Friday, June 16, 2017

Garlic Lemon Fish Greek Salad Sandwiches #FishFridayFoodies


Garlic Lemon Fish Greek Salad Sandwiches are quite a mouthful, both by name and by flavor - pan-fried grouper tossed with a fresh salad of lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, black olives, onion and feta, all stuffed in halved pita rounds.


This month my Fish Friday Foodie friends are sharing seafood sandwiches and I’m excited to join them. When the hot summer starts to pick up speed in Dubai, heading straight into the triple digits (in Fahrenheit, anyway) we eat a lot of salads along with fish, chicken or beef that’s quickly pan-fried so it doesn’t heat up the kitchen. Never mind dishes that have to be cooked long and slow (unless in the slow cooker) or recipes that require a hot oven.

This Greek salad is tasty completely on its own, but add some garlic lemon fish and a wrap or pita bread, and you’ve got the perfect hot weather meal.

Garlic Lemon Fish Greek Salad Sandwiches


Ingredients for 4-5 sandwiches
For the fish:
10 1/2 oz or 300g boneless grouper or other firm white fish, cut in chunks
fine sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
Juice of 1/2 lemon
2-3 tablespoons minced cilantro

For the salad:
3 1/2 oz or 100g feta, cut in cubes
handful black olives, pitted and halved
handful grape tomatoes, cut in half
1 small cucumber, chopped
1/2 small purple onion, sliced
Juice of 1/2 lemon
3-4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
fine sea salt – use cautiously because the feta is salty
freshly ground black pepper
2-3 leaves of romaine lettuce, washed and ripped into small pieces



Method
To cook the fish:
Season the fish with salt and pepper. Pan-fry it in the olive oil till almost cooked through. This takes mere minutes. Add in the garlic and give the hot pan a stir and then quickly add the lemon juice so the garlic doesn’t scorch.

Toss the fish with the cilantro and set aside to cool, off the stove.

To mix the salad:
Add the onion to a large salad bowl along with the lemon juice. Leave to marinate for about five minutes. Add in the oil and stir.


Once the fish has cooled somewhat, add all the other salad ingredients - except the lettuce - into the salad bowl and toss to coat with the dressing and onions. Add in the fish and toss again gently. This can now be refrigerated until you are ready to serve.

Take the salad out of the refrigerator about 15 minutes before serving. Add the lettuce and toss again gently.

Cut your pita bread in half and carefully separate the sides. Fill each half with the salad. Or you can add the salad to the pita bread and fold it up like a taco.



Enjoy!

Check out all the other great seafood sandwiches we've got for you today! Many thanks to our host Colleen of Faith, Hope, Love & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice.






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Thursday, June 15, 2017

Lemon Filled Lemon Bundt #BundtBakers


For lemon lovers everywhere, this lemon filled lemon Bundt will fulfill all of your sweet and sour lemon dreams, with sharp fresh lemon curd, zesty lemon cake and lemon drizzle.

Food Lust People Love: For lemon lovers everywhere, this lemon filled lemon Bundt will fulfill all of your sweet and sour lemon dreams, with sharp fresh lemon curd, zesty lemon cake and lemon drizzle.

This month our host for Bundt Bakers is Cristina from Bizcocheando and she has challenged us all to make filled Bundts. I’ve baked quite a few with fillings between layers of batter, like my dark chocolate mint truffle mini Bundts, glazed chocolate macaroon Bundt, cinnamon crown Bundt, Sock It to Me Cake and, a Texas favorite, sticky pecan pie Bundt. So I decided to do something different and add a filling after baking.

Growing up my favorite doughnut was always the lemon-filled. I find them a bit too sweet now, but as a child, they seemed the perfect amount of tart and sweet. Since I discovered a few years ago how easy it was to make homemade lemon curd, it’s made an appearance in several dishes. The prettiest lemon curd requires lovely yellow or orange yolks, just like the ones we get here in the UAE. I have no idea what those hens are eating but the color of their yolks is gorgeous.

The lemon curd recipe makes more than will comfortably fill this Bundt, but that’s not a problem. I promise you’ll want to eat the rest with a spoon.

Ingredients
For the cake:
3 cups or 375g all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups or 300g granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest (from 1 to 2 medium lemons)
3 large eggs
1/2 cup or 120ml canola oil
3 oz or 85g cream cheese, cut in pieces, softened
3/4 cup or180ml whole milk
1/4 cup or 60ml freshly squeezed lemon juice (from 1 to 2 medium lemons)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the lemon curd filling:
2 small lemons
2 large eggs
Heaping 1/3 cup or 80g sugar
1/4 cup or 50g cold, unsalted butter
2 teaspoons cornflour or cornstarch

For the lemon glaze:
3/4 cup or 95g confectioners' sugar or as needed to get the consistency you’d like.
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Method
Start by making the lemon curd so that you can pop it in the refrigerator to chill before baking the cake. Follow these instructions.

To make the cake, preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C and grease and flour a 10-cup Bundt pan.

In a large mixing bowl, or the bowl of your stand mixer, use a whisk to combine and aerate the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and lemon zest.

Food Lust People Love: For lemon lovers everywhere, this lemon filled lemon Bundt will fulfill all of your sweet and sour lemon dreams, with sharp fresh lemon curd, zesty lemon cake and lemon drizzle.

Add in the eggs, oil, cream cheese, milk, lemon juice and vanilla. Beat on medium for 3 minutes, scraping the bowl down once halfway through.

Food Lust People Love: For lemon lovers everywhere, this lemon filled lemon Bundt will fulfill all of your sweet and sour lemon dreams, with sharp fresh lemon curd, zesty lemon cake and lemon drizzle.

Pour in your prepared pan and bake in the preheated oven for 45-50 minutes or until golden brown. Test with a wooden skewer to make sure the cake is cooked through.

Food Lust People Love: For lemon lovers everywhere, this lemon filled lemon Bundt will fulfill all of your sweet and sour lemon dreams, with sharp fresh lemon curd, zesty lemon cake and lemon drizzle.


Leave to cool for 10-15 minutes then turn the cake out of the Bundt pan onto a wire rack. Cool completely before attempting to cut.

Food Lust People Love: For lemon lovers everywhere, this lemon filled lemon Bundt will fulfill all of your sweet and sour lemon dreams, with sharp fresh lemon curd, zesty lemon cake and lemon drizzle.


Use a long serrated knife to cut the cake in half. Gently remove the top.

Food Lust People Love: For lemon lovers everywhere, this lemon filled lemon Bundt will fulfill all of your sweet and sour lemon dreams, with sharp fresh lemon curd, zesty lemon cake and lemon drizzle.

Use a melon scoop to cut a small channel into the bottom of the cake.

Food Lust People Love: For lemon lovers everywhere, this lemon filled lemon Bundt will fulfill all of your sweet and sour lemon dreams, with sharp fresh lemon curd, zesty lemon cake and lemon drizzle.

Spoon in your chilled lemon curd.

Food Lust People Love: For lemon lovers everywhere, this lemon filled lemon Bundt will fulfill all of your sweet and sour lemon dreams, with sharp fresh lemon curd, zesty lemon cake and lemon drizzle.

Replace the top of the cake. Mix the icing sugar and lemon juice together for your lemon drizzle. Use a plastic bag with a small hole cut in the corner to drizzle the glaze over the cake.

Food Lust People Love: For lemon lovers everywhere, this lemon filled lemon Bundt will fulfill all of your sweet and sour lemon dreams, with sharp fresh lemon curd, zesty lemon cake and lemon drizzle.

Once the drizzle has dried and hardened, cover the cake with cling film and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Enjoy!

Check out all the lovely filled Bundts we've baked for you today! Many thanks to our host, Cristina from Bizcocheando for all of her hard work behind the scenes and for this great theme!

BundtBakers  

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on the BundtBakers home page.

Pin my Lemon Filled Lemon Bundt!

Food Lust People Love: For lemon lovers everywhere, this lemon filled lemon Bundt will fulfill all of your sweet and sour lemon dreams, with sharp fresh lemon curd, zesty lemon cake and lemon drizzle.
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Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Almond Blueberry Banana Bread #BreadBakers

Almond flour is the secret ingredient that adds richness and extra flavor to this almond blueberry banana bread, making it buttery, without any butter. As a bonus to many, it's also gluten free!


I’ve been thinking a lot lately about friendship and what it is that creates those bonds. Sometimes it’s a hobby or interest in common that brings us together. Other times it’s weathering a storm or difficult circumstances or even living in a challenging place at the same time. As expats in far-flung locations, we come to depend on each other, become like family, because we have no one else who understands us, who gets what we are going through.

The blogging world is like that too. I can’t compare starting my food blog with moving to places like Balikpapan, Indonesia or Macaé, Brazil, but back in 2011, typing up words and sending out a recipe for possibly no one to read and comment on felt equally as solitary at the beginning. (Six years ago this very month!)

Like moving to a new city and country, finding friends in the food blogging corner of cyberspace takes time. My first blog, started in 2007, was set to private. I didn’t see it as a way to connect with anyone but family. I told stories of our holidays and posted photos of our girls. But with the public food blog, all that changed. I was a nervous wreck the first time I actually shared a post link on Facebook with friends. What would they think? Would anyone read it? Worse, would they laugh?

My confidence grew as I made blogger friends, joined the Food Bloggers Network group on Facebook, exchanged tips and comments on cooking and recipe writing and photography and social media. I learned the meaning of foreign terms like SEO and white balance and bounce rates, including the mysterious ways of Google analytics. I began participating in themed group events, like Sunday Supper and Bundt-a-Month and Muffin Mondays.

I might never have believed it before, but my online friends, my fellow bloggers, became real friends. We chat privately, in twos and in groups. We commiserate with each other. We support each other. We laugh and we vent. We are a community drawn together by our like interests, our love of cooking, our frustration with changing social media algorithms and learning new technology, and the profound knowledge that we are understood.

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This month my Bread Bakers group is using nut flours to bake our breads at the instigation of our host Cindy of Cindy’s Recipes and Writings. I’ve been enamored of using almond flour in baked goods since I first read Nigella Lawson’s languorous description in her How To Eat of the clementine cake she makes every Christmastime.

While the gluten free flour mix in this recipe can be easily substituted with all-purpose flour, I chose to make a gluten free recipe today to honor my friend and fellow blogger, T.R. Crumbley of Gluten Free Crumbley, one of our community who left us too soon, not even 30 years old.

As a member of the Sunday Supper, Movement, I got to know T.R. through our group events. He was a sweetheart, quick to volunteer his help, the first to crack a joke and at our annual Food Wine Conference, the life of the party. I’m so sorry that he was too sick to join us in person this year where he was honored as Bloggers' Choice Blogger of the Year. He’d have been in his element at the Strawberry Bash on Saturday night. He accepted his award by Skype so he did get to hear the cheers and applause of the crowd.

As managing editor of Sunday Supper, I corresponded from time to time with T.R. over the last year. He graciously gave me permission to expand the Weekday Supper posts that he had contributed over the years, to include the full recipe. His only request was that I let him know when I was going to republish one, so that he could be sure to share it again on social media. That was T.R. all over.

If you or someone you know eats gluten free, please check out Gluten Free Crumbley. T.R.’s family plans to keep his blog going both as a tribute and because it would be a shame to let all of his hard work go to waste. He loved to cook for family and friends. He especially loved sharing his recipes. I like to think he'd enjoy this almond blueberry banana bread. I hope he knows how much we miss him.

Ingredients
3 medium ripe bananas
1 large egg
3/4 cup (180 ml) milk
3 tablespoons or 45ml canola or other light oil, plus extra for pan if not lining with parchment
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup or 120g almond flour
1 1/4 cup or 200g gluten free bread flour blend (I used Dove Farms.)
1 1/4 cup or 120g quick cooking oats
1/2 cup or 100g dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup or 140g fresh or frozen blueberries (do not thaw first, if using frozen)

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and grease a 9x5in or 23 x 13cm pan or line it with baking parchment.

Use a whisk to mash your bananas in a bowl and then add in the egg, oil vanilla and milk. Whisk to combine.


In another large bowl, add all of your dry ingredients and stir to combine. Add in the blueberries and stir to coat.


Pour your wet ingredients into your dry and use a wooden spoon to mix well until the dry ingredients are thoroughly combined with the dry. Unlike in quick breads made with all-purpose flour, gluten free flour batters need to be completely wet before baking.


Pour the thick batter into your prepared pan.


Bake for 55-65 minutes, or until the internal temperature of your Almond Blueberry Banana Bread reaches 210°F or 99°C on an instant read thermometer. Cover the loaf with foil if it is getting too browned before it is cooked inside.

Remove from the oven and cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.


Enjoy!


Do you love baking with nut flours too? You might enjoy making my White Chocolate Cranberry Blondies, Staffordshire Yeomanry PuddingAlmond Raspberry Cake or Passover Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars as well.

And check out this creative nut flour recipe list from my fellow Bread Bakers. Many thanks to our host Cindy of Cindy’s Recipes and Writings for all of her hard work behind the scenes.
#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all our of lovely bread by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated after each event on the #BreadBakers home page.
We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.
BreadBakers
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