Thursday Night Salad...and Banana Bread

I decided I wanted something tasty for dinner tonight.  Apparently I go for the basics when it comes to craving a yummy dinner so we had steak, baked potatoes, and salad.  The salad though was super yummy and is something my dad makes and I wanted to try on my own. 

It’s pretty easy, it’s just a few ingredients. 

Arugula Mushroom Salad

Thinly sliced mushrooms

Lemon
Dijon Mustard
Olive oil
Salt
Arugula
Shaved Parmesan 

Combine the juice of a lemon and about a teaspoon of Dijon.  Slowly drizzle in olive oil and add salt to taste.

I have no idea on the real measurements here; I just add the ingredients until the dressing tastes the way I like it.  I tend to appreciate it a bit tangier so I used the juice of a whole lemon in dressing that was enough for about 3-4 people.



Marinating Mushrooms

Add the mushrooms to the dressing and let marinate until the mushrooms have absorbed the flavor and are noticeably floppier than they start out.  I marinated about an hour.

Arrange arugula on individual salad plates, top with some mushrooms, shave a bit of parmesan over the top and sprinkle with some pepper.  (Be careful of too much pepper since the arugula has a natural peppery/bold flavor)

This salad makes me pretty happy.  It probably could have been my whole dinner.  The steak wasn’t a bad side dish for it though!

Sorry for the lack of finished product pictures, I was apparently too excited to eat before I remembered to take a pic.

For dessert I made some banana bread.  Not your regular old banana bread but the kind that has chocolate chips and crystallized ginger.  I mostly made this because I had taken out some bananas from the freezer a couple days ago and never ended up making anything.  I didn’t want them to go to waste so I found a way to also utilize leftover crystallized ginger I had from the holiday baking season. 

By the way – once bananas reach the stage where they’re good for baking, you can freeze them.  I never knew this until the last year or so.  When you’re ready to bake something, take the bananas out of the freezer and thaw.  They’re pretty gross looking and slimy, but if you can overcome this they slip right out of the peel and mush easily into whatever batter you’re trying to make.

This recipe came from one of my favorite places a blog called Orangette.  I made it pretty exact, omitting the optional nuts.  It seemed like that would be one too many add-ins for some reason. 

Banana bread with Crystallized ginger and chocolate chips

1 cup granulated sugar
1 Large Egg
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
3 ripe medium-size bananas
3 Tbs milk
2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
1 cup chocolate chips
Small chunks of candied ginger, to taste

Preheat the oven to 350.  Prepare a loaf pan using non-stick spray.  (Use plenty, I’ll show you in a minute why)

Cream together the sugar, egg, and butter.  In a separate bowl combine the mashed bananas and milk.  In a third bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and soda.  Alternately add the dry ingredients and the banana mixture to the sugar/butter mixture, starting and ending with the dry ingredients.  Add chocolate chips and ginger.  Pour into pan and bake approx 1 hour. (I ended up baking about 1 hr and 10 min)

Cool for a bit on a wire rack and then flip the bread out of the pan and continue cooling.

Notes: I used about 2-3 tablespoons of finely chopped candied ginger.  It was a pretty mild ginger taste.  In the future I’m thinking of adding some ginger powder so it’s more of an even ginger flavor throughout.  I wouldn’t want to add too much candied ginger or it would seem like too many chewy bits for being in bread. 

This bread was pretty awesome.  It was a nice change from regular old banana bread and you can never go wrong adding chocolate chips to something!  I really like the mild ginger flavor, it’s definitely not overwhelming.

Back to that non-stick spray:  I have few baking mishaps but for some reason my bread didn’t want to come out of the pan!  Some minor repairs and a quick flip, nobody would notice my fail.  Hopefully.  At least it tastes good!

Happy baking!  And salad making!