We were invited over to a friends house last weekend. True Nutella lovers, indeed. Show up with a glass of Nutella and it is being ripped out of your hands before you can say Hello. I guess we’ve had our crazy Nutella times, we still like it, but we don’t kill each other over it. There is probably a zillion ways to use Nutella and true Nutella fans are likely to come up with a few extra ways – or one simply admits the addiction and the fact that Nutella can be eaten spoon by spoon. Actually when we were kids, we didn’t even need a spoon…

Being indecisive about what to bring to this invitation and while trying to get my stacks of notes and paper articles sorted out and tidied up, I stumbled across an old, hand written recipe from a friend of mine. The note certainly has seen better days, but the letters were all readable and described her favorite banana bread recipe, which I have baked a couple of times in the past years, but had completely forgotten about. Hmmm. Banana bread doesn’t involve Nutella. Hmmm. But maybe it should?

Since O. and I both like to have an occasional feast of crepes with banana and Nutella, it got me an idea! Why not turn the banana bread into a muffin and add a decent amount of yummy Nutella? I really didn’t have to think this one over…and to cut to the chase: It’s a definite keeper. The muffins turned out delicious and – what I always have liked about the original recipe – super smooth and juicy. I substituted some of the bananas with Nutella, added some more milk. Who would have thought this could be so easy? The only thing I’ll try to work on is their shape (I’d prefer muffins shaped like little mountains…), but since I knew how the original banana bread recipe turned out (luscious, dense – but quite flat…), it wasn’t much of a surprise. While Oliver likes them when they’re still warm, I think they’re unbeatable when chilled for a few hours. They were topped generously with chocolate coating – it might look like Nutella, but it isn’t. This is actually my favorite part of it: Biting in this well-chilled muffin and breaking the rather thick layer of cool and wonderful crunchy chocolate…

Cream together in a large bowl the eggs, butter and sugar, then fold in squashed banana and the Nutella. Whisk.

In a separate bowl, combine milk and baking soda and blend well. Also separately, mix the flour with the baking powder.

Now alternately blend in a part of the milk mixture, then a part of the flour mix, part of the milk, … until everything is combined. Hereby you have better control over how the consistency of the dough develops.

Now pour batter into greased or paper-lined muffin tins and bake at 180 ° Celsius (350 ° Fahrenheit) in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes. Check if the muffins are done by poking in a wooden skewer – it should come out quite dry and almost clean. Put them out of the oven and let them cool down completely.

Add a thick layer of (milk) chocolate coating and optionally some decoration (nuts, sugar pearls, …).

I’ve been a VERY picky eater throughout my whole childhood, things finally started to loosen up when I went to university. Even today my mom loves to pull my leg about my early eating habits. We still have those very special moments at family get togethers, when she stares at me – while I’m enjoying my meal – followed by the inevitable question “You’re eating this??? But you never did when you were a kid!?“, with a slight reproachful undertone. I guess I must have been really problematic to feed. Care for a few examples? At Italian restaurants I always ordered pizza with salami, just to eliminate any piece of it… I very much liked the taste of salami on my pizza, but not the salami itself. Makes sense? And I liked the breadcrumb-coated fried mushrooms my grandma made for me. Just to nibble off the fried breadcrumbs, the mushrooms mysteriously vanished under the table. Where a somewhat overweight, yet dutiful dog was waiting…

Today I’m still a little biased about some dishes or ingredients, but there are only very few, that I am not willing to give a chance at all. What’s striking to me is that some ingredients I wholeheartedly wanted to open up to and was willing to taste and try, just didn’t do it for me. When I first tried basil (about ten years ago), its taste seemed too strong and to an extend “artificial”. The omnipresent Italian salad Caprese (tomatoes, mozzarella and basil) was typically undergoing the same treatment like my childhood salami pizza…

The years passed by and on different occasions basil and I met again. What can I say, love don’t come easy. To make a long story short, not only has it grown on me (no pun intended) after all, I would even without hesitation call myself a basil maniac. Currently we grow three flowerpots of basil on our kitchen window sill (all of them rather bald…). The last time I was shopping at the Greek grocery shop, I had to get in a longer line at the cashier and found myself burying my nose in a big green bunch of fresh basil – can you get high on basil? My own theory to all this is a combination of a) overcoming one’s own deep-rooted resentment and b) getting used to some new and unfamiliar taste buds experience. Thank goodness my taste buds have “surrendered” ;)

Having made your own pesto once, will likely make you never go back to ready-made ones right off the shelves and it is so easy, too. To complement our pasta we made a chunkier version of this delightful pesto recipe:

Toast the pine nuts in a small pan until they are golden brown. Keep shaking the pan, as pine nuts tend to burn easily, which can spoils their taste. Peel and mince the garlic and grate the cheese (or cheeses if you want to combine flavors – it’s always nice to have a little change).

You can either buy the fresh basil leaves in a bundle or whole basil plants. We shamelessly exploited our basil plants (from the kitchen window sill) and plucked pretty much all leaves, big and small ones. Not a pretty sight, but for a good cause. ;)

Put pine nuts, basil leaves, cheese, salt and olive oil into your kitchen blender and briefly blend. Depending on how saucy you want the pesto to be add more or less olive oil. For pasta we usually add a little more, for sandwiches/baguette or anything else a little less.

A final thought. We usually use the pulse function of our blender to make sure we only blend it briefly, this way the pesto stays a little chunkier.

For dessert we decided to go with basil lime sorbet, which turned out very nicely. The only question that kept spinning in my head was “How do chefs prevent sorbets from turning into soup?“. While visually and taste-wise a treat, it only takes a moment and the sorbet starts to get runny… We have first had this sorbet at Landersdorfer & Innerhofer a few years back and just recently again. Probably anticipating the response we got, we still asked them how they accomplished the extremely smooth texture and vivid color – they – of course – said that it was THE secret.

For the molasses: Put the water, the sugar and the lime zest into a pot and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 4-5 minutes, then let remove from heat.

Add the lime juice and the basil leaves into a blender and blend well. Then add the concoction to the molasses and let infuse for a few minutes. Finally strain the mix through a fine sieve or cloth. Let it cool down completely.

Now either use an ice cream machine or simply put it in the freezer, but don’t forget to check back with the sorbet every 2-3 hours or so and stir well to ensure a uniform texture.

It certainly has been a meme rich month so far. Sam over at Becks & Posh came up with a fantastic topic, asking all fellow food bloggers to participate in answering the question: “Choose your favorite ‘money no object’ splurge kitchen gadget…“. So here we go…

Spend 300 bucks? Hmm, I’m more than happy to help ;) Those are in fact the best presents. You get to choose what you really want and both parties are happy campers as opposed to getting something into which went a lot of thought but you neither really need nor necessarily wanted either…been there, got that, so many times.

Back to the topic and speaking for myself, I’d first pick a device or tool that would make my kitchen-life easier, while adding a fun factor. Knives. Ok ok, I can hear everyone go like “noooo, not another knife post…” – Aaaaanyway, I’m definitely a knife person and can’t walk past (good-looking, expensive looking that is) knives. Bad knives – for me – ruin the entire cooking experience, sharp, well balanced and nicely shaped knives, however, turn even the most tedious prep part into a more enjoyable one. I would almost go as far as claiming, that one really good knife is much more worth than a plethora of so-so knives invented for zillion purposes. The ones in the picture are WMF knives, which we decided to go with because of their handling and their solid metal construction with little chance to wearout. Most if not all stores should allow you to test their knives, what works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another.

However, one word of caution, never ever use your sharp knives while still being jet lagged. Bad things can happen and in my case caused me two stitches in my left index finger and a ambulatory experience, I really cannot recommend at all. Trying to numb a finger tip is a painful and challenging undertaking, which also explains why the doctor wasn’t too keen on providing local anesthesia. It’s basically as painful as the stitching procedure…

Did I hear someone say scars are sexy?

Since N. and I couldn’t settle on just the knives, I also included her fave kitchen thingy, which is our panini grill. We’ve been using it heavily and heavenly producing delicious panini of all sorts. I have to admit, I’ve been abusing it a few times for grilling vegetables – what can I say, it works like a charm. ;))

To do our KitchenAid proper justice, I would have to add that it is definitely in the top ranks of our hall of fame, but since we featured her on a different post, she is not competing. By the way, Sam, your orange one is beautiful!!

As for the $25 gadget, we just recently bought a very well functioning wine preservation gadget, that, in case we don’t finish a bottle, prevents the wine from further aerating. I’m not sure it completely brings to process to a halt, but more than another day our bottles don’t last anyway ;) By the way, this thoughtful gift came with a drip-stop ring, that just as much turned out to be super useful, especially when having your dinner on a nicely set table (with white table cloth).
O.