Cookbook Corner

[shinsua]

Aloha, all!

I wanted to create an unassuming, unjudging area to share recipes.
Recipes that aren't necessarily fancy, extravagant, or intimidating, but by all means; the more the tastier.
Maybe we'll all find something to consider and possibly confer some feedback.
(I'm also quite curious to know what people from outside our locales think of our recipes!)

I'll start with something simple but sweet: my mom's zucchini bread.

Ingredients

• 2+1/2 Cup Flour
• 2 tsp Baking Powder
• 1 tsp Baking Soda
• 1 tsp Finely Shredded Lemon Peel
• 3/4 tsp Salt
• 1/2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp Ground Ginger
• 2 Eggs
• 1/2 Cooking Oil
• 1+1/4 Cup Sugar
• 1/4 tsp Orange Extract (Optional)
• 2 Cup Finely Shredded Zucchini

Baking Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. In large bowl, mix Flour, Baking Powder, Baking Soda, Lemon Peel, Salt, Cinnamon, and Ginger. Set aside.
3. In another bowl, beat Eggs, Oil, Sugar, and (optionally) Orange Extract.
4. Gradually combine this Egg Mixture to Flour Mixture, along with shredded Zucchini. Mix well.
5. Place batter into greased 9x5x3" loaf pan.
6. Bake for 50 - 60 minutes, or until wooden toothpick in center comes out clean.
7. Cool in pan for 10 minutes.
8. Remove from pan and place on wire rack.

If you try this or any other recipe you might find here, I hope you enjoy!

[arbhor]

I have really enjoyed this recipe for red lentil soup that apparently is sourced from the New York Times but reposted on this site verbatim. It is as follows:

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon Black pepper
• 1 pinch ground chile powder or cayenne
• 1 quart chicken or vegetable broth
• 2 cups Water
• 1 cup red lentils
• 1 large carrot, peeled and diced
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Cooking Instructions

1. Heat 3 tablespoons oil, add onion and garlic, and sauté until golden
2. Add tomato paste and spice, sauté briefly.
3. Add broth, water, lentils and carrots. Simmer until lentils are soft, about 30 minutes.
4. Purée half the soup with an immersion blender, or cool the soup and use a traditional blender.
5. Add lemon juice and cilantro.

I usually omit the cilantro but find the lemon juice essential. Thanks for sharing the zucchini bread recipe.

[turnip_juice]

I really want to a share a recipe that always helps me out when i want some tasty pastry, but don't want to spend a lot of time on it.
One of my all time favs and you can mix it with a lot of stuff be it cocoa, nuts, fruit, maybe some lemon curd on top, mashed banana.
I'll uhh, use a glass instead of a cup because i always use a glass. ( i'm not good at official recipe language idk)
My beloved semolina cake? pie? idk what it'd be in english specifically.
~ 3 eggs + 1 glass of sugar (but it depends, if you don't want it to bee too sweet by default by all means add less) + like 3-4 tablespoons of sour cream (idk that's about like half of glass of sour cream, but i wouldn't recommend putting sour cream into glass only to put it in the mix) and mix it all up, might want to wait a bit for sugar to dissolve a bit? Or not.
~ then i usually mix in the 1 glass of semolina and 1 glass of baking flour (idk what kinds are used out there in the world, cake flour? whatever, if i add something like cocoa powder I'd usually add less flour so it doesn't get too viscous) and then use a tea spoon of baking soda with lemon acid or vinegar and add it to the mix. If you want semolina to get a bit bigger(i guess expand a bit) you might want to wait like 10-20 minutes before adding flour but i usually like to just continue.
~ then you'd want to add around 100-200 grams of butter (melted on a stove) or if you don't want to use butter (it's expensive!) you can use sunflower oil instead (it's quite oily/buttery!)
~ That's it, you can add whatever you want there really, but i think even without adding anything special it's very nice. Put it in your form, i usually use glass one. Because it is quite oily I don't use any kind of baking paper and doesn't stick much in my experience.
~ Put your oven on about 200 degrees C for around 30 minutes, might want to check and lower the heat just a bit and wait for another 10 minutes after that.
~ Enjoy!