Archive for November, 2009

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November 16, 2009

Chiles Rellenos

I’ve been wanting to try to make chiles rellenos for a while.  Some of my methods were stolen from an episode of “throwdown with bobby flay” that I saw a few weeks back,  and some of this was just me trying to make it my own.

I bought 2 large green poblano chiles.  Poblanos have a distinctive shape and are hard to mistake

I selected two large ones, as well as a pound of ground beef, a bag of sliced mozarella cheese, some black beans and corn meal mix (self-rising).

When you cook with chiles, one of the first things you want to do is to to peel the chiles.  There are plenty of ways to do this, but I decided to roast the chiles on my gas stove (that filth predates my arrival)

I placed the chiles directly on the rack above the stove.  You’ll notice a popping noise similar to if you threw a green leaf into a fire.  You want to roast the entire chile, from end to end, until the whole thing is slightly charred.

When this is done, you need to place the chiles in a plastic bag to let them “sweat” for a little bit (a few minutes is enough).  Letting them sweat makes it easier to get rid of the skin during peeling.

There are plenty of ways to get the skin off, but when it’s done, you want it to look a little something like this: (this was my first time peeling chiles and I didn’t do a great job)

I put the beef in a pan and browned it, then I cut a slice out of the top of the peppers and filled the inside of the pepper with the cheese and ground beef.

I wanted to add some kind of crust to the chile, so I mixed up a bit of the corn meal mixture and rolled the pepper in it.

I then filled a pan with oil and heated the oil for a few minutes.  When I felt like it was warm, I put the peppers into the oil pan and then turned them around until all sides of the chile looked like the corn meal mixture was done.

I added some heated black beans to the side and then ate it!  I will toot my own horn – this is one of the best tasting meals I’ve ever made on my own.

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November 16, 2009

When You Don’t Feel Like It

There’s nothing I hate worse than the feeling of knowing that you have nothing in the fridge (or very little) and being hungry.  Obviously, you could make a trip to the store and buy more food and make something, but that doesn’t sound like much fun.  You could fall back into the fast food trap and buy a spicy chicken from Wendy’s, but that’s not a great idea either.

The idea I try to keep in mind is what your goals are for cooking.  In my “about” section, I explain that some of my main goals are to “instead of spending my life eating take-out (expensive), frozen dinners (not healthy), and sandwiches (not very appetizing unless done right).  So for me, I know that I really want to avoid quick fixes like frozen dinners and sandwiches because they don’t add enjoyment to my life, and I want to avoid take-out or eating out (unless with friends) because it’s expensive.

One trick I’ve discovered is picking up food from the grocery store.  I know in these situations that I need to go shopping and I need to buy food where I can buy several meals.  However, I may not feel motivated to cook anything right now because of exhaustion (or possibly not feeling well).  So, I say that my reward for getting up off the sofa and going to the store to buy some things that I will cook in the future is that I won’t cook anything now.

I’m lucky enough to have some great grocery stores within a few minutes of where I live that prepare food on site.  So during my store trip, I may purchase some chinese food from the grocery store buffet, some sushi, or a pre-made salad among other things.  I usually try to keep this under $5; you can’t even eat at Wendy’s for $5 these days so I feel like this is reasonable.  But part of the deal is that I actually go buy some real food for several meals that I will make myself.

One of the keys to life happiness is not only knowing what you want to do, but also knowing why you want to do it.  Another way to say it is who you are and what you’re wanting to be.  I think this goes for the kitchen too.

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November 14, 2009

Green Chile Stew

It’s a rainy cold day here in New Jersey, so I thought I’d cook up some of TJ‘s New Mexico Green Chile Stew.

Here’s what you need

one pound ground beef (I use 80/20 since it’s cheaper and the fat adds more flavor, but I’m sure lean is fine)

3 cans Rotel (i use original)

3 cans stewed tomatoes

3 cans Old El Paso Green Chiles

2 russet potatoes

garlic salt

salt/pepper

red pepper flakes (bc i’m insane)

Brown the ground beef in a pan, and empty the cans of rotel, stewed tomatoes and green chiles into a big pot.  You can put the pot on the stove and start heating this mixture.  When the beef is browned, pour it (including the grease – that’s the flavor) into the pot with the tomatoes and chiles.

Take the potatoes and chop them into small chunks, about the size of the last joint of your index finger.  This is an inexact science, but i think that’s about optimum size.  When you get the potatoes, chopped up, dump the potatoes into the pot with the rest of the ingredients.

Add garlic salt, salt and pepper to taste.  I also add some red pepper flakes because I enjoy a little extra kick.

The point of cooking this on the stove is to cook the potatoes, so you only really need to cook this until everything is hot and the potatoes are cooked – by my judgment, an hour is a good amount of time.  You don’t want this to boil out of control, so keeping the heat a little lower and stirring occasionally is a good thing.

Here’s the tomato mixture heating and beef browning:

And here’s the complete mixture

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November 11, 2009

Pork Tenderloin with Stuffing

Unfortunately, there are no pictures for this post, but I’ll do my best job to describe what happened.

The Chef and I collaborated for a dinner over the weekend.  We decided to start with a pork tenderloin since I had been craving pork for a few days.  We purchased some stuffing, as well as some sweet-tart apples (can’t remember the actual kind of apple) as well as some asparagus and some chopped mushrooms.

Unfortunately, we got all of the products from the store back to my apartment before I remembered that the oven was out and had yet to be repaired by the landlord.  Good stuff.  Thankfully, I own an electric frying pan (something similar to the picture below) so we decided we could make do.

We made the stuffing (pork stuffing store brand) according to the directions on the box but we made a little tweak to the recipe by chopping up one of the apples we bought and adding it to the stuffing.  We mixed all of this together and then tended to the pork.

The pork tenderloin looked something like the picture below:

We took a sharp nice and cut it length-wise, cutting almost until we cut completely through, but with the intent of being able to fold the tenderloin out.  By the time all was said and done, we probably cut 80% through the pork loin.  The Chef then took the knife and cut gashes into the meat to help with the next step.

We took the stuffing and placed it on the pork tenderloin in the center where we had just made the knife cut and folding the tenderloin back up towards center.  The idea was to have the center triangle filling with stuffing and surrounded by pork.  We secured this fold back into place with cooking string that was bought along with the food.  We placed the tenderloin and the remainder of stuffing into the electric frying pan at about 325 degrees.

We let the tenderloin cook on the bottom and both sides until it had a nice brown, making sure to stir and flip the stuffing that was directly touching the pan to avoid burning.

The asparagus and mushrooms were cooked in a frying pan on the stove with a little olive oil unless nice and soft and the mushrooms had a nice brown color to them.

The dinner turned out fantastic.  I really appreciated the way this was all improvised to a certain extent, but yet it came out tasting gourmet and delicious.  I think the total cost for the two of us was something like $10, and we both were able to eat until we were completely full.

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November 11, 2009

Burger Adaptations

I wanted a burger, but lately I’ve been trying to avoid eating junk (for the most part) so I decided to switch over to a turkey burger.  In my brief experience with turkey burgers though, it is a bit of a challenge to keep them from being dry.  To try and avoid this, I made some minor adaptations.

I used a pound of turkey burger and about a half cup of frozen onions and frozen green peppers (both defrosted) and dumped all of that into a big bowl.  In the big bowl, I mashed and folded the mixture until the green peppers and onions were mixed into the meat.  Then I formed them into patties that were a bit larger than the buns I had.

I cooked the burgers on a Foreman Grill (since I have no real grill – this will be fixed soon.  I’m looking at one with a smoker).  I put them on a bun with A-1 and some pre-made cole slaw.

The peppers and onions were really good, but I think hot peppers or chopped mushrooms would also be great.  Again, as I’ve said before on this blog – adapt your food to add things that YOU like, not just blindly doing things.  You’ll enjoy your food a lot more and be much more likely to eat at home, save money and enjoy doing it (not to mention eating healthier).

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November 3, 2009

Crockpot Chicken BBQ

This is ridiculously easy to make, especially if you have a slow cooker (crockpot).

I put two pieces of frozen chicken in the crockpot and dumped a large amount of BBQ sauce on top.  I turned the slow cooker on high and left it for 3 hours (approximately).

When I came back after 3 hours, I took each piece of chicken and using a butcher knife, I chopped it into tiny chunks, then I returned these chunks to the slow cooker.

I added some more BBQ sauce and then turned the slow cooker on low.  The decision about low or high here really depends on how long until you’re eating.  Generally on high, this should cook about 4 hours.  On low, it should cook about 8.  I was eating about 2 hours later, so I put it on low.

I bought some buns and coleslaw from the store (i was at Target and they didn’t have any cabbage, but did have pre-made slaw).

When I was ready to eat, I spooned the Chicken BBQ onto the buns and then added a layer of slaw on top.

Delicious.

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