Cooking Up a Storm with SF Cooking School

About a month ago, I was walking down Van Ness, from having awesome dinner at Zarzuela - I'll need to remember to write up a review about my experience because it was so delicious - when I discovered that my beloved Naan and Curry was gone.  The good news is there's a new fantastic Culinary School now at the corner of Van Ness and Turk, SF Cooking.  SF cooking offers a full culinary degree - is that what it's called because I'm not sure - or you can sign up for one day classes, or multi-week courses.  As soon as I started looking over what SF Cooking offered I was, as my friend Rhiannon would say, "In deep smit." (As in really really smitten with the place.  PS - Let's make this a new phrase.)

I immediately signed up for the "Cooking Fundamentals" six week course, along with a one day class on "Asian Dumplings."  (I signed up for the April 7th dumplings class if anyone is interested in joining me.)  I attended my first class yesterday, Thursday February 21st, "Knife Skills."  I have nine awesome classmates (they classes max out at fourteen) and we had a great time learning about the proper way to slice, dice, mince and chop.  Our instructor for the course, David, is super fantastic.  David previously worked at Zuni, and you can tell that he loves cooking.  

After going over the knife basics the class was divided into teams of two and we started on seven different recipes.  

• Crostini with Goat Cheese and Olive Tapenade
• Shrimp Fritters with Grapefruit Cucumber Relish
• Mediterranean Chopped Salad
• Minestrone Soup with a Pesto Garlic Garnish
• French Onion Soup
• Baked Salmon Filet over Veggie Slaw
• Apple Crumble with Whipped Cream

The space we cook is beautiful and very spacious. We were all easily able to work on our separate dishes with plenty of room, but still close enough to check out what everyone was doing. We were all provided with aprons when we arrived, along with printed handouts of all the recipes we'd be making that day. (In my excitement to rush home and tell Bob about how awesome my class was I left my recipes behind. I sent an email and they'll hold onto my recipes until I go to next week's class. Whew.)

After everything was prepared we all sat down together to enjoy our delicious meal, and talk about things we enjoyed or would do differently in the future. For instance my cooking buddy, Hazel, and I worked on the shrimp fritters and we think adding jalapeños to the dish would really kick it up a notch. There was sooo much food and everything was really good. I can hardly wait to see what we're making next week in "Sauteing and Searing."

If you've been looking for cooking classes in San Francisco, you must check out SF Cooking!

Lastly, I'll leave you with some things I learned:

• My knives at home are not sharp.
• I had never used a properly sharpened knife until this class. Did you know that with a sharp knife you can cut through an onion like it's butter? Craziness!
• I can now "supreme" a grapefruit. And you can too with this video.

As soon as I get my recipes I'll add them to the blog so you can all see what you're missing.

:)M

Black Cherry Chocolate Devil's Food Cake Mini Brownies with Blueberry Cream Cheese Frosting

I was in a baking mood this last week, but I'm kind of a lazy baker.  I buy the Betty Crocker boxes of cookies and cakes and then instead of following the directions I turn them into something else.  It's kind of like making it myself, but so much easier.  I highly recommend this process to everyone.  Anyway, my friend Meaghan was having a house warming party and I told her we'd bring some treats and I decided I wanted to try something new.  The original plan was to have blueberry chocolate cupcakes but that plan was sidelined by 1- Safeway not having any pure blueberry juice, and 2 - my eyes landing on a devil's food cake mix.  

One of the first things you need to know about baking with a box, is that you really should never use oil or water.  I will typically substitute butter for oil, and milk for water.  I find that this leaves my baking goodies more chewy and fresher for a longer amount of time.  Everything is also richer in flavor.  Okay, so here's what you need:

Cupcakes

• A box of chocolate devil's food cake - I like Betty Crocker Super Moist Devil's Food Cake Mix
• 1 Cup Black Cherry 100% juice-Alternatively, you can really use any juice you'd like.
• 3 eggs
• ½ cup Butter
• 48-ish mini cupcake cups

Frosting

• 4oz Cream Cheese
• 4oz Unsalted Butter
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup fresh, or thawed frozen blueberries

Follow the directions on the back of the cake box, subbing the juice for the water, and the butter for the oil. Using a teaspoon, yes a teaspoon. Fill you mini cupcake cups. Bake each batch for approximately 20 minutes. You're going to end up with 48+ mini cupcakes.

While your cupcakes are baking put your cup of blueberries, along with about a 3/4 cup of water in a small sauce pan. Bring the blueberries and water to a boil and then allow them to simmer for about 5 minutes. Strain the blueberries and then mash them up like there's no tomorrow. You can also use a blender if you want, which does work very nicely. Add all your frosting ingredients and stir everything together until you have delicious blueberry frosting.

For easy cupcake frosting I recommend spooning your frosting into a ziploc bag and then cutting a small hole in one corner. Then you can use the ziploc bag like a pastry chef, and feel like a badass as you easily and quickly frost your 48+ cupcakes.

If you're not going to eat all your cupcakes in one sitting you should definitely remember to put them in the refrigerator as the frosting will be super nasty if you don't. Now go enjoy your delicious creating.

:)M

P.S. - I wrote/built this entire entry using my new HTML skills. I'm feeling pretty awesome about it.

Raclette awesomeness!

So a while back I bought Bob a raclette set for his birthday.  (Yes, his birthday is in July.)  Anyway, we hadn't used the raclette and it was sitting in the corner of the office looking sad and neglected so we decided to finally use it.  Had I known how awesome the raclette set was it would never had sat abandoned for so long.  

I had purchased the Swissmar KF-77041 Gourmet 8-Person Raclette Grill because I figured if we were going to have a raclette set, we were going to be having raclette parties. And we will definitely be using this for parties.

We decided to start our raclette adventure with a typical dinner for just the two of us. We purchased some French raclette cheese from 24th Street Cheese in Noe Valley. To go with our cheesy awesomeness we picked up some gherkins (little pickles, but let's be honest, saying gherkin is so much more fun) pickled carrots, salami, fingerling potatoes, portabellinis (little portabello mushrooms, they're soooo cute), zucchini, broccoli and some olive sourdough bread.

We boiled the fingerling potatoes in some salty water while the raclette grill heated up. We also sliced up mushrooms, salami, and zucchini so we could easily grill our yummy food. And then, we feasted like kings! While our zucchini and mushrooms were grilling, we placed small pieces of our cheese in the little shovels that go with the raclette set, so it could get all melty and delicious. AFter our cheese had melted we could easily pour it all over whatever it was we wanted to eat. It was fantastic! And because you melt the cheese as you go it was always gooey and hot.

I was so impressed with our raclette grill that the next morning I used it again to make breakfast sandwiches. I cooked some bacon on it first. After the bacon was done and set aside, I fried a couple of eggs, grilled the bread, and melted the cheese in the little shovels. I was able to quickly build us bacon, egg and cheese breakfast sandwiches. I felt like a genius.

My favorite thing about the raclette set is that the grilling top has two options: a flate griddle, or a grill top. AND I can easily remove the grill top and clean it in the sink with out having to worry about a chord or plug. The heating element is totally separate making clean up super easy!

I can't wait to use the raclette set again!

:)M

 

Spicy Chicken Soup (with black beans and hominy)

Confession: I subscribe to the Rachel Ray magazine, "Everyday with Rachel Ray," and I love it.  I absolutely love it because all the recipes give me ideas for my own recipes.  Tonight I made a delicious stew/soup thing that was originally a soup in the latest issue of "Everyday."  I wanted to make it a little heartier and more main course so I made adjustments and voila!  It's fantastic, and less than 400 calories a serving- well before you add cheese.  

This recipe serves two people for a very filling dinner. I like to cook it in a crockpot so it's about 6 hours of cooking time.

What you'l need:

• ¾ lb chicken breast
• 1 can white hominy
• ½ cup dried black beans
• 1 can diced tomatoes (I like mine with garlic)
• 1 cup chicken broth
• ½ yellow onion
• 2 jalapeños

To be fair, you could probably use canned black beans, but I like that I can get a smaller portion from the dried black beans, and you only need to prepare in advance just a bit.  (Just soak the black beans over night in cold water and you'll be good to go.)

Place all the ingredients in your crock pot, make sure your chicken breasts are covered with the juices and everything. Cover the crockpot, set it to low and BAM, in 5 hours you can eat. Before serving use a couple of forks to pull the chicken so that it's distributed evenly throughout the stew/soup.

We like to add a little bit of shredded jalapeño jack cheese to the top just to add a little extra kick, but it's really good on its own.

The best thing about this recipe is that you can add whatever you want to it. Corn, peppers, other kinds of beans you name it, the world is your oyster. Now get cooking!

:)M

- 

Practice Thanksgiving

This year for the first time ever Bob and I will be hosting Thanksgiving at our house.  We're only having a small gathering but we decided it would be in everyone's best interest to do a trial run to make sure that a) I could properly cook a turkey, and b) that we approved of the menu.  Good news, Practice Thanksgiving was a HUGE success!  Now we can prepare for the real deal.  

I'm pretty sure that Practice Thanksgiving will now be an annual event because really, why not?  It was awesome and I feel like a Thanksgiving pro now.  To wet your whistle, and get you in the turkey-eating spirit I've collected our foods so you can decide if you too want to dine like we did.

We enjoyed: savory crock pot turkey, spicy crock pot turkey, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes with gravy, green bean casserole, cornmeal stuffing muffins and a nice heirloom tomato salad.  We ended up having a small party of 5 and I managed to not super over cook!  Amazing!  I cooked everything except dessert.  Our awesome friend Staci brought Paula Dean's pumpkin cake, it was really really good.

Okay so here's how I did it:

Turkey! (Savory and Spicy)

What you'll need:

Savory Turkey

1 turkey breast

1 packet of onion soup mix

Chicken broth

Chopped onions

Butter

 

Spicy Turkey

1 turkey breast

habenaro sauce

lemon/herb/pepper spice mixture

Chicken broth

Chopped onions

Butter

We bought two turkey breasts (because that's the best part in our opinion) and decided to cook them in the crock pot so that I could still use the oven for other things.  Each turkey breast (bone in) was about 2.5 lbs.   Each turkey breast was prepared roughly the same way, slap some butter on the sides of our crock pot, put about a half an inch of chicken broth in the bottom of the pot.  Rub the onion soup mix, or habanero spice mix on the turkey great.  Rub it in real good, and under the skin for extra flavorful awesomeness.  Place the turkey breast in the crock pot and toss your chopped onions of the top.  Place the lid on your crock pot and cook for 1 hour on high, and then 7 more hours on low.  I ended up cooking our turkey breast for about 10 hours and the meat pretty much fell right off the bones.

Sweet potato casserole:

I used the Food Network's recipe for the sweet potato casserole.  I followed it loosely, using less brown sugar and more pecans.

Green bean casserole:

Again, not my recipe, I used the Campbell's Green Bean Casserole recipe.  It's a golden standard as far as I'm concerned and goes with just about everything.  I tried using the recipe on the back of French's Fried Onions once, and it wasn't the same, the soy sauce makes all the difference.

Cornmeal Stuffing Muffins:

I read about how you could make stuffing muffins in an issue of the Rachel Ray magazine and figured I could that, and I did.  Her original recipe has you making everything from scratch and I was not up for that.  I like cheating.  To make cornmeal stuffing muffins you'll need:

1 box of cornmeal stuffing (I bought Mrs. Cubbison's)

4 stalks of celery diced

Half and onion chopped finely

3 cloves garlic finely chopped

2 cups -ish vegetable broth

Butter

In a gigantic skillet sauté the onions, garlic, and celery.  Add the cornmeal stuffing, and slowly poor in the vegetable broth to mush it together.  Let cool a little bit, roll in balls and put in a muffin tin.  Bake them for 20 minutes at 350 degrees and then stuff them in your face with or with out gravy.  It's up to you.

Heirloom Tomato Salad:

Spinach leaves (1 cup per person)

Heirloom tomato (about 1/4 per person-ish)

Avocado (1/4 per person)

Parmesan cheese

Balsamic vinegar

Toss everything in a bowl and serve!  Add some pepper for a little kick.

 

Serve your meal with your favorite wines and then enjoy the fruits of your labor.  I high recommend making the casseroles in advance, it makes things sooo much easier.  And whatever you do, don't forget to set your table, this is a classy affair!

:)M

 

Garlic Chicken with butternut squash and greek salad

I've spoken about it before and I'll do it again, I'm trying to eat healthier.  This dinner is delicious and only (according to myfitnesspal.com) 440 calories.  

What you'll need:

1 4oz chicken breast per person

1/4 cup onion chopped

2-3 garlic cloves chopped chunky

2 tsps butter

5oz of butternut squash per person

1 cucumber

1 tomato

Crumbled Goat Cheese

1/2 tsp olive oil

Oregano

Angelo's Gourmet Seasoning

2 tsps Habanero sauce, or some other kind of spicy sauce (I personally like Mateo Granados' Ahumado)

2 oven safe baking dishes

Aluminum foil

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees while you prep your food.  First use 1tsp of butter to grease each baking dish. Coat your chicken breasts in the habanero sauce and Angelo's Gourmet Seasoning.  (I like to use a sandwich bag to do this, so I can rub the chicken really good with the sauce and seasoning.  Place the chicken in one baking dish and cover with chopped onions and garlic.  Put your butternut squash chunks (I'm lazy and buy mine pre-cut at the store) in the other backing dish.  Cover both baking dishes and place them in the oven for 1 hour.

Clean up your work area.

45 minutes later, or 15 minutes until your chicken and butternut squash is done chop up your cucumber and tomato.  Place both in a bowl (together) and add oregano and pepper.  Cover with your olive oil and some goat cheese and then toss it around so everything is nicely coated.  Clean up your work area again, and voila everything is ready for dinner and your kitchen is clean.

I love baking things in the over with garlic and onions, it's always delicious and moist.  Enjoy your dinner!

:)M

 

 

 

 

 

Spicy Pumpkin Gingerbread Muffins

I love pumpkins, they're delicious and apparently a "super food."  I want to have more pumpkin in my life, so rather than bake a pie or make soup I decided I needed pumpkin muffins.  While perusing the internets for pumpkin muffin recipes I found an excellent recipe that required very little work on my part, which is always a bonus.  "Easy Pumpkin Muffins" is a great starter recipe, but I felt like I could better.

The original recipe tells you to use a package or yellow cake mix.  Meh, that's okay if you want boring pumpkin muffins.  I saw someone had commented saying they'd used a spice cake mix and it turned out great and that got me thinking, I could do anything and so I did.  I bought the Betty Crocker Gingerbread Cake & Cookie Mix and used it, along with a can of 100% pumpkin puree, a fair amount of cinnamon, and a dash of Ghost Pepper Powder to kick these muffins into deliciousness!  Oh man, they are really good.  I'm eating one right now, and I'm quite pleased.  The ghost pepper adds excellent kick, but not too much.  The only thing that would make them better would be to add some candied walnuts on top.  My next batch will be chocolate pumpkin with cayenne pepper.

You know you want them, and now you know they're super easy to make, so what are you waiting for? Do it!!!

:)M

Spicy Veggie Scramble - It's What's for Breakfast

I'm growing yellow squash and lettuce in my backyard, in a large barrel.  And my first squash of the season was ready and waiting to be eaten yesterday, so I obliged and cooked it up real good.  Now before anyone thinks I came up with the idea to put squash in my scramble all by myself, I'm sorry but you're mistaken.  I had a delicious omelet at Beretta with zucchini and squash in it, and have been thinking about making one at home for quite a while.  While this is not the same recipe, it's pretty damn delish. (That's me with my squash on the left.)

 

Ingredients:

1/2 cup thinly sliced squash, or zucchini

1/4 cup diced onion

Garlic (as much or as little as you'd like)

1/2 cup sliced mushrooms

1/4 cup diced tomato

1/4 cup shredded cheese

1 large egg

2 eggs worth of egg whites (I use Lucerne 100% liquid egg whites)

1 tbsp half and half (or milk, or whatever you like to make your scramble fluffy)

Habenaro Sauce (or whatever hot sauce you like, as much as you'd like)

Salt and Pepper to taste

1/2 tbsp butter

Okay, so go ahead and get all your veggies sliced up, I recommend starting with the squash, onion and garlic.  Turn your skillet on to low and butter it up with your 1/2 tbsp of butter and toss in your squash, with a little salt and pepper.  After about 5 minutes add the garlic and the onion and stir everything around.

In a bowl mix your egg, egg whites and half and half together.  

Once your garlic and onion start to look a little translucent toss in the mushrooms.  Give the mushrooms a minute or two to get nice and warm and then add the egg mixture.  

Let the scramble start to form and then add the cheese, tomatoes and Habenaro Sauce.  Cook until it's ready to eat and then enjoy your spoils.

I was quite pleased with my scramble.  It was very flavorful and delicious, the only thing I would have changed would have been to add more habenaro sauce.  Oh well, there's always next time.

This breakfast was approximately 368 calories.  And you can of course not use cheese or half and half to make this even healthier, but really then it wouldn't be as good.

:)M

 

Spicy Shrimp and Broccoli

I'd like to just say that every time I eat shrimp I love them more and more.  Really, it's absurd how much I like shrimp.  Okay, now that my love for those little sea creatures are out of the way….

Spicy Shrimp and Broccoli-

For some reason I've felt compelled to always have about four different dishes per home cooked meal.  Main dish, salad, veggie, some kind of extra whatever - like garlic bread or something.  But I've realized that this is really rather silly and just results in my having to use more cookware than I'd like to clean.  So I present to you a one wok/pan meal.  (Portions are based on my eating habits, with extra info about this at the bottom of the recipe.)

Ingredients:

Shrimp - 1lb (uncooked, shelled)

Broccoli - 1 to 1 1/2 bunch

Spicy red pepper - 1

Garlic - 1 clove

Onion - 1/4 cup 

Chili Garlic Sauce - 3 tbsp

Olive Oil - 1 tbsp

I like using a large deep skillet for this meal.  (You can really use whatever you'd like, I just suggest that whatever you use have a top.)

Step one - Wash and chop up broccoli.  Put in the skillet and pour a half cup of water over the top of the broccoli.   Add the 1 tbsp of olive oil.  Salt and pepper the way you'd like, and then stir the broccoli around to get everything coated.  Place the lid on the skillet and turn on low heat.

Step two - While your broccoli is getting soft, you can chop up your garlic, onion and red pepper.  I like to dice up the garlic and onion so it's nice and small but really it's up to you as to how large you'd like your onion and garlic chunks.  I like to slice the red pepper into long pieces, almost like shreds.  I leave the seeds in the red pepper because that's where the spice is, and if you like spice you'll want the seeds.

Step three - After your broccoli has been simmering for about 15 minutes go ahead and add your chopped onion, garlic and red pepper.  Toss in 2 tbsp of the chili garlic sauce and stir everything around.  Place the lid back on the skillet, still on low heat.

Step four - Wash your shrimp.  Ten minutes after you've added your onions, garlic and red pepper you can add your shrimp.  I like to clear a spot in the middle of the skillet and dump the shrimp in, then I toss in one more tbsp of the chili garlic sauce and stir the shrimp around.  After the shrimp get a little color go ahead and stir all the ingredients in the skillet together.  You can turn up the heat a little if you'd like, it'll help crisp your broccoli.

Step five - EAT!

You can of course have your Spicy Shrimp and Broccoli with rice, and I often do, but you can also eat it just as it is, and it's damn delish.

Typically Bob and I will split this mean into two servings, but really you could feed 3 people with the amount of ingredients if you weren't super hungry.  According to my food/nutrition journal this meal (split three ways) is approximately 350 calories.  

I honestly don't know how I forgot to take a picture of the final product.  You'll just have to trust that it looks good.

:)M

Cauliflower Mushroom and Ham Soup

So, I've been trying to use our Blend-tec blender more often, and I've also been cooking with cauliflower more often as well because it's a nice texture/consistency to add flavors to.  My most recent concoction is a pretty hearty soup.  Now typically I am of the mind set that soup is not a meal.  It's more like a side dish or an appetizer, so I wanted to try to make a full meal kind of soup and here's what I came up with...

Ingredients:

Dried Black Eyed Peas

Ham

Cauliflower

Mushrooms

Garlic

Vegetable Stock

Onions

Cayanne Pepper

This recipe requires a bit more preparation than other things I've made, so I recommend that you being the first step of this meal after you eat dinner one night, so that you can get things ready for the next night's meal.

Step 1 - You need to soak your black eyed peas.  I soaked 1 cup of dried black eyed peas in 4 cups of water over night and into the next day.  (You don't have to soak them this long, but really it's not going to hurt them, you really need roughly 8 to 10 hours of soaking.)

 

Step 2 - An hour before you're going to eat drain your blacked eyed peas and add 2 cups of vegetable stock and put them on low/medium heat on the stove top.  Watch and stir every once and a while, making sure that the vegetable stock covers all your black eyed peas.

Step 3 - While the peas are cooking go ahead and wash and chop up a head of cauliflower and throw it in

your steamer.  Do the same with about 2 cups of sliced mushrooms.  STEAM!!!! This takes about 20 minutes.

Step 4 - While your veggies are steaming, and your peas are cooking go ahead and get out a frying pan.  Chop up about 1/4 cup onions, a couple of cloves of garlic, and about 1 lb of ham into big chunks.  Add everything to your frying pan with a tiny bit of butter or olive oil and season with cayenne, salt and pepper.  Kind of push things around constantly so the ham doesn't stick and so that everything gets covered and cooked nicely.

Step 5 - Place your steamed veggies in the blender.  Drain the peas and pour the chicken stock they've been cooking in, in the blender as well.  BLEND!!!  AFter it's blended to the consistency you like pour the mixture back in the pot with the peas.   Stir in the ham, onions and garlic.  BAM, you're done!

When I made this I didn't have any really good ham in the house, so we just used sandwich meat, which was okay but big chunks of ham would have been so much better.

We had a bag o' salad with our soup, just to add more greens.  As another idea I think you could cook the ham with the peas if you really wanted to, rather than using a frying pan.  But who knows!

Enjoy!!!

 

 

 

Faux-babs, Salads and Cheesy Garlic Cauliflower Mash!

Tonight's dinner was pretty darn delish, and super duper easy to make.  I highly recommend you give it a try, you only need about an hour and then dinner will be on the table.

As an aside, I decided to make the cheesy garlic cauliflower mash because we're trying to be a little healither but at the same time I have a great love for potatoes, mashed potatoes in particular.  I read an article in the latest issue of Rachel Ray's cooking magazine about mashed cauliflower and it sounded sooo yummy so I thought we'd give it a try.

Okay, so before you begin you dinner of awesome you'll need to pick up your ingredients.

 

- meat!  (I usually plan on 1/2 lb per person and will typically choose tenderloin)

- 1/4 cup mushrooms

- 1/4 cup red pepper (you can use green but I feel like the green peppers have a really overpowering taste)

- 1/4 cup onion

- 1/2 a tomato

- seasoning!!! (I like Angelo's BBQ rub, it's awesome and super spicy!)

- 1 head of cauliflower

- 1/4 cup garlic jack cheese

- 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

- 1tbsp butter

- 1 bag of whatever grocery store salad you'd enjoy

- salt and pepper to taste

- aluminum foil

- cookie sheet

- steamer

- blender

All right, so now that you have everything you need here's what you do.

Step 1 - Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees.  While the oven is heating up chop your onion, red pepper, tomatoes and mushrooms into large chunks.  (You can really throw any veggie you want in here.)  Go ahead and chop up your head of cauliflower and set it aside.  Now cut up your chosen meat into kebab sized chunks.

Step 2 - Lay our a large sheet of aluminum foil and place your large chunks of meat on your foil.  Toss your seasoning for the meat over the top of the chunks and roll them around a little to get them nice and coated.  Now place the mushrooms, onions, red peppers and tomatoes over the top of the chunks of meat and place another piece of foil over the top of your yummy creation.  Roll up all the sides of your aluminum steamer and place the foil steamer on the cookie sheet and place it in the oven.  (You'll let this cook for about 35 minutes.)

Step 3 - Butter the bottom of your steamer so it doesn't burn your cauliflower and toss your cut up cauliflower in the steamer and start it a' steaming!

Step - 4 While your cauliflower is steaming and your faux-babs are baking go ahead and clean up your mess, and then cut up about 1/4 cup of your garlic jack cheese.  Get out your blender and get ready.  Mix your bag o' salad and set aside.

Step 5 - Your faux-babs should be awesome, so pull the cookie sheet out of the oven and place it on top of the stove to sit for a minute.  Don't open the foil container yet though, wait until right before you serve it.  While the faux-babs are sitting toss your cauliflower in the blender with the garlic jack cheese and 1/4 cup of whipping cream, add some salt and pepper to taste and BLEND!!!!!  And now you're ready!

Serve and eat your awesome meal!!!!!

Pork, it's what's for dinner...tonight anyway!

In an effort to use our ridiculously expensive blender more I've decided we are now a soup eating house hold.  So tonight we are having home made Tomato Cheese Soup.  I'm quite pleased.  I found a recipe online and then adjusted per usual, for instance the original receipt didn't call for garlic or jalapenos.  Who has a recipe for tomato soup with out garlic of jalapenos, that's just wrong!   Now, I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, "wait a moment, I've been misled, the title of this post was about pork, this isn't pork!"  And right you are, but don't worry meat eaters, we're also having stuffed pork chops with our soup, as well as a delish salad that I'm whipping together as we, errr, I type.

Tonights pork chops come to us courtesy of Mollie Stone's Market in the Castro.  According to the gentleman working in the butcher shop tonight, these are pork chops stuffed with spicy italian sausage with spices and parmesan.  I'm quite excited about this, who knew you could stuff meat with other meat?  Okay, i knew you could do that because I've had turducken, but this is completely different.  There's also a nice layer of parmesan on the outside of the pork chop.  Okay, on to the recipes and cooking directions....

(Cheesy) Tomato Cheese Soup

Ingredients: The ingredients with parenthesis around them are the original recipe ingredients and portion suggestions.

tomatos ( 1 large)

onion (1/4 cup)

cheese (1/4 cup)

vegetable bouillon (1 tsp)

tomato paste (1 1/2 tsp)

salt and pepper (to taste)

water (1 cup)

cayenne pepper - shake it, you know what you like

jalapenos - I threw in half of one, seeds and all

garlic - about 4 little cloves

I only used the recipe as a basic guideline for my creation.  I used two medium-ish tomatoes.  Who really knows what a "large" tomato looks like anyway?  Anyway, I used 2 medium tomatoes, a handful of diced onions, two handfuls of cheese (a blended mix of something or another that's also good for quesadillas), a couple scoops of tomato paste, and a scoop of vegetable bouillon - which by the way I'd never seen before.  I then threw in the half a jalapeno, and the garlic along with a few shakes from the salt and pepper shakers and a little cayenne pepper to top it off.  I threw all these ingredients into my blender and smoothed it out nicely.  The original recipe then tells you to add a cup of hot water to the mix and then eat it.  That's silly, why would I do that when I've made such delicious soup?  I halved the amount of water (okay I just eyed it) and then put the mixture on the stove top to heat up slowly and deliciously.  I've been taste testing ever since, and damn is it good.  Mmmmmm.  I highly recommend this if you like tomato soup, you will never eat campbell's or another canned tomato soup again.

Pork Chops

I'm not going to list the ingredients because I didn't make it.  And I already told you what was in the stuffed pork chops at the beginning of this post.  I will tell you how I chose to cook them.  My favorite way, wrapped in tin foil in the oven at 350 degrees for an hour.  Yum, moist and perfect.

Apple Salad

Ingredients:

spinach

pine nuts

cayenne pepper

apple/s

feta

My fav olive oil dressing concoction

So you don't have to use the pine nuts, you can also use almond slivers or walnuts if you want it to be easier.  I just happened to have pine nuts in my fridge that I needed to use.  I used red apple slices from the Chiquita snack pack because I didn't want them to go to waste.  I used the equivilant of probably 1 and a half apples and we had more than enough salad for two of us.  Four people could have enjoyed the salad, it was spicy, but sweet and I'm quite pleased with my decision to use some cayenne pepper while browning the pine nuts.

Overall it was a very yummy and pretty healthy dinner.  Look at me cooking at home!

:)M

More Stir-Fry from my Kitchen (Apple Pork Potato)

So, again I speak of my love of stir-fry. I couldn't help myself, I blame the blog post I wrote about the last stir-fry. Last night I created a sweet and citrusy concoction that truly was one wok stir-fry awesomeness. And I'm going to tell you how to do it. I shall hence forth refer to it as "Apple Pork Potato Stir-fry," you of course can call it whatever you like when you make it.

This dish is not spicy at all, it's more sweet and tangy/citrusy. Here's what you'll need (and no, I didn't provide quantities because I didn't measure anything, I just threw it in.)

Ingredients:

- pork (cut up in small chunks)

- green beans (although you could probably use broccoli or asparagus)

- potato(es) sliced in very thin slices so they cook easily (I cut my potatoes in half and then slice thin half medallions

- onion (chopped up however you want)

- garlic (coarsely chopped, at least I like it that way)

- apple cut into small cubed pieces

- orange, I pulled it apart and kinda mushed it around in a container

- honey

- soy sauce

- brown sugar

- lemon juice

- butter

- rice (or whatever you want to serve it with, I bet noodles would be good too)

Cooking Implements:

1 wok/or flat frying pan

1 rice cooker/or pot for cooking rice or noodles

Okay, let's begin:

Step 1: As mentioned previously, I like to take care of step 1 around lunch time when I'm in the kitchen anyway.

- Put pork, onion in a zip lock bag. Toss in some brown sugar and then pour in some soy sauce. You don't need a lot of soy sauce, just put in enough soy sauce to mush everything around and get it all covered. Okay, put it in the fridge.

- Cut up your greens and garlic and put them in a container in the fridge.

- Cut up the potato, you could probably also cut the potato into cubes, but I think the slices look nicer and cook more easily. Put the cut up potato in a container and put it in the fridge.

- Cut up your apple and put it in a container. Now, as we all know, after you cut open an apple it starts to get brown and dry out, so to prevent that from happening and to mix some flavor peel your orange and mush up the inside and throw it in the same container as the apple cubes. Now put it in the fridge for later.

Step 2: (1 hour before you eat, for rice prep and other fun.)

- As taken directly from my last post "Start the rice. I love my rice cooker, if you have one I suggest you use it. If you don't then the easiest thing to do is what my mom taught me. Measure your rice and throw it in a pot with out water in it. Okay now stick your finger in there and note where the rice comes up to on your finger. Okay, now put in enough water that when you put your finger on top of the rice the water goes up to that same mark. (It's roughly twice the amount of water to rice.) Now put a lid on the pot and bring the water to a boil, after it's boiling turn the burner down to just barely on (or a simmer if you will) and put the lid back on and let it sit and cook slowly for 45 to 50 minutes."

- If you're not having rice, I suggest you wait until about 20 minutes before you're ready to eat to start the noodles.

- Set the table. I'm a big believer in eating at the table. Don't get me wrong, I will also eat in front of the tv, but I think eating at table is much nicer.

Step 3: Half an hour before dinner.

- Pour some lemon juice in your wok, and throw in about a 1/8th a stick of butter. Throw in your green beans and garlic. Stir them around for a few minutes with the heat way up. (Put the container in the sink.)

- About 5 minutes later put in the potatoes and drizzle some honey over everything and stir it around. (Put that container in the sink.) Turn down the heat and stir everything around for about 10 minutes. You don't have to constantly stir, but you don't want things to burn either.

- Now add your apples and mushed up orange and stir it in real good. (Put the container in the sink.) After you've stirred everything around you can let it sit for a little bit with the burner turned down low. And while it's sitting you can clean up your mess in the sink. Do it.

- Okay, now add all the yumminess from the ziplock bag to the wok and stir it in really well, and turn the heat up to about medium. Stir everything around until the pork is cooked all the way and you're done!

As you can see in the picture above, I enjoyed my stir-fry with a nice glass of coconut milk. Mmmmm, delish.

I think when I make this recipe again I'll add peanuts to it, and maybe try using sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes. That's the beauty of stir-fry, you can make anything you want.

:)M

Oh yeah, Homemade Stir-Fry!

So I was very domestic last night and I cooked dinner for Bob and our friend Eric. I'm a huge fan of stir-fry because you can really make anything stir-fry style. My friend Rachel and I use to make Mexican Stir-Fry, and I've dabbled with Moroccan Stir-fry and Italian Stir-fry. I guess I should define what I consider stir-fry....

Stir-fry: anything that you could make in a single wok. (Obviously not including rice or noodles.)

Anyway, last night was had good ole regular stir-fry in the rice sense of the word. And you know what, it was delicious! Spicy and delicious.

So I went to the market/grocery whatever you want to call it, or wherever you'd like to go. I bought:

- 1.5 pounds of chunks of pre-cut beef

- 1 small container of mushrooms

- 1 small container of spicy red peppers (the little tiny ones)

- 1 small onion

- 2 carrots

- garlic

- a large container of what I thought was bok choy (the greens), but wasn't, I'm still not sure what it was, but for a US version you could use broccoli or spinach

- 1 lemon

- soy sauce

- schezuan pepper salt (I think this could be replicated using black pepper, chili pepper and cayenne pepper)

- soy sauce

- rice

- butter (half a stick)

Supplies:

-rice cooker/or pot to cook rice in with a lid

-steamer/or pot with a steamer basket and a lid

-wok/or flat large pan

Okay, so now you know what you need. Now you need to prep your dinner. There are three steps to this now, I say three because there are three time frames for getting everything ready. I like to cut up all my veggies and everything earlier in the day so that clean up is easier later in the evening. So...

Step 1: (Earlier in the afternoon, I like to do it around lunch time because I'm already in the kitchen making my lunch anyway.)

-Cut up the mushrooms, onion, red peppers, 1 finely chopped garlic clove (or more or less depending on how much you like garlic) and throw everything in a plastic zip log bag with the meat chunks. Throw some black pepper, chili pepper/powder and cayenne pepper in the bag and then seal it. Mush it around in your hands a little to get everything coated nicely. Okay, now put it in the fridge.

-Cut up the carrots, another clove of garlic (big chunks this time), prep your greens (rinse them or whatever you need to do). Put the carrots and garlic in a container and the greens in another container. Okay, put it in the fridge.

Step 2: One hour before you want to eat.

- Start the rice. I love my rice cooker, if you have one I suggest you use it. If you don't then the easiest thing to do is what my mom taught me. Measure your rice and throw it in a pot with out water in it. Okay now stick your finger in there and note where the rice comes up to on your finger. Okay, now put in enough water that when you put your finger on top of the rice the water goes up to that same mark. (It's roughly twice the amount of water to rice.) Now put a lid on the pot and bring the water to a boil, after it's boiling turn the burner down to just barely on (or a simmer if you will) and put the lid back on and let it sit and cook slowly for 45 to 50 minutes.

- Set the table. Don't laugh at me. I like to set the table, it makes things nice.

Step 3: Okay, now it should be about half an hour before dinner.

- Throw the carrots and garlic in a steamer on the stove. (If you're using broccoli, I suggest putting it in now too, if not using broccoli wait until I say.) While the steamer is going cut up your lemon into slices, like you would put in iced tea. Clean up your mess (do it).

- (15 minutes before dinner) Get out your bag of mixed meat, veggies and spices. Prep the wok by pouring about three table spoons of soy sauce on it. And put 1/4 of a stick of butter in there, and add your bag of yumminess. (Turn the heat on low/medium)

- Add your greens to the steamer pot and place the lemon slices on top. Also throw in the rest of your butter. Cover and let steam.

-Stir your meats and veggies and when everything is cooked the way you like it....EAT!

I like to serve my stir-fry in bowls, but you could serve it in anything you like.

If you want you can also make wontons like I did, but they're not necessary, I was just really hungry.

And now, if you don't mind, I'm going to go enjoy last night's leftovers for lunch. YUM!

:)M