Stuffed

That title is not referring to how I feel right now but rather what the theme of this week is turning out to be.  Tonight I made stuffed chicken and tomorrow I plan on making stuffed peppers. I didn't even realize when I was food shopping that I had planned two stuffed items into my weekly meal plan..but I like it. Both are experiments...today's is actually successful!  I made chicken stuffed with baby spinach, pine nuts, roasted peppers and mozarella cheese. Anytime I've attempted stuffed chicken in the past the cheese has exploded out from the chicken and ruined everything.  I don't know what I did differently this time, but it was completely successful (and really easy).  All you have to do is saute the baby spinach, pine nuts and roasted peppers in olive oil for a minute or two, until the spinach is wilted.  Then you take thin chicken cutletes, place the spinach mix towards the top, top with the cheese and roll really tight.  Dip the cutlets in egg and breadcrumbs, and then cook in olive oil until the chicken is cooked through (flipping once - carefully). 

I also took 600 pictures of this meal until I found one that wasn't too blurry and out of focus. I busted out my tripod for this so appreciate it!

Cooking Time Again! Potatoes mmm

Man I am FULL!! I did a bit more cooking tonight, this time making cheesy potato skins. The recipe was actually more twice baked potatoes rather than potato skins, but either way delicious.  I love potatoes so much. For such a huge meat eater though, I'm not a big fan of bacon, so I left that out of the recipe.  I'm sure there's tons of stuff you can add into the potato skins but I just went with cheese, butter, milk and sour cream--a dairy delight.

Just like yesterday, I used a bit too much milk so I had to drain the filling a bit..but otherwise they were super yummy.

Cooking Time! A little Quiche?

I feel like I haven't cooked in a while. I mean, I've been cooking for myself, girl's gotta eat but mostly quick foods - pasta, chili, stirfry. I haven't followed a recipe in a while.

I decided to make this artichoke and feta quiche tonight. A lot of people are afraid to cook anything big because they don't want to mess it up..but cooking is about experimenting. Not everything you cook is going to taste good. It won't look like the cookbook picture and it won't always be perfect. That was the case with this meal. It tasted good but I know if I make it again, it will be better.  I should've followed my instinct and added an extra egg so that the pie set firmer. It was a little too milky, so it ended up falling apart a bit when I cut it. I also hate when a recipe tells you it takes 45 minutes to cook, and 60 minutes later I'm still waiting for the top to brown. Another tip I've learned as I cook more is that anytime a recipe says 350 degrees, always up it by 25 degrees. I didn't do that this time and I should've.

Anyway, here's a little picture of my meal.  Another smashbook post to come a little later in the week (maybe tomorrow, we'll see!).

Cooking Sunday: Bean and Potato Gratin

I love cooking and learning new recipes but I never have the time to make complicated dishes.  When I get home from work, I just want the easist and fastest thing possible so I can sit and relax.  So I decided that every Sunday (especially now that football season is over) I'll make a brand new meal, chosen completely at random.  I simply open up my cook book and cook whatever is on the page (except if it's seafood...not only do I not really eat it, it also stinks up the apartment).

Today I made Bean and Potato Gratin, from How to Cook Everything.  It was delicious, but how could it not be? It's beans...and potatos, two delicious things. It was extremely easy to make except the cooking time was almost 2 hours!  All you need are potatos, cannellini beans, vegi stock, thyme, butter, salt and pepper.  Spread the beans seasoned with thyme at the bottom of a pyrex baking dish, then slice the potatoes thinly and layer them on top. Pour the stock over it and top with butter, salt, pepper and a little more thyme.  Bake it covered in the oven at 325 for 45 minutes then uncover it and bake for another 45 minutes. 

Even though it took so long to be done it was worth the wait.  It was the perfect lazy Sunday slightly hungover (oops) food. 

Cooking Out the Winter Blues

As I mentioned in my previous posts I'm in a serious funk and I need to snap out of it. I think part of the reason I'm so unwilling to move most of the time is that my apartment is ridiculously cold.  Right now I'm in fleece pajamas (as comfy as they sound) and a giant fur blanket and i'm still ice cold.  How am I supposed to get off the couch in these conditions? 

I did force myself off the couch to do some cooking and since this has accidently become sort of a cooking blog I will write about it here. Speaking of accidents, I am also accidently a vegetarian lately because buying meat is so expensive! I can't wait to visit my parents and eat a giant steak.  Don't let this blog fool you...I LOVE meat.  meat meat meat.

But tonight I prepared a meatless dinner and it was nevertheless delicious.  It was Quinoa (pronounced Keen-wah as I learned a few weeks ago) with spinich, avocados and feta.  I love to pretend I'm on a cooking show when I follow recipes from a book so I tend to lay out all my ingredients in front of me

I actually used correct measurements for this one.  Since I'm cooking for one most of the time I tend to reduce recipe measurements so that I only make one serving.  Sometimes this works out well other times I get my measurements slightly off. 

This recipe also required avocados, not shown in the picture.  Just the other day I asked someone how restaurants keep their guacamole green all day.  For those who don't know if you leave cut avocados out for a while they turn this really disgusting black color.  Apparently, if you brush the sliced avocados with lemon they don't get that gross black color.  Lesson learned. 

There were only two disasters when cooking this meal.  For one I spilled the Quinoa everywhere (time to use the dustbuster I recently bought). Then I realized I was using a saucepan I did not have a cover for...in a recipe that called for a covered saucepan.

It's OK though.  You can't get frustrated when you make mistakes.  After the quinoa was cooked, I added the vegetables plus feta cheese, olive oil and a little lemon.  The result? Delicious.



Carving a Chicken...Or Why I'm Glad I'm Not a Surgeon

Confession:  I did not make this chicken.  I bought it at my local supermarket.  The beauty of a rotissere chicken is you only need to heat it up, it's delicious and you can use the leftovers for so many delicious meals.   Despite all it's magic, I've been avoiding buying one for embarrassing reason that I'm afraid to cut it.  I bought one once and had such a hard time cutting it that I ended up just pulling bits of chicken off with my fingers and wasting half the meat.

Well not this time. I'm going to get over my chicken cutting anxiety.  I brought out my new cookbook (How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman) and turned to the chapter on carving a roasted chicken.

The directions seemed easy enough but it seemed to forget something...chickens have bones.  Cutting straight down the middle of the chicken proved to be too much for me and I just ended up making a huge mess.  Once I got the chicken into two half I thought I could relax but the only easy part of this chicken was cutting off the legs.  Everything else was very very messy.  Let me just say...I am glad that I never became a surgeon.  No one wants to end up like this:

I definitely need to work on my knife skills more but the chicken still tasted delicious.