Archive for October, 2009

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October 22, 2009

Fish Tacos

So, I had some leftover ingredients from my old food I’d made recently as well as some fish still left in the freezer, so I got some tortillas when I was buying food at the store for the lasagna and decided to make fish tacos.

I defrosted and breaded the fish using the same method I used with the breaded tilapia (click here to review).

The difference was that this time I decided to pan fry the fish.

I filled the bottom of a frying pan with oil (maybe 1/8 inch deep) and turned the stove on high.

I took the breaded fish and placed it in the pan for about 2 minutes on each side – again, it’s very important with fish that you do not overcook it.

Tortillas were stacked and placed in the microwave for about 10 seconds; heating them makes them more pliable.

I placed two tortillas against each other on the plate and put the following ingredients into them.

-cooked fish – shredded into small chunks (not too small though)

-shredded mexican cheese – leftover from making enchiladas

-chopped carrots – bag leftover from salad

-red cabbage – bag leftover from salad

I didn’t put any condiment on this but I’m sure there are plenty that you could use that would taste great.

It turned out delicious.  Here’s what it looked like:

I ended up eating four of these – so good.

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October 19, 2009

Lasagna Diavolo (spicy)

Lasagna is really easy, and is also a really easy dish to make minor adaptations to.  I decided that I wanted to make lasagna but that I also wanted to make a twist on the lasagna mom taught me to make as a child.

There are basically 4 critical components to classic lasagna

-noodles – lasagna

-meat – ground beef

-sauce – tomato sauce

-cheese – ricotta or cottage

I still used the lasagna noodles but I replaced the ground beef with spicy italian sausage, the tomato sauce with italian stewed tomatoes (canned store brand) and in addition to the cottage cheese I added some mozarella.

Here’s the basic cooking process

1) Start big pot of water to boiling with a little bit of oil.  Add noodles.  Allow boil until noodles are soft.

2) Brown meat in a frying pan.

3) Add a bit of olive oil (or other oil is fine) to a pot.  Place sauce (or tomatoes) into a pot and allow to warm (don’t turn on high or you’ll have a kitchen covered with tomatoes).  Put any flavors into sauce that you would like to add.  Since I wanted spicy, I added red pepper flakes and garlic salt and was generous.

4) when meat is brown, add to sauce mixture.

5) Grease a baking pan with oil or Pam.  Layer in the following fashion:

sauce, cheese, noodles, sauce, cheese, noodles until pan is full or your run out of ingredients.  make sure you cover the top with shredded cheese.

Bake for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

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edits: I felt like mine needed something crunchy, so I’m thinking I’ll probably add a veggie next time.  Probably something like spinach should do the trick – crunchy but not overpowering.

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October 18, 2009

Better Tasting Cheaper Popcorn

Yeah, Microwave Popcorn is easy.  I know this.  However, it’s terrible for you and it’s expensive.

Here’s a technique I learned from my dad for making simple homemade popcorn:

Buy Orville Redenbacher kernels

This is a few bucks for an enormous number of popcorn kernels.

All you need now is a pan and some oil (i use vegetable oil but i’ve heard good things about olive oil).

Put the number of kernels in the bottom of the pot that you want to use.  You’ll find that these kernels make FAR more popcorn than you would probably guess, so better to go light on the kernels than to make a mountain in the bottom of the pot.

Add oil until you can nearly coat the bottom of the pot.  Swirl the pot around so the oil fully coats the bottom of the pot.

Turn on medium-high heat on the stove and allow the pot to start cooking.  Let the popcorn pop until the popping slows to about one pop per second (have a container ready to put the popcorn in!).

As soon as the popping slows, dump the popcorn into your container and then salt to taste.  Enjoy!

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October 17, 2009

Breaded Tilapia with Pepper/Onion CornBread

I bought some tilapia (fish) filets at the store this week since I’d been at the beach and had been craving seafood.  If you’re curious what a tilapia is, you can check out the wikipedia here.

I decided I wanted to bread and then oven cook the seafood.  I also bought some cornbread mix since I thought I was either going to try and make hush puppies or some cornbread.

Because the cornbread said it would take longer to cook, I made it first.

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cornbread

I made the cornbread using a mix and simply following the instructions on the back of the box.  However, I wanted to add something to it – I decided on using some frozen peppers and onions that I had in the freezer.  I defrosted the onions and peppers, chopped them up as small as I could and put them in the cornbread mixture and stirred it up.

I poured all of this into a round pan and then put this all in the preheated oven at 425 as described on the box.

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Breaded tilapia

Once the seafood was defrosted (for this, I put it in a bag and sat the bag in warm water as the packaging suggested), I used a classic breading technique.

1) took some bread crumbs that I had left over from the meatlof making, putting a large portion of those out on a plate.

2) put a large portion of salt and pepper also on the plate with the breadcrumbs and mixed this all together.

3) cracked and egg and stirred it up on another small plate

4) dipped the fish in the egg plate on both sides

5) put the fish in the breadcrumb mixture on both sides and pressed down until fish was covered in breadcrumbs

I then put the fish in the oil-greased pan and then put this is the oven with the cornbread.

I then defrosted some frozen spinach.

The key with fish is that you don’t let it overcook, so when it had been about 10 minutes, I took the fish out of the oven.  This was how much time they suggested for oven cooking on the tilapia package (8-10 mins) and the fish appeared to be done.

I place the spinach on the plate in the shape of the fish and cut the cornbread into 6 slices, then I placed one piece of the fish on the spinach.  This dinner turned out really well and also looked great.

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October 11, 2009

Pasta Dish

I’m a big fan of anything that’s simple with regards to food.  I started with rotini pasta (boil until not crispy), added two things I really like (tomatoes and spinach), and then a little garlic salt.

Here’s what I got

A few things to keep in mind about this dish:

1) colorful – color goes a long way towards determining how appetizing a dish is.  i know this sounds insane but it’s true

2)  different textures – soft tomatoes (stewed canned), slightly chewy spinach, and pasta.  I feel like this dish could use something else frankly (maybe a crunch?) but I haven’t decided what yet.

Here’s the brief recipe

1 large can of stewed tomatoes

3 cups of rotini

2 cups of spinach (frozen)

garlic salt to taste

1.  put rotini into pot of boiling water – easiest way to tell this is done is to use a fork to spear one piece of pasta.  if it’s soft and not chewy, it’s ready

2.  put spinach in a microwave safe bowl with a small amount of water, cook in microwave for 2 mins.

3.  add tomatoes to bowl of spinach, heat for 1 minute in microwave.

4.  drain water from rotini.  add rotini and spinach/tomato mixture to large mixing bowl.  sprinkle garlic salt on top (this stuff is strong, don’t be shy but don’t go crazy).  STIR.

Again, I added the tomatoes and spinach because I like tomatoes and spinach.  Add stuff that you like to this simple dish and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.

This also makes PLENTY of leftovers and is easily reheated and served again.  If you’re cooking it for a lady friend, add some garlic bread or a salad to make it more impressive.

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October 10, 2009

Carnitas

Thanks to my friend TJ, guru of New Mexico cooking, for passing along this great recipe.  It’s all the things I love about cooking – cheap, delicious, really easy to make, really hard to screw up, and easily customizable to particular tastes.

It’s adapted from a book called “Hungry Monkey”.  I made some minor adaptations to the initial recipe.  First, because I’m an idiot and did some stuff wrong.  Second, because I like to make things simple and easy.  Third, because I like to put things in the way I want them.  I added the chile, the cilantro and serving in the tortillas.  Obviously you could add cheese, tomatoes or some other food you like.

This is really one of my favorite cooking principles – cook with food that you like.  Don’t add peppers if you don’t like peppers – switch it to something else.  You don’t enjoy it, you won’t eat it, then you’ll be back picking up chinese and eating cereal for dinner.

Carnitas

3 lbs boneless pork shoulder or country style ribs, trimmed and cut into 1 inch cubes
1 large onion diced (chopped into small chunks)
1 cup chicken broth (i used a small can)
1/4 cup tequila
2 tbs lime juice from a lime (squeezed)
salt and pepper (add to boiling water – be generous)
small tortillas
1 bundle of cilantro (chopped)
2 cans of old el paso green chile
1. combine all the ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil. reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered 2-3 hrs until the meat is tender (i did 2 hours), and the broth is evaporated (if necessary, turn up the heat near the end of cooking to evaporate the rest of the broth.) at this point you may optionally refrigerate the carnitas before continuing. they will keep several days in the fridge.
2. ONLY DO THIS IF YOU ARE EATING NOW – heat a large nonstick skillet over high heat. add the carnitas and cook, stirring occasionally until they are heated through and well browned. even burt or crispy in places.
3. Heat tortillas in microwave for 30 seconds.  Put carnitas, chile (generous spoonful) and cilantro (generous spoonful) into tortilla.  Enjoy
I love that you can cook, this for yourself and all it takes is a simple pan cooking (5 mins max) to prepare this for the next eating.  Leftovers are awesome.
Here’s how mine came out:

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October 4, 2009

Meatloaf Leftovers

One of the most important things about being a single guy and trying to cook is understanding the value of leftovers.  Not only eating leftovers but how to make leftovers not taste craptastic.

One of the best tips I’ve gotten is to avoid using the microwave.  The microwave does not cook to enrich flavor, it cooks to heat quickly – big difference.

Instead, try warming up leftovers in an oven (kinda sucks because it’s slow) or in a pan (be extremely careful not to burn whatever you’re warming).

My last post was about meatloaf, so I wanted to show what I did with the leftovers….

I cut slices off the meatloaf and dropped them in a pan with a little oil.  Once the pan was warm, I let them heat for maybe 2 minutes and then flipped them to 2 minutes on the other side.  They were warm and had a nice brown.

Ate them with the spinach, cabbage and carrot salad I had made for the meatloaf initially – far better than a damn Peanut Butter and Jelly (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

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October 3, 2009

Easy Meatloaf Recipe

I started craving meatloaf while watching Mike n Mike on ESPN2 – i love this show.  Mike Golic mentioned meatloaf was on their buffet, and that started my wheels in motion.

I knew my ex-girlfriend made a mean meatloaf so I texted her and grabbed her recipe.

This turned out so good and it’s super easy.  As with anything feel free to add any ingredients that you enjoy.

INGREDIENTS

1 pound ground beef – i used 80/20

1 pound sausage (i want to try spicy but i just grabbed some jimmy dean)

frozen green peppers

frozen onions

bread crumbs (should be on the aisle with the baking ingredients)

1 egg

INSTRUCTIONS

Turn the oven to 350 and give it a chance to warm up.

Defrost about a cup (handful) of green peppers and onions.

Defrost meat.

Put meat, egg, peppers and onions into a large bowl. Break the egg yolk.

Mix this mixture up using your hands, mashing and smashing the mixture until it’s mixed.

Dump about a cup (handful) of bread crumbs into the mix.

Mix the mixture with your hands, mashing and smashing until it’s mixed.

Make into a loaf that looks like a child size football and place into a baking pan (any will work – just needs edges so the juices won’t run out).  Smaller loafs will cook faster.

Put in the oven and cooking should take about 20-25 minutes.

Take out of the oven when outside is dark brown and check that the middle is not still raw.

Here’s what mine looked like in the oven:

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October 3, 2009

welcome

welcome to my new cooking blog.  feel free to check out my “about” section.  posts coming soon.

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