Banana pancake stacks with lime butter syrup

Ingredients (serves 4)

• 1 1/4 cups (160g) plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp caster sugar
• 375ml can of light and creamy evaporated milk
• 1 egg
• 20g unsalted butter, melted
• 3 small ripe bananas, roughly chopped

• Lime butter syrup

• 150g palm sugar, finely grated
• 60g butter
• 2 limes, juiced, zest cut into thin strips

Method

1. Sift flour and baking powder into a medium bowl. Stir in sugar. Whisk milk, egg, and melted butter together. Stir into flour until smooth. Fold through banana.
2. Heat a small non-stick frying pan over low-medium heat. Add 1/4 cup of batter, cover with a lid and cook for 30 seconds or until golden brown. Flip pancake over and cook for another minute. Transfer to a plate and cover up to keep them warm. Repeat with remaining batter.
3. To prepare syrup, place palm sugar and butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir for 2 minutes until thick and bubbling. Whisk in lime juice and zest - be careful as this will spatter - boil for 20 seconds and remove from heat.
4. Serve pancakes with ice cream and drizzled with syrup.

Post from : www.taste.com.au

Sardines with sweet and sour dressing and jasmine rice

This calls for fresh sardines, grilled and served piping hot. The Thai dressing cuts beautifully through the oiliness of the sardines, while the rice is a delicate foil.

1 cup of jasmine rice
11/2 cups of water
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 red chillies, chopped, seeds left in
1 thumb galangal
1 stick of lemon grass, outer skin removed, insides chopped
5 fresh curry leaves (optional)
1 small bunch of coriander, chopped
1tbsp palm sugar
1tbsp tamarind
11/2tbsp fish sauce
8 sardines, filleted

First, cook the rice. Rinse it quickly under cool running water and place in a saucepan, add a pinch of salt and cover with the water. Bring to a bubbling boil. Turn the heat immediately to low and cover with a tight-fitting lid. If you have a simmer mat, sit the rice on that and cook on the lowest heat for 20 minutes. Uncover and allow the steam to escape, then fluff to separate the rice with a fork.

While the rice is cooking, make the dressing. Place the garlic, chillies, galangal (available from Thai supermarkets), lemon grass, curry leaves and coriander in a mortar and pound with a pestle until you have a rough paste; add the palm sugar (or use caster sugar if you can't find it) and continue to pound, than add the tamarind and fish sauce. The taste should be punchy but well-balanced, neither too hot, sour nor sweet. Set aside; this dressing is best eaten within a couple of hours of making.

Towards the end of the rice's cooking time, heat your grill to its highest setting. Lay the sardines skin-side up and cook without turning for two-and-a-half minutes or until the skin has begun to blister. Remove from grill. Divide the cooked rice among four bowls, lay the sardines on top and spoon over the dressing.

Post from :

This calls for fresh sardines, grilled and served piping hot. The Thai dressing cuts beautifully through the oiliness of the sardines, while the rice is a delicate foil.

1 cup of jasmine rice
11/2 cups of water
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 red chillies, chopped, seeds left in
1 thumb galangal
1 stick of lemon grass, outer skin removed, insides chopped
5 fresh curry leaves (optional)
1 small bunch of coriander, chopped
1tbsp palm sugar
1tbsp tamarind
11/2tbsp fish sauce
8 sardines, filleted

First, cook the rice. Rinse it quickly under cool running water and place in a saucepan, add a pinch of salt and cover with the water. Bring to a bubbling boil. Turn the heat immediately to low and cover with a tight-fitting lid. If you have a simmer mat, sit the rice on that and cook on the lowest heat for 20 minutes. Uncover and allow the steam to escape, then fluff to separate the rice with a fork.

While the rice is cooking, make the dressing. Place the garlic, chillies, galangal (available from Thai supermarkets), lemon grass, curry leaves and coriander in a mortar and pound with a pestle until you have a rough paste; add the palm sugar (or use caster sugar if you can't find it) and continue to pound, than add the tamarind and fish sauce. The taste should be punchy but well-balanced, neither too hot, sour nor sweet. Set aside; this dressing is best eaten within a couple of hours of making.

Towards the end of the rice's cooking time, heat your grill to its highest setting. Lay the sardines skin-side up and cook without turning for two-and-a-half minutes or until the skin has begun to blister. Remove from grill. Divide the cooked rice among four bowls, lay the sardines on top and spoon over the dressing.

Post from: www.independent.co.uk

Tristan's menu offers something for every appetite

In late fall, Tristan restaurant saw the departure of its talented Irish chef for the West Coast and sunny climes of San Diego. Quickly, chef de cuisine Aaron Deal was appointed the executive chef. This Johnson & Wales graduate has found a culinary home in the contemporary cooking at Tristan.

With his passion for ingredients and commitment to local and sustainable resources, this young chef was wise enough to leave well enough alone on the menu and carefully added his own signature dishes — such as a Butternut Squash Terrine ($10) with Split Creek Farm Goat Cheese, ginger snap toast, pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and tender arugula leaves. The popular Pomegranate Beet Salad ($12) remains, with the earthy flavors of the tiny and tender beets, endive grilled to a sweet and crispy char, and the salty crunch of pancetta lardons (think bacon bits). Strewn with fromage blanc, it is a still life with pomegranate vinaigrette.

The appetizer menu is well constructed in variety, texture and playfulness.

The she-crab soup ($8) is presented as a frothy cup of "cappuccino" with foamed parsnip cream over the top. Lamb ribs ($12) are cloaked in the house-made (and available for purchase) chocolate barbecue sauce. The sauce has all the complexity of a Mexican mole but is used in simplicity to balance the hickory smoked ribs. The Crab Cake ($14) is excellent — lumps and chunks of backfin served with roasted corn kernels and soybeans, splashed with a lobster emulsion and sprinkled with sweet sea urchin roe. Its panoply of flavors and freshness of ingredients resonated in quality and simplicity.

Mussels ($10) "speak" with an Asian accent in their preparation. They are served in a hot-and-sour broth with succulent braised pork belly, sesame-flavored vegetables and young shoots of sprightly cilantro.

Chef Deal travels the globe in ingredients and preparations: black edamame with short ribs, sauce Perigueux with sweetbreads, a squash and a quinoa risotto; pickling cherries, candying kumquats, drying grapes, perfuming broth with vanilla, and pairing white tuna with black truffle agnolotti.

Ingredients also have their pedigrees, such as Keegan-Filion Farms chicken, Harris Farms rib-eye steak, specially cultivated Tristan turnips, Paddlefish caviar and Port Reyes blue cheese, to list a few.

The Keegan-Filion Farms Chicken ($26) was delicious. An airplane-style breast (wing on) was poached to tender succulence, served with a pillow of buttered pommes puree (mashed potatoes), along with tender and sweet sugar snap peas and foraged mushrooms. Sauce Marsala spoke to its Italian heritage. This simple dish redefined the chicken and mashed potato genre.

They got us with a gimmick, the Tomahawk Rib-Eye Steak ($55). You do need to see it to believe it — a nearly foot-long rib, frenched with clinical precision, attached to a 2-inch-thick steak, being raised on a diet of corn, hay, grass, legumes, lazily eating its way to weight and flavor. You just want to pick it up by its bone handle and participate in carnivorous gluttony, Tom Jones-style, and we did. Kudos to the kitchen for crafting a sauce Perigueux — reducing a French mother sauce, stratifying with truffles and foie gras, enhancing with Port and cognac, and cooking slowly and patiently to form a culinary tempera to glaze the gargantuan beef.

The composition of the menu truly offers something for every appetite. The appetizers (hot and cold) can easily be combined for an inventive meal.

Post from : www.charleston.net

Coconut-crystallic-palm sugar (borassus flabellifer).

A sugar which originated form from further proccessing of coconut trees. Well known in indonesia, especially in java island as gula jawa/merah, and these kind of sugar could be procced again into spesific products called: Gula semut/coconut crystallic palm sugar (borassus flabellifer). These kind of sugar are needed nor traditional or modern foods industries as natural-sweetener or one of the ingredients.
Coconut-crystallic-palm sugar made of nira, a white sap obtained by tapping the inflorescences of the coconut trees. To turn it into sugar, the nira is first strained to remove dirt, then boiled until it becomes syrupy. It is then poured into a mold, usually made from half the husk of a coconut/palm, and is left to harden. After it is removed from the mold, the coconut sugar is ready to use. In making gula semut, however, the boiled nira is not simply poured into a mold. Instead, it is stirred and strained and dried so that it forms granules.
Coconut-crystallic-palm sugar is believed to be more nutritious than sugar extracted from sugarcane. It contains calcium, phosphor, iron, and even protein and fat, which are not present in sugarcane sugar. That is why coconut sugar is believed to be beneficial for people suffering from calcium deficiency.
"to prevent osteoporosis you don't need to drink milk. You can just eat coconut/palm sugar. It's cheaper. "

Changes in vitamin A intake following the social marketing of red palm oil among children and women in Burkina Faso

Département de nutrition, Université de Montréal, CP 6128, succ. centre-ville, Montréal Qc H3C 3J7, Canada.

This paper focuses on changes in vitamin A (VA) intakes as part of the evaluation of a pilot project on social marketing of red palm oil (RPO) as a VA supplement for mothers and children in central-north Burkina Faso. The objectives of the 30-month project are to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of introducing RPO in non-consuming areas. RPO is collected from women in the South-West region and it is sold in project sites by village volunteers. RPO is promoted by community workers trained in persuasive communication and social marketing. The target population is free to buy and consume RPO. Evaluation design includes data collected at onset, then 12 and 24 months later, from the same sample of 210 mothers and their children randomly selected in seven project sites. Children were 1 to 3 years old at onset. Blood samples were collected at baseline from mothers and children for serum retinol determination by HPLC. VA intakes are estimated by a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire, using the conventional beta-carotene to retinol conversion factors and the newly revised lower factors. VA deficiency is a major public health problem in the area: 64% of mothers and 85% of children had serum retinol concentrations < href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11943637?dopt=Abstract">www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11943637?dopt=Abstract

Coconut

Coconut
(Cocos nucifera)

The Tree of Life

The scientific name for coconut is Cocos nucifera. Early Spanish explorers called it coco, which means "monkey face" because the three indentations (eyes) on the hairy nut resembles the head and face of a monkey. Nucifera means "nut-bearing."

The coconut provides a nutritious source of meat, juice, milk, and oil that has fed and nourished populations around the world for generations. On many islands coconut is a staple in the diet and provides the majority of the food eaten. Nearly one third of the world's population depends on coconut to some degree for their food and their economy. Among these cultures the coconut has a long and respected history.

Coconut is highly nutritious and rich in fiber, vitamins, and minerals. It is classified as a "functional food" because it provides many health benefits beyond its nutritional content. Coconut oil is of special interest because it possesses healing properties far beyond that of any other dietary oil and is extensively used in traditional medicine among Asian and Pacific populations. Pacific Islanders consider coconut oil to be the cure for all illness. The coconut palm is so highly valued by them as both a source of food and medicine that it is called "The Tree of Life." Only recently has modern medical science unlocked the secrets to coconut's amazing healing powers.

Coconut In Traditional Medicine

People from many diverse cultures, languages, religions, and races scattered around the globe have revered the coconut as a valuable source of both food and medicine. Wherever the coconut palm grows the people have learned of its importance as a effective medicine. For thousands of years coconut products have held a respected and valuable place in local folk medicine.

Post from http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/

Kitchen Dictionary

Palm sugar was once made from the sugary sap of the Palmyra palm or the date palm. Now it is made from the sap of the sago coconut palms, and sold as coconut sugar. Palm sugar is a golden brown paste sold in cans, tubs, tins or blocks.

Ingredient

Nutrition Facts
Calculated for 1 cup
Calories 774
Calories from Fat 0		(0%)
Amount Per Serving		%DV
	Total Fat 0.0g	0%
	Saturated Fat 0.0g	0%
	Monounsaturated Fat 0.0g
	Polyunsaturated Fat 0.0g
	Trans Fat 0.0g
Cholesterol 0mg		0%
Sodium 0mg		0%
Potassium 4mg		0%
Total Carbohydrate 200.0g		66%
	Dietary Fiber 0.0g	0%
	Sugars 199.8g
Protein 0.0g		0%
Vitamin A 0mcg		0%
Vitamin B6 0.0mg		0%
Vitamin B12 0.0mcg		0%
Vitamin C 0mg		0%
Vitamin E 0mcg		0%
Calcium 2mg		0%
Iron 0mg		0%
how is this calculated?

Season: available year-round

How to select: Palm sugar is easily found in Asian or India markets. It should crumble when it is squeezed.

Substitutions: Mix 1 cup dark brown sugar, 2 tsp molasses, jaggery, piloncillo, and brown sugar, maple sugar, or date sugar.

Posted :

http://www.recipezaar.com/library/getentry.zsp?id=894