Tacos & Guacamole

First, I would like to apologize for having not updated my blog in several weeks.  As I was frantically finishing finals, I realized that I would get a break from blogging as well as school.  One of the many benefits of my summer job is that I frequently get to enjoy the cooking of the skilled chefs of McAlisters, Qdoba, and the always wonderful University of Wyoming Washaike Dinning Center; hence, I will not be doing much cooking this summer.  However, during finals week that thought got lost among the psychoanalytic thoughts of Edgar Allen Poe and the curious and bizarre wanderings of Walt Whitman, instead of making it into my blog.

Anyway, this past week I was able to do a bit of cooking.  I have probably consumed more tacos in my life than any other single entree, but for some reason I always get random taco cravings.  In one of the books I am reading, the author claims that many of our adult desires are grounded in unmet needs from childhood.  However, I can guarantee that I never was lacking for tacos as a child.  If I should desire anything, it would be lasagna  because my mother thought the whole process a bit to putzy (see the lasagna post for the whole story).  

In a rare spirit of creativity, I decided that instead of buying a taco seasoning pack, I would season the tacos from my own spices.  I did, however, read the back of the seasoning pack in Wal-mart to see what it included.  As the meat was simmering, I gradually began to add cumin, paprika, and a bit of oregano to the mix.  I also mixed up some guacamole, and flavored it with cumin, paprika, red pepper, salt and pepper.  The guacamole turned out great, and I resolved to never buy a guacamole packet again.  The taco meat, however, was a different story.

Living in Wyoming, I have the benefit of having lots of acquaintances who hunt and share their meat.  I thought that I had taken the "wild" out of cooking "wild game," since most of my other recipes have turned out alright.  However, cooking ground game was a different story.  At home, I was always raised to drain the ground beef after cooking it; but after cooking the ground elk, I was wishing I could add fat to it.  Generally when I have a kitchen disaster, I simply add more cumin to the recipe because I not only love the taste of cumin, but also it's ability to overpower just about any other flavor.  However, cumin met its match with my tacos.  Cumin many conquer taste, but it cannot conquer dryness.

So as I sit here on night number four eating dog food rolled in a tortilla,  looking at at least another two nights of tacos in my tupperware container, I wonder if the luxury of eating Panda Express at work is, at times, a hindrance.  If I wouldn't have gotten free lunch all week, then I would have been done with these tacos three days ago.

Curry: Take Two

As I look back on this rapidly concluding semester, I feel that my cooking skills have come a long way.  In fact, I would even go so far to say as most of my food is more than edible—sometimes it even tastes good.  However, as a college student, I don’t frequent too many other food venues, so I mainly end up eating my own cooking, or the free pizza you can get from Little Casers when they close (all you need to go is go out back by the dumpster and wait for the employees to bring out the extra pizza).   Normally it is not an issue to only eat my own cooking, after all, I don’t think it is too unbearable (although I did feed the last serving of my steak fajitas to Dakota).  However, after making an Easter visit to Tyler’s parents’ house last weekend, I realized a downfall of eating your own cooking.

Whenever you only eat you own cooking, or only eat someone else’s cooking, you don’t always know what you’re missing.  After eating pork roast cooked in a perfect blend of Italian spices, loads or real mashed potatoes, honey-smoked ham, lemon bread dripping with power-sugar glaze, and homemade pumpkin pie, you realize that you are not all that great of a cook. 

So as I sit here, eating what has so far been my most flavorful recipe, I am deeply aware of how much progress I still need to make.  But that’s ok with me.  Because if I had mastered cooking in one semester, I would not longer need to keep a cooking blog; and then I could no longer provide a way for you to procrastinate on your homework any longer.  Here’s to ignoring that paper for five more minutes.

Steak Salad

I cannot wait for the day when I can just throw together a recipless meal with whatever inhabits my cabinet.  Tonight, I came close.  I had some idea running threw my head about different meals I want to make this week—like curry and stir fry.  However, despite the fact I seem to frequent a grocery store at least every other day, I can never seem to get all the ingredients together.  Just before I cooked dinner, I went to Safeway (for the second time today), but did I manage to get the Worchester sauce for the marinade I wanted to make?  Of course not; I had forgotten my wallet.  I could have asked Tyler to get it for me, but I couldn’t even remember if Worchester sauce was what that I needed.  Instead, I watched Ty spend $10 on Dr. Pepper and four boxes of Gushers. 

I went home to a cabinet full of mismatched ingredients, which my mind hopelessly tried to piece together to create a flavorful dinner.  Curry, stir fry, and stew all passed through my mind, but alas, I was missing at least one key ingredient for each.  Since I didn’t want to trek to Safeway for a third time, I improvised with a very simple meal.  I made a steak salad (since I wanted to eat a dinner filled with alliteration).  I didn’t know how to flavor the steak, so I put the two vanguards of spices, salt and pepper, and then on a whim, I added some cumin because it is my favorite spice.  Paired with spinach and carrots, the dinner was better the alternative—Ramen.    

White Chicken Chili

While most of my peers have spent their adolescent lives texting their parents, my parents never had texting.  And while that saved me getting the constant “check in text” from my parents, at times, I wished I could have texted my parents simple questions such as “Do I claim a 1 or a 0 on my W4 form?”  Had my parents had texting ability to answer these short questions for me, many disasters could have been avoided, like last year when I ended up owing $300 dollars because I claimed “1” instead of “0.”    Needless to say, when my parents got texting last week, I was ecstatic.   And their texting abilities came in handy, especially because I knew there was no room for failure when making this recipe. 

After a long debate with my roommate and my mom, I decided to make White Chicken Chili as my debut recipe.  For the first time in my newly sprouted adult life, I was cooking for a group of people, and I did not want to ruin my own coming out party.

At Wal-mart, however, I realized I didn’t know what butter beans and great northern beans were.  I stood dumbly in the bean aisle, desperately searching for ingredients that the small, selective Wyoming Wal-mart might not carry.  I knew it was too late to call my mom, it was well past 10pm in Wisconsin.  But then I realized I could text her to see if she was awake.  I sent a quick text, and moments later the slight humming of my phone alerted me to my mom’s message, which read, “I don’t know. Google it.” Impressed that my mom was still up and had such a rapid response, I really didn’t care that she didn’t know.  After some more searching, I finally found them on the top shelf, hiding from their 5’ 2’’ buyers.    

After the brief Wal-mart incident, the chili making went off without a problem.  I didn’t even cry much when I cut the onions.  I did go a little over board on the cumin—but it’s hard to be lenient when using your favorite spice, and it did give the chili a “nice kick,” as girls described it when the ate it the following evening.    

Finally, I have decided that I am going to be rating each dish because I do not have the vocabulary or food expertise to accurately describe what I cook.

Time Commitment: 30 minutes (experienced) 1 hour (me)

Overall Taste: 6 on a scale of 1 (horrible) to 10 (great)

Presentation: 2 on a scale of 1 (horrible) to 10 (great).  This chili had a funny yellow color….

Difficulty: 3 on a scale of 1 (easy) to 10 (difficult)

Ingredients:

1.       1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2.       2 medium onions, chopped (1 cup)

3.       2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

4.       3 cups chicken broth

5.       2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

6.       2 tablespoons lime juice

7.       1 teaspoon ground cumin

8.       ½ teaspoon dried oregano

9.       ¼ teaspoon red pepper sauce

10.   ¼ teaspoon salt

11.   1 can (15oz) great northern beans

12.   1 can (11oz) white shoepeg corn

13.   1 can (15 oz) butter beans

14.   2 cups cooked chicken breast

Directions

1.       In 4-quart Dutch oven, heat oil over medium heat.  Cook onions and garlic in oil 4-6 minutes until tender.

2.       Stir in remaining ingredients except chicken.  Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer uncovered 20 minutes. Stir in chicken; simmer about 5 minutes.  

Steak Fajitas

As I handed her the plate of sizzling steak fajitas, Annie commented, “I have so you well trained.  I have you cooking for me now just like Tony does at home.”  Well I am sure the comment was comically well-intended, I am not sure my smile hid my exhaustion.  It was about 9pm, and Annie and were finally getting to dinner (with Annie doing the relaxing and me doing the cooking).  Not that I minded too much, I rather like cooking late at night.  Since discovering my chai tea recipe, I make it at least twice a week.  However, the steak fajitas presented a different challenge then mixing milk and tea bags to make chai.  I can’t seem to cook steak right.  Annie told me to put the burner moderately high and sear the meat for a few minutes both sides.  Even though I follow her directions, the meat seems to get too tough and rather tasteless.  These fajitas had a good marinade over then, but that didn’t save the steak from the frying pan and my cooking abilities. 

The first night when I cooked the fajitas they were decent considering the meat was overdone.  However, I had marinated a lot of meat for the fajitas, and I am not affected with over exaggeration when I say a lot.  I ate overdone steak fajitas for a week.  The last few servings were eaten only because my mom engrained a strong sense in eating leftovers in me, and unfortunately, my dad isn’t in Laramie to clean up the leftovers I don’t want.  Three years after leaving home, I am still finding things that I miss about it, and after the steak fajitas incident, I really missed my dad’s tolerant taste buds.  However, without my dad, I had a chance to be innovate and find a new “garbage disposal” that wouldn’t make me feel guilty about wasting food.  Turns out it wasn’t hard to find.  I just looked down into the most beautiful brown eyes that had long ago perfected the art of begging that labs are so well known for.  Dakota got more than one table scrap that night. 

Ingredients:

1.       Marinade (see below)

2.       1 ½ lb beef boneless top sirloin steak, 1 ½ inches thick

3.       2 large onions, sliced

4.       2 medium green or red bell peppers, cut

5.       2 tablespoons vegetable oil

6.       12 flour tortillas

7.       1 jar picante sauce

8.       1 cup Monterey Jack cheese

9.       1 ½ cups guacamole

10.   ¾ cups sour cream

Ingredients for Marinade

1.       ½ cup vegetable oil

2.       ¼ cup red wine vinegar

3.       1 teaspoon sugar

4.       1 teaspoon oregano

5.       1 teaspoon chili powder

6.       ½ teaspoon garlic powder

7.       ½ teaspoon salt

8.       ¼ teaspoon pepper

1.       In a small bowl, make marinade by combing all ingredients.

2.       Place beef in a resealable plastic bag or glass dish.  Pour marinade over beef; turn beef to coat with marinade. Cover and refrigerate at least 8 hours but no longer than 24 hours

3.       Cook beef either by grilling or on stovetop.  If on stovetop, cook with onions, peppers, and vegetable oil. 

4.       Heat oven to 325 degrees.  Wrap tortillas in foil.  Heat in oven about 15 minutes

5.       Build your own fajita (I hope I don’t actually have to write out this process like the book took a paragraph to do.  If you can’t figure out how to build your fajita and fold the tortilla, you probably shouldn’t be making this recipe.  Don’t feel offended, I am just saving you time and frustration).  

Hurry Curry Chicken

The beauty of the 911 system is that someone always picks up.  The dispatcher will always send help, even if you’ve done something stupid like starting your kitchen on fire with the towel that caught flame when you took out the pizza (which almost happened to me).  Regardless of the caller’s stupidity, the dispatcher is always there and will always send help.  I wish that I could say the same for my “911” system.

My “911” system is on speed dial, since I use it frequently.  However, I wouldn’t have quite so many calls logged to my mother if she would pick up everything I called.  And if she doesn’t pick up, I have to shuffle through my next “911” alternatives, my dad and my home phone, before I get to a reliable dispatcher, my sister, who will pick up the phone even if she is driving a stick shift through downtown Minneapolis during rush hour while drinking coffee (which she had done with me in the car). 

Fortunately, I didn’t have to go through my alternative options because my first dispatcher picked up.  When I called my mom, my curry looked more like chicken curry soup than chicken curry.  I tried to boil away the water to thicken the curry sauce, but, according to my mom, while boiling normally does thicken sauces, sauces that are yogurt based (like this one), only get more watery the more you boil them.  Immediately, I pulled the curry off the burner, and thought that we were going to have soup for dinner.  However, my mom and my roommates began to spew out a list of redemptive ideas.

Staring at my curry soup, with everyone talking at me, I could feel my stress level rise.  I don’t deal well with external stress, such as loud noises and crowds, because I generate more than enough internal stress for myself to handle.  That’s probably why I have adjusted so well to living in Wyoming—its endless tracts of emptiness inhabited only by antelope and the occasional person, creates little opportunity for external stress.  If you have ever driven the 120 mile stretch between Douglas and Gillette, you understand what I mean.  But the kitchen, at the moment, was far from the empty, exhaustive, fields of sage brush and antelope; everyone was loudly talking, trying to redeem the curry with cornstarch and water.  Unable to deal with the pressing external forces, I focused in on the curry, the only thing in the room that was quite and still, and realized that slowly, on its own, it was beginning to solidify.  Turns out I forgot a cooking rule: that once cooled, sauces tend to solidify.  So with everyone talking and freaking out, I grabbed a fork and dug into the wonderful curry. 

Ingredients:

½ 2.25 lb. pkg. Chicken Breast

1 tbsp olive or vegetable oil

1 tsp. paprika

½  tsp. salt and pepper

1 8oz container plain yogurt

½ cup low fat mayo

½ cup chopped onion

½ cup raisins

1 tbsp. curry powder

1 tsp ginger

Rice

1. In skillet, combine oil, paprika, salt, pepper, heat and add chicken cubes.  Cook over medium heat for  

    about 15 min, stirring occasionally until chicken begins to brown and juices run clear. 

2. Meanwhile, in small bowl, combine yogurt, mayo, onions, raisins, curry, ginger and mix.

3. Add yogurt mixture to chicken, stir and cook for 3 to 4 minutes or until bubbly and heated through. 

Naan

Besides Chai, my other favorite Indian staple is naan, a grilled flatbread similar to a pita or tortilla.  Naan is an excellent accompaniment to Spicy Chicken in Peanut Sauce, curry, or anything else that tastes better with white, unhealthy carbohydrates wrapped around it.   I even considered resurrecting my hummus recipe that I so miserably failed at making earlier this semester.  However, Hannah has wanted to make curry for a while, so we are going to make that instead of reliving my painful hummus experience (the curry recipe will be posted on Friday). 

My dough stared back at me with a definite look as it relentlessly flaked and fell apart despite my kneading, as if to remind me of my own incompetence to perform a simple task.   As I slowly kneaded the defiance out, the simple, redundant processes of pushing, turning, pushing, turning, make me thinking reminded me of how far removed I am from the rest of the world.  Possessing the ability to cook is unnecessary for me.  I could easily eat out every night or put the food industrial’s latest frozen concoction in my microwave.  However, for many women, cooking represents much more than a hobby they can dabble in.  For many, cooking equates to a survival skill, both for physical and social survival.  For centuries, it has been expected that women cook, and these social expectations cannot be thrown without repercussions.  

Looking at my crumbling dough, I wonder if I could ever survive in that culture where cooking is necessary, even if I was raised learning the intricacies of cooking.  Although some people will argue that I live a better life because I am separated from the entrapment of domesticity, while I do not necessarily disagree with them, I also feel that cooking is still often negatively equated with patriarchal control.  Cooking is a survival skill, and if people only know how to order at Applebee’s or put Marie Calendar in the microwave, haven’t they lost something?  Isn’t it a bit strange that as American’s, we no longer have to possess a skill that, on a fundamental level, is necessary for us to remain alive?  If we lose touch with our basic needs and skills, does that mean we are losing touch with our humanity?    

Recipe: http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/naan/Detail.aspx

Lasagna

This is the recipe I wish my mom had 12 years ago.  I have always loved lasagna, but my mom seldom made it because it was “too putzy*.”  I lived such a deprived childhood; my mom would so rarely make one of my favorite dishes that “lasagna” was almost eradicated from my lexicon (and my stomach).  In infrequent moments of weakness, my mom would buy us Stouffer’s lasagna.  After my brother devoured the last piece of gooey deliciousness, my stomach would long for the tastes and fulfillment that so infrequently found home in its gluttonous cavern. 

My mom didn’t make lasagna because it was an overly complex recipe, but rather because she hated to boil the noodles before assembling the lasagna.  If my mom had this recipe when I was growing up, I could have had lasagna every week because it requires no boiling. That’s right mom, you stole my sweet days of childhood lasagna eating because you never discovered that boiling is unnecessary.  However, I do not blame her because I got this recipe from my lasagna-loving roommate’s mother, who has two doctorate degrees.  Apparently it takes two doctorate degrees to discover that if you pour about a cup of water in the sides of the lasagna pan before you bake it, the oven will do the boiling for you.  So what did I learn from this recipe?  That if I truly want to stymie the conundrums of cooking, I had better prepare to be in school for quite a while.    

*Is “putzy” a real word?  It’s sure not in the dictionary, but it is definitely a favorite descriptor of my mother’s. 

Ingredients

Group A (combine in its own bowl)

1.       1 pound ground turkey or beef (cooked and drained)

2.       1 tbsp minced garlic

3.       1tsp dried oregano

4.       1 tsp salt

5.       2- 15oz cans of tomatoes diced

6.       1 jar spaghetti sauce

Group B (combine in its own bowl)

1.       3 cups creamy cottage cheese

2.       1/2 cup parmesan cheese

3.       2 tbsp parsley

4.       2 eggs

5.       1 tsp salt

6.       1 tsp pepper

Other ingredients to be used in layering process

1.       1 pound mozzarella cheese shredded

2.       extra parmesan cheese for the top

3.       1 package lasagna noodles (uncooked)

How to Layer:

1.       Start with a scoop of sauce to cover the bottom of a 9X13 inch pan

2.       cover with a layer of noodles (uncooked noodles)

3.       1/2 cottage cheese mixture

4.       1/2 mozzarella

5.       layer of sauce

6.       Repeat the layers (don't over fill the pan - it will bubble over and cause a mess)

Baking:

1.       Add parmesan cheese on the top and put 1 cup water in at the edges of the pan

2.       Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes at 375 degrees

3.       Uncover and cook for 15 minutes or until the middle is hot and the edges are browned

4.       Let it cool for about 15 minutes or it will be runny.

Pretzels

The large pink plastic bowl stood waiting to devour Hannah’s and I’s carefully measured ingredients, like it does every time Hannah and I make pretzels.  Hannah and I make pretzels for two reasons:

1) we are having a salt craving that cannot be stymied by cheese alone (we are true Wisconsinites; well Hannah almost is, she just missed the boarder by about 80 miles)

 2) We mentally can no longer face our piles of homework without a break.  Sometimes I wonder whether the yeast we put into the pretzels manages to creep down the hall and into our homework because our piles of homework always seem to rise more than our pretzels.

I could write a whole separate blog about all the times we make pretzels.  We have been slowly progressing towards creating the perfect imitation of an Auntie Annie’s pretzel.  We started with Hannah’s old pretzel recipe from third grade, and now use this recipe found at http://www.food.com/recipe/auntie-annes-pretzels-copycat-59462, with some modifications.  Last weekend, Tony and I ended discussing why our pretzels didn’t get the same brown crust as Auntie Annie’s.  Apparently, Hannah and I had been missing a big step in the pretzel process: boiling.  So this time when we were making pretzels, Hannah and I were being extra careful, hoping that this batch of pretzels would be our long desired Auntie Annie’s pretzels. 

As I was measuring out the salt (I was even using the official teaspoons, not just my cereal spoon, which my mom tells me is about a teaspoon), I said to Hannah, “Let’s measure very carefully, and follow all the directions precisely.” I spoke a moment too soon, because I accidently poured too much salt into the teaspoon, and it filled up past the brim.  As usual, Hannah saved the pretzels by quickly sticking her hand under the teaspoon and catching the excess salt.  I stared at her stupidly, humored at my own ineptitude to carefully measure.  After we mixed the dough, let it rise, and rolled it into pretzel shapes, we put on the water to being the boiling process.

Tony had briefly described the boiling process to me, but rather look up exactly how to boil pretzels, Hannah and decided to follow Tony’s vague directions.  As the water simmered, we added some baking soda (too much it turns out) to the water and then plopped in the pretzels for a 30-45 second bath.  We didn’t know how long to leave them in there, but this amount of time seemed to work out alright.  Then we baked them according to the directions. 

Overall, these pretzels were a large improvement over our last several batches, and we got the brown crust around them that we desired.  However, for about 8-9 cups of water, don’t put in more than about 2 teaspoons of baking soda.  The pretzels tasted a bit too much like baking soda.  The bottoms also got a little crispy, but that is probably the fault of our archaic oven.  If you’re an experienced baker, and know what else is missing in this recipe, let me know.  Otherwise, if you’re a newbie like me, I would wait a bit on this recipe until Hannah figure out a few more of the subtleties of pretzel making.  Don’t worry it won’t take us too long; we make pretzels at least once a week.  

Leftovers

During my high school days, there was only one thing I dreaded coming home too, and it was not my parents after breaking curfew (because I never had a curfew).  It was leftover night.   I have always hated leftovers.  For some reason, after removing food from its pan and placing it into plastic square containers, I feel that the food takes on a new unappetizing life.  Squished tight into too-small containers to save refrigerator space, it becomes about as appealing as squeezing into my middle school jeans after a night of cooking making. Something about cold, plastic-cased, aging food is very unappealing, unless you’re a microbe. Despite the fact that the coolness of the refrigerator is supposed to prevent microbes from slowing turning your lasagna into mold, there is just something off-putting about the microbe breeding ground we more politely call the refrigerator.  In high school, I used to excessively clean the refrigerator, without being asked.  I think I felt, subconsciously, that if my refrigerator was coated in a thin layer of Clorox, that somehow I would be more inclined to eat my mom’s last night’s creation. 

                However, college is all about challenging, and sometimes changing, your perspectives.  For me, college living has changed my perspective on leftovers.  Two weeks ago, I had enchiladas, soup, and my roommate’s lasagna for my dinner options.  Last week, too overwhelmed by my midterm test and term paper, I reverted back to my old habits and ate Mac and Cheese, Lipton Soup Packets (the fancy form of Ramen), and about 7-8 bagels that were leftover from a conference I attended.   Last week I realized that I missed leftovers. I kept opening up my fridge (which ironically is much more revolting than my mother’s and hasn’t felt the sweet kiss of Clorox because the refrigerator existed before Clorox was invented), hoping to find some leftover creation waiting for me.  By Friday, I really felt desperate.  Turns out my body had adjusted to eating something besides string cheese and bean tacos, and my body could no longer handle meager rations paired with increased stomach acid from my stress level.  I can’t wait to make a new meal this week because that will mean I have new leftovers.    

Cannelloni

         I hate onions. I have shed more tears over onions than anything else in my life, which is saying a lot since I cry over almost anything (I even cried when Andy gave away his toys at the end of Toy Story 3).  I don’t even have to be cutting the onions either.  Their presence alone makes my eyes water for hours afterwards.  Can your eyes have a food allergy?  Because I feel like mine do.

          Despite my apparent allergic reaction to the onions, this was a great recipe; although it is not one you would want to attempt unless you are either 1) an advanced cook 2) have the help of advanced cooks   3) stupidly adventurous and willing to go hungry if you mess up.  However, Annie and Tony didn’t really follow a recipe, so perhaps this recipe is as malleable as the homemade pasta Annie and Tony whipped up.  Annie and Tony have surpassed the phase of cooking where a recipe is needed.  Their cooking has become a smorgous board of past experience and knowledge, with a large dollop of creativity and improvisation mixed in.  They are like the jazz artists who no longer need sheet music; they can simply taste a timbre of the style and follow where it takes them, creating in every step. 

           If you don’t quite understand the following recipe, it’s because there wasn’t one.  I kept trying to pin Annie and Tony down on definitive’s, but like the jazz artists, their creativity could not be well transcribed into understandable sheet music for us less creative cooks.  So you can try to follow my instructions, or if they seem to convoluted to you, try this recipe which is similar to what Annie and Tony made (minus the pork): http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/pork-spinach-and-ricotta-manicotti-recipe/index.html

          Besides the fact that Annie and Tony don’t need to follow recipes anymore, they also make everything themselves, so explaining this recipe becomes even more complicated.  So let’s start with the pasta.  Cannelloni is homemade pasta that has not been dried, and typically means that you need to make it yourself.  The recipe is as follows:

Cannelloni

                2 cups Semolina flour (this is the typical pasta flour)

                2 cups whole wheat flour

                Mix together the fours with some water. I really have no idea how much water they put in, but it was about the consistency of sugar dough.  After letting the dough sit for an hour we rolled it out and cut it into rectangles.  We then filled the rectangles with the following:

Fresh Ricotta

½ Gallon whole milk

1 cup heavy whipping cream

3 Tb of lemon juice

Warm milk and cream to roaring boil.  Add lemon juice. Turn down heat cook till it curdles (whatever that means)

*Or you could be lazy like me and go to Wal-Mart and buy ricotta. 

Fresh Parmesan

 1 ½ cups Fresh Mozzarella (or 2 cups if your me or Hannah, and you are going to eat about ½ cup before you bake it).

Italian Seasoning

One onion

After we filled the rectangles and rolled them up, we put them in pan, covered them with pasta sauce, and let them bake at 350 for about 25 minutes.  

Chi Tea: Take 2

              When I finish answering a question with the phrase, “But I really don’t know why I think that,” you probably shouldn’t believe my answer.  I have a tendency to get false ideas stuck in my head; ideas that I will foolishly act on. This is not a trait you want to have when you cook; especially if you only have one chance to get it right.    

               On Valentine’s Day this year, I got two cards in the mail and one small manila envelope (and no flowers or chocolate from my boyfriend).  The first card was from an always thoughtful mother of one of my friends back home.  The second was from my mother, containing two pieces of mail that were mistakenly sent to my home address (she also didn’t include chocolate, or even three stick of bubble gum like she used to send me in her letters when I was at camp).  The small manila envelope was from my sister, and it contained five tea bags, a Ziploc bag full of cardamom, cloves, peppercorns, and cinnamon, and $2 labeled “milk money.”  It was everything I needed to make the chi tea that my pocketbook forbade me making in my previous post. 

                I was excited to make the chi, but the spices smelled so go, that I left then by my bed for a week.  It was like falling asleep in India all over again.  Last night, knowing that Annie and Tony are coming up on Saturday, I decided to make chi.  With the limited number of spices Annie sent me, I knew I only had one chance to get the chi right.  Everything went smoothly until I had to add the sweetened condensed milk.  Like I mentioned before, I have a tendency to make false assumptions, based on poor logic.  Normally when you cook and it calls for ingredients found a can, you dump the whole can in.  So I dumped the whole can of sweetened condensed milk into the chi.

                Initially, when I first tried the chi, I was ecstatic.  The blend of spices in this recipe is the closest to what I tasted in India.  However, half a cup later, the sugar was overwhelming me, and I was struggling to finish my cup.  I thought it was strange, since I had followed the recipe.  Curious to when even my sweet tooth was on overload, I rechecked the recipe and realized that I should have only put in half a can of sweetened condensed milk. 

                So this afternoon, I am going to bundle up, scrape the ceaseless Wyoming snow off my car and head out to Wal-Mart to buy tea bags, and make this recipe again, minus the sweetened condensed milk. Luckily, I have some spices left over.  Hopefully when I mix the unsweetened chi with the overly sweetened chi, they will equal each other out.  Tomorrow, if Annie and Tony will be able to make it up over the I-80 pass (which always seems to be closed in winter) or over the Hwy 287 pass (which should be closed more during the winter), they will be able to enjoy a cup of chi that is slightly less sweet.  

               

*For recipe, go look at the previous post labeled "chi tea"

Chicken Tortilla Soup

What is white, squishable, and comes in a can?  Hominy, so if you make this recipe, don’t bother googling what hominy is, you’ll find in the bean section.  I like to think of hominy as the albino version of the black bean, or the bean who didn’t get his tan on last summer.  At least I think it’s a bean; if its not, I’m sure my expert-chef brother-in-law Tony will correct me in the comments section.  When Hannah, Alyx, and I first found this recipe online, we had no idea what hominy was, and we didn’t think that a Wyoming Walmart would actually have it.  Turns out it must be pretty common since Walmart even carried a generic version of it, saving us 17 cents.  I am sure that the last sentence makes Hannah, Alyx, and I seem very competent; but don’t worry we will finish college. 

        Making the soup went off without a hitch, probably because instead of cooking, I was pre-gaming. Now I don’t mean pre-gaming in the traditional sense, but rather snacking on all the ingredients before we put them into the soup.  I ate a good chuck of the French bread, as well as a good proportion of the black beans, cheese, and tortilla chips.  This is one of the reasons that I never wanted to start cooking, because when I cook its highly likely that I will eat through all the ingredients before they make it into the finished product.  By the time the soup was done, I could barely finish a bowl.  But the bowl that I did have was pretty darn good.  This is definitely a recipe to try. 

1 onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 teaspoons chili powder

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes

1 (10.5 ounce) can condensed chicken broth

1 1/4 cups water

1 cup whole corn kernels, cooked

1 cup white hominy

1 (4 ounce) can chopped green chile peppers

1 (15 ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

2 boneless chicken breast halves, cooked and cut into bite-sized pieces

crushed tortilla chips

sliced avocado

shredded Monterey Jack cheese

chopped green onions

1. In a medium stock pot, heat oil over medium heat. Sauté onion and garlic in oil until soft. Stir in chili powder, oregano, tomatoes, broth, and water. Bring to a boil, and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes.
2. Stir in corn, hominy, chilies, beans, cilantro, and chicken. Simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Ladle soup into individual serving bowls, and top with crushed tortilla chips, avocado slices, cheese, and chopped green onion.

Enchiladas

1 lb lean ground beef

1 medium onion, chopped ½ cup

½ cup sour cream

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

¼ teaspoon pepper

1/3 cup chopped green bell pepper

2/3 cup water

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 ½ teaspoons fresh oregano

¼ teaspoon ground cumin

1 can (4 oz) chopped green chilies, drained

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 can (15 oz) tomato sauce

8 tortillas

Shredded cheese, sour cream, and onions if desired

1.       Heat oven to 350

2.       In 10 inch skillet, cook beef over medium heat 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until brown; drain.  Stir in onion, sour cream, 1 cup cheese, parsley and pepper. Cover and remove from heat

3.       In 2 quart saucepan, heat bell pepper, water, chili powder, oregano, cumin, chilies, garlic, and tomatoes sauce to boiling, stirring occasionally; reduce heat.  Simmer uncovered 5 minutes. Pour into ungreased 9 inch pie plate.

4.       Dip each tortilla into sauce in pie late to coat both sides. Spoon about ¼ cup beef mixture onto each tortillas; roll around filling. Place seam side down in ungreased 11x7 inch glass baking dish. Pour remaining sauce over enchiladas

5.       Bake uncovered about 20 minutes until bubbly.  Garnish with shredded cheese, sour cream and onions. 

When you’re learning how to cook, just like when you’re learning how to bike, it’s always good to have someone close by, just in case you fall or almost dump too much of something in (unless it’s vanilla; my brother claims you can never put in too much vanilla).  Fortunately for me, Hannah was busy reading the literary theorist Spivak, who is about as dense as the ingredient list, when I happened to comment that I thought this recipe called for a lot of garlic.  Hannah inquired how much, and I held up the whole garlic (which I now know, thanks to Google, is called the head).  She gave me a quizzical look, and asked “are you sure it called for that?”  To which I replied, “Yeah, it called for one clove of garlic.”  Hannah laughed, and said that a clove of garlic was actually just one little chuck of the garlic head.  Thanks to Hannah, disaster was averted.   

                While the rest of the cooking went as smoothly as possible for someone of my talent, with me only almost forgetting to mix in the first four ingredients with the beef, the enchiladas turned out to be edible.  Hannah like them more than I did, but sour cream doesn’t sit well with my taste buds; I naïvely thought that the sour cream flavor would bake out, just as the rum bakes out in a rum cake.  As usual, my logic ended up proving false.  The onions also were a bit of a spoiler, since I forgot to cook them with the beef so when they came out of the oven and into my mouth, they were a bit crunchy. Next time, I think I’ll make extra sauce to mix in with the meat, since the sauce was quite good.  However, they were much improved the next morning.  I made the full recipe so I had eight enchiladas to eat, so I figured that I better beat the moldy microbes to my Mexican fiesta.  

Ratatouille

Ingredients:

1.       Old house (100+ years or older work best)

2.       Holes in Walls (either self-made, or natural)

3.       Hair (the more the better)

4.       Mice (if you’re on the timid side) or Rats (if your gutsy)

The other morning I woke up and realized that I had made a new friend during the night.  Curled up in my hair was a little mouse, who I am sure, set safely behind glass in a pet store, would have been quite cute.  However, the lack of a thin pain of glass makes quite a difference on your perception towards a creature. I don’t know how long he had been there, but his little claws created a slight tugging on my hair.  I was up in an instant, and on the opposite side of the room.  He wasn’t nearly as phased as I was; he simply sat there for a bit, as if wondering why I had ruined his warm bed and then scampered back to his hole.  Knowing I had to get rid of my accidently made “Ratatouille,” and saying a quick prayer of thanks for 24 hour Wal-marts, I grabbed my keys and began to formulate how I was going to get rid of the leftovers. 

What to do with your leftover Ratatouille:

1.       4 am trip to Wal-mart

2.       $35 worth of d-Con mice traps

3.       Peanut Butter (Natural Skippy works best)

4.       Patience

Spicy Chicken in Peanut Sauce

                One poor decision that I repeatedly make in my life is going grocery shopping when I am hungry.  Suddenly everything from Super Pretzels to Little Debbie Zebra Cakes look appetizing (except that Zebra Cakes always look good).  This time I managed to make it through Wal-mart without indulging any of my sinful pleasures, because I knew that I was going to go home and make Spicy Chicken.   My roommate Hannah and her friend Alex were also over, and we decided to make it together.  My excitement mounted as I open the cookbook, but the moment I turned to page 159, I wished that I had brought the Zebra Cakes because I knew that I wouldn't be able to make Spicy Chicken tonight. 

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive or vegetable oil

8 large chicken thighs (I used chicken breasts)

1 large onion, chopped

2 cans (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes with green chilies, undrained

1 can (14.5 oz) crust tomatoes, undrained

2 tablespoons honey

1 ½ teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/3 cup creamy peanut butter

2 cups hot couscous*

*we used pita bread because, for reasons I do not know, wrote pita bread on my grocery list instead of couscous. 

1.       In a nonstick skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Cook chicken in oil about 4 minutes, turning once, until brown

2.       In 4 to 5 quart slow cooker, mix onion, diced and crushed tomatoes, honey, cumin, and cinnamon.  Add chicken. Spoon mixture over chicken.

3.       Cover and cook on low heat for 7 to 8 hours

4.       Stir in peanut butter until melted and well blended. Serve chicken and sauce over couscous.  

Luckily, Alex had a bit more cooking experience than I do, and decided that we could sauté the recipe instead of putting it in the crock pot for 7 to 8 hours.  I was a little hesitant, because of the hummus experience, as also because if this was a failure, bean tacos were our only other dinner option. Bean tacos didn’t sound too satisfying to Alex and Hannah, who have little more sophisticated taste than I do, so we decided to sauté the recipe instead.  Here is what we did:

1.       First, we followed step number on the original recipe, and part way through cooking the chicken we added onions since Alex said they should be cooked longer. 

2.       One the chicken was done; we dumped everything else except the peanut butter into the pan.

3.       Once it had simmered for a while, we pulled it off the burner and added the peanut butter.

While my directions may seem vague in comparison to the original, don’t be too concerned.  This recipe, even with our alternative cooking method was amazing.  It was by far the best dish I have ever cooked; although that is really not a substantial claim since I haven’t cooked that much.  Whether you make this in the slow cooker or on the stove, it is definitely worth the effort.