Sorry people, when I moved the original entries from my personal blog, I accidentally did them out of order. So the chronology on the first four entries make no sense. Also the tags didn't transfer D:

It's time to blog about food.

Why? Who knows. I feel like writing about it. Plus, I might be able to use this a chronicle/recipe notebook as time goes on so I can figure out what I did wrong, etc. So fair readers of the blog, prepare to read about food now and again.

First, I should note that I like cooking. It's quite a creative endeavor, if you think about it. Sure there are some rules to follow (ex: do not replace "chicken" in chicken recipes with something unrelated...like Cheerios.) and some things to think about in terms of cooking thoroughly, etc. (ex: do not add milk to chicken and eat in bowl as if they were Cheerios.) But all in all, it can be a fun and somewhat improvisational experience.

Lately I've been trying to expand my repertoire, so the improvising is sort of on the backburner as it were. The last thing I did improvisational was add chili powder to the Lawry's taco mix. It was good, but not exactly a stroke of genius. They won't be asking me to host a show on the Food Network just cause I put something into something else, that's for sure.

Anyway, with upcoming legal programs in my future and Megan continuing work and school, I've been searching for recipes that will make good, relatively quick-make dinners for Mon/Wed and yet have enough leftover for Megan to eat some on Tues/Thurs (I'll have to go straight from work to UCLA, so it'll be a ton of Subway for me, I'm afraid.) As a result, I've been perusing the Food Network website trying some new recipes and I've met with some mixed success. Here's a rundown!


Beef Tacos
Get some beef and tortillas. Then Lawry's taco seasoning and add 2-3 pinches of chili powder. What, come on, you know you wanted to know what I did.


Campfire Pan-Roasted Chicken
Here be the link.

The name of this recipe confuses me to no end: there is no open flame involved, and when I read something like that I'm expecting...I don't know, cowboy food? But this is definitely an Asian-influenced pan chicken. This was a great recipe and it came out very good. In my opinion, chicken breasts on a pan need to be sliced in half, especially if you're stuck like me using a crappy electric stove (ours is brand new, and it still pretty much sucks.) so just give it a halving before you toss it in the marinade bag. One might want to prep this on a weekend, it takes a lot of "start up ingredients" that you may not have already (soy sauce and peanut oil in particular) but once you have those you could probably make it 6 or 7 times before you ran out of ingredients. The rest you buy fresh or during your weekly market run. It's a very tangy, salty recipe, just on the border of too salty. If you're sensitive to that sort of stuff you may want to ramp back on the added salt. I made this with roasted shiitake mushrooms from this recipe but with just shiitake, not a bunch of others. Really good.



Chicken Marsala
Here be the link.

This one is from our favorite "bam" yelling friend, Emiril Lagasse. In general, I find most of Emiril's recipes to be way too complicated or time consuming for a weeknight meal and I just haven't had the courage to go for one on the weekend. This one, however, is a good recipe. Again, it takes a lot of start of up ingredients, this time in the form of spices, in order to prepare the "essence of Emiril", which is included on the same recipe link. This adds, I'd say, about 10-20 minutes to your prep time but once you've made a batch you have quite a bit left over; you can just keep it in an airtight canister. If I were at home, I'd take a picture to show you mine, but you're stuck with using your imagination for now. You'll also need to buy Marsala wine, and if you've never done that for cooking before, get the "Dry" version, not the sweet. This recipe ended up being really good too; we had a minor crises when I forgot to get chicken stock and Megan had to run to Vons and pick some up, but despite that, it wa quite good. Doesn't really need a side dish either, because of the mushrooms already used in the dish.



Chicken Faijtas
Here be the link. I just used two chicken breasts instead of the beef.

My dad has been using this recipe for a LONG time and it's one of my favorites; unfortunately, it is DEFINITELY NOT a good weeknight recipe. I prepped the marinade on Sunday then tossed it in the bag on Monday morning, and still it felt like a lot of work to cook Monday night, particularly because of the vegetables, and problems I had using a cast-iron grill pan. When using a cast-iron grill pan, you HAVE to halve your chicken breasts; this was the time that confirmed it. Otherwise the outside gets scorched while the inside does not cook, which resulted in me having to jury-rig a "cut" of the chicken in order for the heat to get to the interior. The final result was still very delicious, but all in all I think that this is best done A) on the weekend B) using a real grill. Trying to do it on a weeknight with a grill pan just makes the whole experience too stressful to enjoy, and the amount of prep work you need to do the day before is quite extensive. Still, if you're having a party or something, definitely give it a shot.


Lasagne
The recipe is on the box of Barilla ready-to-bake noodles. My variant removes the ricotta cheese and replaces it with more mozzarella.

Yikes. Epic. Fail. The entire edge of the lasagne was burned and crunchy, and was generally inedible. The center was really good, and I ate that anyway, but Megan decided to opt out and go to Baja Fresh. Oh well. I think the problem was despite following the recipe, there wasn't enough sauce, and it left a lot of exposed, un-wetted noodles to simply incinerate in the oven. The other option could be the foil: I think that maybe I didn't cover it tightly enough. Megan thinks the foil is the cause of the burning. In either case, I'll have to fiddle with the variables a bit to try and make it better. It's also just on the edge of taking a bit too long to make for a weeknight, but it's manageable, probably takes about 1 hour 20mins total to brown the meat and then bake the lasagne. Even though it takes some time, it's a pretty automatic recipe since you mostly just sit and wait, so there's an advantage in that.


Well, that's about it for the recipe report. I have a Greek Lemon chicken recipe slated for the weekend, and I think it's about time for some beef kebabs and this parmesean fry recipe I've been waiting to use for next week. I'll let you know how those turn out.

By the way, if you have a recipe you think would be good for weeknights, post it in el commentolos, and I'll give it a go.

So, since my previous entry about cooking seemed to be popular, and since I usually don't write anything else with much frequency, I'd at least post up on Friday what it was I made for the week. Friday being the optimum day because A) it's the last day of the week and B) it makes a nice alliteration with "Food". But since tomorrow Megan and I are off with the young marrieds of the Church for the weekend and I'm sure I'll be preoccupied with getting things ready tomorrow, I'd just drop in and do it on Thursday. So uh...probably next week will be the first official Food Friday Roundup that's on...well, Friday.

Moving along!


Monday - Spaghetti di Rockney

No linked recipe for this one, as it is mostly a recipe used by Megan's family, slightly modified with some elements from a recipe my parents used to use.

Ingredients

Fettuccine Noodles
1 Jar of Newman's Own Marinara Sauce
Sweet Italian Turkey Sausage
Dried Oregano Leaves


Pretty easy recipe; we've made it a billion times so there was no adventures in new skills regarding this one. Meg prefers Fettuccine noodles, as they are wider, so we use those. Dump salt into your pot, boil the water, throw the noodles in. Pretty straight forward.

For the meat sauce, take the Sweet Italian Turkey Sausage (Jenie-O is the brand we use) and throw it on a pan. Now, normally I hate using Turkey as a meat substitute for things like ground beef and the like, but this particular sausage is really, really good. So no complaints from me from this particular turkey product. Anyway, the sausages come in links, not ground, so what you have to do is push the filling out of the skins. Two ways you can do this; Megan does it by hand before putting it in the pan, I usually just squish it out with a spatula while it's on the pan. Either way is find. Throw away the skins and break up the filling and brown as you would with regular sausage or ground beef. Sometimes there's enough fat to merit draining, sometimes not, do as you prefer.

Once the sausage is browned, dump the sauce into the same pan (use a pretty big pan). You could also move everything into a saucepan I suppose, or a pot, but since I try to use as few utensils as possible to save on cleaning times, I use one pan. Newman's Own Marinara sauce is, in my opinion, the BEST on the shelf marinara sauce there is. Period. It's a bit more expensive than other brands, but it's definitely worth it.

Mix the sauce with the sausage. Add the oregano in here if you want; try it with and without to see which you prefer. Sometimes I forget the oregano and it's not a huge deal, but I think it gives it a little something extra. Not a ton, just enough to sprinkle lightly across the surface should do.

And that's pretty much it. Makes good leftovers if you make enough.



Wednesday - Beef Kebabs and Oven-Roasted Parmesan Fries
Here be the link for the Fries.


Ah, beef kebabs. Again, a tried and true food item for us. We usually just buy pre-made kebabs from Ralphs or Gelson's (Ralphs is preferable, as they are slightly cheaper and slightly larger) and cook them in the oven...a bit trickier than maybe using a grill, but for ease and convenience we use the oven. I may get bold in the summer and try our public grill, but for now it works.

For yesterday's quest, I started with the fries first, as they took more preparation. Peel, slice, boil, bake, sprinkle, bake was the process in a nutshell. My slicing is still terrible; very inconsistent. I think it was starting to resemble some sort of consistency by the end of the second potato, but still something that I'll have to continue to develop with practice.

By the way, the recipe calls for 5 potatoes, but we don't need that much. In general for other fried potatoes/fries I've made, I usually do one potato per person; thus two. I also throttled back on the amount of salt used in the bowl, since 1 tablespoon for two potatoes is a lot, and it's much easier to add salt after the fact rather than somehow magically remove it.

So, slicing was ok, boiling was odd. It never did come to a full boil, though I was using my largest pot with the pasta filter in it (for rapid, easy draining of the potatoes). I just kept checking them for softness per the recipe's instructions by using the paring knife, and then just pulled them out.

I didn't bake them long enough. I was on a time constraint since I needed to use the oven for the kebabs as well, so they were still sort of...soft fries. I like soft fries so it wasn't a huge deal, but Megan likes them crispier, so next time I'll do them longer. I think I may also spread the fries onto multiple cookie sheets next time; one seemed a bit too crowded to crisp them rapidly.

So after I cheesed them I dumped the fries into a basket and began kebab cooking. Same cookie sheet, just set the kebabs on there and use a high temperature. In the past I've used the broil setting, which works fine; yesterday I tried it at 450, which was also fine. No real difference, I didn't think. When I cook them, I start with 7:30 per side, then 3:00 per side, then 1:30 until I think they're done (usually checked by cutting open the largest chunk.

I have to admit at this point that while the pre-made kebabs are convenient, I'm starting to feel annoyed by them. The pieces of meat used are quite varied in size, so by the time you get the larger pieces done perfectly, the smaller ones are a little over-done. If I were to do this on a weekend, it might be worth the time to build them myself. I suppose I could pull the more done pieces out earlier, but that makes them not-kebabs anymore as they are removed from the stick. Then again, we tend to pull them off the stick and eat them with a fork and knife anyway...so maybe it's a moot point.

Anyway, this was a successful meal. Just a few notes for the fries for improvement and I think it'll be perfect.



Future Projects!

I'm off to the store tonight, I think, to get things ready for next week. Usually I shop on Sunday, but we won't have a lot of time with the trip and all, so I'll just freeze everything until then. On the docket for next week, at a minimum, is a Pepper Chicken with Lime sauce. I went through the bookshelves last week and found all of our cook books (to which I was surprised at how many we had) and moved them to a smaller bookshelf that we recently bought from Ikea for my law books. Now that they're much more accessible and closer to the kitchen, I can delve into them more frequently. The Pepper Chicken is a recipe from a Williams-Sonoma book we bought, so I'm excited to give that a go.


I also want to make a Minestrone soup to freeze for Megan to have for dinner on the nights that I'm gone. I may do that tonight and report later on how it turned out.

Oh! This one is awesome. Last week, my brother called me and asked what I was doing. Since we had leftover tortillas and cheese from the Fajita Fiasco I was making microwave quesadillas (my microwave can make a perfect quesadilla in 30 seconds). But when I said quesadillas, he thought I said Pizzadillas. And now we're obsessed with the idea of making a pizzadilla. I'll let you guys know how that one goes too.

Once again, any shared recipes will be appreciated. I haven't pounded any chicken yet, Matt, but I did get a tenderizer so I'm ready to go for next time.

Haha! Well, fellow food fiends, it's that time again! And while I do have some thoughts to relay about how my first ventures into the Law have been, I would be remiss in breaking my own new format this early. So Law thoughts another day. In a word though: Good.


Monday - Pepper Chicken with Lime Sauce, Rice, Roasted Green Beans

Link for the Green Bean Recipe!
Rice just used a Rice Cooker...

Pepper Chicken with Pepper Lime Dip - Cambodian Dish from the "Savoring Meat and Poultry" book by Williams Sonoma.

Ingredients

2 Boneless Chicken Breasts, with skin
1 teaspoon peppercorn
1 teaspoon sea salt (says coarse salt; I suppose you could use regular salt too)
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 cloves of garlic, quartered

For the dip: 2 limes, 1 tablespoon ground black pepper, 1 1/2 teaspoon sea salt


Ok, I should start out by stating that the recipe is slightly modified from the one in the book. The book recipe called for like, two whole chickens. But since there are but two of us, I nerfed it down to two breasts. Normally we eat boneless/skinless, but the picture in the book had yummy looking skin so I opted for a bit of extra fat and got some with skin still on. Also, the original recipe called for mushroom soy sauce. I looked at Gelson's for mushroom soy sauce, but I haven't a clue what it is or if it's sold; in all my years of growing up in a semi-Asian household I've never heard of mushroom soy sauce. I wondered if maybe it was something you had to make, but there were no instructions. So I just used regular soy sauce.

For this sucker you have to marinade first. Crushing peppercorns without proper tools is not an experience I would recommend; the book said to use a mortar, but I don't have one. So I used a bowl and an ice cream scoop. It worked out, but it was tiring and in someways quite needless since I do have ground pepper. In any case, you take the peppercorns, quarter the garlic and smoosh it together. The book said to make a paste, but I didn't, I just kinda...mixed it up. I added that to the soy sauce, sugar, oil, and salt and threw it with the chicken into a ziploc bag. I tend to do all my marinating in ziploc bags; you can just throw them away when you're done and they seem to get the job done. It's also easier to concentrate the marinade straight on the meat by turning the bag in certain directions, so when you are marinading for a short period of time (I only marinaded it for 45 minutes) it gets a concentrated effect. Time listed in he book was 1 hour to overnight.

While that sucker was marinading I prepared to use my rice cooker for the first time. Now, attention white people: rice cookers are the ONLY way to make good rice. Period. The end. I don't want to hear arguments about it. You also must use white, long-grain rice; I've always eaten Calrose and had good experiences with it. I've seen people try to make rice other ways and it never comes out the same. Besides, why go through the trouble? With a rice cooker it's dump in the rice, dump in the water, push a button, wait twenty minutes. It's super easy and super effective, so don't go and start boiling stuff in a pan.

I'll reserve my comments about putting butter on rice for another day.

Ok, rice now on auto-pilot as well as the marinading chicken, I had an issue about what to do for a vegetable component. I had picked up green beans and broccoli (for me and Megan, respectively) but I didn't feel like steaming them or sauteeing them, and I hate boiled vegetables (not to mention they apparently remove vitamins, so why bother?), so I ran to the internet to do a quick search. I used a new tool I found called the Food Blog Search, which...well, searches food blogs, and came to a recipe for Roasted Green Beans with Onions and Walnuts. Ironically it was from a blog Jeni had previously suggested I check out, so I knew it was probably a good one.

Now, this one took a little improvising on my part; having not intended to make this side dish I was lacking in a few ingredients; I did happen to have a red onion lying around, but walnuts were a no go and I wasn't sure replacing them with peanuts would be the way to go (not to mention I didn't feel like unshelling said peanuts). I was also out of garlic cloves; I used the last of them in the chicken marinade. So I just used some garlic powder instead with a rough estimate as to how much would be about right. Another super-easy recipe: pre-heat to 450, oil the beans and onions slightly, make the "drizzle" and add at the end.

Cool.

So, oven is now pre-heating, it is now time for me and Mr. Grillpan to go for round three. Taking Matt's previously commented advice, I super-heated the sucker and pounded the chicken as flat as it would go prior to marinading. The beans took about 10 minutes so I put them in right before I threw my chicken on the pan for the suggested "3 and 3" round. Well, six minutes of filling my apartment with smoke later and...

...nope.

Still cooked the outside but not the inside. Inside was as raw as the day they slaughtered that bird. I suppose they're just too thick or that electric stoves and cast iron grillpans are simply not meant to replace a real grill. So, the grillpan and I are on speaking terms only as far as it concerns steaks and hamburgers, the only things it has managed to do correctly.

But! Not all was lost! The outside was beautifully lined and the skin nice and crisp. So, since my oven was already on at 450, I threw it in a 9x13 with a bit of oil and let it cook in there for about 10-12 more minutes. The beans came out in the meantime and the rice was on warm.

The result? Chicken was AMAZING using that process. The center was moist yet thoroughly cooked and the outside was crispy. The flavor was quite unique; the sugar put in a fair amount of sweetness, even enough to cover the usual super-salt intensity soy sauce tends to give recipes I use it with. All in all a success.

What was NOT a success however, was the lime dip. I don't know what Cambodians are like, but if they think that squeezing a lime into a bowl with salt and pepper is a legitimate sauce, then perhaps we shouldn't mix company often. I had a coughing fit the first time I tried it; super potent citrus combined with strong sea salt and added with admittedly too much pepper (I didn't count on the fact that peppercorns take up more volume and that the resulting crushing of those peppercorns would NOT equate to the same amount as using a tablespoon of already ground pepper) was just...gross.

But, since it was a dipping sauce, all was well. The beans were a fascinating mix as the two strongest flavors within it, the balsamic vinegar and the honey, interacted in a way I hadn't thought possible. Megan thought I cut the onions too thick, but other than that a totally successful meal.

I would give it a week-night doability if you're having a leisurely evening. I definitely need to try our public grill though, because this battle against the pan is getting old.


Wednesday - Italian Sausage and Bean Soup

Ingredients


1 lb Italian sausage. Use spicy Italian if you prefer.
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1 15oz can of great northern beans (white beans), rinsed and drained
1 15oz can of black beans, rinsed and drained
1-2 cans of beef broth (around 15 oz. We use low-sodium)
1 tbsp fresh basil or 1 teaspoon dried basil
Parmesan cheese for topping

The original recipe also called for a 1 15oz can of undrained tomatoes, but Megan doesn't like them so I took them out.

I also added crushed red pepper flakes...we'll talk about that in a second.


Ok! This is the most amazing recipe ever! It's a super-delicious stew-soup that is cheap to buy ingredients for (after buying bread for dipping, the cans of beans, the broth, and the sausage it was I think like 7 bucks) and takes like no time or skill to make!

Step 1: Brown sausage of choice. You can drain if you want, I didn't.
Step 2: Chop onion and garlic
Step 3: Rinse and drain beans
Step 4: Put all ingredients into pot.
Step 5: Simmer for 10 minutes
Step 6: Serve. Put cheese on top if you want.

Now, a few notes about personal preferences. Megan prefers a more thick stew and less soup, so her favorite is to use only one can of broth. I like more broth though, so I prefer to use two. I split this difference on Wednesday and used 1 1/2, and that seemed to make both of us happy.

In terms of spice, you can use a spicy italian sausage if you want. I decided to add pepper flakes to the sausage as I was browning them and I really liked it, but Megan found it too spicy. The first time I had this soup was during the Ing Annual Gingerbread House Making Extravaganza when my mom made it. At the time I added the pepper flakes in as I was eating it and got the same effect, so if you have different spice preferences you can always add more to your own personal bowl of soup as you go along.

I forgot the basil on Wednesday. I didn't really miss it though, so if you don't have any you can skip it and be fine.

The original recipe also only used 3/4 lb of sausage, but we like more meat.

Like I said, this is an AMAZING recipe. So delicious, reheats well, and take little time and effort. So you readers with babies might want to keep this handy for those particularly crazy nights.


That wraps it up for this week. Still no head way on the To-Try list, but since we were gone at the Young Married's retreat I didn't have time to do my Sunday Store Day (I don't intentionally try to alliterate my life, really I don't). But, I did learn a lot about cooking with alcohol from AJ and this other guy Dave, who apparently went to culinary school. So I think there will definitely be some new experiments coming up, along with delving into the list.

What'd you guys eat this week?

I'm starting to think that Friday is not the best day for the Food review. But I refuse to relinquish my alliteration, so here it is.

Only one meal was cooked this week, much to my dismay. I had planned on making a cool taco salad on Wednesday with homemade taco seasoning, but I forgot that I had a dentist appointment and it just ended up being too complicated to figure out. So, only food on Monday.



Monday - Barbecue Chicken with Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Barbecue Sauce Ingredients

1 cup ketchup
1 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 1/2 teaspoons liquid smoke
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 rounded 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder

Garlic Mashed Potatoes Ingredients

3 lbs potatoes (recipe is peeled and cubed; I used red potatoes so I just peeled. You can also leave peel on)
1 head of garlic
1/2 handful of salt
4 TBSP butter or margarine
1/4 cup of milk


I made the barbecue sauce on Sunday, after I came home from the store. This barbecue sauce is amazing; my dad has been making it for years. It's supposed to be the secret recipe used at Tony Roma's for their Blue Ridge Smokie sauce. I don't know if it tastes the same or not; it's been a while since I've been to Tony Roma's and I usually get the honey-style sauce. Regardless, it's still a very good barbecue sauce, and once you have all the ingredients super-easy to make. You just dump it all into a pot and bring it to boil, then simmer for 30 minutes. Ten put it into a bottle and refrigerate for future use. It makes about 1 1/2 cups of sauce. Works great on everything; burgers, chicken, ribs.

Now, I made the chicken by simply throwing some olive oil onto it and putting it in a 9 x 13 pan to bake. I don't put sauce on it; it just burns in the oven and it tastes just as good putting the sauce after the chicken is cooked.

Now, for the mashed potatoes. This was my first batch of mashed potatoes I had ever done, and from what I hear of the world of mashed potatoes is that they can be very difficult to do correctly, so I wasn't sure how this was going to work out. Megan felt like helping out this time, so she peeled all of the potatoes while I smashed the garlic head and peeled them. I was sorta grumpy about garlic since I had bought a pack of three heads from the store and they were all sprouted already except for one quarter of one of them. I had some garlic from a previous head and managed to get enough functional cloves, but that'll teach me to buy garlic blindly in the future.

anyway, you put the garlic and potatoes into a pot (my mom (it's her recipe) wrote saucepan, but I used a pasta pot because I thought it would be easier to drain with the built in strainer. I don't think I'd do it again; too much to clean up just to avoid normal draining procedures of the boiling water.) as well as the salt. Don't worry about it being too salty; it's mostly to help the water boil faster and the potatoes didn't soak up much of it; in fact they needed salt afterwards. Boil until they are soft. After you drain, add the butter/margarine and milk and smash together. You can add in ground pepper if you want.

The only thing I would definitely change for my procedure is how I dealt with the red potatoes. I like the flavor of red potatoes better when they're mashed, but because they were naturally smaller I decided not to cube them since they were about the size I would've cubed regular potatoes. However, it took a little extra time to cook some of the larger ones to be really really soft. In the future I would cut down all the potatoes to be about the same size to speed the process along and prevent the smaller potatoes from potentially being over-done (can you overdo a potato? I don't even know.).

The end result was great; the potatoes needed some salt and pepper, but they were smooth and creamy and perfect. The sauce was great as always (I've made it before so there was no trepidation about it) and it was overall a successful dinner.


So that's it for this week. Hopefully next week will be a little bit back to normal in terms of the cooking routine.

What'd you guys eat last week?