French Toast

A few of the things I bought from Penzeys spices were some vanilla extract and cinnamon so French toast was on the menu.  I had some dessicated French bread that I tried to slice up but it was dry enough to just break off into chunks.  But I just wanted to get rid of the bread somehow, so I just used the biggest evenly size chunks of bread I made.  I let the bread soak up the custard for a long while, maybe 3-4 days, and then cooked in a pan.  The uneven pieces and the amount of crust to inside of the pieces of bread I cut didn't really help cooking and texture.  Definitely need to use large slices of bread.  I made some whipped cream and a sauce out of blueberries but it really didn't help.

Nigella Lawson's food = bleh

Ok, I'm watching Nigella Express right now and I have to comment about it.  Ok, so Nigella Lawson is a bit chunky but from the chest up she is actually my cup of tea so I try to catch her show.  I like a lot of the British cooking shows; their accents are always fun and it's nice to watch other people cooking other than Rachael Ray, Bobby Flay, or whoever Food Network forces down your throat. 

The food that Nigella cooks is terrible though.  So cooking shows for me are food porn- you try to imagine eating the stuff and it inspires you to want to cook it.  I probably would have never decided to pick up cooking back in the day if I was watching Nigella because her food just looks and sounds awful sometimes.  Like she was making a chicken stew with bacon, garlic, riesling, and dill.  Not sure how to describe it to anyone who isn't familiar with those flavors, but it's probably like taking barbeque sauce, adding Sunny D, and a splash of wheat grass.  And then she made a terrible looking crab salad with Asian dressing dealie.  Bleh.  Good thing she's easy on the eyes.

Chocolate panna cotta

I was watching "Worst Cooks in America" on Food Network and one of the contestants made a panna cotta in the final meal she cooked. I've seen other people cook panna cotta but I figured if that was the dessert they cooked in the meal that won them $25,000, I should try it out. I haven't had panna cotta before. I'm not sure why I don't see in restaurants more often, I'm sure I would've tried it if I ran across it by now. From the looks of the ingredients it looks like an Italian version of pudding. I wasn't sure on the ratio of gelatin to liquid and other ingredients. Hell, I wasn't even sure how much gelatin was in each packet in the box I bought so I probably put too much into 1 serving.  I ended up making some flavorless thick ass cement that I had a few bites of and threw away.

Chicken Vindaloo

I bought a load of spices from Penzeys spices, a place that sells spices online and seems to be reputable across the foodie nation. The only thing I really wanted to get was some ground dried horseradish to make my own Arby's horsey sauce (heh) to put on sandwiches, but I ended up buying a whole bunch of stuff. I probably would've bought a lot more but spices tend to get a little expensive. Anyway, I ended up with some hot curry powder and Vindaloo powder because I was hankering to try making some curry.
After watching a couple Youtube clips, I found you make a paste from the spices, vinegar, and chile peppers and marinate the chicken in it. Then sautee some aromatics, toss in vegetables, add chicken, a little water and simmer.

Chicken fritatta

I had some five day old cooked chicken leftover from my Superbowl nachos that I needed to use but couldn't really think of any good things to make out of it with the stuff in my fridge and I was too lazy to go to the grocery store to buy stuff to make anything intersting. Alton Brown, the greatest cooking personality ever, always said frittatas are good refrigerator velcro, meaning it's a good substrate for putting random crap in. So here's some leftover chicken, some frozen garlic butter veggies from Trader Joes, eggs, cheese, and herbs. Instant dinner that's relatively quick and easy. Though the chicken ended up dry enough to being inedible so it was overall pretty lousy. I was proud of the homemade salad I made though.

Japanese mortar and pestle

There's a small Japanese grocery and gift store near campus call Sakura http://www.sakuragroceries.com/. It's inside the same shopping center as this place to buy cooking stuff so I wandered in after wanting to buy a empty glass drizzle bottle to make some Piri Piri oil (basically just chili oil). The place doesn't have fresh vegetables, fruit, or meat, it's almost like a Japanese 7-11. I don't have an affinity for Japanese food in general so I don't do much cooking in that area. Though I went to one psychic randomly who said I should eat more miso soup so maybe I should stock up on that. There was some macha green tea I might buy sometime and bought some organic soba noodles since I figured it could be useful someday.
I've been meaning to get a mortar and pestle since I've been stocking up on spices and stuff to use and I wanted to get this Thai one that I saw in a magazine http://www.saveur.com/gallery/SAVEUR-100s-Kitchen-Gadgets-and-Books which is around 25 bucks online (I couldn't find one at the local Asian megamart). Th smallest Western style mortar and pestle went for as low as 40 bucks at the kitchen supply place. I saw this small Japanese mortar and pestle and it was 8 bucks for the bowl and about 4 bucks for the pestle. It's kind of neat looking because it has all these ridges going along the sides. The bad part is that spices do get stuck in the grooves, so it doesn't grind super well. Good enough for me though, I don't care that much and it's relatively cheap.

Oven "fried" pizza

Tried my hand at making pizza from scratch again this week. As per my usual M.O. I Google recipes and try to find recipes from reliable sources that seems easy enough to do. Saw this thing for oven "fried" pizza on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqvr8F57pUg. It sort of has the same technique as making a grilled pizza, though of course on the stove. You put the dough in a hot pan on the stove, flip, put on toppings, and stick into oven to finish. I'm not sure if I'm not working the dough enough or stretching it out well enough but it doesn't seem to have a good texture. I used this white wheat dough from Trader Joe's, I was hoping it would have the same taste as regular flour, yet healthier but it's mostly like wheat flour so the flavor and texture are completely off. Oh well. I might just have to stick with making French bread pizza.

Prosciutto and butter sandwich

Here's another sandwich that I first had at 'Wichcraft in Vegas. I mostly got it because it was the cheapest one there. Every sandwich was like more that 7 bucks and this thing was maybe 4 or 5. The combination is good, can't complain about prosciutto and bread and butter are one of my most favorite things in the world. I think supposedly it's sort of a play on the classic ham and cheese sandwich. Whatever I guess. I found a recipe and the people at La Brea bakery also have a sandwich like this. They had an optional scallion and parsley oil to drizzle on top which I made for fun.

Leftovers Philly style

Steak is pretty awesome leftovers because they basically ready to be made into other dishes. Made this Philly cheese steak with maybe too much provolone because I was afraid it was going to start sprouting mold. Well, one of the pieces of cheese had some weird stuff on I took that one off and the other two looked fine. That's safe right?

Girls who can tenderize my meat: Marcela Valladolid

Thought I mix up the posts by writing about this host on the Food Network that I'm totally digging. She's Marcela Valladolid, who has a show called "Mexican Made Easy". I do love Mexican food so it's already a match made in heaven. Apparently she was also on the Martha Stewart edition of The Apprentice, which I have never seen in my life in any shape or form. I haven't been able to catch her show because it's only on at 9:30 in the morning on Saturday and I'm usually up all night (until like at least 6 in the morning) for no particular productive reason so I end up sleeping through her show. The commercials for her show make her seem pretty peppy, which could be hot if it doesn't reach Rachael Ray levels.

Pork chili Fritos pie

Here's the chili I made with the left over pulled pork I made a few days ago. Just added the pork to the base, then poured over some Fritos and topped with a bit of cheese. A good late dinner for you're in the hankering for street fair-ish food.

Steak with jalepeno butter

I have to say, grocery shopping the day before the Super Bowl sucks. The only reason I was at Costco was to get some ciabatta sandwich rolls, which was the only place in Stockton that I absolutely knew had them off the top of my head. The line was long enough so you couldn't even see the cash registers, it was just a huge line going back to where the books and socks usually are. Anyway, I did see some prime grade New York steaks there. If you're going to eat steak, go for the best, baby. It's tastier and easier to cook since you don't have to do too much to it.

A steak dinner is a relatively quick meal to make, maybe 30 minutes or so. Rachael Ray would be proud. This is just a steak with a jalepeno/garlic composite butter, some chili and garlic broccoli, and garlic naan.

Post Super Bowl nachos

I woke up at around 2:30 in the afternoon on Superbowl Sunday, made a roasted pork sandwich and watched the game. The Superbowl starts at around 3:30 on the West coast and since I ate a late lunch I wasn't even hungry by the time the game ended around 3 hours later so I didn't even have any munchies during the game. I was going to make chicken nachos for the game but hell, it's a fine late dinner as well. It has all 4 food groups and very filling.

Pulled pork sammy

Here's the final pulled pork sandwich I made out of the 'Wichcraft book. I think I should've used pork shoulder like the recipe called for instead of pork tri tip because the pork was a tad dry. I also roasted for quite a while in a convention oven so that could have contributed to some dryness. Still pretty darn good.

Feeling a little chili

Honestly, I don't think I've ever cooked this much in such a short amount of time. Well, cooking in a sense of making stuff that takes more time than making a sandwich or cereal. So good times.

I'm not the biggest chili connoisseur or purist so I don't care whether it has beans or not, chocolate, cinnamon, or whatever people want to put in as long as it tastes good. The ingredients in this chili are pretty standard while browsing through recipes posted at some chili competition websites, besides the beer and maybe chicken stock. On a random side note, have won hottest chili at the neighborhood 4th of July block party (when there were only three entries). Got a neat little drink bottle that has like a thing in the middle that freezes. Good idea but it had a tendency to leak so I only used it once. Yargh.

Anyway I decide to make the base for a chili to fold in the leftover pulled pork after I'm done making a few sandwiches out of it. By the way, I'm taking these pictures from my cell phone because I forgot to bring the charger to battery for my camera when I moved, so excuse the random blurriness and ghettoness.

Chicken sausage sandwich a la Martha Stewart

I saw this recipe for chicken sausage sandwiches with just peppers and onions in Everyday Food magazine. This is one of these Reader's Digest sized magazines I randomly browse in the checkout line for quick ideas. It's a pretty nifty magazine, has a bunch of easy recipes. This is barely a recipe, but hey, if it's good enough for Martha Stewart to publish it's good enough for me. You basically just take some chicken sausage, saute up some peppers and onions, toast a bun, slather some mustard, and pile everything on.

I was a bit disappointed in what I made. For some reason I did get a little stomachache after eating this, so maybe the sausage was weird. I never tried this sausage or heard of this company before but I gave it a shot since it was made in Lodi, which is the neighboring city like 10 minutes north of where I'm at. Figured, local = bueno. Meh. I'll just get some Aidells sausages next time. And make sure you get some good bread. My philosophy on these things is that you have to be able to eat the bread by itself and this telera roll was super chewy and bland.

The pulled pork experiment

I had some leftover beer that I can't quite finish, so decided I should cook or marinate something with it. I was thinking of making some breakfast sausage with beer marinated ground pork but got side tracked when I saw some already made raw breakfast sausage that looked ok. Then I saw this piece of meat that I've never seen before called a pork cushion tri-tip and ideas of dishes started floating in my tiny brain. First I started thinking of making over roasted pulled pork sandwiches. Then I can use the leftover pulled pork for a small batch of chili maybe. Got home and brought out all my leftovers out of the fridge and dumped it into a bowl. I mean, I have no idea what to do with parley stems but figured they might be a good flavoring agent.

I have Tom Colicchio's 'Wichcraft book. I've been to the one at the MGM hotel in Vegas a couple times and it's pretty good, though maybe my love of the name of the place and the overall concept of fancy sandwiches is blinding me. Anyway, the recipe in the book looks easy enough. There some interesting ingredients, cloves, anise and caraway seeds. I have no idea what caraway is.

Hello world!

After years of putting off making a food blog on the back burner (hey-o!) I finally decided to get into business. Not sure why I wanted to make one. I'm not exactly Julia Child (or that Julie lady who cooked through her book) and I'm not going to win the Pulitzer prize so I'm keeping my standards pretty low for this thing. But hey, if it'll help me keep cooking for myself and perhaps learn some new/easy recipes, I'll be down with it.