Cooking Classes

So my cousin Salomon will come over and have dinner with us every once in a while.  He was over when I made the Mango Salsa and Tilapia.  He was in the kitchen talking to me as I made dinner, and he saw how easy it was to make tasty food.  So he asked me to teach him how to cook.  How could I say no when I get to call him my protege?!
I asked Salomon what he wanted to learn first; he wanted to learn how to make this fantastic chicken dish that my mom taught me how to make (many moons ago...).  It looks fancy, tastes great, and is easy to do if you have a little bit of patience.  Rudy and I went to the store and took Sal along with us so I could go over the ingredients for dinner.  Once we got home, the real learning began.

I showed Salomon how to chop potatoes, butterfly chicken breasts, make the cream cheese mixture, saute green beans, and make mashed potatoes with gravy (Sal loves gravy).  Because all the cooking was being done by someone else, I took this as an opportunity to exploit memorialize the help.

Butterflying a chicken breast.  

And then I asked him to cut all the way through.

Loading up the chicken breast.

Ready to get their bake on!

Whipping up some creamy mashed potatoes.

Working it at the stove.

We even at the table!  

I think it was something like the 5th time we have used it to eat at...

Even Lola joined us for dinner.

Ta-da!  The finished dinner!

Mamma's Bacon Wrapped Chicken

4 chicken breasts

8 slices of good bacon

8oz. cream cheese

4 green onion stalks, chopped

3 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce

1 Tbs. Tabasco sauce

8 toothpicks

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Butterfly open the chicken breasts, then cut them all the way through.  You should have now 8 chicken breast pieces.
3. Mix together the cream cheese, the green onion, Worcestershire, and Tabasco sauce.  You can add more or less of the sauces to please your taste.
4. Take one of your chicken pieces and place a spoonful of the cream cheese mixture in the middle of it.  Carefully roll the chicken around the creme cheese, making sure you don't squish the cheese out.  
5. Wrap a slice of bacon around the chicken and secure with a toothpick.  Transfer to a baking pan.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for the remaining chicken pieces.
7. Place the chicken in the oven for 20 minutes.  The bacon should be a darker pink the the chicken should be golden around the edges.  Let the chicken rest for 5 minutes before transferring it to a serving plate.

Great first lesson Salomon!

Moroccan Chicken

I love trying food from other cultures.  If I can't travel abroad, at least I can let my taste buds take the trip for me.  I have been watching a lot of HGTV (it's either this or soap operas for day time TV, and I'm not really the soap opera type...) and they keep talking about Moroccan design.  Moroccan this.  Moroccan that.  I finally got fed up with every one having or doing something Moroccan without me.  So I whipped out my phone and did a search on Epicurious (seriously my FAVE!).  What did I find?

A very yummy chicken and fennel dish that I served with Indian paratha and quinoa.  I don't know if the Moroccans eat either of these, but they were a tasty addition to the chicken.  And the best part was, I had a bigger audience for this dinner too!  Salomon and Rudy both had this, and I'm pretty sure they were both finished eating before I even sat down.  They both inhaled it and then promptly asked for more.  Unfortunately, they would have had to go to Morocco to get more because I ran out.  Next time, I am going to have to make a double batch!

So until I can save up enough money to buy a plane ticket to Morocco and good walking shoes, this dish will satisfy my travel temptation.  The only question left is, where am I off to next?

Epicurious

After seeing this application in many magazines, I finally decided to download it.  To my surprise, it was free!  Yay!  My favorite aspect of this app is the "Search Recipes".  You can search recipes that have certain ingredients that you already have, or you can search certain cuisines from around the world, or you can tailor your recipes to certain dietary needs.  Heck, you can even search a combination of all these!  I was really excited to search Portuguese/Spanish dishes for dinner that was low cal. 

I bought Mahi Mahi fillets from Fresh and Easy when they were on sale (oh how I love a sale!) and was really exicted to find a good looking recipe that included Mahi Mahi on this app.  Not only was the Mahi Mahi with Gazpacho delicious, it was pretty to look at. Rudy ate every last bite!  As he put it, "Baby!  This doesn't even taste fishy at all!"  All I have to say:  Mission Accomplished.

 

Dreamy Bagels

I just finished making bagels for the first time ever!  And to tell you the truth, I will be dreaming of their soft and squishy insides just as much as I will be dreaming of their crisp and supple crust.  I took a very big risk by not following the directions exactly, but I was desperate for bagels and I didn't have all of the exact ingredients.  These bagels are so good, in fact, that Rudy started eating one of the bagels I had set up for pictures.  He thought I had set them out for him to eat.  To make matters worse, he continued to eat them even after I told him they were for pictures!  Now, all I have left to do is to close my eyes and await the Bagel Fairy to bring me sweet dreams.  Maybe the Philly Cream Cheese Angels will join in on the action too...

Breadmaking Day #2

It seems I just can't get enough bread making!  Maybe it was making the malasadas.  Maybe it was talking to a family friend who used to own a bakery.  Maybe it was finding my Bread Bible dusty and neglected.  I don't really know what it is that has sent me on bread making overload, but I'm glad it happened!  My latest creation:  Sacaduros.  They are little dinner rolls from some fancy restaurant the author of The Bread Bible went to and got the recipe for.

But I put on my own little twist.  Remember that Pancetta I used to make the shrimp?  Well, I happened to have some left over!  And after a little digging in the fridge, I cam across a very special gem:  fig spread!  Figs and Pancetta.  Pancetta and figs!  You couldn't go wrong!  I wrapped the doughy little rolls around a drop of fig spread every so lovingly.  Then I topped  my creation with a ribbon of Pancetta.  Put them in the oven for 20 minutes, and what comes out is a fun and fanciful treat!  Lets just say, after having The Cuh's over, I have only 5 plain rolls left, and only 1 fig roll left.  That's out of 2 dozen rolls!  And, I have been requested to make another 2 dozen today!  Maybe I should take that family friend's advice and open a bakery...

I have another great achievement to share!  Rudy made a delicious stir-fry for us yesterday for lunch!  It was really delicious!  It had all sorts of vegetables in it, with little shrimp popping up here and there.  All of this with some brown rice...  I was in heaven!  Needless to say, by the time I was able to get my camera out, I didn't have much to take a picture of.  It was all gone!  Maybe on top of running a bakery, I will become a food forensic scientist...

Foccacia and Shrimp

After making the malasadas, I wanted to make another yeast bread.  I heart baking.  Plain and simple.  There is nothing better than seeing your golden brown and delicious concoction coming out of the nice, warm oven smelling delectable.  I would bake steak if I could (I really have trouble cooking red meat of any kind).  So I went flipping through my Bread Bible (it's a real book.  Check it out on Amazon if you don't believe me!) and found a recipe for Rosemary Focaccia bread.  A little bit more reading, and I found a variation that used poached garlic.  Poaching garlic in oil sounds easy enough (it was only a three sentence segment in the whole recipe, so how hard can it be really???), but apparently it is really easy to screw up!  Case in point:

Just for the record, burned garlic does in fact tastes nasty. I do not recommend it.  After walking down to the grocery story and buying six more heads of garlic (I was a little scared I would mess up again.  Chances were good after all!), I made my second attempt.  Success!

Golden brown and soft, not smushy.  Just like the Bread Bible says.  I knew the Bread Bible wouldn't do my wrong!  So once the garlic was poached, it was time to make the focaccia.

First rise -- Very soupy.  Very stretchy!

Look at all those cute dimples of garlic! 

Ta-da!  Complete and tasty and warm.  Just like I like it!

Now I had a dilemma.  What am I going to eat this bread with?  I guess the easy answer is, "By itself stupid!"  But I wanted more than that.  I had to design a meal around this.  A meal that could stand alone, but also is greatly benefited by having this garlic foccacia as a side.  What did I come up with?  Shrimp wrapped in pancetta.  Can't go wrong there!

This is a super easy meal where boiling the water is the most difficult, most time consuming task.  If you don't believe me (again with you non-believers!) try it yourself.

Shrimp and Pancetta

10 large shrimp (peel off, deveined)
10 thin slices of pancetta
1/4 box angel hair pasta
1 cup frozen peas
2 Tbsp. garlic infused oil* (I made this when poaching my garlic!)
2 Tbsp. butter
1/2 tsp. red chili flakes
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 pinches of Parmesan cheese

1. Put your pot of water for your pasta on the stove and set it on high.  Additionally, get your grill warming up.  I use my George Foreman, but an outdoor grill or grill pan work too.  Just get the sucker hot at this point.
2. While the water is boiling, carefully wrap 1 shrimp in 1 piece of the pancetta.  Put in on a skewer, then repeat with the remaining 9.
3. In a pan, add the oil, butter, chili flakes, and garlic.  Let the butter melt, and the flavors mingle.
4. Once the water is boiling, your grill should be hot.  Add your shrimp skewers to the grill.  Let it cook 3 minutes on each side. 
5. While the shrimp are cooking, add the angel hair pasta to the pot of water, and cook according to the instructions (it cooks fast, so you should really only be cooking it for 4-5 minutes)
6. Halfway through the pasta cooking, add the peas to the pot.  You should also be flipping your shrimp if you haven't done so already.
7. Drain the pasta and peas.  Add the oil and butter mixture to the pasta and peas.  Divide the pasta and peas onto two plates.  Top with a pinch of Parmesan cheese.  Rip the shrimp off the skewers and place 5 shrimp on each plate.  Grab a fork, and get your grub on!

Really, this meal takes 20 minutes or less.  And if you have a garlic press, then you can make this and not even get your hands dirty!  And, it makes a perfect accompaniment to garlic foccacia. 

* You can use regular oil, but you may want to add two extra cloves of garlic for the extra flavor boost!  Or not.  Whatever floats your boat.

Malasadas

No, malasadas are not "badly grilled".  They are Portuguese doughnuts (minus the hole and fillings)!  My family fell in love with these tasty treats on one of our adventures to The Big Island.  There, we found Tex's... Think of them as a Krispy Kreme but for malasadas.  I could have stayed there all day if I could, just watching them make the malasadas.

Imagine how excited I got when on our last trip, I saw that Tex's put together all the dry ingredients for their malasada dough!  I had to buy one so I could make these delectable doughnuts at home.  So what did I do?  I bought two of course!

Well, I found out yesterday that it was a darn good thing I splurged and bought not one bag of malasada mix but two.  I totally screwed up the first batch!  I was supposed to let the dough rise for 20 minutes, and I think the dough actually started shrinking instead!  I let it sit there for 15 more minutes, and still nothing happened.  I went back to look at the recipe, and I forgot an ingredient.  1/2 teaspoon of sugar.  That was all that was standing between me and the fluffy goodness of malasadas.  Time to start all over.

So after about an hour of trying to make the dough correctly, and after painfully throwing out the first batch of dough, I successfully made almost 3 dozen, 2-bite-sized malasadas!  Rudy and I could not wait to try them!  It's a good thing we taste tested them at home before we took them to the family pool party, because we did not get a chance to eat any once we got there!  Those malasadas were gone soooo fast!  I think they were eaten faster than I had made them!

So I learned a few things in this adventure. 

1. Malasadas need a lot of sugar.  If you think you have enough, check again!
2. My family, who loves to share what they have with as many other people as possible, refuses to share malasadas.  It is every man, woman, and child for themselves!
3. I need to find Tex's recipe online somehow, because I am already hankering for some more!