Mango & Avocado Ceviche

We bought some sweet, green mangoes today at the farmer's market, and I happened to stock up on some avocados earlier this week. And what do you do when you have some tomatoes, cilantro and seafood on-hand?  You make ceviche of course!  This recipe is quite versatile.  It's serves as a wonderful side dish, a great relish on any broiled white fish, a refreshing dip with some tortilla chips, or (the way I usually enjoy it) great filling for pita bread! 

Ingredients:

- Three large tomatoes

- Two avocados

- One large mango

- One large white onion (minced) 

- 1/2 cup of shrimp (cleaned, de-veined, cut in half)

-1/2 cup of squid or cuttle fish steaks (cubed)

- 1/3 cup cilantro (or according to taste preference)

- 4 ounces lime/lemon juice (preferably lime for the aroma)

- salt

Prep & Instructions:

-Clean and chop shrimp and squid into small pieces.  In a small pan, add seafood into 2 cups of boiling water.  Add 3 tbsp of lime juice.  Bring to a simmer until seafood is cooked.  Once cooked, strain and set aside to cool.

- In a food processor, finely chop onions, and set aside.  Do the same for the cilantro and set aside. Chopping these two ingredients with a food processor is recommended for the fine texture, which subdues their strong flavors.

- Chop tomatoes by removing seeds and pit.  Chop diced.

- Chop and dice mangoes and avocados into small pieces.

- Combine diced tomatoes, cooled seafood, cilantro, and onions.  Add lime juice and salt to taste.  Add avocados and mangoes.

- Stir until ingredients are mixed well.  Refrigerate.  Best served when chilled.

Banana Nut Bread

The only time consuming part in this recipe is ripening the bananas until they are almost completely black.  Furthermore, that is the secret to a sweet and moist banana nut bread.  You may find that the blacker the bananas you add, the sweeter, the moister, and chewier the bread will be.  Adding unripened bananas (while still yellow), may yield a bit of tartness in the bread.  So when you can, set aside plenty of bananas ahead of time to ripe.

Here is my from unhealthy (hehehe), from-scratch recipe (ingredients yield 2 loaves):

Ingredients:

- 2 sticks of butter, softened
- 4-5 blackened bananas
- 1 1/2 cups of sifted flour
- 1 cup of brown sugar
- 1 cup of white granulated sugar
- 2 tbsp baking soda
- 3 tbsp pure vanilla extract
- Non-stick spray (with flour preferred)

Prep and Instructions:

- Pre-heat oven to 350F degrees
- Grease two large loaf baking pans with non-stick spray  (with flour preferred, to avoid extra grease on bread)

-  In a mixer at medium speed, mix softened butter, eggs, vanilla extract, brown sugar, and white sugar until mixture is at a creamy consistency.

- Add shifted flour and baking soda. Mix well until mixture becomes a batter.

- Mash bananas by hand until pureed. I like to mash the bananas by hand rather than a food processor to retain some banana chunks.

- Add banana puree (approx. 2 1/2 cups) to batter.  Continue to mix well with mixer until batter is smooth.

- Add batter into greased loaf pans.  Cover loaf pans with perforated aluminum foil to keep top from burning. Bake until center is firm. To check if the loaf is cooked thoroughly, poke the center of the load with a wooden skewer and when skewer removed clean, loaf is ready to be removed from the oven.

- Set loaves on cooling rack to cool.

- Once completely cooled, slice and serve.