Posted: February 27, 2010 |
Author: Alyssa |
Filed under: Alyssa |
2 Comments »
Last week I was in Boston at a job conference looking for a new job. After ten interviews between the hours of 9 and 4:30, I was EXHAUSTED. I don’t know if you have ever spent 9 hours in heels trying to look professional while running from table to table (think speed dating for jobs) interviewing for various positions that you may or may not want (including an interview with a school in Bulgaria which was just ridiculous), but I don’t recommend it…at all. I actually get to do it again this Friday in New York, but the stress of the event will be completely over shadowed by 3 things: 1) I get to see my 5month old nephew who is adorable and squishy and whom I haven’t seen since Christmas. 2) The PrettyGirls get together and all the antics that will ensue. 3) I get to see my best friend of 22 years whom I haven’t seen in way too freaking long and whom I miss terribly.
Anyway…after my crazy day in Boston, all I wanted to do was grab dinner, go back to the hotel room, and pass out face down on the bed for 12 hours. Luckily, being in downtown Boston, there were tons of restaurants along the way back to the hotel so I stopped in at P.F. Changs and grabbed one of my favorite foods of all time: Mongolian Beef. Between the crispy beef, the sauce and the ridiculous amount of green onion they put in, I could literally eat this every day. However, distance and finances prevent this from happening. Now, I don’t know if everyone knows this, but I enjoy my time in the kitchen, so I thought I would try to recreate my beloved dish and see how I fared. I did some research to find a starting point, and actually found a pretty good recipe at recipezaar. Its actually really easy to make and tasted close enough to the real thing to satisfy my craving.
While making this recipe I learned some things that you might want to keep in mind if you try this:
1. I sliced the beef ahead of time and marinated it for about an hour in a combination of soy sauce, ginger, garlic, sesame oil and brown sugar (basically just the sauce deconstructed).
2. You don’t need a lot of corn starch for the beef, just sprinkle each side very lightly.
3. Don’t let the sauce thicken too much because the thicker you let the sauce get, the more concentrated the flavor gets and there is such a thing as flavor that will kick your ass.
4. Toss the beef in the sauce then pull it out with tongs, because this is not a dish where you want the extra sauce making the crispy beef soggy.
Overall an excellent project and I think I’m going to start trying to recreate more of my favorites from various restaurants. Next up, the nacho cheese chicken chalupa from Taco Bell…I didn’t say it was going to be from class restaurants 
I love cake. I have really had the baking urge lately so I decided to make a cake. Now, a lot of people could probably just grab a mix, throw it together and be good. However, I would not be a Pretty Girl if that were sufficient for me. So while I was supposed to be working, I thought about what I could do to that I hadn’t done before. I had a couple ideas in my head, but this one didn’t really come together until I walked into the grocery store. I always head to the produce section of the grocery store first (because apparently starting with the produce will help me make healthier food decisions. Sometimes the fact that I hold a Master’s degree baffles even me with logic like this). So I head to the produce section and the first thing I see is “Mangoes $.99. Hell Yes. I love mangoes, and these were all pretty and ripe and just pliable enough to be perfect. Once I saw these, it all came to me. Chocolate cake with mango-basil salsa.
You can use any chocolate cake recipe that you prefer, but I like my cake denser so I used our very own Improviser’s chocolate cake recipe . Its pretty easy to make, and tastes fantastic.
For the salsa, you need:
1 fully ripe mango
3 large fresh basil leaves
granulated sugar
liquor of your choosing. I used American Honey, but rum would also work.
While the cake is baking, dice the mango as finely as possible and roughly chop the basil. Put them both in a bowl and throw in a dash of sugar and liquor. Mix it up and let it sit so the flavors meld together. I served this with lightly sweetened whipped cream as well to cut some of the intensity of all the flavors.
Once the cake is ready to be served, just put the piece on a plate, top it with some of the mango and add a dollop of whipped cream on the side. Its actually pretty easy to make, and the whole thing only took me an hour. I then took the rest of the cake out to the dorm for the girls and it was gone in approximately 3.5 minutes…I almost didn’t get the plate onto the table before the little vultures attacked me. Whoever said teenage girls don’t eat is a damn dirty liar, because I’m pretty sure I could drag a dead buffalo into the common room and they would eat it to the bones in minutes.
What I really like about this is that the basil is similar enough to mint to work, but different enough to give it that hint of something unique. I think my next move might be to make the mango a chutney filling and then serve it with a basil whipped cream…
I have to apologise for my post slacking recently. I had to travel to Boston this past weekend, and then work has just gotten out of hand. Living in a dorm with 30 girls ages 14-16, in the dead of winter, with the nearest vacation a month away is getting sort of dramatic. Unfortunately its very hard to cook with girls screaming about plants, and lunch tables, and god help us all the Sadie Hawkins ”Sadies” dance is coming up. Just in case you think I’m exaggerating, let me give you a glimpse into my tragic life:
“Ms. Mac, SHE came into my room when NO ONE was here and put a plant on my desk. What kind of b*tch just goes into someones room with out permission. OMG I mean we used to be besties, but this is just a ridiculous invasion. SO I threw the plant out the window. ” (of the fourth floor, by the way)
I kid you not, this is just a small excerpt of the hour and a half long conversation I had last night. Between this fantastic part of my job, and the THREE exes that came back to haunt me for Valentines day, I have felt the need to drink heavily on a fairly regular basis, just to get through. Sadly, I can not go to the bar every night and can not go about my job reeking of booze, so I have to be sneaky about my “drinking”. I have gotten pretty good at figuring booze into most of my recipes, so I thought I would just try to do that again. I know, cooked alcohol isn’t the same, but its the flavor that counts, not the warm buzzy feeling right? (Whatever, just let me delude myself. ) So despite all of this ridiculous tom foolery in my life, ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Guinness Braised Brisket….Ta Da!!! (also known in my head as BEER MEAT 
)
Ok so this is wicked easy:
Cut up one large yellow onion into wedges and put them into the bottom of a deep roasting pan and nestle your 3-4ish lb brisket into its new vegetable home. * You can also add other veggies if you like, I actually threw in a couple of wedges of tomatoes and a few kalamata olives that I had left over from a recipe. * Pour about 2 and a half bottles of Guinness Draught over it then float in a bay leaf. Sprinkle the meat with Italian seasoning, salt and pepper, then place about 5-6 fresh basil leaves on top of the meat. Cover completely with tin foil and put in a 285 degree over for about eight hours. I did it over night so that I woke up salivating. Once its done, take it out of the over and let it cool. Put it in the fridge for a few hours to let the fat rise to the top and harden. Once its cold, remove the foil and spoon off the majority of the fat. At this point you can either shred the meat or slice it and then re-heat it in the liquid and serve as you choose. I greatly suggest serving it with mashed potatoes or polenta or something that will absorb some of the liquid. I didn’t have potatoes the first night I ate this, but I just used crusty bread, and it was freaking sweet .
The beer gives it that smoky flavor with just the hint of sweetness that I love about Guinness, but there is also the great meat flavor with the onions and whatever other veggies you put in. I have eaten this two nights in a row, and tonight I’m taking the rest of the meat out of the liquid and shredding it with a Guinness stout BBQ sauce, and I’m pretty much banking on it becoming the best BBQ sandwich I’ve ever made. It might even be good enough to get me through the ridiculous drama of teen age girls and 20 something boys (not together) that I have been dealing with. Wish me luck!!
Do you ever miss being able to eat with your hands with out people looking at you like you’re an animal? I do. Of course there are always things like quesadillas and chicken wings that are standard ‘finger food’ but there aren’t many finger foods to fit a more refined palette (not my palette, but someone else’s who is more refined. I still love PB, banana and honey for gods sake). So in my many internet wanderings, I stumbled across a new mini quiche recipe that both intrigued me and made me squeal like an excited little girl at the same time (yeah, I said it). I guess I shouldn’t say the whole recipe excited me, rather the idea that the recipe gave me. Rather than using a standard crust for the quiche, they used prisciutto. Thats right my friends, I give you quiche wrapped in bacon!! Its super easy too. You can use whatever quiche recipe you prefer, but here is the one that I used:
1 egg, 2 egg whites, 3Tbsp sour cream, diced black olives, diced mushrooms (left over from my kickin pasta from earlier this week), pepper, and garlic to taste. Whisk the eggs and sour cream together until they are smooth, then add the rest of the ingredients. Take four slices of prosciutto and cut them in half width-wise. Grease 8 cups of a mini-muffin pan (I know the prosciutto has fat, but trust me its going to make your life a lot easier if you add a little extra grease. Line the greased cups with the half slice of prosciutto by squishing it up against the sides until it fits the cup shape pretty well, then spoon the quiche mixture in dividing it evenly between all the cups.
**Keep in mind that its going to puff up a little. I got a little over zealous loading these bad boys up and had some overflow during the cooking process. Bake in a 400 degree oven for about 12 minutes until the quiche is set. Let them cool until you can handle the pan, then run a knife around the edges and the quiche should pop right out of the pan.
One word of advice though: I usually get my prosciutto sliced pretty thin, but for this recipe I would definitely recommend using a thicker cut because the thin has a tendency to pull apart more easily so there are holes in your ‘crust’. A thicker cut would solve that problem pretty easily.
Once they are out of the pan, devour them. These would be really good for any party from a brunch to the superbowl depending on what you put in them, and they are fantastically easy to make. If you can poke, stir, and pour then you are good to go. Hope you enjoy!
One of the ‘perks’ of my job is that I can save money by eating whatever meals I want in the dining hall. Unfortunately, when cooking a meal for 400 people in a high school cafeteria, quality has a tendency to go out the window. The other day for lunch, the menu said that they were serving grilled chicken and penne in a creamy roasted red pepper and smoked gouda sauce. Sounds really good right?…sadly, no. There was one tiny little chink of chicken on my plate with watery sauce, over cooked pasta, and garnished with cherry tomatoes. Not cooked cherry tomatoes which might have made sense, but raw, cold cherry tomatoes from the salad bar. I can’t not think of anything more disappointed than a meal that sounds fantastic and tastes like crap. I was convinced that I could do better, so this weekend I planned it out and tried to execute. Needless to say (hopefully) mine was way better than the institutional cafeteria version.
The first thing that I did was roast a red pepper, which required putting a red pepper in the over and rotating it every 5 minutes until it is black on all sides, then taking it out of the oven and covering it with a towel until it cools and collapses a little. Once you can handle it, peel all the skin off and cut it into bite sized pieces.
While the pepper is roasting, cut the chicken into bite sized pieces, and sautee with some butter, salt and pepper until it is golden brown. Set the chicken aside and throw some mushrooms, onions, and asparagus into the sautee pan and cook until they are tender.
Put a pound of pasta (I used angel hair, but use whatever you want) into boiling water, and while that cooks, you can start the sauce. Its a basic white sauce, so I started with 3Tbsp of butter and 3Tbsp of flour to make my roux, then added 2 cups of milk and 1 cup of chicken stock. Once it thickens add grated smoked gouda to taste. I used a combo of smoked gouda and regular gouda because my stupendous grocery store only had one block of smoked gouda. Add the chicken, peppers and veggies, then salt and pepper to taste. Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and add it to the sauce. Toss to coat.
Thankfully, this turned out beautifully. More importantly, it turned out WAY better than the dining hall version.
Hope you enjoy!
Grilled chicken and penne
pasta in a creamy roasted
red pepper and smoked
gouda saucGrilled chicken and penne
pasta in a creamy roasted
red pepper and smoked
gouda sauceGrilled chicken and penne pasta in a creamy roasted red pepper and smoked gouda sauce
After last week’s fried chicken debacle, I felt the need to redeem myself by trying a new recipe. I was a little nervous, because unfortunately this past week was even worse than the previous, so god only knew how I was going to screw up this time. Perhaps I could screw up ramen noodles, the easiest food on earth. Maybe destroy a salad and make it inedible…at this point my life is so ridiculous that I wouldn’t be shocked if a foray into cinnamon toast resulted in the amputation of a toe. The good news is, it can’t really get worse from here, so I might as well just start assuming that its going to get better. Which is why I decided to set out on a new adventure entitled: Alyssa tries to make bread pudding for the first time without F-ING it up, burning the building down, or losing a toe.
I’ve been looking at this recipe for a while on epicurious.com for leek bread pudding, which sounds super good. Although the more I thought about it, it felt like it was kind of missing something, and we all know by now that I can’t just leave well enough alone with a recipe, I have to mess with it. The first thing I decided to do was to take away some of the ridiculous salt they have you put in as well as some of the butter and make up for it by adding a couple slices of diced pancetta (I KNOW, I add bacon to everything, but seriously how is that bad?). I also traded out the emmentaler for havarti, which was not entirely based on flavor, rather than price. In small town Ohio, good and affordable cheeses and breads are kind of difficult to find (I was shocked too), so I have to make do with what I can. I love havarti because its so creamy and delicious, but I think you could substitute for pretty much any cheese that melts smoothly.
I added the pancetta to the sautee pan with the leeks so that they absorbed all the pancetta-y deliciosity.
Make sure you cook the leeks until they are extremely soft. They should fall apart fairly easily when you press them with a spatula. Some of them will get a little brown and crispy (same with the pancetta), but the rest should almost melt. That way they will absorb into the bread with the custard and bring its flavor with it.
I also used a little extra cheese when I was layering, because you really can’t go wrong with cheese.
Luckily for me, this turned out really well and when I pulled it out of the oven I felt like I was on Food Network Challenge transporting my 6 foot tall muppet cake to the table without destroying it, because leave it to me to get through this whole recipe and then drop it on the floor as I lift it the one foot up from the over to the stove top. Thanks to a steady hand and a prayer to the food gods, I was successful and had this to show for my efforts:
I really wish that I could somehow make your computer screen scratch’n’sniff right now because I was salivating as this cooled just smelling it from the living room. It turned out beautifully, and it is just what I needed to get my mind back on track. I’m taking it as a sign that since this recipe went so well, things will start to look up soon
This week has been AWFUL. Between ridiculous work announcements, full teaching evaluation, friend worry and stupid boys, I pretty much stopped functioning sometime around Wednesday. By Thursday I had lost my mind so completely that I went to the bar and stayed out until 2am. Completely unintelligent since I had to work the next day, but entirely worth it since it helped me get through the rest of the week. Normally, when I am in a funk like that I can just get into the kitchen and lose myself in a recipe. By the time I am done, I feel better about everything and can think with a clear head again. However today, that did not so much work as it did totally backfire. I had some left over chicken in the fridge from last week that I decided to fry up so I had it for the rest of the week. Unfortunately my mind was so jacked up that I burned half the chicken. I have been making fried chicken for years, I can almost do it in my sleep. I can not BELIEVE that I burned it. SO from that little adventure, I moved on to a recipe that a monkey could do: Red Wine Chicken Stew.
The Recipe:
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 2 cloves of garlic, mashed
- 1/2 cup chopped tomatoes
- 2 boneless chicken breasts
- 1 cup sliced onion
- 1 cup sliced mushrooms
- 1 cup full-bodied red wine
- 1 cup chicken stock (1 cup water plus 1/2 chicken or vegetable bouillon cube)
- 1/4 tsp thyme
Literally all this entails is sauteeing the garlic for a minute, then adding the tomatoes until they give up their liquid. At that point you throw in everything else and let it cook on low for an hour.
The title of the recipe is pretty misleading, since without a thickener it does not get thick (most obvious statement ever), and stew it supposed to be fairly thick, or at least thicker than just a broth. So of course, rather than just taking it as it is, I feel the need to play with it and try to make it into what I want it to be. My first move was to add 3Tbsp of butter, because what isn’t better with butter? It also has the added bonus of thickening liquid, but keeping it smooth rather than cornstarch which can leave it a little grainy. I also added about 3/4 of a Tbsp of flour. I let it simmer on the stove, uncovered, for about 15 minutes. It didn’t thicken as much as I wanted, but it definitely improved. Next time I will just make a roux and then follow the recipe. The good news is that by the time this was done, I did feel a little better. Pair this with some crusty bread and a large glass of wine, and it almost became a good evening. I’m just glad that after my burned chicken debacle, I was able to successfully create something that was edible. Stupid Chicken….
I don’t know about most of you guys, but my menu tends to be dictated by what is on sale that week at the grocery store. This week there was a really good sale on cut up chicken pieces for frying, so I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to try out a new fried chicken recipe. The recipe I used to use was good, but was very temperamental and REALLY heavy, even for fried chicken. So the new recipe I wanted to try was actually easier, and ended up tasting even better.
Its pretty simple, but like most fried chicken, crazy delish. Start out with whatever chicken pieces you want and rinse/dry them thoroughly. Whisk three eggs in a bowl with enough hot sauce (I use Franks RedHot, but Texas Pete is excellent too) to make the eggs look bright orange. Season the chicken with a mixture of salt, pepper, and a dash of garlic powder, then dip it into the egg mixture to coat it completely. Then dredge it in self rising flour. Put it into a skillet that is filled half way with peanut oil at 350 degrees. For dark meat cook it for about 7 min on each side, for white meat, about 5 minutes on each side. It should be golden brown, but if you aren’t sure just check the temp. As long as its at least 165 degrees, you are good. Once its done, set it on paper towels to cool and get rid of some of the excess oil. Once it is cool, nom away
I made an entire chicken worth so that I have left overs throughout the week…not sure how long its going to last though
Happy Frying!
TT
In my last post I mentioned my desire to attempt a sweet risotto, and I’ve been thinking about it all week. At first I was thinking some sort of fruit situation, however nothing I came up with really did it for me. After cruising the internet (while I should have been working, of course) I found a chocolate risotto recipe from the great chef/epic douche Michael Chiarello. From there I started playing around and came up with S’more risotto.
The chocolate risotto was pretty basic:
6 cups milk
2 vanilla beans
1 cup sugar
6 oz semisweet chocolate chips
4Tbsp butter
1 pkg Arborio rice
Put the milk in a large sauce pan with the sugar and the 2 vanilla beans (split lengthwise) and let it simmer for about 10 minutes over medium heat to infuse the vanilla flavor into the milk. Once the milk has simmered, remove the vanilla beans and throw them out. Make sure the milk stays hot. Melt 2Tbsp of the butter in a large saucepan then add the rice and stir it until the rice is hot and coated with butter. After that start adding the milk a ladle full at a time and stir it until the liquid is absorbed before adding another ladle full. Keep adding liquid and stirring until it gets creamy and delicious, and is the consistency you want it to be. Once its done, take it off the heat and add the other 2 Tbsp of butter, and the chocolate pieces. I added a little extra chocolate, shockingly enough.
Once I stopped had finished eating this directly out of the pot, entirely for the purposes of quality control of course, I could assemble my experimental concoction. Since this was a new recipe, I just wanted to get a feel as to whether or not it was even worth my time in the future, so rather than making the graham cracker crust myself, I picked up some of the Keebler mini graham cracker crusts at the grocery store to make my life easier. So once the risotto was made, I took one of the crusts and filled it with risotto.
In the future, I think I will not fill it as much and just try to keep it even with the top of the crust.
Then I topped it with mini marshmallows, and broiled it on low for about 4 minutes. I like my marshmallows a little on the burned side, so you might want to drop that time a little.
The mini marshmallows make it look a little goofy, so I would like to find a way to change that in the future, but overall it turned out pretty much like it did in my head . You get the full flavor of the smore that will bring you back to being 8 again, but you also get a whole new textural component with the risotto.
This is most definitely something I am going to continue to play with, and I think next time I will class it up a bit with ramekins, rather than the super elegant tin foil, disposable mini pie tin…
I would love to get thoughts, suggestions, etc… from everyone
Posted: January 4, 2010 |
Author: Alyssa |
Filed under: Alyssa |
3 Comments »
There are 2 feet of snow on the ground and it WILL NOT STOP SNOWING. This is not just regular snow, this is giant, heavy chunks of snow falling from the sky like little meteors of sadness and tragedy. My car is completely buried, and it is so deep that my dog literally can not walk in it. Needless to say, I am not a happy camper. Snow is pretty through the window, but when you are in it, all it does is make shit freaking cold, wet, slippery and gross. Luckily, there is no end in sight for this winter wonderland of doom, so I am just going to have to find a way to deal. Tonight, after a long day walking around the frozen tundra we call campus, all I wanted was something warm and comforting that would make me feel happy and squishy. So one of the first things I thought about was risotto. Its warm and creamy and hearty enough to make me forget that its January in Ohio. I had an old Giada De Laurentiis recipe that I have been playing with in my head, and tonight was the perfect night to make it. I have to warn you though, dear readers, this is very much not a light recipe. It contains butter, sausage, bacon, and cheese…so if your new years resolution was to lose weight, you might want to run like hell in the opposite direction of this recipe.
Dirty Risotto:
I would suggest you have all your ingredients pre-chopped, diced, and prepped since risotto is a bit of a needy dish. First, measure out 5 cups of chicken stock and heat it in a sauce pan until it is simmering. I diced a medium-small yellow onion, and about a half a package of mushrooms (any kind you like) and two thick slices of bacon. I also measured out a cup and a half of arborio rice so that I had everything ready .
Melt 2Tbsp of butter over medium heat, then add the diced bacon and about 1/3 lb of hot Italian sausage and sautee until they are brown. Throw in the mushroom and onion and let them soften, then season with salt and pepper. Add the rice and mix it to coat the rice. Pour in 3/4 cup of white wine and let it simmer until the wine is almost completely gone.
Sausage and bacon
Then add the chicken stock one large ladle-full at a time (about 1/2-3/4 cup at a time), letting the rice absorb the liquid between each ladle-full, and stirring constantly. Once the liquid has all been added and the risotto is creamy and delicious looking, take it off the heat and add about 1/2 cup of shredded Parmesan cheese and mix together. Serve immediately, because its delicious and will make you happy .
This was exactly what I needed tonight, and it made so much that I will be able to enjoy it through out the week. I think my next risotto adventure is going to be a sweet dessert risotto…more to come on that.
