Banana Bread Part 1: The sugar free one

Earlier this year, I discovered to my dismay that one of my favourite Singaporean baking blogs had shut down entirely. The blogger didn't just stop blogging; she took down all her archived recipes as well. I was so annoyed. So I've decided to be more diligent at clipping/reproducing recipes I've discovered online.

I never met a banana bread/cake/muffin recipe I didn't want to try. There's just something about banana baked goods that I love. I've tried and "collected" quite a number of keepers over the years so I'm going to do a series of posts on just banana bread.

This was a recipe I got via Karen Cheng - a Perth based family and fashion blogger. Like her, I swap some of the flour for almond meal and it makes for a crumbly, more bread like texture. The great thing about this recipe is that there is a sugar free option which makes it a good snack for my toddler. I currently bake a batch of this almost every week.

As for the mix ins, if you read the original post, you'll see that she says that she just throws in whatever is in her pantry: choc chips, nuts, seeds, raisins etc. I haven't tried all that but this is a pretty flexible recipe; I'd say almost any thing you toss in ought to be alright as long as you don't exceed the 100g stipulated.

Ingredients

75 g butter (unsalted)
2 medium eggs at room temperature
450 g ripe bananas, weighed with skin on
1-2 tablespoons or maple syrup or honey (you can omit this altogether. I usually add about 1 tablespoon of maple syrup just to counter the bitterness from the nuts)
1/4 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
100 g chopped walnuts (her recipes says 100g but I usually don't bother measuring this out. I just grab about a handful)
1.5 cups (or 225 g) self raising flour*
A handful of sunflower seeds (optional)

*If you don't have self raising flour, you can make your own by sifting together 1 cup of flour, 1.5 tsp of baking powder and 1/4 tsp of fine salt. You can also swap out some of the flour for almond meal. I typically use 1 cup flour and 1/2 cup almond meal.

Method

1. Heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Lightly grease a loaf pan and line the base with baking paper.

2. Melt the butter and let it cool.

3. While the butter is cooling, mash the bananas

4. Mix the honey/maple syrup into the cooled butter

5. Add eggs and combine well. Then add mashed bananas and chopped nuts and stir well.

6. Sift in flour, baking soda and pinch of salt. Stir until just combined.

7. Pour into the loaf tin and sprinkle with sunflower seeds if using.

8. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until your cake tester comes out clean.  Leave to stand for a few minutes then cool on a baking rack.

9. Eat. Delicious with butter and drizzled with maple syrup. Good on its own too!

Five spice stir fried chicken with cashews: A riff on a Nigel Slater recipe

It started as a Nigel Slater recipe for stir fried chicken with cashews and broccoli. But I hadn't any broccoli. I did have an enormous jar of unsalted cashews that my parents left behind when they came to visit though, so I decided to make the dish anyway.

Along the way, I added and tweaked quite a number of things and I'm afraid that it no longer resembles Slater's original recipe. But the important thing is, it tasted very good. Good enough for Mr Grey to express a hope that I would remember what I'd done.

Very roughly, here it is.

You need about 400g of chicken - the chicken I had today was taken from 3 rather large chicken drumsticks. Marinate with a tablespoon of light soy sauce, a minced garlic clove and a tablespoon of Chinese five spice powder.*

Chop a thumb size piece of ginger into smallish pieces. Heat about two tablespoons of oil in a wok or a deep pan, then add the ginger. Stir fry the ginger until golden brown and fragrant, then add the chicken. Stir fry the chicken for about 2 minutes then add:

1 more tablespoon of light soy sauce
1 tablespoon of Chinese cooking wine
1 teaspoon of cornstarch mixed with water
1/4 cup of chicken stock
A bit of salt - 1/4 tsp perhaps?
1/3 cup of cashews

Stir fry for a bit longer then add the cashews. Finally add a little extra water and cover with a lid. Allow the chicken to cook for about 5 more minutes. During this time, chop a spring onion into 2 inch lengths. When the chicken is nearly done, stir through the spring onion until wilted.

Serve with steamed rice.

*Slater's original didn't have soy sauce. In fact his original recipe did not call for any seasoning at all  but the cashews he used were salted ones. But as I said earlier, all I had were unsalted cashews. The above is the result of just adding whatever I happened to have in my kitchen.

* In general though, I find that ginger goes well with 5 spice and spring onions go well with ginger so there you have it. As for the seasoning, it's hard to go wrong with the classic chinese trifecta of soy sauce, sesame oil and Chinese cooking wine. The corn starch was just to thicken the sauce - it may be omitted if one prefers the gravy to be thinner. The chicken stock was habit. I have, at all times, a bag of frozen cubes of home made chicken stock in my freezer. I find that it adds an umami-ness and depth of flavour to sauces and gravies.

Starting young

About 6 years ago, I went to the hospital to visit a friend who'd just given birth. Another friend L, who I hadn't seen since high school was there too. I don't remember how it happened but L, who was also married with children, wound up giving me unwanted advice in a wagging finger tone about how I should think about having kids young "because it's better".  I was single at the time and was smarting from a recent breakup so...well, I immediately lost my cool. Ahem.

(I'm mildly horrified thinking about it now, but I think the friend who'd just given birth had to intervene and calm me down.*)

That was 6 years ago. Now that I'm married with a baby myself, I look back and realised that it's true. It is better to start young. But I would never say that to any of my single friends. I'd say it to married friends wanting to put off having children. But I would never ever say it to my single friends. I've been there and it really hurts to hear it.

But back to starting young. People may not like to hear this but parenthood is a young person's game, it really is. It takes energy, actual physical flexibility and a strong back. Plus, okay even if you argue that "it will keep you young" and "you feel fit and young", chances are, your eggs and sperm aren't actually young. Lots of very young looking people wind up having trouble conceiving because even if they look 25, their ovaries and eggs are still 40. There are lots of things you can run away from, but I've learnt that it's really hard to run away from your own biology.

Now I look at my friends who married in their twenties and had kids with a certain amount of envy. They have older children to help with the younger ones, plus they're done with childbearing whereas I'm only just getting started (I hope!).

*I have really wonderful and understanding friends.

squidgy

I've been meaning and meaning to write. But the last few months have been spent moving the contents of my entire apartment into storage, looking after a small baby, looking for a tenant, getting said baby his vaccination, and preparing to move to another country with said baby.

But I stopped by because last night, lying under the covers, I began itching to write something - anything - about this time. Because you see, Baby is now 6 months old and oh, I do not want to forget this time. I want to hang on to it even as it dribbles through my grasping fingers. I now understand why people take time away from work to "be with their children". I used to think this was an excuse. Now I see that when you have a little growing human being, time is a finite and infinitely precious resource.

Baby is 6 months old now and he will never be 6 months old again. He will never again be on the cusp of sitting and crawling. One day - quite soon - he will sit up and not topple over as he does now. Soon, instead of getting on all fours and lunging inexpertly forward or motoring backwards, he will crawl towards his toys.

At 6 months,  he has plump cheeks, firm plump arms and legs and fat little dimpled hands. He is squidgy and squashy and altogether delicious. He has dimples at his elbows and skin like cream.

He is amiable and lovable and smiles readily at anyone, at everyone. When he smiles, he smiles broadly in a way that lights up the room and breaks my heart.

His favourite thing to do in the world is when you pull him to his feet and support him under his arms. Then he looks around the room with wild undisguised delight. He looks exultant, like a king surveying his kingdom. Then  he starts jumping up and down as if to say, 'oh look at this great big exciting world!'

He has turned me into a sap. I now smile at babies, children on the street. I know why strangers stopped me when I was pregnant to smile at me and congratulate me. It's because they knew this time of exhausted sweetness was coming.

A few days ago, I stopped by his cot on my way to work. He was sleeping and I stroked his hair. He opened his eyes sleepily, smiled at me and went back to sleep. It was just devastating. I wanted to put my bag down, sit beside him and not ever leave.