granola

preface:

why buy store bought granola when you can make your own and control what goes into it?

recipe:

in a large bowl mix:
1/4 c vegetable oil
1/2 t almond extract (or vainilla extract)
1/2 c honey
1/2 c peanut butter (smooth)

stir in:
6 c old-fashioned oats

spread this on a couple of baking tray, dont heap it too thick.

bake at 325 degrees for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.

with ten minutes left, add:
1/2 c somewhat chopped almonds

after baking is done add:
1/2 c raisins

let it cool- dont store it while its hot.

eat it for breakfast 10 days in a row and then it is gone.

eggplant, part II (eggplant parmesan)

why this way is good:

* not fried in oil
* not brushed with oil
* doesn't hurt stomach b/c of excessive oil
* doesn't use lots of salt for getting moisture out
* turns out like lasagna

egplant: wash, lop off the ends and slice horizontally (~7 slices). boil slices in water about 5 minutes then drain in a colander.

sauce: sautee minced garlic in olive oil (this is the only oil used). add some type of tomato-based sauce (~1.5 c pureed canned diced tomatoes), 1 T italian seasonings (oregano, basil,...), simmer 10-15 minutes.

bake: layer eggplant, sauce, eggplant, sauce, then parmesan cheese in sprayed cooking dish. cover with aluminun foil and bake at 350 degrees 20 minutes, remove foil and bake 10 minutes more.

mediterranean-esque salad with salmon

after deciding that a fresh, colorful dinner was in order, i decided to create a salad and add salmon to it since salmon is so delicious.

salad ingredients:

• green leaf lettuce (or whatever green lettuce-like vegetable you like)
• green onion
• 1 whole apple, chopped (i used fiji)
  
• sprouts (sprouts are just fun to eat!)
  
• 1 roma tomato, chopped

vinaigrette ingredients:

• 1-2 cloves of garlic, minced and "smushed" (so the juice gets out)
• handful of whatever herbs you have on hand (for me, oregano and thyme from my mini-garden)
• pinch of salt
• few shakes of pepper
• equal parts balsamic vinegar and olive oil (i used a little less than 1/4 cup, and it was just enough for all the salad)
  

instructions:

to make the vinaigrette, put all the ingredients together in an air-tight container and SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE to get everything together. an emulsion, if you will. (it's that easy! and you can try with different variations of vinegar or lemon juice or whatever herbs you want.) add all the vinaigrette to the salad and toss till well coated.

to make the salmon, cut the salmon into cubes and season with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. sautee in a pan until done.

to assemble the salad, just put the green stuff in the bowl first. then add the salmon chunks. garnish with croutons and crumbled feta cheese and then you have the most delicious salad EVER.*


*it could only be more delicious with a nice glass or two of red wine, preferably a cabernet. a merlot would be too sweet i think with the vinaigrette and the apple.

chick pea soup

* this is called "milan chick pea soup" on many web pages but when one reads about milanesian (?) cuisine, no such dish is listed. despite its origins, it is delicious.

(1) remove 1/2 pound italian sausage from its casing, brown in a skillet.
(2) add a chopped onion and a chopped head of garlic (sure, all the cloves).
(3) add 1/2 cup (or 2/3 cup to use the whole can) tomato paste.
(4) add 2 cans of chick peas (with the licuid). if you have time but not money,
obviously, cook these yourself in which case i guess you need 4 cups.
i will experiment with this next time.
(5) add 10 oz or so of chicken stock or broth.
(6) add 4-8 oz chopped mushrooms.
(7) add spices: basil, oregano, black pepper.
(8) bring this to a boil, simmer good uncovered 20 minutes.
(9) add one zucchini, in large cubes.
(10) simmer 5-10 minutes.
(11) serve with (whole wheat penne is good) pasta (1/2 cup dry pasta per person)
and parmesan cheese.

this feeds four hungry people and makes 6 cups.

fish tacos for two!

fish tacos are not only delicious, but are also healthier than red meat tacos. we made these on monday with an avocado salsa/guacamole. we used salmon, but i suppose any fish would do. i just really like salmon, and i like how it changes colors while it cooks so i know that it's done cooking (versus orange roughy, which contrary to its name, is a white-fleshed fish, not orange.)

for the fishy part:

1/2 pound salmon was cubed, or rectangled, into small chunks. i mixed together 1/4 teaspoons of the following: black pepper, cayenne pepper, cumin, salt, and garlic powder. i then put all the salmon chunks in with the seasoning and stirred it up. then i sauteed them in a frying pan until they were done with just a little bit of olive oil. easy!

for the avocado salsa:

1 avocado and 1 medium tomato were diced and put in a bowl. add 1/4 cup of diced onion. then we added 4-5 cloves of minced garlic (raw) and minced serrano pepper to it, but i suppose that part is all to taste. chop a handful of cilantro roughly and add as well. a dash of salt and pepper, and a nice squeeze of lemon or lime, stir it up, and VOILA! you're done!

for the eating:

just take a corn tortilla or taco shell or what have you, spoon in what you like, maybe add some sour cream or cheese if that's what you want, and have at it! so delicious, and it was perfect for a warm evening. oh, and we drank red stripe with it and it was good too. and the recipe was perfect for 2 people to eat 3-4 tacos each without being overly stuffed.

vietnamese spring rolls or vietnamese foods, part 2

here is the now perfected recipe:

-boil shrimp, peel
-boil rice vermicelli (pancit noodles) until clear
-lay out bowl of water, wet towel, wrappers, cilantro, lettuce
-dip each wrapper in water for one second, let it drain, place it on the towel
-put in the stuff: rice vermicelli, lettuce, shrimp, cilantro
-fold the right and left side over a little.
-start rolling from the bottom until fully and tightly rolled

serve with a hoisin/peanut dipping sauce which i have yet to produce.

i can eat about 4 and thats a meal for me and its delicious and light.

vietnamese foods

pho is the vietnamese noodle soup dish that can make sweat come out of your forehead. even using homemade chicken stock and a "beef pho paste", i could not quite get the taste of the broth right despite several attempts. like the conclusion i reached after several attempts at making that ethiopian spongy sour-dough bread, i decided i would leave making pho to the vietnamese restaurant.

after memories of this failure had passed, it was time to try spring rolls, another favorite item on the menu at the local vietnamese eatery. i got a package of 48 spring roll wrappers and a crappy recipe of the internet, and i was ready to go.

for the filling, some ground turkey was browned and drained then mixed in with shredded cabbage, carrot, green onion, garlic, cilantro, and a little sesame oil and oyster sauce.

and getting the filling in the wrappers? you have to dip the wrapper in water briefly. this makes it go from hard to almost slimy. put it on a dry surface like a cutting board, put the filling in, and wrap it up.

at this point, my recipe said to bake these rolls. however, i dont think this is necessary, just brown the garlic with the turkey initially.

also, next time i may use iceberg lettuce, shrimp, and sliced pork, as at the restaurant. there should be another post about this in the future.

chicken broth: the building block of life

in order to make any soup more succulent, we believe that a homemade chicken broth base is vital for success. making chicken broth, in its basic form, involves boiling a chicken in water for around an hour and a half. however, the things you put in there (vegetables, etc) give the broth flavor and subtle nuances that can make or break the broth. huitzl has deemed his chicken broth recipe "top secret", alas, so i won't be sharing that with you. just know that when you get that perfect blend, keep it! it will reap you tasty rewards!

chicken tortilla soup

after figuring out why my camera was giving yellowish tints to all my previous pictures, i decided to become adventurous and present to you a MOVIE rather than pictures of the chicken tortilla soup. the recipe is simple enough:

• boiled shredded chicken
• chicken stock
• diced tomatoes
• onions
• garlic
• jalapeno pepper
  
• garnishes

the secret to success in this dish is making your own chicken stock in advance. that, my friends, is why the chicken tortilla soup is as delicious as it is.

now for the movie...my apologies for the random movements and comments, i haven't yet learned how to keep the camera steady and i have a habit of saying whatever pops into my brain first...

meuniere sauce a la h

so remember that post that huitzl did about the meuniere sauce? well, we recreated it superbly the other day, and here's an example of how we used it in our dish. let me try to describe it to max out it's potential...

pan seared salmon topped with brown butter sauce with notes of cilantro and lemon, accompanied with asparagus steamed in a salt bath and whole-wheat angelhair pasta delicately tossed with butter.

yum...

shrimp scampi with mushrooms

what a lovely dish i created on the fly. i got a pound of frozen peeled shrimp and thawed them. i sauteed garlic in olive oil, and then added the shrimp and cooked them for 2-3 minutes (until they just got pink) and then removed them from the pan. then i added about 1/2 stick of butter (that is a lot for my cooking style, but you could use more), chopped green onion, and mushrooms. i sauteed the mushrooms until they were yummy, and then added worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, pepper, cayenne pepper, salt, and BEER! (i used amber bock tonight.) i simmered all of that for 4-5 minutes, and then added the shrimp back in and made sure they were well covered in the sauce. then i served it over wheat penne pasta and BAM! wonderful goodness!

eggplant dip

many people are fascinated with eggplant because of references to it in the novel don quijote, because of its position as trickster in one thousand and one nights, and because of the impressiveness of its dark purple in a summertime garden patch.

its strange culinary properties only escalate (augment, if you will) its mystique. there are seemingly billions of recipes for preparing eggplant, each different.

i have breaded and fried, sauteed, boiled and baked, and baked eggplant but havent found that one way of preparing it that i would not tire of. my latest method:

cubed the eggplant, boiled the cubes in salted water for 10 minutes, drained, sauteed in olive oil, then blended in a blender with the same ingredients as i would for hummus (sub eggplant for chick peas). the result was a really nice dip but from an entire, albeit small, eggplant, the yield was maybe just under 2 cups of dip. and i basically ate it all in a half hour.

the moral of the story is: maybe this isnt the best way to do eggplant since i think a lot of the eggplant got boiled away into the water. back to the old drawing board.

meuniere sauce (for salmon and angel hair pasta)

for 2 people{
combine in pan{
2 T butter, 1/2 T worchestire, lemon juice,
chopped green onion, chopped cilantro, minced garlic,
1/4 t salt, 1/8 t cayenne pepper
}
heat this til melted
keep warm til the fish is ready
}

asian-y chicken and pasta

being from a somewhat asian heritage, it comes to no surprise that when i just "feel like cooking up a little something", it leans towards oriental flavors. one day last week when left to my own devices, i decided to cook up some chicken and also try and use some penne pasta with it, since i hadn't eaten any in a while.

the items i had at my disposal were:

• garlic
• ginger
• celery (2)
• carrot (1)
• one chicken breast, cubed
• sesame oil
• soy sauce
• schezuan sauce
• penne pasta

i minced the garlic and ginger, and sauteed those in a non stick pan (because i was going to make a "sauce" and didn't want to have to scrape up nasty bits) with sesame oil. i then put the celery and carrot that i had cut up into small pieces, and sauteed those as well. finally i put in the chicken, let it brown slightly, then gave it a good dousing of soy sauce. i then put the pasta on to boil, figuring that the chicken and pasta would be done at the same time. i then put a spoonful of the schezuan sauce in the chicken, stirred it up well, then cooked it on low heat, covered, until the pasta was done cooking. then after everything was done, i drained the pasta, put it in a bowl, and then put the entire contents of the pan on top.

it was quite delicious, nice and spicy, with enough sauce to coat all the pasta. the celery and carrot still had some crunch to it, and the chicken was nice and moist. not bad for just throwing something together on the fly...

blackened fish

this week i've had the fortune to make blackened fish on two separate occasions! as requested by H, i dug up some recipes on cooks.com and then modified them to fit what i wanted to make. total cook/prep time ~ 20 minutes!

i used tilapia filets as my fish of choice, but i'm sure that any other fish would be good. for my seasoning, i basically put at least 1/2 tablespoon of whatever spices i could find in my cabinet. (note: for the pepper-like spices, obviously i didn't put as much in!) these included salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, red chili pepper powder, oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, cumin...i think that's all. i think adding onion powder would have been really yummy too. i then beat an egg in a bowl and dipped a filet into the egg, covering it completely. i then covered the eggy filet with the spice mix, and then fried on a skillet/pan for 2 1/2 minutes on each side on high heat. the fish came out tasting delicious and spicy...

see? quick and easy, and tastes so good...

plain brown lentil soup

why i like:

(1) tastes good,
(2) eat with couscous or rice,
(3) freezable and is still good,
(4) cheap,
(5) healthy (i guess)

how i make:

(1) soak 1 cup lentils in cold water for 30 minutes.
(2) sautee 1 onion and as much garlic as you want in olive oil.
(3) add spices (try 1/4 teaspoon paprika, cumin, curry powder, and a little less cayenne powder).
(4) stir for 1 minute.
(5) add 3 cups of licuid (2 cups chicken broth, 1 cup cold water).
(6) bring to boil.
(7) add salt and pepper.
(8) add the drained lentils.
(9) simmer 45 minutes (or until lentils are cooked, duh).
(10) puree half of it.
(11) return to a boil.
(12) remove from heat.
(13) down the hatch.

orange ginger chicken

after a trip to florida, huitzil and i were bestowed a gift of a bazillion oranges. so therefore, i wanted to make something dinner-y with an orange or two, and we both felt like it was a great success! the only drawback was that i didn't take any pictures, but let me tell you, it was beautiful...

first, the ingredients. i used about 6 cloves of minced garlic, tablespoon of minced ginger, half a chopped onion, chopped celery, juice of one orange, and chicken thighs (for something different...it's a nice change from chicken breasts). i browned the chicken in some olive oil, and then removed it from the pan. then i sauteed the onion first, then added the rest of the chopped ingredients. after that was nice and brown, i put the chicken back in the pan, and added some spices because, hey, why not! (i added cumin, paprika, salt and pepper.) then i splashed it with some low sodium soy sauce (got to love the soy) and then drenched it with freshly squeezed orange juice. then i turned the heat down some, covered the pan, and let it cook for about 25 minutes or so. (from a great suggestion from huitzil, low heat and slow cooking make for some delicious chicken! i've also found it really brings out the ginger as well.)

secondly, to plate the deliciousness, i put a chicken thigh, rice (that i so conveniently cooked with a slice of orange to infuse the flavors together...and it worked!), and half an orange on a green plate. the colors looked nice. oh, and i put the "sauce" and whatnot on the chicken and rice. huitzil added some celery stalks for crunch and nutrition factor, and VOILA! yummy orange ginger chicken!