiliate. If you purchase from these links or from my store, I will receive a small kickback.

udi's gluten-free granola on sale at amazon.com

Granola is not always gluten-free. You have to make sure it's made from oats that haven't been contaminated and make sure the dried fruit hasn't been dusted with wheat flour. Here comes Udi's to the rescue. It's great with milk or yogurt or baked into muffins. Throughout the month of March, Amazon.com Groceries has select Udi's granola on sale for 15% off when you use the code UDISO3II at checkout. You can save an additional 15% with subscribe & save.

Note that not every Udi's product is gluten-free, so read the descriptions carefully.

*I am an Amazon affiliate. If you purchase from these links or from my store, I will receive a small kickback.

dosa masala

Dosa are thin rice-flour pancakes stuffed with spicy yummy fillings. They're often served for breakfast with side sauces. They're a convenience food that you can buy from a cart off the street.

We have two dosa sources within walking distance of our house, a cart and a restaurant, and dosas have become my favorite fast food. A plain dosa is usually filled with onion. My favorite kind is dosa masala, which is stuffed with masala-spiced potato. I've also had dosa palak paneer, which is stuffed with spinach and cheese. The sauces are usually a coconut chutney and a lentil soup. One of the restaurants near us also serves dosa with a ginger chutney, which has been my favorite sauce so far.

Here's the tricky part about dosa. Despite the fork and spoon shown in the photo, dosa are traditionally eaten with your fingers, with just your right hand. It takes some practice to rip the pancake, scoop up all the filling that falls out, dip your fingers in one of the sauces, and get it all into your mouth (and in our case, without dropping any on the baby's head) with one hand. I'm getting the hang of it.

new year new you sale at amazon.com

A couple more Amazon.com sales that I'm excited about...

Select Kind bars are 5% off with the coupon code KINDNYNY through January 31 and if you subscribe you'll get an additional 15% off. I'm a big fan of the Kind Plus bars with calcium, since I don't drink as much milk here in India as I probably should.











Select Bob's Red Mill products are 15% off with the code BOBSNYNY through January 31 and if you subscribe you'll get an additional 15%. Note that not every product on the page is gluten-free, so read the item descriptions carefully.











*I am an Amazon affiliate. If you purchase from these links or from my store, I will receive a small kickback.

Our Dinner Guest of Honor

(First published at Where in the World Am I? on 26 December 2010.)

After Thanksgiving Mike read the Facebook status of one of our friends who had enjoyed a succulent duck for dinner (We've had her duck. It's amazing.) and Mike wondered if we could get duck here. Well, with the help of our driver, Mohammed, my Christmas present to Mike was a duck for dinner.

On Tuesday Muffin and I went to the bird market in the Old City, where there are all sorts of live birds for both dinners and pets. We were surrounded by blue and green parakeets (budgies), geese, turkeys, blackbirds, guinea hens, and chickens. Ducks were scarce but Mohammed assured me we'd find some. First I was offered geese. They looked good, but they weren't what I wanted. And they looked too big to fit into our tiny oven. (I'd been instructed to buy the biggest duck I could find, but I was thinking of the biggest duck that would fit in our small oven and small selection of cooking pans.) The first ducks I found were mallards. They were cheap, but covered in flies. In an outdoor market like this, there are going to be some flies, but I wanted to shop around see what my other options were.

We walked down the street, peeking into every storefront. The parrots and parakeets where beautiful and I wanted a cage full of little blue ones to bring home for our terrace. There were also some beautiful ornamental hens and I wish I had a yard for keeping some in. I saw two of the biggest turkeys I've ever seen in my life. Mohammed said that if Americans want a big turkey they must wait for Christmas; at Thanksgiving time only small turkeys are available. There are enough Christians in the city to demand big Christmas turkeys, but not enough Americans to warrant big Thanksgiving turkeys. (Not that the big ones would fit in our oven anyway.) We passed by dozens and dozens of guinea hens, small turkeys, and geese but after several storefronts we still hadn't seen any other ducks.

Just when I was resigning myself to the possibility of guinea hens instead of duck we came to one of the last vendors on the block, the one Mohammed buys the Americans' Thanksgiving turkeys from. He happened to have two big ducks as well. They were pricier than the first ducks I'd seen, but the conditions seemed cleaner. No flies, less smelly. And the right size -- the biggest I could find and the biggest that would fit in our oven. We made a deal for the three kilo male duck, the larger of the two, for 1200 rupees (about $26). It was a little more than I wanted to spend, but honestly I have no idea how much a duck should cost. He tried to sell me the pair for a bargain price and it didn't occur to me until the ride home that I could have bought them both and put one in the freezer.

Many Americans get excited over buying fresh meat but then make a mistake, only once, about delivery of the animal. After seeing friends have live turkeys and other live animals dropped off at their houses, I knew to ask for the duck to be prepared for us. Plucked, cleaned, no neck, take out the organs, for an additional 100 rupees ($2 -- probably the best $2 I've ever spent).

On Thursday Mohammed went back to the market with a cooler full of ice, picked up our prepared duck, and brought it home. Our housekeeper cleaned it off and wrapped it up to sit in the refrigerator. Mike had his Christmas duck.

Mike did all the cooking yesterday. I'm not confident in my meat-roasting skills, but I was able to stock the kitchen with all the groceries he needed, plus keep Muffin out of the way, tidy up the presents-opening mess, and set the table while Mike went to work with his bird.

Muffin helped a little.

It was delicious. It wasn't perfect, but that's due to us still figuring out the nuances of the oven and the toughness of the bird had to do with the life it led before it met me. But it was tasty and something we'd like to do again. The potatoes and carrots roasted in duck fat were amazing and if duck fat is readily available to you I highly suggest you try it. With some seasoned rice and a cranberry log our friends brought over, dinner was complete.

Note the cranberry log standing upright on the plate...

We had a great dinner with some of our new friends and we couldn't have asked for a better day. I hope everyone else celebrating yesterday had as happy a Christmas as we did.

year-end deals at amazon.com

It's been a little quiet around here as we adjust to our new life in India. Come the new year, I have plenty of product reviews and local food stories to share. Until then, enjoy some gluten-free end-of-year savings from Amazon.

The GoPicnic Energy Boost Care Package includes hummus, multi-seed crackers, popchips, organic energy chews, and other high-energy, gluten-free treats. It's usually $29.99 and is on sale for $9.00. Stock up for your favorite college student who will be returning to late-night study sessions soon.











A case of Pamela's Chocolate Chunk cookie mix is down to $25.20. I love all of Pamela's mixes and packaged cookies and biscotti.













Bob's Red Mill products on this page are 15% percent off when you use the code BOBS2010 at checkout. Note that not every product on that page is gluten-free so read the descriptions carefully.












That's enough commercialization for now. Cheers to a happy, healthy 2011. Happy New Year!

*I am an Amazon affiliate. If you purchase from these links or from my store, I will receive a small kickback.