Category: Recipes

One day I am going to overdose on banana pudding. I am going to turn into one big goopy Nilla wafer, oozing yellow cream out of my sweet pores. My arteries will be clogged with whipped cream and my intestines will be stopped up with bananas. But I will have died sinfully, blissfully, joyously, bloatedly happy.

This weekend, I had a major craving for banana pudding. I debated all Saturday long whether or not I should get off my ass, rip my fingers away from the remote control, and make a trip to Sugar Sweet Sunshine for a fix. At about 6:00, I decided I couldn't take it anymore. I fucking doffed my tropical orange print muumuu, donned my public clothes, ventured out into the waning daylight from my beloved Sunset Park, took the N(ever) train and changed at Canal, where I waited for twenty minutes for an M(aybe if you're lucky) train, got off at Essex St. just to buy a large banana pudding. Let no one say I am inert. Let no one say I am lazy. When I want something (to eat), I will go to great lengths to get it. I will spend my (Mastercard's) last penny on a great piece of meat, or an excellent Indian lunchbox if that's what I am in the mood for. Food is my only vice, and I am a bad, bad girl.

Of course, I got to Sugar Sweet Sunshine with a sweet tooth that had the shakes. When I looked into the display case, I noticed three full tubs of the custard used to make banana pudding, but no prepared banana pudding. With dismay, I whispered to one of the slim bakresses behind the counter, "Do you have any banana pudding?" She said, "Nope. Sorry." I put on my most anguished face, a face that I hoped expressed the fact that I had gotten out of my muumuu and traveled all the way from deep Brooklyn for that banana pudding and I was not about to leave without it. I think she smelled my desperation and she said, "It'll be done in thirty minutes."

So by the time I came back my sweet tooth was scratching its bleeding nails at the walls. A huge tub of banana pudding was waiting for me! I ordered a large banana pudding (which is no small feat to eat), a pistachio cupcake, a red velvet cupcake with vanilla satin buttercream, and a german chocolate cupcake thrown in for good measure. As usual, I went overboard.

I finished the three cupcakes off that night, and I savored the banana pudding all day on Sunday. When Wednesday rolled around, and I was considering making a detour on the way home for another banana pudding, I decided maybe it was time to try and make some myself. My coworker Dottie gave me the cheater's recipe for banana pudding. For my upcoming birthday poker tournament, I plan on making this Sweet Dreams Banana Pudding recipe, but this quick recipe is pretty damn good, considering that preparation is only about 10 minutes.

Quick n' Lazy Banana Pudding

1 box Jello pudding Banana Cream
2 cups cold milk

1/2 pint heavy cream
a little sugar
a splash of vanilla

2 bananas, sliced

1/2 box of Nilla Wafers

Prepare Jello pudding according to directions. Set aside to set. Whip the cream with the sugar and vanilla to stiff peaks, the airier the better. Fold the whipped cream, cookies, and bananas into the pudding. Let it sit for an hour in the fridge. Serve cold. YUM!

I have half a tub waiting to love me when I get home. You should too...

***

By the way, the Sweet Dreams recipe yielded an incredible pudding. I do recommend adding a little less whipped cream to the custard and then layering like so: pudding, Nillas, whipped cream, bananas, repeat ad nauseum. By the way, neither of these puddings keep very well, so make enough for that day and then make again when the craving hits. Also, don't turn your nose up at the quick n' lazy recipe -- Magnolia's recipe is very very similar, but it involves instant vanilla pudding, cold water, a can of sweetened condensed milk and about a gallon of whipped cream.

1 whole chicken, preferably a capon (red chicken) from a small farm, raised without hormones, or any other full-of-taste chicken
Water to cover
2 cilantro roots
1 tsp. salt
White pepper to taste
1 1/2 cups rice
1 cilantro stalk
3 tbsp. oil (peanut or vegetable) or chicken fat
Cucumbers (small kirbies are a good choice)
10 cloves smashed garlic
Small slice of winter melon
Bean sauce condiment (see recipe below)

1. Gently simmer the chicken with the water, salt, white pepper and cilantro roots until chicken is cooked. Do not boil. Skim the scum off the surface to ensure a clear broth. Remove chicken pieces from the broth and let cool. When cool, debone the chicken and slice against the grain thinly.
2. Wash the rice. Set aside.
3. In a medium pot, saute the garlic in the oil until fragrant and not too golden. Throw the rice in the pot and fry the rice for 3 minutes. Put 2 1/2 cups of the chicken broth you made earlier into the pot. Cook, covered and undisturbed, until rice is done. Fluff before serving.
4. With the remaining broth, cook peeled, cubed winter melon until done. Garnish with cilantro leaves.
5. Scoop the rice onto a plate and arrange the chicken on top. Garnish with cilantro leaves and thinly sliced cucumber. Serve with a small bowl of the winter melon broth and a small dish of bean sauce condiment.

Bean sauce condiment
3 tbsp. bean sauce (the yellowish brown kind, not the black kind)
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. soy sauce
1 tbsp. well crushed or grated ginger
1 tsp. chopped cilantro
1 tbsp. rice vinegar
1 red chili

1. Crush the chili and ginger with a mortar and pestle. Add the bean sauce and crush until smooth.
2. Add the sugar, soy sauce, and vinegar. Scoop into small bowl and serve with the chicken and rice.

*Translated and adapted from a Thai cookbook called One Dish Meals, and from my dad.

Mango Chicken Salad
Windfall Farms teenage lettuces
Trimmed, chunked French Breakfast radishes
Sliced Red Onion
a smoked chicken breast from Quattro Game Farms (also at the Greenmarket)
A champagne (hairless) mango (available at Whole Foods, Chinatown stalls, etc.)

Dressing:
Lime juice
Soy sauce
Grapeseed Oil
Minced cilantro
Honey
Shichimi Togarashi (Japanese red pepper mixture)

Toss the lettuces, radishes, onion in the dressing. Slice the chicken breast and mango, arrange on top. A delicious summer lunch.

Cucumber salad, my family style, is one of my most favorite things to eat in the world. There were times when I was growing up that I would hunker down with a nice big bowl of rice and steadily pick away at the piquant mound of crisp julienned cucumber. Everyone else would finish eating and I would still be sitting there, an hour later, spooning the salad juice over the last clumps of jasmine rice in my bowl, savoring every last drop.

It's a variation on the classic Thai dish som tum, which is normally made with green papaya. Don't get me wrong, I love green papaya, but sometimes you don't have time to go to the asian market. These days I certainly don't have the patience to deal with the rabid throngs in chinatown. Besides, you can't always get a good green papaya -- sometimes they're difficult to track down, and when you finally find them, the few available are pockmarked and soft, oozing gross milky white papaya blood.

So in my house, instead of green papaya, we often substituted the widely available kirby cucumbers, maybe three large cucumbers for one plate of salad. My mom or I would shred the crisp, cool flesh, skin and all, into julienne-like sticks by bouncing the knife on the surface of the cucumber lengthwise creating parallel knife marks 1/4 of an inch deep, then slicing the surface horizontally to create a pile of uneven, crunchy shreds.

Then I'd sit down on the floor with the clay mortar and pestle on the rag rug, along with my other ingredients: a tomato, a lime, fish sauce, sugar, dried shrimp, thai chili, and a couple of cloves of garlic. the chilies and garlic go in first. my mom said there's a superstition about the chilies -- you should always use an odd number of chilies. for my taste, I liked three well pounded chilies -- my mom can take seven. also, the more you pound your chili, the spicier your dish gets. anyway, pound the chili and garlic together a couple of times -- it doesn't have to be a paste. then add your dried shrimp, and give them a nice pounding. i like pounding them til i can't tell that they're shrimp anymore.

Now slice the tomato into uneven pieces directly into your mortar. At this point, I also like to add the seeded section of the cucumber, cut into 1/2 inch pieces. Squeeze the juice of one lime in there (and don't be lame about it -- use a fork if you have to, but squeeze all that juice out.) Now add some nice healthy squirts of fish sauce. I like Tiparos fish sauce, and for that dish, I measure four one-second squirts to start. Add maybe 1/2 tsp. of sugar (palm sugar if you have it) and start pounding lightly. It'll slosh around, but you don't need to pound it for too long, maybe just 10 poundings. then add your julienned cucumber and give it another few poundings.

Now, most importantly, taste it. It should be tart and pungent with fish sauce. It should make your saliva start running. The sweetness should be coming mostly from the tomato. It should have the bite of raw garlic and it should be as spicy as you can stand (remember, you're eating it with lots of rice). If the lime-fish sauce balance is uneven, add a little more of this, a little more of that. If the whole thing is too salty-tart, add a touch more sugar.

Serve with a fresh pot of jasmine rice and a protein of your choice. On Sundays, we had it with take-out from El Pollo Loco, or a little KFC. It'd be just as good with a home roasted chicken, or a salt-baked fish, or some fried dried beef and sticky rice.

But sometimes just a nice deep bowl of steaming rice with a big spoon will do.

***

Incidentally, now is the best time for kirbies. The greenmarket is selling them three for a dollar if you get the large ones (which are best for this dish) -- they're super crisp and unwaxed, unlike their supermarket brethren.