Welcome to Our Kitchen!

Let me do a little intro:

The Wookie is a causally trained Italian chef in his grandfather's restaurants from a young age.  He is a sometimes competitive chef focusing on an Italian/Mediterranian/Middle-Eastern fusion style.  He usually works with proteins, pasta, and cocktails.  Many of his inspirations come from Alton Brown.
The Lady grew up cooking with her mother, grandmothers, and aunts.  Her style is rooted in British comfort foods, fresh and local ingredients.  She does most of the baking, veggies, and snacks.  Her greatest inspiration comes from reading other food blogs, emails from recipe sites and food magazines, just whatever looks tasty and seasonal!

We both like try new things: flavors, ingredients, styles, equipment, and roles in the kitchen.  Fall flavors are definitely a favorite and we've been cooking a lot recently

Food is central to our relationship, it's the reason we met.  Recently we decided to start sharing our meals and recipes with our friends (mostly via Facebook) and now we're going to be doing this in a more official capacity.

The inspiration:
I recently stumbled across a blog called The Food Librarian who informed me that yesterday was National Bundt Day.  There was an offer to post a picture of a bundt on your own blog or email her a picture and I thought "we could do that."  I have been reading food blogs and websites for the better part of the last four years but never thought of writing my own until yesterday

So:
After 12 or so hours of trying to come up with a name, we finally settled on the one you see here (Kama Foodtra was already taken and the Lady is an art history nerd...don't get me started).  There's not going to be any consistent post schedule but we hope that having an audience will push us to be more creative and prolific in the kitchen.



Banana Bundt Bread with Cinnamon Streusel Crust
I started with an adapted version of this recipe, adding some spices and the streusal crust (blended flour, brown sugar, vanilla sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg with butter and coating the inside of the pan before adding batter).  I had hoped that the streusal (I never spell that word right on the first try) would stay a little crumbly but that didn't work out.  Instead it formed a crispy caramel-like layer around the banana bread, delicious happy accident.
I love this recipe, I used 5 large bananas that had been in my freezer for a month.  It is a very dense bread (weighs a TON) that accepts adaptations very well.  I often make it in the bundt pan because it's pretty that way and I have added various spices to it as well as chocolate chips on occasion.  It has a very rich, banana flavor that also toasts very well.

You can see the streusal crust along the top edge there.

Well, that's it for now, hopefully I'll be able to find the real camera instead of taking pictures with my phone and I can work on my food photography skills.  Wookie says he's going to post his signature cocktail recipe later today and give his own little intro.