Pineapple-Carrot Cake

Modifications:

I'm giving the recipe as written, but here are the changes I made: I put in about 1/2 cup of molasses instead of 1/3, and since I'm in France I used "levure chimique" instead of baking soda & powder (which don't seem to exist here).

Ingredients:

2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup maple syrup or molasses
1/3 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup canola or safflower oil
1 3/4 cups crushed pineapple, drained
1 1/2 cups grated carrots (about 3 carrots)
2/3 cup ground almonds or other nuts
1 1/2 cups pastry flour (ideally whole wheat)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

Equipment:

2 Mixing bowls
wooden spoon
grater
9-inch cake pan (ideally springform)

Instructions:

1) Preheat oven to 300*F. Oil the cake pan.

2) Beat together eggs, sweetener, yogurt and oil until smooth. Stir in pineapple and nuts.

3) In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. Stir flour mixture gently into carrot batter.

4) Pour batter into pan. Bake 60 to 70 minutes (till a toothpick comes out clean).

This recipe came with a recipe for pineapple-yogurt frosting, but it sounded ridiculous to me--you have to drain 16 oz of yogurt for at least 12 hours to get the liquid out, and mix in crushed pineapple and coconut. I decided to go without frosting. It was delicious.

Roasted Seafood

Ingredients:

400 g of salmon (about a pound)
24 large shrimp
6 small tomatoes
3 onions (French onions are tiny--if you are in CA buying normal onions, you probably only need one)
bay
salt & pepper
olive oil

Equipment:

roasting pan/baking dish
cutting board & knife

Directions:

1) Preheat the oven to 150*C/300*F.
2) Cut the salmon into bite-sized pieces and peel the shrimp.
3) Chop the tomato and onion.
4) Mix in your baking dish. Add the seasoning and drizzle with olive oil.
5) Bake for 20 minutes (check at ten minutes to see how the salmon is doing, and every five minutes after the first 20. It's done when the salmon is done, which may be more or less time.).

Suitable for baby food: Yes, but obviously if your kid isn't eating shellfish yet don't feed him the shrimp. I don't eat the skin on fish or chicken, because it's too fatty, but Tristram loved eating the skin off our salmon for this recipe.

Makeshift Thanksgiving

We finally had something like a Thanksgiving dinner. It was largely improvised; I'll transcribe the recipe as I made it and not as the book gave it. It was originally supposed to kebabs, and called for slices of lard in with the turkey and prunes. I didn't think that lard kebabs sounded particularly appealing, and without a grill there's not a great way to do kebabs, so I decided to ditch the lard and just put everything in a big baking dish to roast. I also decided, since I was already being unFrench by not doing my seasoning with fat and fat alone, to add some spices, It's not the best recipe in here, but it's quite respectable and it satisfied our Thanksgiving longings. You could easily put things on a stick instead of in a dish if you would prefer to do so.

Ingredients:

2 turkey breasts
24 prunes (1 small bag)
2 Tbsps honey
salt & pepper
paprika to taste (probably a teaspoon or so)
dash of ginger
olive oil

Equipment:

cutting board & knife
baking dish

Directions:

1) Cut the turkey into bite-sized cubes.
2) Mix all the ingredients in a baking dish/roasting pan and drizzle with olive oil.
3) Roast at 220*C for 20 minutes.

Suitable for baby food: Yes, if you cut it up small. Tristram loved the prunes but was ambivalent about the turkey; it's hard to chew.