Creamy Grilling Sauce

Source:  Hellman's Mayo

1 c mayonnaise
2 T snipped oil packed sun dried tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 t dried basil

Mix ingredients together.  Brush half the sauce onto 4 chicken breast halves, burgers or steaks.  (I used chicken breasts).  Grill or broil meat.  Serve with remaining sauce.

So you say this is not much of a recipe?  Give me a break guys, I trying to ease back into things.  I have also been getting a big box of vegetables each week from my CSA, so I constantly need ways to make chicken breasts to go with all the produce I am trying to use every day.

Obviously, this was a very easy meal to put together.  The fattiness of the mayo made the sauce melt during the grilling, keeping the chicken breast moist.  The little chunks of garlic and sundried tomatoes in the sauce caramelized nicely.  Made for a messy grill pan though.

This was a good meal.  A nice "pantry meal" -- you'd have all these ingredients in your house, and does jazz up a traditional grilled chicken breast.  I did not care for the leftover sauce put on the chicken -- that overwhelming uncooked mayo flavor was just overwhelming, so I would suggest put all the sauce on the meat during grilling, let that raw mayo flavor melt/cook off, and you'll have a delicious and easy meal.

Fried Green Tomatillos

Source:  Sunny Anderson

1/2 c sour cream
1/2 c Greek yogurt
1/4/ c honey
hot sauce to taste

6 green tomatillos
1 c flour
1 c buttermilk
salt
pepper
1 c plain breadcrumbs
1c cornmeal
garlic powder
chili powder
fresh thyme

Sauce:  mix all ingredients together.

Tomatillos:  Slice tomatillos 1/2 " thick.  Lay them on a plate and season both sides with salt.  Let rest 10 minutes.  Pat dry with papertowels.
Combine flour and pinch of salt in a shallow dish.  Pour buttermilk into second shallow dish.  In third shallow dish, add breadcrumbs, cornmeal, garlic powder, salt, chili powder and salt.  Dredge tomatillo slices in flour.  Shake off excess.  Dip slices in buttermilk, then press both sides in cornmeal mixture.
Pour enough oil into a large saute pan to coat the bottom.  Heat over medium heat until oil begins to shimmer.  Fry coated tomatillo slices in batches, taking care not to crowd the pan, 2-3 minutes on each sides.

ingredient note:  You can get tomatillos at most grocery stores.  They sort of look like green tomatoes.  But.  As all of us who have ever watched Food Network know,  tomatillos are not related to tomatoes.  In fact, they are related to gooseberries.  They look pretty neat with their papery husks.  I found my tomatillos slightly sticky inside the husk.

 This is what a tomatillo looks like.  Pretty cool looking, huh?

And this is what they look like slice.  See, not related to the tomato.

Ever since I saw the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, I've been intrigued by recipes of this sort.  My dislike for tomatoes has stopped me every making it before. The fact that this recipe uses tomatillos (which look like freaky alien berries) just clinched it for me. I had to try it!

The recipe is fairly straightforward.  I always make a disaster with breading -- my fingertips end up wearing little dough"covers", there is flour everywhere -- it's a mess.  Also, I my ratio of cornmeal to breadcrumbs was 1 to 3 (third of a cup of cornmeal to one cup of breadcrumbs) -- instead of half and half.  I don't care for the texture of a cornmeal crust, so I wanted to downplay that.  The whole frying is always a disaster for me too -- the smell of oil, hot oil blah blah blah  (would be so much easier with a deep fryer, but I refuse to get that kind of temptation into my home).  So the recipe makes a mess.

The crust is crispy and flaky and perfect.  Once you bite into these you'll never doubt again that the tomatillos are related to gooseberries.  They are extremely tart.  The dipping sauce is PERFECT for this.  I thought that the 1/4 c of honey was an overkill -- you need every bit of sweetness.  And the heavy creaminess of the sauce is also great to balance out the acidity of the tomatillos.

And below is a picture of my daughter enjoying them:

Banana Mini-Chip Muffins

Source: Splenda

2 c flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1/4 c butter softened
1/2 c Splenda sugar blend
1/3 c Splenda Brown sugar blend
1 t vanilla extract
3 ripe bananas mashed
1 large egg
12 oz package of semi- sweet chocolate mini chips

Preheat oven to 350

Spray 48 mini muffin cups with non-stick cooking spray (or line them with muffin cups -- as I did).  Combine flour, baking powder and salt.  Combine butter, sugar blend and brown sugar blend and vanilla in large bowl.  Beat until creamy.  Beat in bananas and egg.  Gradually mix in flour mixture.  Stir in morsels.  Spoon batter into prepared pan.  Bake 15-30 minutes.  Cool 10 minutes in pan; cool on wire rack completely.

Yes.  My oven is back.  So I am back to baking, baking, baking.  YEAH!!!   I am not a huge artificial sweetener fan.  I am aware of all the studies etc. that state that they are actually worse for you then regular sugar.  But mostly, I am a believer in just eating natural foods, with as little processed and artificial components as possible.  With that said, I was drawn to this recipe -- the little choco-banana muffins sounded delicious.  If I could figure out how to substitute sugar for the Splenda bled, I would have.  I was worried that it might change the texture or taste of the recipe as it was clearly formulated with Splenda in mind.

Obviously, easy to make -- just throw things in a mixer.  I used regular chocolate chips -- mostly b/c I didn't pay attention to the recipe calling for mini-chips.  It turned out fine.  The recipe says it makes 48 mini muffins -- for me, it made 61, and I didn't underfill my muffin cups.

These are tasty little two bite muffins -- the banana taste is very pronounced, with the chocolate chips providing creamy little bitter-sweet surprises.  A solid option for using up mushy overripe bananas.