May23

Dinner date with Dad – Arroz con Pollo

Posted on May 23, 2013 by athaidek

I’m so excited to be able to cook a full meal for my fam! After trying to make small meals at school so I wouldn’t have to eat the same thing for a week, it’s refreshing to be able to make a family-style meal. This recipe has been on my list for a while and was the perfect one-pot wonder summer dinner. Although it is wonderful when the whole family’s together, it was nice to have a dinner just pops and me.

I was a bit nervous about setting the whole dinner aside in one pan to cook for 45-60 minutes, but the constant unpacking that overwhelms my life distracted me throughout the cooking time. I’m also terrible at cooking rice, but luckily my dad taught me a few tricks. This recipe calls for valencia rice, but we only had long-grain white rice (Indians…). I didn’t know you could rinse long-grain rice and get all the starch out to help reduce the cooking time to something along the lines of an arborio or valencia rice.

In addition, I substituted a few whole tomatoes from a can for roma tomatoes. We countered the lack of saffron in our pantry with an extra 1/2 tsp of tumeric and I ended up adding some more cumin and red pepper flakes at the end because I thought it needed a bit more spice. Adrianna says she used about 4 cups of chicken stock to fully cook the rice, but mine only took about 3. Either way I would keep 4 cups on hand in case you need the full amount to cook the rice.

This is one of those dishes where I feel stupid saying “aRRRRRoz con POYO” but saying “chicken and rice” reminds me of that time I had to feed a bunch of people and we put some shredded chicken in orzo and when brainstorming what kind of sauce/toppings we should add, my friend Sean tried to convince us to dump a can of cream of mushroom soup to the mix…….maybe, but no. just no.

Served with a side salad, this dish was sooo much and should have been for a crowd! We’ll be eating the leftovers all weekend woohoo

Recipe here: http://acozykitchen.com/dads-arroz-con-pollo/

Brown the chicken: SORRY if this grosses you out

once all the chicken is browned, remove and cook up the onions and garlic

add in tomatoes + bell pepper…spices added below

rice soaks up all zee flavors

after cooking in the broth for ~45 mins

FIN!

May23

Jack-of-all-trades sauce: Cilantro-lime dressing

Posted on May 23, 2013 by athaidek

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I hate that I don’t truly have a recipe for this guy, but I’m working on perfecting the right cilantro-lime dressing. The last few weeks of school I went through a jumble-salad-for-lunch phase as I never really had anything in my fridge to make real meals. This go-to dressing was hearty enough to make the salad seem interesting even if it had some plain ingredients. The best toppers are black beans warmed with some of the lime juice plus red onion, corn, avocado, toasted hazelnuts, and dried cranberries…oh and goat cheese.

After seeing my favorite chef Jill Donenfeld’s post on this dressing via HuffPo, I was inspired to try this herby concoction. Delicioso. For some reason, I had the urge to add nuts to the blended dressing, so I’ve used both almonds and pecans in different versions. I think it comes out of habit from making pestos. The first version I made had half a chipotle pepper added with a few drops of adobo and omg, so. good. Also, to keep the dressing going, sometimes I’ll mash up some avocados in it if I’m running low on cilantro.

To get to the point, I’ll just give you a list of most of the ingredients I use based off of Jill’s vid with my variations:

a bunch of cilantro

lime juice

rice wine vinegar (or white/red wine vinegar/apple cider vinegar)

dijon mustard

garlic

hot sauce (I like to just add some cumin)

honey (or agave nectar)

olive oil

I think that’s what she uses? Like I said, I really like adobo sauce and chipotle peppers in this as well…This dressing is great for salads, and I’ve also used it as a spreadish type thing on burritos/wraps! Note to self…make sure to wash the cilantro well, mine was a bit gritty

HAPPY SUMMER!!!! Back to cooking for my family for a bit 🙂

May2

Pancakes soak up LDOC tears

Posted on May 2, 2013 by athaidek

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LAST DAY OF CLASSES!!! Clearly the only thing to keep me from crying is a big ole stack of flapjacks. Lovely breakfast date this week with my fellow pancake-lover Makela too :). I’m sure if you know me well it’s surprising that this is my first pancake post. My friends make fun of me for being overly obsessed with pancakes, and it’s true….I am trying so hard to be adventurous with breakfast, but EVERY time I go to brunch I cannot help but order the pancakes. I just want to try every variation. I have asked people about what their go-to item on a menu is, you know, that one that you just want to try at every restaurant.

Here are some of the answers: mussels, crabcakes, PHILLY CHEESESTEAK, veggie burgers. Well anyways, here’s a combo of various recipes that I combined given what was on hand. Last year, I spent practically every weekend making pancakes in my house of 17 on our super fun griddle. I miss those days!! From pumpkin to whole wheat to banana-oat, these are my ultimate weakness.

Here’s our recipe:

1 cup whole milk

1 cup soy milk

1/2-3/4 ish tsp vanilla

2 eggs

1 mashed up banana

1 cup white wheat flour

1 cup oat flour (aka ground old-fashioned oats)

2 TBS sugar

4 TBS melted butter, cooled

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

dash of cinnamon

chocolate chips

Whisk together flour, oat flour, baking powder and soda, salt, sugar and cinnamon. Beat eggs and mashed banana together, add milk and vanilla. Once the butter is cooled and as well.

Pour dry into wet ingredients and stir JUST until combined. Let sit for a few minutes to let the oats have time to soak up the liquid. Heat up a pan with some butter and warm the oven to 200 degrees for the pancakes to stay warm. At this point add some chocolate chips or just drop them into the pancakes on the pan.

Scoop some batter on the pan and cook ~2-3 minutes each side! Throw each pancake onto a baking sheet in the warm oven while you’re cooking the rest. Serve with some sliced banana, PB, and syrup

Apr21

Riding in Cars with Cakes (sorry boys)

Posted on April 21, 2013 by athaidek

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Note to self: Never decorate a cake on a square plate and try to carry it in a round cake carrier. LOL. but really, what an experience. The lovely Annie B turned 22 last week, and I THOUGHT I’d be able to deliver this baby in full-form to her dinner partay pre-Corey Smith concert.

On the car ride over however, I proceeded to show the decoration to my friend sitting next to me in a teeny convertible backseat and TIPPPPED the cake over directly into the air vent and back seat. Silence…..(keep this going a few more seconds) All five of us in the car turn and look at each other, each with another apprehensive smile. My brain is thinking “Noooo I have to clean this car tomorrow!!!” I think everyone else is wondering if I’m going to cry or not.

One person starts laughing and we tipped it back to some sort of stability on the plate. While it looked mangled, I was happy as long as people were going to eat it. My dear friend next to me helped the situation by eating much of the icing covering the air vent (thanks Liz) and we brushed it off until we got there.

Moral of the story is, if you do spend hours making a cake and it does in fact fall over, PEOPLE WILL STILL EAT IT (if it tastes good obvi)!! Clearly I’ve got a ways to go when it comes to baking cakes for travel, but for a first big cake, at least the taste was a success!

Plus, if it’s chocolate, the few dots of icing leftover from spilling on your chest or foot make for great stories at bars later or for a midnight snack 🙂

Here’s the recipe if you feel daring enough to attempt! http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2012/06/14/german-chocolate-cake-recipe/

Apr20

Rainy day calls for desperate measures – BB French Toast

Posted on April 20, 2013 by athaidek

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Otherwise known as “Jules and Katie do Monday morning right”

Another adventure that’s been in our daydreams for months, Banana Bread French Toast is one of those pinterest things that you just can’t get out of your head. No matter how many times you convince yourself that banana bread and french toast could stick to their respective baked good and hot breakfast item categories, respectively, you’ll still revert back to dreaming of a crunchy, sweet, decadent breakfast.

And we can tell you now that IT’S SO WORTH IT. Last week, I made a banana bread loaf in anticipation of our leetle date. I have always wanted to make all these variations of banana bread, but stuck to this basic recipe, knowing that the french toast recipe would probably work best with a simple walnuty, moist bread. Twas VERY moist and I highly recommend this recipe if you want a classic banana bread.

I cut a few of these slices the night before we made it to let them harden a bit on the edges. This bread is really that moist that even 2-3 days after baking it, the bread still needed to be left out overnight to firm up. This step was definitely necessary otherwise I think the bread would’ve fallen apart. (one piece is kinda messy bc i cut off like half a chunk :/)

The next morning, I arrived at Julesy’s apt, bread and accoutrements in hand for what was the best medicine to a sleepy Monday morning. We based our recipe off of spoonforkbacon’s rendition and basically used 3 eggs with some milk, cinnamon, and nutmeg as our dipping batter.

Then we coated the bread in some crushed up cornflakes (yep the cereal) and added it to a buttered pan just like regular french toast

Give it a little flip after the cornflakes are browned and the bread has formed a crust. Be very gentle if your bread is pretty moist when you’re flipping the toast.

Because this is so decadent, you actually don’t really need the maple syrup typical to a french toast recipe. In fact, we agreed it went better with a classic nutella+PB combo! and of course some bananas. Try!

Julia’s the organized one, clearly….

her plate:

mine meh i need food styling skills