Fajitas

I've developed a knack for homemade fajitas. I grew weary of the prepackage fajita spices (the extra ingredients, too salty, too strong  of flavor when done with full package) so over the past few years I've amassed the spice collection to forgo those packages. Unfortunately, I don't measure anything so I'm almost guaranteed that the end result is never the same. It's kind of fun, but it can also be unpredictable. Maybe it's time I write this "recipe" down?

Brown meat (can be done with full pieces of meat of already cut into strips) in oil
As its browning: Salt, Pepper, Ancho Pepper, Crushed Red Pepper (CRP), Cayenne Pepper, Cumin (so I like pepper, huh?)
Deglaze with chicken or vegetable broth & cook down until meat is fully cooked, sometimes a second addition of liquid is needed.

If using chicken, I then transfer to my KitchenAid stand mixer and use the paddle attachment to shred the chicken.

Return to pan, taste, add more spice as necessary.

Add a splash of lime juice

Cook Bell Peppers & onion in olive oil, salt & pepper, ancho pepper, CRP

Serve with tortillas, salsa, cheese & sour cream & rice.

Improvised Italian Chicken w/ potatoes & carrots in the Crock Pot

So yet again my dear readers, I'm improvised my crock pot set up. This time, though, I actually WROTE IT DOWN! My dear husband actually liked this, as did I so I plan to make it again. It was especially nice to create a full 1 pot meal. I was expecting leftovers and looking forward to dining on them for lunch the following week, but in the ultimate testament to him liking the recipe, there were no leftovers!

What did I do?

Browned chicken thighs in olive oil/butter mix
salt/pepper/crushed red pepper
Added chopped onion, carrots (sliced lengthwise), & garlic
Deglazed pan with chicken broth (veggie broth would work too)

Added cut red potatoes to crock pot
Poured chicken/carrot/onion mix
Added a splash of lemon juice & roasted red pepper dressing

Cooked on high for 4 hours.

Potential future alterations: Greek
adding shallots
cutting the roasted red pepper dressing
adding herbs (rosemary & thyme)

Overall I'm excited how well this recipe turned out, especially as I kinda winged it!

Clam Chowder

Oh the weather outside is frightful.... It was downright scary crazy stupid cold here on Monday. Not the coldmaggedon/coldpocalypse the media made it out to be (after all I was over by Tuesday afternoon) but it made for an excellent excuse to whip up a big pot of soup. Instant leftovers to pack for lunch. Cozy comfort food in a thick cream based soup. perfection!

I have 2 clam chowder recipes and a recipe for wild rice & chicken soup. Over the years I've perfected the wild rice  & chicken soup to create a nice thick soup and a consistent outcome for taste. I make clam chowder less often so I do not have that one quite as perfected.

Recurring theme: I improvise, mesh recipes, create awesome meal, forget exactly what I did so I am always trying to recreate it.

Clam chowder is no exception. Note: Most people do not respond well to, "So I don't remember how I did it last time so I'm just going to merge these 3 recipes and hope for the best!" Needless to say it does not instill very much confidence in the diner.

This time:

Melted 1 stick of butter
Added celery, pepper, onion, shallots, carrots
Sauteed for several minutes (until vegetables were softened)
Meanwhile: peeled and cut potatoes and boiled them in the juice from 3 cans of whole baby clams with some dried thyme
After the vegetables had cooked, added 1/2 cup flour to make a roux
When roux was complete, added hot clam/potato juice into the roux (strained out potatoes).
Added additional vegetable & chicken broth (next time seafood stock?)
Added potatoes & clams
mixed well
Added half & half (3 cups)
Salt & pepper to taste

End result: a very thick cream soup. Not overwhelmingly clammy. I may go back to using the minced baby clams as I'm not so keen on the effect of the whole baby clams. I'd give my made up recipe 4/5 forks with room for some improvement/perfecting.

Recipe Review: Crockpot Pulled Pork -Paleo-style... kind of

Recipe: http://primalbitesblog.com/2013/06/22/easy-crockpot-pulled-pork-and-paleo-tacos/

I found this while on pinterest. It's one of several pulled pork recipes I've bookmarked and I decided that Sunday was the night I was going to try it. I love when I can think ahead on a weekend and just set up something in my favorite kitchen accessory because sure enough we went grocery shopping and the last thing I would have wanted to do upon getting home is come up with dinner.

Alterations: I used both a shoulder roast and some pork chops. I coated them in the spice mix as directed and added to the crockpot.

Taste: The chops were a bit over done. They had the spicy coating, but were rather dry/bland inside. I was not impressed with the overall flavor of it and know that I've made better pulled pork and pork chops in the crockpot in the past.... now if only I could remember what I did?!?


I'd give it 2/5 forks (Is that what I used to use? Who knows, I'll go with it!). As it didn't quiet live up to expectations, I removed it from my board. It was a success, but not one I plan to recreate anytime soon.

Improvised chicken in the crockpot

I had chicken to use up. Part of my evolution as a cook has involved more improvisation. Often my go to recipes rarely taste the same each time as I forgo measurement letting instinct, google and taste be my guide. I'm not quite to the point I can taste a dish and identify what its lacking. Someday... maybe. :)

Working 2nd shift, I tend to cook only a couple times a week and subsist on leftovers. Today I decided to put my new crockpot to use. 

Improvised Chicken in the crockpot

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts

olive oil

onion

shallots

vegetable stock

crushed red pepper

oregano

salt 

pepper

diced tomatoes

a squirt of roasted red pepper dressing

a splotch of pesto

I browned the chicken in the oil with everything except the tomatoes. Put it in the crockpot, used some extra stock to deglaze the pan and then dumped the tomatoes over the chicken. Cooked on high for 4 hours. In my head it would almost form a sauce that would be good over penne noodles with a bit of mozzarella/parmesan cheese sprinkled on for good measure. 

I did not get to enjoy this dish yet as I was at work but I did sneak a bite of the chicken when I got home and I'm ranking it a success! Maybe i'll call it an unbreaded deconstructed chicken parmesan?

REboot?

Maybe I should try resurrecting this again? It was interesting to look back on some of the old posts I have made. I found things I never even remembered trying. Did I really make pudding from scratch? Wow. I this age of pinterest, unless I pinned it in my Nailed It folder, I forget I ever try things.

What is my cooking profile? How would I describe my cooking in 3 phrases:

Slow cooking
Made from scratch
Branching out from recipes/experimental

I'll try posting to this blog this year more often. Some will be pinterest successes, others my offline recipes and experiements!

So here we go!

In a recipe rut

I've been in a bit of a rut lately. I've been working WAY too many 2nd shifts which throws a wrench into it all. So the diet has been suffering to say the least. I haven't gained any weight -- mostly because I'm staying active, but I'm no longer losing -- *insert :( .

After getting my hair done on Tuesday, my future sister in-law gave me the real simple magazine and perusing that was enough to spark some cooking energy! Thursday, the fiance and I went grocery shopping and filled our cart full of good food and things to make the bunch of new recipes I found!

Tonight's meal will be one from the magazine: Roasted Tilapia with potatoes and lemon

Upcoming recipes:

• Wild Rice and Mushroom Pilaf with cranberries
• Green Beans with Bacon Vinagrette
• Roasted Leg of Lamb with Carrots and Honey Mint sauce
• Not to mention countless ideas for sandwhiches and quick food....

I'm hungry! Hope my tilapia finishes soon!

• 
  

What's for Dinner?

Whoa! It's been a while!!! Where have I been?? Have I been cooking?

Well, I've been working a lot of 2nd shifts and watching my pantry food supply dwindle so cooking had definitely fallen by the wayside. But never fear, friends, I have returned. Because of the downgraded diet, I had definitely noticed the effects on my body. I haven't gained or lost much weight, but my energy and how I feel has suffered. So I'm newly returned from the grocery store, have a well stocked pantry and am ready to take on a cooking challenge!

Today's recipe is for Baked Walleye. I'm pairing it with salads and a Knorr Pasta side: Broccoli and Cheddar pasta. Nothing too highly gourmet but I'm cooking it and it's not pizza, so WIN!

I found the recipe by a google search: http://www.food.com/recipe/baked-walleye-69347

my modifications:

I cut down on the lemon juice to 2tsp instead of 1 T and added some dried tarragon to the mix. I omitted the mushrooms and also added some garlic to my piece of fish.

Initial taste is a bit bland actually. I may try seasoning it some more....

Seasoning didn't really do anything for this. It was just way too bland. Will not be making it again. Consider this link deleted from from my bookmarks!

soup!

The weather has turned cooler. This instantly put me into a soup mood. I have big plans for fall and winter to try my hand at various soups. Today, I return to an old/new favorite: Wild Rice and Chicken soup.

I didn't grow up eating soup... well at least not real soup. IMHO, Campbell's Chicken noodle concentrated soup DOES NOT count. If it comes in a can and all you do is add water, Nope. Doesn't count. It's a meal, but real soup involves real work. Things like fall harvest veggies, hand pulled chicken, local wild rice. Is your mouth watering yet? I know mine is.

I first was exposed to a good wild rice soup at a local soup place called Eddingtons. After that, I had amazing soup at my fiance's parent's house and since then it definitely a comfort food. I've tried my hand at a couple other recipes but none really come close to the splendor that is this recipe. Will I share it? Only by request. I'm not sure where his dad got the recipe so it's not really mine to share with the public.

I can share that this fall's soup includes good late summer/fall veggies: carrots, peppers, celery. And of course, wild rice (although mine is from a bag so probably not a recent harvest by any means). There's a reason you crave soups like this during cool weather. I even double checked that these were in fact late summer/early fall produce items. I've been reading "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver so things like harvest times are of particular interest right now.

I sautee'd those veggies in butter. Pre-cooked the rice in chicken broth. Added some flour to the butter sautee'd veggies but did not create a roux and then added more chicken broth. The final touches were adding the cooked rice, the chicken and the cream. That's as much detail I feel I can go into.

For the diet concious: THIS IS NOT YOUR RECIPE! This is a treat indeed cooking with real butter and real half and half. No reduced fat in this recipe. It's one of those times when I feel you should indulge in the real stuff but enjoy in moderation!

I will, though, share some pictures of my comfort food:

Fiance's dad's recipe has mushrooms and onion in it as well. I omitted today because 1) I strongly dislike mushrooms 2) I forgot to buy an onion. The soup tastes just fine without those!

Ok... now time to feast upon my creation....

What's for Dinner?

After a hiatus due to a very busy August, I cooked tonight.

Tonight's menu:

Homemade garlic mashed red potatoes
Tomato, Basil, Garlic marinaded steak on the grill

The mashed potatoes were way easier than I expected! I simply brought a bunch of water to a boil. Added a bunch of quartered red potatoes, about a tablespoon of diced garlic. Reduced heat and simmered 22 minutes covered. Then I added 1/2 cup of milk, 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese, 2 T of butter. After the potatoes were done I strained them and added them to the milk/cheese/butter combo.

Because I lack a manual masher, I used my hand mixer to mix everything together.

And with that, they were ready to serve!

The verdict:

They were ok. Albeit on the blander side. I think I should have added a few more herbs and a bit more salt. For a first attempt, I'd give them a 6 on a scale of 10. Something to make again, but tweak.

What's for Dinner? 2nd post of the week!

I think I just outdid myself....

Cooking 2 nights in a row! Whoa!

Granted tonight wasn't really all that hard as far as cooking went: Steak marinated in a balsamic garlic & peppercorn marinade and grilled, paired with Rosemary Garlic red potatoes (done from a McCormick Veggie Steamers packet in the microwave).

A great meal for a warm evening, no oven involved.

Prep time: 20 minutes (including marinating time and potato chopping)
Cook time: 15 minutes.

What's for Dinner?

 Sound the alarms.... I cooked.

I ended up having to run to the grocery store at 5pm (worst time EVER to visit Rainbow in EP, unless you love getting banged into by carts in clogged aisles and endless lines....) to accomplish this, but I'm happy I did.

Tonights menu:

• Italian chicken (personal creation)
• Garlic & Basil steamed green beans
• instant mashed potatoes

The italian chicken is a personal little creation of mine. I brown chicken with garlic (sometimes onion too) in oil. Use chicken broth or extra italian dressing to deglaze the pan. Then put all of that and some more italian dressing in a shallow baking dish. I bake that covered for 20 minutes, uncovered for 10-15 (I use a convection oven so time is shorter). 

The garlic and basil steamed green beans was made with a McCormick Veggie Steamers packet in the microwave. The instant potatoes were from Potato Buds instant potatoes. 

Total meal cost was easily under $10 with the chicken taking about 1/2 the budget. 

The garlic and basil green beans were fabulous! I didn't use the full amount of green beans so there was a lot of sauce with each bean but I would defiitely make these again! It was a super easy thing to make and it took me longer to chop the ends off the beans than any of the effort I put into making them. So if you're looking for a vegetable side for dinner this was an extremely flavorful option!

In a rut...

I'm in a cooking rut. I feel like we've only been home enough to eat maybe 2 meals in the last week and a half. Hopefully I'll be able to change that soon. I'm really feeling the need to cook. I just don't know what to make.

Cross your fingers my rut ends soon....

CUPCAKES!

I decided today was the perfect day to do some baking. I've been itching to use my kitchen aid mixer again and cupcakes sounded like a good excuse to use it, that an as an overdue birthday present to fiance.

The last time I baked cupcakes, I wasn't all that impressed with our cake recipe so I decided to give a new one a try, one from my Better Homes and Gardens baking book. I found a recipe for devils food cake that sounded like it may work.
I could post the recipe, but the way more exciting part is how they turned out, so here they are:

Pictures of my yummy cupcakes:

Coffee Flavored frosting, coffee bean garnish on chocolate cupcakes

Chocolate cupcakes with either chocolate frosting or neon pink vanilla frosting, or some combination of them. Some garnished with fresh raspberries.

I've never tried making my own coffee flavored frosting. I just happened to have part of a cup of cold coffee on hand that needed to be put to use. I added it to some of my frosting and then added powdered sugar to get it back to the proper consistency. I chilled a test cupcake and then tried it. YUM! I think it's my new favorite cupcake. Too bad I'm the only one who'd eat them! For that reason, I only frosted 4 of them with the coffee frosting and will be taking 2 to work tomorrow.

On the neon pink cupcakes and the bedazzled ones, I used a plastic tip and my ghetto version of a pastry bag (ziploc bag, hole cut in the corner, plastic tip through hole) to achieve the fancier looking frosting.

YUMMY!

My morning feast

Every so often I work a 8.5 hour day at the coffee shop. We do not have a microwave so my food options involve either sandwhiches, food from the coffee shop (which is good, but gets a little old) or snack type food. I'm no good at packing a lunch for these days. Luckily my coffee shop shares strip mall space with Trader Joes.

When I'm faced with my 1/2 hour break, I tend to wander over there to the produce section and pick up some nourishment. Prior feast included: whole wheat bread, gourmet chicken salad with currants and almonds, chili lime cashews and an organic banana (single handedly one of the BEST bananas I swear I've ever eaten). Today, given my greek food cravings, my feast was:

• Mini Pita bread circles (not chips, actual pita bread)
• Hummus
• Organic Strawberries (OMG so sweet and flavorful, not as pretty as the non-organic ones, but taste was so much better!)
• 2 organic bananas. 

From this post, one could infer that I'm an organic foodie/snob. But I'm actually not. I usually can't justify the extra cost. I wish I could afford/justify to go organic though because when I do, it usually tastes so much better! There is one area where I feel going organic is just a waste of money: Processed foods. Do you really need those Froot Loops in organic form? My guess is probably not.....

I will say that my feast (4 mini pitas, about 2 Tbsp hummus, 5 strawberries and 2 bananas) left me satiated for the whole day... well until now. Now I'm HUNGRY. So it's time to make some dinner....

Upcoming kitchen adventures

Homemade Pita bread
Homemade Tzatziki sauce
Homemade Hummus

In turn, I plan on making my own souvlaki chicken again only doing it on skewers on the grill with red pepper.
Hopefully this attempt will get dear fiance into Greek food.. or I'll have a very special treat for myself....

What's for dinner? Greek Lemon chicken breasts

I'm a little late in making dinner tonight so I don't get to marinade these as long as I should but I found a recipe for Greek chicken souvlaki and I swiped the marinade recipe for my chicken breasts.

I added 1/2 cup of white wine to the marinade and a pinch of dried rosemary and marinaded it for 15 minutes. Baked in 400 degree convection oven for 30 minutes.

Recipe:

• 1 c. lemon juice
• 1/2 c. white wine
• 1/2 c. olive oil
• 1/3 sweet onion, diced
• 1T diced garlic -- I like garlic
• 1 tsp salt
• pinch of pepper
• a smattering of dried oregano
• a pinch of rosemary.
• 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts

I put the chicken breasts in a small baking dish and added the marinade to just below covering the chicken and put in the oven for 30 minutes. In the last 10 minutes, I threw in a 2 minute broiling session and finished off baking at 400 degrees.

I paired this with the very uninspiring: Knorr rice sides: Chicken and Broccoli. :-/  I really need to go grocery shopping so I have options!

Results:
Very tangy! The lemon-wine combination was a bit overwhelming/strong at first bite, but after that, I really enjoyed this dish. It seemed to get fiance approval. I'm almost glad I didn't marinade it too much longer than the 15 minutes I did.

I would love to try this skewered with peppers on the grill with some homemade tzatziki (sp?) sauce and pita bread. MMMM... greek food.

I will still continue my search for great chicken souvlaki recipes....

brightening up a blah day by baking...

Today is a pot luck for my book club.  A good person would have at least picked out the dessert she was going to make for today, yesterday. Did I do that? Nope. So this morning about 11am I remembered saying I was going to bake something.

Qualifications:

1. had to be fairly quick to make so it could cool in the appropriate amount of time
2. kid-friendly
3. I needed to have ingredients on hand

I would up deciding on chocolate cupcakes using my Hershey's perfectly chocolate cake recipe. I also had a spare cake mix in the cabinet that's been there since I lived in Rochester. Because I didn't know how it would turn out I decided to use it for a trifle. I also have been digging for an excuse to use my shiny new trifle bowl! 

First, the chocolate cupcakes:

I used my standard recipe, but the first batch came out too flat on the top.  

So I was reading one of my recipe books and I decided that maybe the 1 c of water the recipe calls for is a bit too much. That its creating too dense of cake to rise properly. Coupled with underfilling the cups and I wound up with flat dense cupcakes. I quickly added two heaping spoonfuls of flour to the mix and whisked it in. The 2nd batch of cupcakes turned out much better! See, a comparison:

Onward to the trifle:

I needed whippped cream, but my current was still frozen. Unwilling to buy a whole new tub, I decided to use my leftover heavy whipping cream and make my own. I did a quick search on cooks.com and found the following recipe:

1/2 pint heavy whipping cream

3T sugar-- i used ultra fine bakers sugar, but plain ol granulated will work just fine.

1T vanilla

Beat whipping cream til starting to thicken

add sugar and vanilla

beat until fluffy.

here's my whipping cream:

Another picture of it:

Now that I have the whipping cream. I need pudding. Jello makes a mean instant pudding but that would require a trip to the grocery store. So, I found a recipe for homemade pudding at cooks.com.

Just mix together 1 heaping T cocoa, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 hea ping T flour. Add 2 cups milk (I did 1 cup chocolate milk, 1 cup skim). Stir over low heat until thickened. Add 1 T butter and 1tsp vanilla. Voila, pudding!

  *I'll stick to Jello. This recipe took forever to thicken and never really got to be the consistency I expected.

So now I needed to put the whole trifle together. I alternated cake, pudding and whipped cream layers. For the top, I was low on whipped cream-- and I wanted to make it look prettier, so I used redi-whip instead. Then I drizzled caramel and chocolate syrup over the top.  

Tada: Trifle!

And instead of chocolate frosting, I went for vanilla frosting dyed pink/purple

What's for Dinner? 5-23-2010: Spicy oven fried Perch

Tonight's adventure with fish involved my first time cooking perch. While its not too big of departure from the haddock and cod I grew up exposed to, I've mostly cooked salmon or tilapia.. I was looking for cod when I went to the fish counter at Rainbow, but perch was on sale, so perch became the fish for this dish. (tee hee that rhymed...)

My inspiration tonight was taken from the Pampered Chef Stoneware Inspirations cookbook that I received long before I was a consultant. I'd never made anything from it and decided it was time to dust it off and give a recipe a try. So all that talking and I haven't even said what I'm making.

Spicy Oven Fried Cod(Perch) 

Preheat oven to 450 degrees

Sauce:

• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp chili powder
• 1/2 c thousand island dressing
• 1 clove/tsp minced garlic
• 1 green onion (I omitted as I didn't have one, but added a touch of onion powder to the sauce to replace)
• 1 dash cayenne pepper

1. Mix ingredients together
2. Cover and refrigerate about 1 hour (to ensure flavors mix: especially if you use fresh garlic and onion)

Fish: -- about 4 small fillets

• 1/2 c seasoned bread crumbs
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp chili powder
• dash of cayenne pepper
• dash of black pepper
• 1 egg

1. Beat egg in small bowl
2. Mix remaining ingredients in shallow dish
3. Dip fish in egg
4. Dip into bread crumb mixture covering both sides
5. Lightly spray pan with non stick cooking spray (I used Crisco Olive Oil Spray)
6. Lay breaded fish onto a stoneware baking sheet or nice quality baking sheet (cooking time may have to be adjusted)
7. Drizzle a couple drops lemon juice on each filet
8. Cook for approximately 15 minutes
9. Serve with chilled sauce on the side

VERDICT:


I was not overly impressed with this recipe, but I'm still sick so my taste may not be to full capacity. This recipe did get the fiance stamp of approval so I'll try to work it into the repertoire. It seemed to have subtle spice but may be lacking on other flavor. It was very reminiscent of my hometown fish fry with a spicier kick/twist.

The sides that I served with the fish did not fully complement the fish (a chicken flavored rice side and corn). A future suggestion would be roasted asparagus or roasted broccoli Parmesan and a salad may have done more to bring out the variety of flavor.

What's for Dinner 5/18/2010 Honey BBQ Chicken, salad

Its been a while since I've posted a "What's for dinner" update. I have been in a bit of a cooking dead zone. Aside from a very beautiful chocolate cake I made on mother's day and a Strawberry Amaretto Pastry I've made for Pampered Chef events, my cooking has been largely uninspired.

Even my Mother's Day Feast (I somehow confused cooking for 5 with cooking for 15, I had THAT much food) was not very inspired: baked potatoes, roasted asparagus --although it was my first time ever cooking asparagus-- marinated steak and salads.

Anyway, back to todays meal:

Todays Menu will be: Honey BBQ Chicken, salads and potato wedges.

Potato wedges- courtesy of Oreida

Honey BBQ Sauce-- courtesy of www.cooks.com
I added about a tsp of Worcestershire sauce and extra garlic and chili powder to taste. I use 1/2 the sauce for the recipe and store the rest in a jar with lid (old pickle jars work great for this!) in the refrigerator.

• I took the 1/2 of the homemade honey bbq sauce I intended to use and poured over 3 chicken breasts in a deep glass pyrex dish lined with foil and covered it with more foil. 
• I, then cooked it in a 425 oven for 30 minutes, basting it every 10 minutes.
• At 30 minutes, I uncovered it to cook for another 10 minutes.

A very easy meal to throw together, once the inital BBQ sauce is made.