Versatile fruit bread

A couple of weeks ago I made a date loaf. It got rave reviews on the recipe site, but I wasn't impressed by it. On a scale of 'sponge to mud' cake, I like my date loaf up near the mud cake end. This version was too close to the sponge cake end.

Last week I made banana bread. Every one really enjoyed the recipe. The texture of the bread was far more like the texture I'm looking for in a date loaf. Instead of trying another recipe, I thought perhaps I could just substitute dates for bananas. It turned out okay. A little too sweet with the dates, and perhaps a little short on full date flavour.

The original recipe and the date option.

Ingredients - Banana Bread
3 or 4 ripe bananas, mashed. According to one site this is about a cup of banana.
80g (1/3 cup) of melted butter
3/4 cup sugar. Original recipe was for 1 cup. Even 3/4s was on the sweet side.
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla (I only ever use beans or bean paste)
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1.5 cups of plain flour
 Ingredients - Date Loaf
As above except:
1.5 cups of cut dates soaked in 1 cup of boiling water. Next time I will put the soaked dates through the blender, which may help to 'spread' the flavour a little.
1/2 cup of sugar. This still way sweeter than necessary. Next time I will use only 1/4 cup.

Method - either
Preheat oven to 175°C (350°F).
Stir butter into fruit.
Stir in sugar, egg and vanilla.
Sprinkle salt and baking soda over the mix and stir in.
Stir in flour.
All stirring with a wooden spoon; no need for 'lectric. Pour into greased loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. In my small oven, after about 40 minutes I need to cover with foil to prevent the top from burning.
Eat lots of it. Good warm straight out of the oven. Good the next day with butter on it.

Porridge (Oats)

My nana used to make stick-to-your-ribs-all-day porridge. After dinner, she'd put the oats in water a saucepan to soak over night. In the morning, she'd cook it up and you'd get a lovely blob of sticky, gooey porridge.

I've never been able to replicate it. Even "traditional" oats are obviously not as hardy as oats 'back in the day'. Leaving them to soak overnight all but destroys them, turning them into something resembling school paste. A slow cooker recipe I found was (unsurprisingly really) even worse. Microwave porridge, firstly, makes a huge mess and secondly, just wasn't as satisfying; but I think I've nailed it.

The trick is a very large container with straight sides to cook the oats in. For a single serve of porridge (1/3 cup of oats, 2/3 cup of water) I use a 2 litre mixing bowl. I cook, according to the instructions, for 2 minutes, stir, cook for a further minute. For variation, when I stir I add a handful of cranberries. The result - perfect, nana stodge. Love it on a cold winter morning.

Doesn't photograph well, but it sure hits the spot on a cold morning.
The big white lump near my spoon is cream from the top of the milk.
Gotta love unhomogenised milk!

Corned Beef Hash

Got a couple of recipe type posts coming up. Here's the first one. This was a new, trial recipe for me. The others enjoyed it. Can't say I was much fussed. Sadly, I only have one photo. Taking photos of my food is a little foreign to me.

Corned Beef Hash mix

What was in my hash mix? In the photo the big, bright green 'thing' to the right - that's a spatula. Just in case you were wondering.

Otherwise - left over corned beef, carrot, baby spinach leaves, onion, celery - all put through the food processor. Really, you could put just about anything in these. There could even be some zucchini in this mix. Just put everything through the food processor or grater to ensure it's a fairly even consistency.

Grated raw potato, which isn't yet in this photo. The trick is to dry the potato as thoroughly as possible. My dad's suggestion is to use a potato ricer (pictures on this website). They look a bit like an overgrown garlic press. After pressing the grated potato, dry them on paper towel. I'm thinking another option might be to use a salad spinner (Ikea's version). I don't own either, so I squeeze by hand, and then put the potato into one mesh seize, put another on top and squeeze them together.

I also added an egg (probably needed two, but I didn't have two) and some spices.

Form about a tablespoon or so into a ball, place (don't drop) into hot oil and flatten. That's really all there is to is.

Like I said, I wasn't fussed, but it's an easy way to use up a bunch of left corned beef and veggies.