The Apartment Chef

Banana Bread

2010-04-18T17:41:00.005-04:00

Difficulty Rating:

I know! I know. It's been forever. I know. Please don't hate me. I have, like, three things to post up, and will do so soon, my lovelies. I promise. In the meantime, here is some delicious bread to take your mind off it. :D

Recipe

1 2/3 cups Self Rising Flour
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 c + 2 tbls Sugar
2 eggs
1/2 c vegetable oil
3 1/2 overripe bananas, mashed
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbls sour cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a breadpan. Mix flour and cinnamon and set aside. Mix bananas, sour cream, and vanilla and set aside.

In a bowl, whisk together sugar and eggs for ten minutes. Slowly whisk in oil. Stir in banana mixture. Add flour mixture. Pour into breadpan and bake 45-60 mins depending on oven. Let cool ten minutes before serving.

Execution

I mean, just look at that recipe. So easy! Let's get to it!

Ingredients

Get the oven and pan ready. Once again, I use Crisco to grease things because it makes them extra delicious. As you can see from the picture, I already dumped the cinnamon into the flour, so no big deal there.

Then mash up your bananas with either a handheld potato masher or a fork - they're overripe, so this should be really easy.

Add in the sour cream and vanilla and mix it all up into a gooey mess, then put it aside.

Now comes the arm-killing part. Whisking. Ugh. Add the eggs in with the sugar...

...and then spend the next ten minutes wishing you'd worked out more. Seriously, nothing makes you feel more like a loser than realizing how weak of a whisker you are. But do it! Ten minutes! Time yourself, you gotta get it all delicious!

Then just slowly drizzle the oil in and whisk it. I usually just dump a little in and then whisk, repeat repeat repeat. For a 1/2 cup of oil, it should take you about six or seven rounds. When you're done, it'll be all shiny like pearls. Preeeeeetty.

Now dump that in with the 'Naner mixture and stir it up good.

And then dump the flour in and mix it. It won't get thick like dough; it'll still be way more like cake batter than bread dough, as seen below when I poured it into the breadpan:

Throw that sucker in the oven and bake it for 45-60 minutes. My oven only takes 45 minutes because it cooks like a boss. When you pull it out, take a moment to enjoy the golden deliciosity of it all!

Mmmmm. I am an asshole, and wanted some RIGHT NOW so I cut into it immediately. Which is why in this picture you can see both the steam coming off of it, and also how it slumps a little once it's cut - that's because I didn't give it time to settle and solidify. Don't do like me. Unless, like me, you don't give a damn what it looks like and just want the nummy in your belly.

If you're feeling especially fond of fatassery, put a smidge of butter on it while it's still hot. You'll thank me for it. I promise. :D

Asparagus, Prosciutto, and Mozzarella Pasta

2010-01-25T14:39:00.006-05:00

Difficulty Rating:

To make up for all of the meat-free recipes I've been doing lately, here's one with delicious prosciutto, the yummiest of the Italian meats. Mmmm.

Recipe

2 pounds asparagus, trimmed
3/4 pound spaghetti
4 tablespoons olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 ounces thinly sliced prosciutto, cut crosswise into strips
6 ounces smoked mozzarella cheese, diced (about 1 cup)
6 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh basil leaves

Cook the asparagus in a large pot of boiling salted water until crisp tender, about 2 to 3 minutes. With a spider or slotted spoon, remove asparagus from boiling water to a bowl of ice water to cool and stop the cooking. When cool, strain, cut asparagus into 1-inch pieces, and set aside.

Return the water in the pot to a boil, adding additional water, if necessary. Add the pasta and cook until al dente, tender but still firm to the bite, about 8 minutes. Drain the pasta, reserving 1 cup of the cooking liquid.

Heat the oil in a heavy large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and saute until fragrant, about 20 seconds. Add asparagus to the skillet. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Add the pasta, and if needed, some of the reserved cooking liquid. Toss to coat. Add the prosciutto, mozzarella, and basil, and toss to combine. Turn off the heat. Season with salt and pepper, to taste, and serve.

Execution

This has a bit of a longer recipe than the ones I've been doing lately, but it's actually very quick and easy to make. Just chop up everything beforehand, and then it's a matter of throwing it in the pot.

First things first!

Ingredients

First you chop up all the mozzarella cheese. Put it in a cup or bowl or something and fill it with water to keep the cheese moist.

Then chop up the prosciutto into strips.

Chop the basil up as well. Then you boil the asparagus for a couple minutes until it turns bright green and is cooked but still crisp.

Take the asparagus out (I just used a spaghetti spoon) and put it in iced, cold water to stop it from cooking.

Keep the water boiling and use it to cook the pasta. Once the pasta is done, keep a cup of the water and drain the rest. While the pasta is cooking, chop the asparagus into pieces about 1-inch long.

Now comes the part where you put it all together!

Heat the oil and cook the garlic for half a minute to get it started cooking. Add the asparagus and salt & pepper. Cook it for a minute to get the asparagus all garlicky and extra delicious.

Now, add the pasta.

You'll have to use some of the liquid because otherwise the pasta is too dry to stir and it'll stick to itself. Just use enough so you can mix it up.

Now you add the meat, cheese, and basil and toss it for another minute or so before you turn off the heat. This'll get the cheese to melt a little, but it'll keep the pasta and garlic from burning.

Then you serve it with a bit of parmesan to sprinkle on top!

Nummy meat and asparagus! And cheese and pasta! Here you go, another fancy and delicious meal made in under twenty minutes. And you thought you didn't have time to cook.

Stuffed Mushrooms

2010-01-21T01:21:00.002-05:00

Difficulty Rating:

This is another delicious appetizer recipe that should keep your guests happy. And it's another meat-free dish, so your vegetarian friends will be happy. Assuming they still eat cheese. And if they don't eat cheese, you shouldn't be friends with them.

I'm not kidding. That's how you tell they're evil.

Recipe

24 fresh mushrooms, stems removed
1 (10-ounce package) frozen chopped spinach
2 ounces cream cheese
4 ounces feta cheese
1/2 cup finely chopped green onion, with tops
seasoning
1 cup grated Parmesan

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Wipe mushroom caps clean with a damp paper towel. Thaw spinach in a colander; squeeze out as much moisture as possible. In mixing bowl, combine all ingredients except mushrooms and Parmesan. Mix well. Fill mushroom caps with mixture and place on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle Parmesan on top. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Serve warm.

Execution

Apparently I forgot a picture of the ingredients again, which makes me a bad person, but not as bad as people who don't eat cheese.

First thing's first though - you'll need to cap your mushrooms. Grocery stores will usually sell white mushrooms for stuffing, and they're nice and big with plenty of room for sticking stuff. I used brown mushrooms, and had a bunch of tiny ones, but it wasn't that big a deal.

Make sure you wash your mushrooms! They are grown in poop. You do not want to eat poop. Wash 'em off. Don't scrub them because that'll bruise the caps and make them brown and mushy, but just wipe them clean under the faucet using your fingers. Then you just wiggle the stem a little and pull it out. If some of the stem sticks in the bottom, just dig it out with a fingernail.

Once you've got that done, put your stuffing together. Now, I defrost the spinach the same way for this as I do for the spinach-artichoke dip - 5 minutes in the microwave, then squeeze out the excess water. I don't have all day for sittin' around watching spinach thaw, dammit.

Mush everything together except for the parmesan. Now, the original recipe is a Paula Dean one, and I dislike a lot of her recipes simply because they say things like "1 tbls House Seasoning" with a little link to how to make Paula's seasoning. Emeril does this too. How lazy can you freaking be - just give the seasonings you use, I'm not a Follower of the Church of Paula Dean so I don't have specially labeled pre-made spice mixtures to use with your specific recipes. Sheesh. Anyway, I used a spoonful of minced garlic (you can use a tbls garlic powder instead), a tsp each of salt and pepper, and a pinch of cayenne to give it a bit of a kick. Just a pinch though. Tiny peeench.

Then you just use a spoon and scoop it into your mushroom caps. I like to cook them in a casserole dish since it keeps the juices from dripping all over your stove. Just spray it with some cooking spray or grease it with a little oil to keep them from sticking.

Cover them with the parmesan cheese - a cup may seem like a lot, but that's only if you sprinkle them. COVER THEM. It is delicious.

Bake 'em at 350 until the cheese turns brown on top and the mushrooms release their juices (porny, non?), about 15-20 minutes.

Jenny really likes the mushrooms. She doesn't let anyone else eat them. No one tries, because she has the crazy eyes.

Zombie mushrooooooooms...

Hot Spinach and Artichoke Dip

2010-01-13T14:06:00.003-05:00

Difficulty Rating:

Hot yummy delicious appetizers, coming up!

Recipe

1 10-oz pack frozen chopped spinach
2 (13 3/4 oz) cans artichoke hearts
1/2 c. mayo
1/2 c. sour cream
1 c. freshly grated Parmesan
1 c. grated pepper-jack cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a casserole dish.

Heat spinach in microwave 5 mins & squeeze dry. Drain artichokes and coarsely chop either in food processor or by hand.

Combine everything but the pepper-jack. Scrape into casserole dish, sprinkle with pepper-jack, and bake for 30 minutes.

Execution

So simple, and delicious at the same time. This is an excellent dish when you have a bunch of people coming over and you need something to stuff in their pie-holes. :)

Ingredients

The recipe pretty much tells you all you need to know. I used jarred artichokes instead of canned because that's what they had at Costco, but the canned ones are actually better in my opinion.

First, chop up all the artichokes. I just do it by hand because I hate cleaning the food chopper when I don't have to.

Chop chop chop.

While you're doing that, stick the frozen spinach in the microwave for five minutes. Once it's done, it might be completely dry or it might have some liquid in the bottom, it really depends on your microwave. If it's got liquid in it, just smoosh it out with a spoon and drain it.

Then you just mix everything in a big bowl...

...then scrape it into a greased dish and cover with more cheese.

Bake for thirty minutes, and bam! Nummy dip for to dip things in!

I recommend some cubed sourdough bread, which is what we used, or any kind of thick, heavy bread. And if you have leftovers and are just looking for something to snack on, I usually spread it on a toasted bagel.

Salmon Dinner

2010-01-05T23:26:00.004-05:00

Difficulty Rating:

Tonight, dear reader(s), I am making you an entire meal. An entire meal for just 2 cookies. I know, I know, you're thinking this might be an early April Fool's prank, but I promise you that you can do it too. Now, there was a really good article about how ridiculous and yet overwhelmingly prevalent the idea of being "too stupid to cook" is, and since it goes along wonderfully with the entire point of this blog, I think you should take a second to read it and realize that you can cook. You can do it. And here's an entire meal, front to back, that you can put together yourself.

Admittedly, the asparagus ain't that healthy since I boiled it in butter, but I needed a sauce for the rice and I was feeding three people. So... shut up. Now, there's only a recipe for the main entree, Baked Salmon with Blackberry-Ginger Glaze, because I literally made up the rest of it on the fly. I actually wasn't going to make dessert but I had all this delicious blackberry goo left over so I turned it into a nummy dessert sauce. So while I will list the recipe for the salmon, I'll explain the asparagus and the blackberry tart as well.

Here we go!

Recipe

1 c. water
12 oz. blackberries
1 (1-inch) piece of ginger, peeled and sliced into coins
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/4 c. sugar
1 tbls olive oil
4 (8-oz) skinless salmon fillets
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a small saucepot over medium-high heat, combine water, blackberries, ginger and lemon juice. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook until berries break down, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and strain into a bowl, using the back of a spoon to push blackberry pulp through. Return blackberry mixture to the sauce pot, add sugar and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer until reduced by half, about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally to avoid burning. Remove from heat and let cool.

Brush a baking sheet with olive oil and set fillets on top. Brush fillets with oil and season with salt and pepper. Once blackberry mixture is cool, brush over salmon fillets and bake for 4 minutes. Brush again with blackberry mixture. Turn oven to broil and broil another 3 minutes.

Execution

First of all, DO NOT preheat your oven right now. Seriously, you only need the oven for the last 7 minutes of a half-hour recipe, so you'll just be wasting your time and sweating all over your kitchen.

Now. Um. What comes next? Oh, yes.

Ingredients

These are just the ingredients for the salmon. For the rest, you'll need a bunch of asparagus, minced garlic, a stick of butter, and rice (any kind, we like basmati). For the dessert, you'll need either whipped cream or heavy whipping cream and sugar to make your own as we did, pound cake, and vanilla ice cream. I seriously got it all at the gas station downstairs. No, really. I looked at the blackberry goo and then ran downstairs to get stuff to make a dessert.

So. What to do! This is all about the sauce. Everything else takes five minutes.

First, dump the water, blackberries, lemon juice, and ginger into a saucepan. I didn't have fresh ginger, so I used a tablespoon of powdered ginger.

Cook that for about 5-10 minutes until the berries get all mushy. As a fun scientific note, the blackness will leech out of the berries and into the liquid, leaving them looking like raspberries. Fun!

Once that's all good, strain the stuff to get all the seeds and solids out, but be sure to use the spoon to squish as much through the strainer as you can. Now this is the point where I looked at all the seedy gooey goodness and said... hey, I can add sugar to that and make it delicious. Mmm.

When you're done, pour the liquid back into the pot and reduce it by half. This took me about twenty minutes just like the recipe said.

At this point I started the rice, and at around ten minutes I started the asparagus, so the rest of the meal gets cooked while the sauce reduces since all you're doing it stirring it every five minutes to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom.

In another small pot, melt a stick of butter with a heaping spoonful of minced garlic and some salt and pepper.

Once it's all melted, throw in some chopped asparagus and just let it boil in the butter until it's cooked.

Ta-da! Done with the sidedish!

When the blackberry sauce is done, pour it in a bowl and stick it in the fridge to cool. When it's down to about room temperature, preheat your oven. Oil your baking sheet and put the salmon on it, then oil and salt it. Brush on the sauce and bake it in the oven for 4 minutes. Take it out and add some more sauce, turn the oven to broil, and stick it in for another 3 minutes. I took a note from the comments section of the recipe and stuck some lemons on the fish so it'd be prettier. This is a SUPER colorful dish, and I like making it even more so.

Ta-da! Purple fish! So delicious. Put some rice on a plate and spoon the asparagus and butter over it, and serve with the fish.

Om nom nom!

So. I had this blackberry goo leftover. I figured it'd be delicious, so I added two tablespoons of sugar to it.

It's kind of blurry because I'm a crappy photographer.

We had heavy whipping cream because I'll be making some more deliciousness in the week to come, so my roommate went ahead and made some whipped cream with it. Just add sugar and whip it, really, that's all. It whips faster if you chill the bowl or submerge it in ice water - or, as my roommate did, add tiny chips of ice, but that means you sometimes chomp on them so it's up to you. But homemade whipped cream is sooooo delicious!

Yes, that is a dent left by my finger. I ate it. Yum.

I cut up a few slices of pound cake and put a scoop of ice cream in between them, then covered all of that in whipped cream. Cut up some strawberries, drizzle on a whole lot of the blackberry sauce, and you have something truly wonderful.

Tell me that's not the most amazing thing you've ever seen! And it was gooooood. I couldn't move for an hour after this meal, which is twice as long as it took me to make it. So you see people? You can make things like this. It's really that easy!

Penne alla Vodka

2009-12-29T12:13:00.005-05:00

Difficulty Rating:

This is one of my favorite recipes, not only because it's delicious and easy, but also because it has booze in it. And I like booze.

Recipe

1 tbls extra-virgin olive oil
1 tbls butter
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 shallots, minced
1 c. vodka
1 c. chicken stock
32 oz can of crushed tomatoes
salt and pepper
1 lb penne pasta
1/2 c. heavy cream
fresh basil

Heat a large skillet over moderate heat. Add oil, butter, garlic, and shallots. Gently saute shallots for 3 to 5 minutes to develop their sweetness. Add vodka to the pan. Reduce vodka by half, this will take 2 or 3 minutes. Add chicken stock, tomatoes. Bring sauce to a bubble and reduce heat to simmer. Season with salt and pepper.

While sauce simmers, cook pasta in salted boiling water until cooked to al dente (with a bite to it).

Stir cream into sauce. When sauce returns to a bubble, remove it from heat. Drain pasta. Toss hot pasta with sauce and basil leaves.

Execution

The recipe is a teensy bit vague on how long to do things for, so I'll hopefully be able to help out with that. I also didn't get a picture of the ingredients because I had to rush to get ready for my trip, so you'll have to forgive me.

So, first thing's first - put the oil and butter in the pot and let it melt, then add the garlic and shallots.

Cook that for about five minutes, and then add the vodka. Mmm, vodka.

Also be sure to try the vodka to make sure it's safe. You wouldn't want anyone to get hurt.

Cook that down until it's about half as much as you had before. Make sure you stir it because if you don't the garlic will burn.

Now, the recipe calls for a 32 ounce can of crushed tomatoes, but I can only ever find 28 ounce cans, so just buy two and add about a bit from the second one. Also add salt and pepper and, if you can't get fresh basil, add dried basil at this point. I sometimes add a bit of garlic powder if I want it to be extra garlicky.

Now is when you should put your pasta on to boil. You want the sauce to cook for a while, about as long as it takes for you to boil water and then finish cooking the pasta. It won't be super-thick when you're done, but it should cook down at least a little bit. Now, the recipe says to add the cream and then let it come to a boil and then you're done, but I like to let it simmer for another five minutes or so. Then you just pour the whole shebang over your cooked pasta and serve with some parmesan cheese.

It's seriously nummy. You can also add some grilled chicken if you want, or if you want to go vegetarian (which I did for these pictures since my sister's a filthy veggie-eating hippie) you can use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock. As a side note, they didn't have any vegetable stock at the store, so we bought a can of Progresso vegetable soup and just drained it and used the liquid. It's all about improvisation, people. Serve it with toasty garlic bread and enjoy!

Trailer Park Toffee

2009-12-18T09:51:00.004-05:00

Difficulty Rating:

I can't believe I'm putting this on the website. This may be the weirdest thing I've ever made, and when I saw the recipe for it, I giggled and said it sounded like the strangest thing ever. I disbelieved. And then it was done, and I tried it... and then I ate, like, four more pieces. So since I was very much against this recipe before I even tried it (for example, it is not actually called Trailer Park Toffee, I was just being a jerkface), I have decided to eat my crow as thoroughly as possible and post it up for the rest of you to try. Enjoy!

Recipe

1 sleeve of saltine crackers
1 c. light brown sugar
2 sticks of butter
12 oz bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cover a cookie sheet with tin foil. Place crackers flat on foil to cover.

In saucepan, melt butter and add sugar. Boil, then reduce to medium heat and simmer for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Pour and spread over crackers. Bake 7 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool 3 minutes. Pour chocolate chips evenly over the crackers, then bake 30 seconds to soften up the chocolate. Remove and spread the chocolate to cover. Refrigerate.

Execution

I know what you're thinking - saltines don't make toffee! However, the crackers make it deliciously salty AND sweet. Oh man. I'm having to force myself not to go raid the fridge right now.

Ingredients

I know it only shows one stick of butter, but use two.

Lay out the crackers. Now, I learned the hard way that you should really curl the tin foil up around the edges. I'll show you why in a minute.

Melt the butter and add the brown sugar...

...stir it all together and bring it to a boil!

Boil it for about 3 minutes, until it gets kinda foamy. This is a a variable, because if you don't cook it long enough it'll stay liquid, but if you cook it too long it'll turn rock hard and you won't be able to eat it.

Once it's cooked, pour it over the crackers. This'll be messy, but it's okay!

Then spread it around if you need to. Don't worry, the ones on the edge won't be as gooey. It's to be expected.

However, this is when you'll learn why you should curl the edges up to keep the liquid from dripping off edges. Or at least put some clean baking sheets under it to catch the drips. Because stuff can and WILL catch on fire. Hence the need for all the baking soda.

Whee! Okay, well, everything's salvaged, so just keep going! Pour the chocolate chips over it, then stick 'em back in the oven for a minute, just long enough so that they start to melt, and then spread the chocolate out over the whole thing.

Put it in the fridge for a couple hours to firm up, then break it up into pieces and serve! Look at that... I mean, it looks delicious! And it is delicious! Who'da thought, huh?

Om nom nom... nom nom sticky om nom.

Pecan Pie

2009-12-16T02:41:00.003-05:00

Difficulty Rating:

I'm not even going to lie - I forgot to take pictures of the stuff while I made it. But it's such an awesome and perfect recipe that I can't help but go ahead and post it! So all you get is the finished product and the recipe, but trust me when I say it's the easiest dessert to make in the world. Gordon Ramsey's tiramisu took more effort.

Now I know what you're thinking - if this is so stupid-easy, why is it a 4-Cookie Recipe? Well, that's just because pecans aren't that easy to come by in some parts of the world. I mean, in Mississippi I could literally just walk outside and pick them off the ground, but they're a bit harder to find here in New York City. But if you search around in some of the specialty markets, you should be able to find a bag. And keep in mind that pecans can be frozen for... well, forever, kinda. I had mine in the freezer for about two years and this pie turned out spectacular. It's only a 4-Cookie because of the one ingredient. Otherwise, easy as pie.

Yes, I went there.

Recipe

1/2 stick butter, softened
1/2 c. sugar
1 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 c. pecans, chopped fine
1 c. Karo syrup
1 frozen pie crust

Using a fork, combine the butter and sugar. Add flour and salt and combine. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Pour into pie crust and cook at 300 degrees for an hour.

Execution

A few notes on the ingredients.

Apparently, it is very odd outside of the South for people to leave butter on the counter. Everyone I know keeps it in the refrigerator where it stays hard as a rock and isn't any good for spreading on toast. So if you don't keep a stick of butter softened at all times, you can just put it in the microwave for 20 seconds to get it to the proper state. Just be sure NOT to melt it.

Also, you can cut the pecans up by hand but that gets rather messy. As I stated in the post on Kitchen Basics, I like to use a Food Chopper for such things. Noisy, but oh-so-convenient!

And it doesn't matter whether you use dark or white Karo syrup. I prefer dark if I have to just pick one. My grandma always mixes half of each. Up to you whether you want to shell out for the second bottle or not.

Now. To make it!

Throw the softened butter and sugar in a bowl and squish it up with a fork until it's combined completely. That's exactly what my recipe says, by the way: squish!

Add in the flour and salt, and squish again. It may threaten to get a teensy bit dry, but the main point is to try not to leave any big chunks of butter unmixed.

I like to add the eggs and vanilla, mix again, then the pecans, mix again, and then the syrup, but my gramma just dumps it all in at once and stirs it up. It'll end up a sloppy, gooey brown mess either way. Mmmm. Sugary syrup.

Pour this into a pie crust - I like the 9" deep dish ones best. As a side note, those come two to a package, so I usually double the recipe and just make two pies, but that's entirely up to you. You can decorate it with unchopped pecans if you like; my gramma covers the whole top in them, but I like to make a design so I can avoid them when I cut myself a piece. Weird as it is, I hate whole pecans. The only way I'll eat them is in this pie.

Pre-heat your oven to 300 degrees and cook the pies for about an hour. I find it usually ends up being a little more than that, but I start checking it after an hour.

Knowing when your pie is done is a somewhat subjective artform in and of itself. The best thing to do is to check it about 45 minutes in: open the oven and (using an oven mitt, of course) jiggle the rack gently. You'll see the middle of the pies wiggle as if they're still all liquidy. This is what you are trying to overcome - you do NOT want a jiggly middle.

How like life, huh?

So after an hour, check it every five minutes or so. Just jiggle it slightly to see if the middle has firmed up yet. Don't be tempted to turn up the heat, because doing so will just burn the crust on your pie instead of cooking it any better. Be patient, and eventually you'll jostle the thing and it'll just sit there and be all brown and perfect.

Like that! How awesome is that? A Southern delicacy, all for you. Here's a close-up so you can see what the consistency looks like:

Now, you can, of course, serve it immediately, but it'll fall apart a bit when you try to get it onto the plate. If you let it sit a little while it'll firm up a bit more and be easier to serve. Since it's made of syrup and butter, you don't really have to refrigerate it as long as you're gonna finish it within the week. And really, who could possibly leave a pecan pie laying around for more than a week?? No one in my house, that's for damn sure.

Pasta with Chicken, Broccoli, and Oil

2009-12-16T01:57:00.003-05:00

Difficulty Rating:

This one is totally my bad - I actually made this last month at my awesome friend Peter's house, and had such a great time there that I forgot I took all these pics for the blog. Good food and good company, man, this is what it does to you. Luckily I made a pecan pie and took a pic of it to put up here, and when I plugged my camera in I re-discovered all of these!

I must say, I've been lax in my blogging lately, but now that finals are almost over I should get back into the swing of things! So here, my lovelies, is a super-easy and surprisingly healthy dish for you all to enjoy!

Recipe

1 lb pasta shells, cooked
About 4 bunches of fresh broccoli florettes
1-2 cups extra virgin olive oil
3 tbls chopped garlic
About 1/2 lb chicken breast, cooked and cubed
Parmesan cheese
Salt & pepper

Add garlic and a few tablespoons oil to a skillet on medium heat and cook 2-3 minutes. Add broccoli florettes and cook until broccoli turns bright green. Add chicken and spice with salt & pepper, and cook until chicken is hot all the way through.

Add enough oil to fill pan about halfway up to the top of the broccoli, usually between 1-2 cups. Simmer on medium heat until broccoli is cooked to preferred consistency. Serve over pasta and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.

Execution

This is by far one of my favorite dishes. I could literally eat this every night for a week.

Ingredients

Peter's kitchen is soooo much nicer than mine. Look at those countertops! Mine are that fakey-marble blue. Yuck.

Now you're more than welcome to cook and chop your own chicken, we were just looking for something quick so we got the Deli-Fresh kind. You can also make this without meat at all; this was actually the first time in almost ten years of making this dish that I put chicken in it, but I was super-hungry and wanted meat.

As for the "broccoli florettes," all this means is you're only using the top part of the broccoli. Cut off all the stems, and then just chop the top of the broccoli up into smaller pieces so they're bite-sized. You'll get little green things everywhere, but it's worth it.

You can also use fresh garlic which I usually do, but again, I was going for quick and delicious so I used jarred. Dump in a couple spoonfuls of garlic and a bit of oil to cook it in.

DO NOT let the garlic burn! This is very important, because the garlic is in this for the long haul. Just stir it around for a minute until everything smells like garlic, then dump in your broccoli. Stir it around so it soaks up some of the oil, and let it cook a little. If it gets too dry, throw a little more oil on there. Your goal isn't to drown it or pan-fry it here, just to keep it sort of moist with the oil.

Once it starts turning bright green (is there anything prettier than cooked broccoli?), throw in the chicken.

You'll want to cook this another few minutes so the chicken absorbs some of the garlicy flavor and mingles with the broccoli. You should also add salt and pepper to taste.

Mmm! Now, if you're watching your figure you can just throw this on some pasta and go, but trust me when I say it'll be dry. So suck it up, remember that olive oil is good for your heart, and pour a bunch more in. I usually add it until it's about halfway to covering the broccoli concoction, as shown below.

I know it looks like a lot of oil at first glance, but remember that you're throwing this over an entire pound of pasta, so don't be shy! Let this simmer for a few minutes - the oil should turn a bit cloudy from all the other ingredients - until the broccoli is the consistency you prefer.

Then you just put some pasta in a bowl and spoon the broccoli concoction over it. I like shells the best, because there's all kinds of little niches that the oil can get stuck in and make it extra delicious.

Note #1: See what I meant about getting little green thingees everywhere?

Note #2: I am so jealous of Peter's dishes. Oh man.

Now, at this point you sprinkle some parmesan cheese over it and chow down. I like a lot of cheese, practically negating any healthy benefits of eating this meal, but how much you add is entirely dependent on your own love of cheese.

Once you've had your fill, throw the rest of the pasta into a tupperware container, pour the remaining oil from the pan over it, and eat it later with some more cheese. Mmmm, cheese.

Thanks again to Peter for helping me make this excellent meal!

Guacamole

2009-11-17T14:44:00.004-05:00

Difficulty Rating:

Sorry it's been so long since my last update, but school's been eating my brain so I haven't been cooking lately. But! Worry not, as I am cooking a large bit of food for Thanksgiving, and that'll give you a wide array of things to love. Plus, I'm making Red Beans & Rice this week, so look forward to that!

This takes about fifteen minutes to make with prep time, and involves dumping stuff in a bowl, but since avocados have to be found in a grocery store it's listed as a 2-Cookie recipe. But, seriously, very easy.

Recipe

2 medium, ripe avocados
1/2 small white onion, chopped fine
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and veined and chopped very fine
1 large tomatoe, chopped fine
2 limes, juiced
2-3 tablespoons fresh cilantro, destalked and torn

Mash up avocados with a hand masher or fork. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix together. Eat with delicious chips.

Execution

I can't even think of what to write 'cause this is so simple. So... um... here we go!

Ingredients

You usually don't cut straight through the pit of the avocado, but my boyfriend go a little overexcited using my super-sharp awesome chef's knife. The way you usually do it is to act as if you're going to cut it in half, and just pull it apart instead of cutting the pit. Pull it out, then scoop the delicious mushy insides out and throw them in a bowl.

I use a hand-masher and get it all mushed up, and then it looks like this. Note that he already added the cilantro because he forgot I was taking pictures, but you get the idea.

So once it's all mashed up, you just add everything in. I don't really like spicy guacamole, so I scooped some out before he added the jalapenos, but if you want it to be spicy just be sure you cut the pieces really, really finely or you're gonna bite into a big hunk of ohmigoditburns!

But once it's all mixed up, you have some serious deliciousness to contend with. I like to pair it with some blue corn chips, which are tastier than crappy Tostidos anyway. Enjoy!

Macaroni and Cheese

2009-10-18T21:56:00.006-04:00

Difficulty Rating:

This will make you fat and sassy.

Recipe

1 lb elbow macaroni
1 stick (8 tbsp butter)
4 eggs
12 oz evaporated milk
1 tsp hot sauce
2 tsp kosher salt
1 1/2 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp garlic powder
black pepper
20 oz cheddar cheese

Cook pasta and drain. Return to the pot and add butter, tossing to melt.

Whisk together eggs, milk, hot sauce, salt, pepper, garlic, and mustard. Stir into pasta to coat. Turn on medium heat and add cheese. Continue to stir 3-5 minutes until creamy.

Execution

This is a really easy stovetop version of macaroni and cheese. It's also so delicious that you might actually hurt yourself from eating too much. Seriously. Ration it. It's dangerous stuff.

Ingredients:

First you're going to boil the pasta. Once it's done, drain it. I like to put the empty pot back on the stove and dump the butter in to let it melt first, then put the macaroni back in. Mix it all up.

While the pasta is boiling, shred the cheese. It is a lot of cheese. It will make a mountain - like this!

Whisk together everything else but the cheese, and pour it over the macaronis. It won't look like much at first.

But then. Then! The cheeeeese. It's a lot of cheese, so add a handful at a time and stir it up to melt it. It'll probably take about five minutes to make it all happen, but once that sweet time has passed, you're left with some of the most delicious thick and creamy nom-noms that you have ever tasted!

Just look at it! It's so melty and wonderful! You'll eat too much of it. I promise.

What to do with leftovers

2009-10-06T14:02:00.004-04:00

Difficulty Rating:

This isn't really a recipe. This is more a "Hey, you don't just have to heat stuff up and eat it again - you can play with it!" sort of suggestion. Because we all know that, no matter how delicious it is, leftovers can get kind of tedious.

For instance, I made 5 pounds of Puerco Pibil. Now, it was super yummy, but I can't just eat it every damn day. So what's a girl to do?

I usually like doing pastries. Pies or puffs, or even throwing it on a homemade pizza. This time I did triangle pastries with phyllo dough, and here's how!

Phyllo, or puff pastry sheets, are very easy to work with. You can buy them frozen and keep them for a very long time, and it keeps in the fridge for about 5 weeks. You'll always need to defrost them before using them. They usually come in a bundle of large sheets, which you cut into thirds.

For the insides, I mixed the pork with yellow rice and 4 oz of sour cream (because sour cream is delicious).

Take the strip of dough and butter one side of it. Fold the sides over a little so you have a buffer zone of non-buttered dough to work with. My pictures didn't come out all that clear, but the shiny part is the butter. I melted the butter and then used a brush to apply it.

Then take a spoonful of the mixture and plop it down on one end of the dough.

Fold the end over it, then start folding it into triangles.

Once they're all folded, put them on a greased baking sheet and brush some more butter on the outside.

Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes, and then you have delicious meat pastries! Remember, everything on the inside is cooked already, so you're just waiting for the dough to cook.

These little suckers are excellent. Phyllo dough is really, really flaky, so make sure you eat it with a napkin.

You can put pretty much any leftovers in these as long as it's mostly solid. Phyllo is also great for desserts. Have you ever had a peanut butter and jelly pastry? It is amazing. Mmmm.

Beef Stroganoff

2009-09-29T12:35:00.005-04:00

Difficulty Rating:

I've got an investor! Squee!

My friend Dave has agreed to bankroll a few of my cooking projects so long as he gets to eat them, and this is a totally okay solution for me. As such, you now have a delicious Beef Stroganoff recipe thanks to his generosity. He also brought over a copy of the first disc of Firefly, which has disappeared from my house. Dave is totally the man.

Now, the only reason this is a 3 Cookie instead of a 2 Cookie is because I use Tony Chachere's, and that might not be available everywhere so I'm offering a substitute. If you can get Tony's you damn well should have some in your kitchen. It is the most awesomest of spices known to man. Screw Emeril - yes, I said it, screw Emeril. He got nothin' on Tony.

Recipe

2 lb ground beef
1 1/2 tbls salt
2 tbls pepper
2 tbls Tony Chachere's
3 tbls olive oil
1 small or medium onion, chopped
3 c. sliced white mushrooms
1 lb egg noodles, cooked
4 cans of beef broth at 14 1/2 oz each
1 1/4 c. sour cream
chopped garlic
a few tablespoons of SR flour

Substitution:
Every geographic area has its own local spicy goodness. Tony's is the Louisiana version. You can substitute with Zatarain's, Old Bay, or even Adobo if you add some cayenne pepper to it.

Heat oil over medium heat. Add meat and cook until nearly browned. Drain excess oil. Add onions and cook until soft, 3-4 minutes. You may need to add a little bit of broth (appx. 1/4 c) just to keep enough liquid in the pan to keep the meat from burning to the bottom.

Add mushrooms and garlic and cook until mushrooms release their juices. Add noodles, 6 cups of beef broth (a little more than three cans), and sour cream. Cook 5-10 min until thickened. If it isn't as thick as you'd like, use a fork to combine the remaining broth with two large spoonfuls of flour; add this to the stroganoff and stir well, cook another 5-10 minutes.

Execution

This recipe is fairly easy - you only need two pots, and the measurements are pretty much just about eyeing it and adding what you think you need. This is definitely one of those recipes that you'll adjust based on how you like it. I actually scribbled down a few changes in my recipe book just because of how I made it last night; the original recipe called for less beef and less sour cream, which, um, it's stroganoff, bitches. Gimmie more sour cream and beef!

The point is, play around with it. You won't mess it up unless you just accidentally dump half a pound of salt in it.

Ingredients:

I know my mushrooms are a little scuzzy, they were in the fridge for too long.

The first rule of this dish is prepping your food. Go ahead and chop all your garlic and mushrooms and the onion. Cook the noodles. Mix the meat and spices. Once everything's prepped, it'll literally just be a matter of throwing it in the pot in the correct order. Easy-peasy, as my gramma used to say.

I didn't really prep because it's mid-terms week and I've spent every available moment either studying or playing Fable II to distract my brain into working after I've burnt it out with studying. So I didn't mix the spices into the meat beforehand, I just dumped them on top. And that's fine too. :)

So! Heat the oil, dump in the meat and spices.

My spoon-holder is covered in spaghetti sauce because I made bolognase, which I forgot to take pictures of.

Cook it until it's mostly brown, but still has some pink in it. This'll keep it from burning in the subsequent cooking. Drain off the oil.

A quick note on draining oil - don't ever pour that crap down your sink. Yeah, sure, you can run the hot water and it'll probably stay liquid long enough to make it down your pipes, but it'll still run the chance of coating your pipes and eventually clogging the whole thing up. I use my gramma's old trick of an empty coffee can. Label the lid "Used Oil" or something, and then every time you need to drain your oil, put it in the coffee can and then freeze it. This will keep the oil out of the way, and once it's full you can just throw it in the trash without having to worry about it leaking or clogging or anything else.

Once you've drained the oil, add in the onions and cook those down too.

You should chop up the onions properly - I don't because my roommate is allergic to onions and they need to be big enough for him to pick out. That's why most of my recipes don't actually involve onions, but if you're a huge fan you can add 'em in wherever you want.

Keep an eye on the meat. If it starts to stick or burn to the bottom, open up one of the cans of broth and add a little bit. The recipe only calls for 6 cups, which is about 3 cans and a few tablespoons from the fourth, which means you've got some extra to work with if you need it.

Once the onions are softened, add in the garlic and mushrooms. Mmmm, mushrooms.

Cook that until the mushrooms "release their juices," which just sounds like a bad line from a Harlequin novel. It's pretty easy to tell: the mushrooms go from looking all dry and spongy to looking all juicy and delicious. Nummy!

Now you just dump everything else in - 6 cups of broth, the pound of egg noodles, and the sour cream. Mix it all together and let it cook for a few minutes.

It could very well be done now, depending on how you like it. Some people prefer their stroganoff to be more like a soup, but I like mine really thick. If you want to thicken it, take a few heaping spoonfuls of flour and dump it into the last can of broth, which should be about half-full if you're following my recipe exactly. Use a fork to whisk the flour into the broth, and try not to leave any lumps. It won't look particularly thick, but just pour it into the stroganoff and mix well. If you cook that for another ten minutes it should thicken right up.

Ohmigod so good. I like to eat all the noodles and beef, and then use bread to sop up what's left in the bowl. Sooooo good!

Puerco Pibil

2009-09-23T02:26:00.003-04:00

Difficulty Rating:

I will start out by apologizing for some of the picture-fail that came out of this recipe. It is my first 4-Cookie Recipe, and as such it's a bit more complicated, with several steps to it. Plus I habenero-ed myself pretty severely, and my camera froze twice. So... yeah, there's like two pictures missing of the final product. But I'll explain 'em really well, I promise!

Anyone who's seen Once Upon A Time In Mexico knows puerco pibil. I first learned how to make the dish from watching Robert Rodriguez' video about it, but since then I've adjusted the recipe a bit so I hope you enjoy!

Recipe

5 tbls. Annato seeds (sometimes sold as Achiote)
8 All-spice seeds
1/2 tsp. whole cloves
1 tbls. whole black pepper corns
2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 c. orange juice
1/2 c. white vinegar
2 habenero peppers
2 tbls. salt
8 cloves of garlic
1 lemon
6 limes
2 tblsp. brown sugar
1 shot of tequila
5 lbs. pork butt

Hardware needed:
Extra-large baking pan
Aluminum foil
Coffee grinder
Blender
Large freezer bag

Put annato, all-spice, cloves, and black pepper in the grinder and grind until powdered. Add cumin and set aside.

Remove veins and seeds from peppers and chop up. WASH HANDS! Add the peppers to the blender along with the orange juice and vinegar. Add the ground spices, salt, sugar, and garlic. Blend until smooth. Juice the lemon and limes into the blender and add the tequila. Blend until well mixed.

Chop the pork into 2-inch squares. Put the meat in a large freezer bag and pour the blended mixture over the meat. Close the bag and squish to distribute. Place this in the refridgerator for 4-6 hours, turning every half-hour to hour to redistribute the spices.

Place meat in extra-large baking dish and cover with foil. Cook at 325 degrees for four hours. Serve over rice.

Execution

If this wasn't so damned delicious it would just be torture. This is not a hard recipe, but it is grueling and takes all day. But I do like to do this when I'm having a party and want something that I can set out buffet-style for people to eat.

Ingredients:

Now, if you'll notice there next to the garlic I have two different kinds of peppers - red ones and green ones. The green ones are the habeneros, which are what the recipe calls for. However, you can't always find them in your local grocery store (I wasn't even sure these were habeneros since they're usually orange or red, but apparently these just weren't quite ripe enough) so you can substitute with equal an equal amount of scotch bonnets.

Also note that although the container on the counter says "Dog treats for good dogs," I do not actually have a dog. I have a cat named Captain Dog, who is always good. Mainly because he's always sleeping. Like this:

He's very lazy.

So! First thing's first - you're probably going to have to de-bone your pork. Pork butt, by the way, is not actually the butt of the pig. It's the shoulder. So if you go to the store and see no pork butt, only pork shoulder... you know, buy it. It's the same thing.

Don't cut all the fat out since that's what makes it juicy and yummy. If it's got skin on it, though, get rid of that. I usually buy a 7 lb. pork shoulder so it yields about 5 lbs. of meat. You can just keep it in the roasting pan while you do the rest of your deeds. Also, I lost the picture of the meat in the roasting pan, so here's what it looks like pre-cooking and you can just imagine it all cooked and stuff:

I always buy the throw-away aluminum ones because this gets kind of gross otherwise.

Next comes the spices! If you're like me and you occasionally grind your own spices for recipes, make sure you have a grinder that's specifically for spices. You can use a regular old coffee grinder, which runs about ten bucks at the cheap places, but DO NOT, for the love of little apples, ever use the spice grinder to grind coffee. The cross-contamination, it is dreadful to the tastebuds.

The original recipe calls for grinding up your own cumin too, but I've searched and searched and never found cumin seeds available for sale, so I just use ground cumin and throw it in with the rest once I've ground them all up.

Once you've got that done, set it aside and prepare yourself for the habeneros.

WEAR GLOVES.

I really don't know what to say other than that. Most people say you can just wash your hands immediately afterwards and be fine. But some people (like me, which I discovered this weekend) have a serious reaction to the capsaicin, which is the chemical that makes the pepper spicy. This might, say, make your hand feel like it's on fire for about ten hours after you chop up the pepper, even though you washed your hands six times. You might even spend all day with your hand in a bowl of baking soda and ice water wishing for death. Let's just say that wearing gloves is a safe bet.

What I will do for delicious food, my darlings.

Cut it open, remove all seeds and veins (the inside connecting parts and anything NOT the same color and texture as the fleshy middle).

Then you just chop it up into tiny little pieces.

Then wash everything that ever touched it.

Next dump those spicy little suckers into the blender, along with the orange juice, vinegar, spices, salt, sugar, and garlic. Bleeeeend.

Put the cover on! You don't want this all over your counters! Now blend. Yesss.

Juice the lemon and limes (the original recipe called only for 5 lemons, but I prefer it with limes) and add that and the tequila to the mix.

Now, dump all that raw meat into a large freezer bag, pour that gooey red mess on top, close it up and squish it all around. Stick it in the fridge and let it soak for a while. Soak-soak-soak. Every now and then just squish it around some more so it gets in all the meat. I say leave it about 4-6 hours. The good thing about this recipe is that you can do this the night before, and then when you wake up you're all ready for cooking.

Once that's done, just dump it back into the aluminum pan, spreading it out evenly so it can all cook. Cover with foil and stick it in the oven for about four hours. You can take it out at 3 to 3 1/2 hours, the meat will just be a little more solid. Four hours makes it more the consistency of pulled pork, where the meat just sort of shreads and falls apart. This is really just up to how you want it - if I'm throwing it over rice, I like it a bit more solid. If I'm making sandwiches, I'll cook it longer.

The cooking really is the easiest part. I'd suggest serving it over yellow rice with a bunch of very cold beers. I only had white rice in the house, so this is what it looks like:

Mmm. The cooking process and the little bit of brown sugar keeps the peppers from completely overwhelming the dish, making it spicy but still very flavorful. And you've got five freaking pounds of it, so you can feed an army or just feed yourself for a week!

And I promise you, for all my complaining I love this dish. I only make it once a year, but I eat the hell out of it when I do!

Chocolate Crackle Bitches

2009-09-21T15:17:00.004-04:00

Difficulty Rating:

This is a recipe that I got from a friend of mine several years ago and have been obsessed with ever since. I don't remember how the name came about exactly. I think it used to be "Spicy Chocolate Crackle Bitches" but that was just too much.

No matter what you call them, these slightly spicy chocolate cookies are fantastic!

Recipe:

1 box Devil's Food Cake mix
1/3 c. vegetable oil
2 large eggs
2 tbls ground ginger
2 tsp ground pepper
1 tbls water
1/2 c. mini-chocolate chips
1/4 c. sugar

Combine all ingredients except chocolate chips and sugar. Add chocolate chips. Form 1/2 inch balls and roll in sugar to coat. Place on parchment paper or greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 9 minutes - cookies should be soft and cracked on the top.

Execution:

My friend and I have recently been discussing how to make this from scratch instead of using cake mix, but I kinda like the convenience of it all. I also prefer dark chocolate, so instead of mini-chocolate chips I just cut up a bar and a half of dark chocolate into little bits and use that.

Ingredients:

Note that I forgot to put the eggs on the counter for this picture. I know, I know.

Mix everything but the chocolate bits and the sugar together. It'll be pretty solid once it's done, just squish it all up and make sure there's not big lumps.

Now, I usually use more spices than the recipe calls for. I like my cookies spicy. So in actuality I usually use about 3 tbls of ginger and 2 tbls of pepper. You can try the original recipe or add some more, it's totally up to you.

Then you mush in your chocolate!

I know it doesn't look very different, but there's a bunch of chocolaty pieces in there now.

Now start pulling off bits and rolling them into little balls, maybe an inch across. Don't make them too big because these won't flatten out like normal cookies - they'll bake up, not out. If you make them too big the middle won't cook all the way.

Then roll them in sugar...

..and plop them on a greased cookie sheet. I actually prefer to just grease a bit of tin foil, that way clean-up's easier.

Leave enough space between them to bake. These take practically no time at all - the first sheet will be done before you've finished preparing the second sheet. I find this usually makes about two cookie-sheets' worth of cookies.

All crackly on the outside, warm and gooey on the inside, just a little spicy, extra chocolaty... oh man, these are the best cookies ever!

Cheesy Corn Chowder

2009-09-17T23:17:00.004-04:00

Difficulty Rating:

I'm so full, I can't believe I'm even able to type. Holy crap. I forgot how good this stuff is.

Recipe:

8 large potatoes, peeled and diced
1 small bar of Velveeta cheese (16 oz), cubed
2 cans creamed corn
2 cans sliced carrots
Salt & pepper
Garlic powder

Put potatoes in large pot and add just enough water to cover potatoes. Bring to a boil and cook until soft.

Reduce heat to low. Add cheese in small handfuls and stir to melt. Once melted, stir in corn. Stir in seasonings. Stir in carrots.

Execution:

This is 2 cookies only because Velveeta is usually only found in grocery stores. The hardest thing about this chowder is not making yourself sick eating it. Mmmmm.

Ingredients:

Pretty basic. I usually get an extra can of corn and an extra block of cheese, mainly because potatoes come in different sizes and you may find it's not cheesy enough (add more cheese) or too thick (add more creamed corn).

This is pretty much gonna just be me saying "Add stuff and stir," so I figured I'd spice up the entry a little by showing you what is, in my opinion, the best way to dice potatoes.

(1) Slice in half.
(2) Slice that lengthwise.
(3) Cut that into long slices.
(4) Dice.

This method ensures you always have a flat side down on the cutting board so your potatoes aren't sliding all over the place and endangering your precious fingers under the knife. Illustrated below!

Well that was fun. Another tip: to keep potatoes from browning once you peel them, immediately put them in a bowl of water. Same once you've diced them - exposing them to air is what does it, so just keep 'em in a bowl until you're ready.

And once you ARE ready... throw 'em in a pot and fill with just enough cool water to cover them.

Bring this to a boil, then continue to let boil until the potatoes are soft. This will take less time than you think because they're all chopped up. Just use a fork and try to mush a piece against the side of the pot. If there's no resistance, they're ready!

You can just leave 'em in the pot and turn down the heat. Grab a hand masher (or big slotted spoon if you don't have a masher) and smush the potatoes until you get a slightly chunky, chowder-like consistency.

Kitchen Buddha approves of the potato masher. It totally tickles his chakras.

Add cheese! Do this only a handful at a time because if you dump it all in at once some of the cheese won't melt. Just add, stir it for a little while, then add some more.

Once that's done, pour in the two cans of creamed corn. By now it should be a happy golden color:

I always add my seasonings at this point, since it's easier to taste when you're not fighting to keep carrots off your spoon. I stay pretty basic: salt, pepper, garlic powder. Then I dump in the carrots.

Ta-da! This stuff is seriously not messing around. It's thick, gooey, delicious, and will fill you right up. This is absolutely pants-unbuttoning food. :)

Disclaimer: The Apartment Chef is not responsible for any deaths as a result of overeating any of her recipes. She admits that it is just that damn good, but you knew what you were getting into.

Lemon Pasta

2009-09-16T14:44:00.003-04:00

Difficulty Rating:

I'm putting this down as a 1 Cookie recipe because it's painfully simple and you probably have everything except the lemons already. There is a bit of a variation on the recipe if you wanna get fancy, but I'll explain that later.

Recipe:

1 lb pasta
2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2/3 cup olive oil (extra-virgin preferred)
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice, about 4 lemons
salt and pepper

Boil the pasta and drain.

Mix remaining ingredients. Pour over pasta. Mix until the pasta is well covered. Serve hot or cold.

Execution:

The thing I love about this recipe is its versatility. This is the most basic version of this recipe, but I will often add other things to it: grilled chicken, sauteed broccoli, fresh diced tomatoes, anything really. It's also delicious both hot and cold, so it's perfect right off the stove or refrigerated and brought to a picnic. Yum!

Ingredients:

No, this is not an ad for Ronzoni, they were just having a sale at Trade Fair. Shut up.

As far as which kind of pasta to use, it really doesn't matter. I've made it with spaghetti, angel hair, rotini, small shells, linguine... really, whatever you like. I find that using something with texture or nooks-slash-crannies (rotini, bow ties, shells, spaghetti rigata) works best because then there's places for the delicious cheesy-lemon sauce to get stuck in.

First step: boil the pasta.

Boil, kitchen Buddha, boil! Use your magic zen kitty dragon rainbow chakra power ding!

Next, juice the lemons. A note on making things easy: I don't have any fancy juicer, I just use a fork and my ten little fin'ers. If you have a juicer that's fine, go crazy. But if not, and you just want to juice them by hand, start by rolling the lemons on the counter.

Just roll them from fingertips to palm, squishing the lemon, and that'll break up some of the pulp and make it easier to get the nummy juice out. Cut 'em in half, then strain the seeds. I usually do this by sticking the collander on top of the measuring cup and juicing it there...

... but you can always just juice 'em into a bowl and pick the seeds out by hand. I do that when I'm feeling too lazy to wash the collander.

Now that you've got your juice, dump the oil and cheese into it. I'm using the basic powdered cheese we all know and love, which will henceforth be known as Shakey Cheese. If you can afford it, go ahead and get a chunk of parmesan and grate it yourself - it's a hundred times better. Not that this isn't delicious, but real parmesan is like a party in your freaking mouth.

Anyway, mix 'em all up. It'll probably still separate a little (for all you scientists out there, this is a suspention mixture) but that's fine, just mix it up again before you pour it. You can add salt and pepper to this mixture or put it on the pasta after you've mixed it all together, it's up to you.

You should be able to do all this and have a beer before the pasta's done boiling. Once it's done, drain it and put it in a big ol' bowl. Then just pour your cheesey-lemon sauce over it.

Just dump it all in, you don't have to do anything special. Then mix it all up so the pasta gets completely coated, and sha-zam! Delicious lemon pasta!

The original recipe for this says that at this point you should add 1/3 cup fresh chopped basil. This is an AWESOME idea and I love doing it. Basil is my favorite fresh herb to use, and it makes it super colorful (because, let's face it, this is kinda monotone, yes?). I just forgot to get basil at the store, so none for me. Also, fresh basil kinda makes this a 2 Cookie Recipe. Anyway, I recommend that if you have access to basil, you throw it in there. You can also try sauted spinach, that's good. I mean, anything that's light and tastes good with lemon and cheese. Experiment, dump it in there, see what happens!

I myself am a lover of cheese, so I always put a bunch of extra cheese in mine.

You can believe, dear reader, that I ate the crap out of that. Mmmmm.

Another update on updates

2009-09-16T00:52:00.002-04:00

Things to look forward to this week:

Puerco Pibil
Lemon Pasta
Spaghetti Bolognese (which is non-traditional in that we use whatever's in the fridge)
Cheesy Corn Chowder
Beef Stroganoff
Chocolate Crackle Bitches (which are cookies)

There may or may not be Chicken Picata depending on whether Tim brings over the ingredients or not. That's a little pricey to make, and we used all our grocery money for the previously mentioned stuff. And lots of cheese. Oh man, we got so much cheese.

There's also been some requests for my Rabbit Stew, which I generally only make at Easter; I'm not making it unless someone else buys the meat and wine. That is way beyond my budget to make for a blog. :P

Now that you're all drooling, you have to wait til tomorrow! Haha! By which I mean... someone else already made me dinner.

Update about updates

2009-09-01T10:47:00.003-04:00

Sorry there hasn't been a recipe yet this week, but the situation is as follows:

(A) I started college this week, and not having gone to college for nearly ten years makes this a sort of monumentally stressed occasion. Plus I just spent half my rent's worth of money on books that are nonreturnable and were unable to be bought used. It's a business, people, don't ever let 'em tell you otherwise.

(B) We haven't gone grocery shopping this week. But we're doing that today.

So expect delicious recipes soon, my loves, and in the meantime try out some of the ones already here!

Dreamsicle Cake

2009-08-28T13:16:00.002-04:00

Difficulty Rating:

I'd like to preface this particular entry by saying that I am the worst, please believe me, the worst cake froster in the history of frosting cakes. My cakes always end up looking like some mutant half-melted monstrosity, and I'm okay with it because they're delicious. So just, you know, don't worry about the pictures. Your cake will look better, I promise.

Recipe:

Cake

1 box White cake mix
3 oz (one box) orange jello mix
1/3 c. vegetable oil
1 1/4 c. water
4 eggs
1 tsp orange extract

Icing

8 oz sour cream
1 1/4 c. sugar
Orange juice - 1/2 c. with pulp, 1/3 c. without pulp
1 tub Cool Whip

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix cake ingredients and pour into 2 - 9 inch round cake pans. Bake, cool, and slice cakes in half to make four layers.

Combine all icing ingredients except Cool Whip. Fold in Cool Whip, then spread between layers, on top, and on sides of cake.

Execution:

This is a fairly easy cake to make - the icing is actually the most complicated part, but I think using the word "complicated" is, in itself, a stretch. Let's make a delicious cake happen, shall we?

Ingredients:

The first rule of baking is that you always mix your dry ingredients first and then add your wet ingredients. This keeps things from clumping together, which is never good in baking.

I've changed this recipe a bit - it originally used orange cake mix. But orange cake mix is hard to find in a lot of stores, and besides that it makes the flavor a bit too overpowering. I always remember Dreamsicles being a subtle, creamy orange flavor instead of a straight punch-in-the-face of orange. So I use white cake mix instead and just throw an extra little bit of orange extract if I want it to be more orangey.

So! Mix your dry ingredients...

...and then add your wet and whisk it up. You can also just use a fork or slotted spoon if you don't have a whisk. Some people say to use an electric mixer, but I don't really see the need.

Then you pour that goop into two greased round cake pans and stick 'em in the oven. Cook it according to the box's directions - I think this particular cake called for 27 minutes.

While that's cooking, get your ingredients together for the icing:

Mix everything but the Cool Whip together. After making this several times, I've adjusted the amount of OJ needed based on pulp content just because the non-pulp version tends to be more watery so you need less of it.

Then you'll want to fold in your Cool Whip. There is a distinct difference between mixing and folding. Mixing usually breaks it down a little too far and leaves it less icing-y than you'll want. In order to demonstrate, I've shot the first ever video for The Apartment Chef to show you the technique.

For the record, rocking out to Muse makes the cake taste better.

Once you've got the icing all done, stick it in the fridge until the cakes are done.

Oh, look! Cakes are done! Take those suckers out, get 'em out of the pan, and let 'em cool for a while.

They should get down to room temperature. Once they're cool, use a large knife to saw them in half so you have four layers. I have illustrated below, with one already cut and the other in the process:

The trick to making a four-layer cake is positioning the layers. When it bakes, the cake will naturally have a curve on the top and a flat bottom. If you try to stack them the same way, they'll end up middle heavy and you'll get a crack in the middle. I discovered this one year when I made my easter cake. My friends can attest to the earthquake that hit it right down the middle. So the solution is to turn some of them over. You'll want the first curved part face-down on the plate, followed by the bottom to match, then do the top two layers upright. Sort of like the horizontal version of this: ( | | ) Which is not an emoticon for boobs. It's CAKE, people.

Then you just start slopping the icing on there. As you can see, I am especially sloppy about it.

Get it all between the layers and then do the tops and sides. It should end up looking something like this, though surely better since I am the suck at frosting a cake.

And now you have a delicious cake! Just cut into that bad boy and eat the crap out of it.

Yummy!

Taco Bake

2009-08-26T10:21:00.003-04:00

Difficulty Rating:

This is, quite possibly, the least healthy recipe I will ever put up on this website. In general, I like the food you make to be good and good for you. But sometimes you just need something greasy, heavy, disgusting and delicious. This is the recipe for you!

Recipe:

1 lb. ground beef
2 cans of crescent rolls
4 oz (about half a tub or three spoonfuls) sour cream
1 packet of taco seasoning
1 - 15oz can tomato sauce
2 cups shredded cheese
2 cups crushed tortilla chips
salt & pepper

In medium skillet, brown beef with salt and pepper to taste.

While browning the meat, press the crescent roll dough into the bottom of a cassarole dish. Cover in a layer of crushed tortilla chips, about 1 cup.

Once the meat is browned, add the tomato sauce and taco seasoning. Simmer about five minutes or until thickened. Pour into casserole dish. Smooth sour cream over that. Cover in cheese, then top with the rest of the tortilla chips.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes or until crescent rolls are brown along the edge.
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Execution:

It's so good. Oh man, I'm just thinking about how delicious this was.

Ingredients:

First thing's first - brown the meat. Throw some salt and pepper in there for good measure.

While the meat is cooking, grease a glass casserole dish and line it with the crescent roll dough. Just mush it against the sides and bottom, it's doesn't have to be particularly pretty.

Crush up a few handfuls of tortilla chips in the bottom. This is a great use for old stale chips.

Once the meat is all cooked, you should put a spoonful or two on a paper plate and reward the pets for being awesome...

...and then add the tomato sauce and taco seasoning to the rest. Simmer for about five minutes or until the sauce thickens up a bit.

Once that's all done, pour it into the casserole dish and spread it out flat.

Then comes the layer of sour cream...

Then the layer of shredded cheese and tortilla chips...

Stick that bad boy in the oven at 350 degrees, and a few minutes later you've got something amazing. It's freakin' fantastic. Mmmmm.

Again, this ain't exactly the healthiest thing in the world, but if you like tacos you'll love this. You can also add chopped tomatoes or onions or whatever before the cheese and chip layer. Yum!

Special thanks to my mom for letting me turn her nummy dinner into a blog post. Love you Kate!

UPDATE!
I've been told by a friend who made this and doesn't have an insanely hot oven like my mum that the dough takes closer to 25 minutes to brown in normal ovens. That's fine, just cook it 'til the dough gets crispy and yummy. Enjoy!

Tomato Soup

2009-08-24T00:52:00.003-04:00

Difficulty Rating:

Recipe:

1 - 1 lb can of crushed tomatoes
2 cups milk
2 tbsp butter
1/8 tsp baking soda
Spices

In one saucepan, heat tomatoes on low. In second saucepan, heat milk and butter on low. DO NOT LET EITHER POT BOIL!

When tomatoes are hot, stir in baking soda to foam. Add in hot milk and butter and stir until well mixed. Add spices and stir.

NOTE: If increasing the recipe, DO NOT increase baking soda.
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Execution:

Again, pretty much the easiest recipe known to man. Most people have never had anything other than the sludge that comes in a Campbell's can - which I'm not knocking, it was my fav as a kid. But we're adults now and we can do better with about as much effort!

I listed one of the ingredients as "spices" just because I generally use whatever's in the house, about a teaspoon to a tablespoon of each. When I made this at home on Friday I used salt, pepper, garlic powder, Adobo and dried cilantro. Tonight I used salt, pepper, garlic powder, and dried basil. Whatever you've got in your kitchen works. Also, please note that for the pictures I didn't have any canned tomatoes so I used fresh - all you have to do is dice them up very tiny and mush 'em a little.

Ingredients:

Five things, super simple. You put the tomatoes in one pot and the milk and butter in another.

(Please excuse Kitchen Buddha - he's a camera hog.)

Heat them both over low to medium-low heat. It's very important that you NOT boil either of the ingredients, because it starts to break down the tomatoes and it generally scorches the milk. I taught my little sister how to make this tonight and she asked, quite smartly, "How do you know it's hot enough if it's not boiling?" The answer: stick your finger in the tomatoes. If it's hot, you'll feel it. For the milk and butter, you're really just waiting for all the butter to melt. If you're less keen on burning your fingertips, just keep an eye on the tomatoes - they'll start steaming a little once it's the right temperature.

Then you just sprinkle in the baking soda and watch as science makes it awesome. It should foam up much like your volcano in the 4th grade science fair, and for much the same reasons. Stir it until it stops foaming, then dump in the milk and butter melty goodness.

Then you just chuck in the spices and stir it some more.

Now, depending on what you're using, the soup may not be thick enough for you. We're all used to the creamy, nummy Campbell's goodness after all. There are two solutions to this problem.

(A) Use heavy cream instead of milk, which usually requires a trip to the grocery store. Be EXTRA careful about not boiling it.

(B) Once you're done and it's still too watery, put a tablespoon of flour in a little bowl and mix in a few spoonfuls of liquid from the soup. Use a fork to mix it up and make sure there aren't any lumps - you can add more soup liquid if it's too pastey - and then pour that mixture back into the soup. Flour is a natural thickening agent, and if you simmer it for another five or so minutes it should thicken right up. You can do this as many times as you like until you get the consistency that you like, but always give it five minutes between adding flour because sometimes the thickening is a little delayed.

Either way, you should have delicious creamy soup in the end!

I like to make this in conjunction with the beer bread; I usually put two slices of beer bread in the bottom of a wide bowl and then pour the soup over it so it soaks into the bread and makes a delicious mushy mess. You can also add regular old saltines and have it be amazing. It goes great with grilled cheese sammiches, and, as we discovered tonight, it's pretty damn good with homemade mac 'n cheese too.

This recipe gives a shout-out to my sister Karli because it's her favorite thing in the world. There's leftovers in the fridge!

Beer Bread

2009-08-21T23:48:00.008-04:00

Difficulty Rating:

Recipe:

3 cups Self-Rising Flour
2 tbsp sugar
1-2 cans/bottles of beer
1 egg, beaten with 1 tsp of water

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Slowly add the beer until the dough reaches a sticky, solid consistency. Press into a greased breadpan and cover with a towel. Let sit for 15 mins.

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Brush egg mixture onto the top of the dough. Bake 1 hour.
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Execution:

This is, by far, the easiest thing in the world to do. Most breads require buying yeast, and careful measurements, and waiting for it to rise, and kneading, and a whole lot of work that's just a pain. Not so with Beer Bread - the beer has the yeast built right in, so there's none of that pesky manual labor.

You can use any beer, really. I find myself experimenting with flavors. Cherry Wheat beer makes a nice fruity bread that's good by itself with butter - throw in some actual chopped cherries and life is awesome. Since I'm making this to go with tomato soup, I chose a Summer Ale since it's light and slightly citrusy. It doesn't really matter what you choose; you can make this with the Silver Bullet if that's what you have in your fridge.

Ingredients:

This is made with basically nothing. You start with Self-Rising Flour (if you only have All-Purpose flour, which is what's usually sold in stores, you can turn it into SR Flour like so).

Keep in mind that when you're measuring flour, you should never pack it into the measuring cup - don't shake it to get it to settle, don't flatten it in there with a spoon. Just scoop it in there until you get to the top. There should be some air in there - packing it will throw off the measurements. It's not enough to panic over so don't go crazy with it, just scoop it in there and dump it in the bowl.

Add two tablespoons of sugar, which is just two big scoops with a large spoon. Mix it up. Then slowly pour in your beer a little at a time. It'll fizz like the dickens, but that's to be expected. Just mix it into the flour bit by bit until it gets doughy. How much beer you use really depends on the individual beer. I always get two bottles just in case. For the Cherry Wheat, it takes about 1 1/4 bottles; for the Summer Ale, it didn't even take one full bottle. It should have a sticky, solid consistency.

This is actually a little too wet for the dough, but this is my first foray into photography while cooking so things are a bit jumbled. If it gets too wet like this, just mix in some more flour a spoonful at a time until you get it right.

Then just pour it into a greased bread pan. Throw a towel over it and let it sit for 15 minutes. Depending on what beer you use, it should rise a bit. Heavier beers generally mean less rise and thicker bread. I have a hankering to try this with Guinness since that's basically bread-in-a-bottle anyway, but I haven't yet made that leap.

Then just brush the egg over it and stick that bad boy in the oven.

375 for an hour, and voila! You've got delicious crusty bread!

As a general rule, get the bread out of the pan as soon as you can and let it cool. The grease should keep it from sticking and it'll come right out when you tip it over.

The crust should be pretty thick, which makes it perfect to eat with soups. Enjoy!

Special Thanks to Casey C. for the original recipe!

Kitchen Basics

2009-08-21T21:49:00.007-04:00

Before we start cooking, let's discuss the most basic of questions: what the hell do you need in your kitchen?

When I started going through my kitchen to compile this list, I thought to myself, "Self, this is gonna be a really short list. I mean, these are bare-bones minimums for what people need in their homes. This'll only take a minute." And then, two notecards later, I realized the error of my ways.

When you see this list, don't be discouraged by the number of things on it. Chances are that unless you're fresh out of the dorms, you've probably got most if not all of these things in your kitchen already. And since one of my goals in this is to keep your costs as low as possible, let it be said that because these things are so basic, you can usually find them at any discount retail store for fairly cheap. A new skillet might cost you $15, but that's $15 that could save you $50 a month when you're not ordering pizza every other night.

So without further ado, here are the lists for Kitchen Basics!
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Basics #1 - Cookware
These are the essential things that enable you to actually, physically cook

Large and small skillets
Large saucepan (small ones are nice but unnecessary)
Large boiling pot (my mom called this the Pasta Pot)
Pasta Strainer
Baking sheet (aka Cookie Sheet, preferably metal)
Casserole dish (preferably glass, the metal ones are impossible to keep clean)
Various spoons/spatulas/stirrers (plastic's best, but I keep a few wooden ones around)
Two cutting boards - one for meat, one for everything else
Cheese grater (I prefer the flat ones)
Measuring cups and a Pyrex measuring bowl
Large cutting knife (non-serrated, AKA a chef's knife)
Large mixing bowl
Aluminum foil

Basics #2 - Additional Cookware
You don't really need these, but they make life easier

Loaf pan
Parchment paper
Basting brush (true story - I use the dollar store hair-dye brushes. Culinary ones can be expensive.)
Rice cooker (trust me, it's worth the $30)
Food chopper

Basics #3 - Ingredients
These are staples that should be in your cabinets at all times

Salt & pepper
Sugar
Brown sugar
Flour (both All-Purpose and Self-Rising, though I'll teach you how to turn one into the other)
Vegetable oil
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar (I know, I know - trust me)
Butter (real butter, NOT margarine)
Crisco (yes, Crisco. For future reference, whenever I say "grease a pan" use this.)
Eggs
Rice
Honey
Bread crumbs
Vanilla Extract
Garlic powder
Cinnamon
Adobo
Sazon
Chili powder
Ginger
Bay leaves
Beef bouillon cubes
Parmesan Cheese (we call it Shakey Cheese in my apartment)

Basics #4 - Additional Ingredients
Again, not necessary, but they really are worth getting

Basil
Rosemary
Thyme
Soy sauce
Worchestershire sauce
Tony Chachere's (a little hard to find outside of the Deep South)
Mustard powder
Bisquick (yes, Bisquick)

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And that's it! I'm willing to bet that you can find most of that - at least the essentials - in your kitchen already. Also, don't be afraid to improvise! Half of what you're going to learn here is not how to follow a recipe, but how to be a Kitchen McGuyver. I want everyone to be able to come home after a long day, open their fridge and say "Okay, I have this, this, and this... what can I make with it?" and have an answer.

You can do this. Just keep telling yourself that. You can totally do this.

The Required Introduction

2009-08-21T11:23:00.003-04:00

I got the idea to start this blog when I made a batch of cookies.

Okay, wait, that's not entirely correct.

I got the idea to start this blog when I made a batch of cookies and, upon bringing them to class, was hailed as a culinary genius. These were not hard cookies to make. They were, in fact, made from things I had laying around the house - and one ingredient that I went to the local gas station deli to buy. It could very well be the easiest cookie recipe I have in my arsenal. And still, everyone was amazed that I baked.

Don't get the wrong idea. They were freaking delicious. But what amazed me was the overwhelming reaction of my friends - mainly, that no one knew how to cook.

So I'm setting out to teach the 20-somethings of the world that cooking really isn't all that scary. In fact, it's usually a great way to relax, destress, and ensure that you eat a healthy meal. After all, you know what's going in there.

But most importantly, I want to show people that cooking is easy; you don't need a gourmet grocer or special pots and pans to make a really good meal. It can be done in small apartments around the world, with little more than the basic ingredients you already have in your kitchen.

You can make delicious stuff. You. I promise. Here, I'll show you how.