Sarah: Iron Chef Blogger Challenge Nutmeg

Spinach-and-Cheese Puff

Ingredients:

- Butter for baking dish

- 3 packages of frozen chopped spinach (thawed and squeezed dry)

- 1 1/2 cups half-and-half

- 3 large eggs

- 1 1/2 cups coarsely grated Gruyere cheese

- Coarse salt and pepper

- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg.

1. Preheat oven t0 350. Butter a shallow 1 quart baking dish.

2. In a large bowl combine spinach, half-and-half, eggs, 1 cup cheese, 2 teaspoons salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper and nutmeg. Stir to combine.

3. Spread evenly in baking dish. Top with remaining cheese.

4. Bake until set and top is golden, 30-35 minutes.

---Review---

Have you even had Gruyere cheese? It's like heaven in your mouth. While cooking this my sister Samantha and I must have eaten at least a handful each. I know it is pricey, but buy it, and buy lots of it, because you're going to need to eat at least a cup before you even start on cooking.

When I heard that nutmeg was a secret ingredient, my inner baker jumped up and down and did a back flip. Thoughts of cookies danced through my head and I smiled for three days straight.

Then I met up with Becky, who had picked the secret ingredient and she told me she was planning to make A REAL DINNER using nutmeg. I was completely floored. You can do that?

I did some searching and came up with the above recipe. I am the happiest clam that my household has discovered this SUPER easy, SUPER tasty dish. Even my extreme workout and dieting sister ate thirds.

Recipe from Martha Stewart Living magazine.

Carrie: Iron Chef Blogger Challenge Nutmeg

Since Arizona is apparently under siege from wind, rain, potential snow, and the right conditions for a tornado, it seemed like a good night to bake banana bread. And I'm busy the rest of the weekend. This week's challenge was nutmeg, so off to google search I went. For the Love of Cooking is one of my favorite cooking blogs because her recipes are healthy and simple, the perfect recipes for the home cook. I found a recipe for Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips and Walnuts and since I'd been wanting to make banana bread for some crazy odd reason, it made sense that I turned it into my ICBC recipe. My sister and I decided the banana bread is delicious. I'd give you a roommate review too, but the roommate doesn't like fruit, especially bananas. I think I would definitely make this recipe again.

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread (adapted from For the Love of Cooking)
1 cup flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 ripe bananas
1 egg
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
chocolate chips
*The recipe also called for toasted walnuts which I don't really care for and ground cloves which I didn't have, but I don't think the bread suffered very much from the missing ingredients.

Grease and flour a loaf pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In one bowl, mix flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. In another bowl, mash bananas, egg, sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla extract and butter and mix thoroughly. Slowly add dry ingredients into wet ingredients and mix well. Add chocolate chips to the batter (I just eyed this) and pour the batter into the loaf pan. Bake for 40 minutes or until knife poked into center of loaf comes out clean.