Playing with Food

Here's some fun stuff I've made in the last week!

Spaghetti with Pesto Sauce
Pesto sauce is rich and delicious!  It's also great as a dip.

Ingredients (makes enough for 6 servings):
2 cups fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup olive oil
2 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons pine nuts
pinch of salt
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons softened butter

1.  Wash and dry the basil leaves.  I cut the stems off. 

 2.  Mix the basil leaves, olive oil, pine nuts, garlic cloves, and salt in a food processor until they reach a creamy consistency.

3.  Place this mixture in a bowl.  Add the butter and Parmesan cheese and mix by hand.  Taste and add more salt if you'd like. 

 4.  In the meantime, you've been cooking the spaghetti!  Once you drain the pasta, mix in the pesto sauce.  Don't heat the pesto sauce--the heat of the freshly cooked pasta will do the trick.







Mojo Chicken and Tostones with White Rice (that's toast-oh-nes, for my Gringo friends =)

Ingredients
4 Chicken Breasts  (thinly sliced)
Mojo marinade (1 cup sour orange juice, 6-8 garlic cloves (minced), salt, black pepper, cumin)
1/2 an onion
Olive Oil
3 Sweet Plantains (green!)
Corn Oil
Salt
Steamed White Rice


Mojo Chicken
1.  Making the mojo marinade:  This is the traditional marinade of Cuba.  What you will notice with most Cuban meat dishes is that citrus flavor, courtesy of the sour orange.  You can buy pre-made mojo marinade by Goya or Badia at most supermarkets.  Those are authentic and yummy.  If you want to make it yourself, it's pretty easy!  Squeeze the juice of a couple of sour oranges into a bowl (until you get about 1 cup).  add the minced garlic, salt, and black pepper.
2.  Once you have sliced the chiken breasts, season generously with cumin and then place into the bowl with the mojo.  Cover and place in the fridge to marinade for a couple of hours.
3.  Slice about 1/2 an onion and save for later use.
4.  When you're ready to cook the chicken, start by heating some olive oil in a pan.  Once the olive oil is very hot, add your chicken breasts.  When the chicken starts turning golden-brown, throw in the onions and some of the juices from the marinade.  The onions should still be soft when you are done. It will look like this:

Tostones: 
1.  While the chicken is marinading, peel the the sweet plantains and then cut into 1-2 inch-thick slices.
2.  Fill a medium-sized pot about halfway with corn oil.  Heat the corn oil at medium-high heat until it's very hot.  (Do this right before you're ready to start cooking the chicken).  Add the plantain rings into the hot oil until they start turning golden.  Do not fully cook them!  You just want them to get nice and soft.  This will take about 3-5 minutes.  Remove from the oil onto a plate and drain with a paper towel.
3.  Here comes the fun part!  You are going to flatten the plantains.  This can be accomplished in two ways:  The traditional way is to use a plantain press or you can simply place each slice vertically on a cutting board and then press down on the top with the bottom of a cup. 
4.  Add the flattened plantains to the oil again and cook until they are a nice golden color and the edges look crispy.  Don't forget to turn them over as they cook.
5.  Remove from oil onto a paper towel to drain.  Sprinkle with salt.

Flat bread Pizza with Pesto Sauce

Ingredients:
Pesto sauce (see above!)
Flat Bread
Shredded Cheese of your choice
Red and green peppers
Chicken breasts

1.  Make the pesto sauce!
2.  Slice as much pepper as you'd like on your pizza!

3.  Heat some olive oil in a pan and cook thinly sliced chicken strips or cubed chicken breasts.  Season with garlic powder and basil.  Throw the peppers in the pan until they are soft and chicken is fully cooked.  Set aside.
4.  Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.




 

5.  Spread the pesto sauce across the flat bread.

6.  Cover the flat bread with a layer of shredded cheese.  I used an Italian cheese blend.
7.  Add your peppers and chicken to the pizza, and then one thin layer of cheese.









8.  Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes or until the cheese has melted.  The one thing I didn't like about baking it was that the pesto sauce gets dried up and loses its flavor.  =(.  Next time I think I will just brush the flat bread with olive oil and season with rosemary and garlic. 

I also tried the Fancy Macaroni recipe from the Pioneer Woman.  You can find that recipe here.

 Mine looked like this:  

It was good...but I wasn't that happy with it.  I'll have to try again. 

I'm having fun playing with food with all of my spare time!  Hopefully I will have more to come in the next couple of weeks!

From Primped and Pampered....to Potatoes and Pans

Yesterday I went to an event at the Newport Beachside Resort entitled 'Teachers Deserve More.'    At 7 PM, the newly renovated spa opened just for teachers, where they treated us to beer, wine, appetizers, fruits and cheeses, and mini-massages.  All for free.  Oh, yes.  The resort is also offering select salon and spa services for only $20.10 for teachers all summer long.  Oh, yes....

I went with one of my teacher-girlfriends to the resort yesterday.  We sat in massage chairs, sipped complimentary champagne, and got manicures and pedicures.  All for just $20.10.   I haven't treated myself to a mani/pedi since the week of my wedding.  Ahhhh....the sea salt scrub made my skin soft and smooth.  I was long overdue.

 Bubbly

 Afterwards, we joined the crowd in the spa for the free event.

Today, I peeled potatoes and made dinner.  With my French manicure and all.  Tonight I blended two different dishes into one meal:  garlic and herb chicken and paremesan-basil potatoes.  Here's the how-to, in case you'd like to try:

Garlic and Herb chicken
Diced chicken breasts
Olive oil
Garlic powder
Sweet basil
Black pepper
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme (just kidding...I couldn't resist the urge...or use them if you want to).

How-to:

1. Dice chicken breasts into small cubes, or strips, or don't dice at all if you don't want!  Season chicken with garlic powder, sweet basil, and black pepper. 
2. Heat olive oil in a pan.  Add chicken and cook until it's...well, cooked...and voila!

Parmesan-Basil Potatoes
Diced potatoes
Butter
Grated parmesan cheese
Sweet  basil
Large Ziploc freezer bag

How-to:
Peel potatoes and dice into small cubes.
Melt one tablespoon of butter (for every two potatoes).
Add the potatoes and butter into the bag and shake, until the potatoes are well-coated.
Add the parmesan cheese and basil to your liking and shake.
Spread the potatoes onto a baking tray and bake in the oven for 45 minutes at 350F.  

Voila!  The chicken looks a lot like the potatoes in the background due to the cubed shaped. 

The first time I've cooked in...........ages.

My husband certainly didn't marry me for my cooking.  There was no 'getting-to-his-heart-through-his-stomach' in this love story.  And Amen for that.  Or it might not have worked out.

As a girl, I watched my mom cook us home-made meals every night.  I learned how to make a few simple things, and helped her here and there.  So I'm not completely useless in the kitchen.  And I don't burn everything I make, either.  Actually, I very rarely burn food.  Cooking was just never something I was really that interested in.  Besides, my job (as my parents told me from a very early age) was to be a good student, go to college, get a degree and hang it on my wall, start a career doing whatever I wanted to do, and make my own money; and if a man ever mistreated me or told me what I could or could not do, I could tell him to stick it where the sun don't shine and I would be able to move on and take care of myself.  Well...my mom added the last part about the man.  Although my dad certainly agreed.  We (my sister and I) were raised to be strong-willed women with minds of our own, and my mom taught us to one day marry men that would appreciate and respect that.  College was not an option.  We were going.  And we'd better get good grades, too.  I think my mom was trying to get us away from that traditional role of the Cuban housewife that she had grown up around.  Women of her mother's generation just didn't have many other choices.  As the oldest daughter of 10, my mom's mom was pulled out of school when she was still a young girl to help raise her brothers and sisters.  She would cry and beg her parents to let her go to school.  She really wanted that opportunity which she was denied, and I guess she passed that sentiment along to my mom.  I guess that's where my mom was coming from.  I suppose it's because parents always want more for their children.  School was my first and primary job.  Around the house, we had to help my mom with chores and keep our rooms clean.  But only if we were done with our homework first.  By the time I was in high school, my room would get messy and my mom rarely asked me for help around the house since I was so busy with band and honor societies and concerts and college applications.  No time for cooking lessons.

I love my refrigerator magnets:

My mom printed something for herself a while back and put it on the fridge.  It reads:  "The maid is off today. If you want something, get it yourself."

I think this sums it up pretty well:  When I was going off to college, my mom asked me if I wanted her to buy me an iron.  I said "what for?"

Don't get me wrong--I do like cooking.  Sometimes.  Before we got married, Steve and I would talk about how nice it would be to have our own place and cook in our own kitchen.  We did pretty well the first year--we cooked at home most of the week.  Then we settled into life and work and got tired and lazy.  Home cooked meals became less frequent.  But, every now and then, I get inspired to experiment in the kitchen.  Mostly in the summer months, when school is out and I get bored.  Sometimes good things come of my boredom.  Like a clean house.  It has been really messy for the last few months.  Things piled up after my accident and hand injury, and once I got better I got busy with work and the piles just kept getting more mountainous.  Now that it's officially summer break, I've already made some progress.  (I'm the neat freak and organizer in the relationship, although you wouldn't be able to tell that by the look of my spare bedroom).  But, I digress.  The last time I cooked something besides pasta was months ago.  Steve likes to cook (another Amen) and frequent restaurants with me, so that's why we haven't starved.  I borrowed a book of chicken recipes from my sister (although she says 'stole' since I didn't ask for permission, a minor detail between sisters) and found an easy dinner idea I wanted to try:  honey garlic chicken wings.  Since I don't own a BBQ grill, I changed the recipe to suit my available utensils (and limited cooking skills) to a honey garlic chicken stir-fry with mushrooms and steamed rice. 

Honey Garlic Chicken with Portobello Mushrooms
Ingredients (makes two servings)
2 chicken breasts
1/4 cup steak sauce (I used A1 thick and hearty)
1/8 cup honey
1 garlic clove, minced
Baby portobello mushrooms
1 cup rice

How-to

1. Start cooking the rice
2. Slice two chicken breasts into small cubes
3.  Begin to heat some olive oil and minced garlic in a pan over medium-high heat
4. Mix the steak sauce, honey, and minced garlic in a bowl.
5. Once the pan is hot, add the chicken and mushrooms.
6. Once chicken and mushrooms are cooked, add the sauce and let simmer for a few minutes.
7. Serve with steamed rice and enjoy!

Nothing like the smell of olive oil and garlic sauteing in a pan...

                                  

Saucy!

 

Simmer....

 Eat up!

Not too bad for a self-proclaimed 'domestically challenged' woman.


Next time, I will return to my roots:  Mojo chicken with tostones and white rice!