Graduate applications are a pain

So in the past month, I've made risotto, chicken, some sort of dip, cheese straws, holiday cookies, milk chocolate (by accident), more bread, cream biscuits with cheese, roast lemon chicken, green beans, and mashed potatoes. Also a couple drop biscuits here and there. I've also been working on my application to grad school and that's kind of awful... so more updates once those are done.

Also

http://loltonbrown.blogspot.com

Beer Bread

Okay seriously... beer + bread... sounds too good to be true, right? Well... maybe.

I've recently taken an interest in quick breads because they're pretty easy and I actually have baking soda/baking powder, as opposed to yeast. This recipe was ridiculously simple.

3 c all purpose flour
3 tbs sugar
1.5 tsp salt
3 tsp baking powder

Mix. Put into a well greased (like with Pam) bread pan. Put in a 375 degree oven for an hour. Eat.

So the beer that I used was a wheat beer called Zoomer from the New Holland Brewing company in west Michigan. My problem with that beer is that it's entirely too hop-y for being a wheat beer and you can definitely taste that in the bread, though it's not a strong. My inclination would be to find a different beer whose flavors I appreciate more, but it was either Zoomer or Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat... and just... no. I mean, it's not horrible, but it could be a lot better. I'd actually think that if you did this with Stella or Sam Adams or, hell, Budweiser, it would be a lot better.

Spinach Tomato Pasta

Since my Thanksgivings are usually a lot more brief than everyone else's, I spent a lot of time staring at the TV. We were watching when Giada De Laurentis came on and she made this pasta which seemed super simple... and now that I've stolen my dad's huge ass pan (or what I've been calling a wok), I had something to make it in and it was yummy. Even Colby (who I made eat it) thought it was good.


1 lb pasta

1 clove minced garlic
1/4 c olive oil
8 oz cherry tomatoes, halved
1 bag pre-washed fresh spinach coarsely chopped

1/2 c Asiago + Parmesan or some other hard, salty cheese
salt and pepper to taste


boil the pasta until al dente in heavily salted water. Save 1/2 c of the boiling liquid. Drain. Cook the garlic in the olive oil until you can smell it, then add the spinach and tomatoes until the spinach starts to really wilt. Add in pasta, pasta water, cheese and toss. Season with salt+pepper to taste.

It was super simple and really good. I was going to add chicken, but my refreezerator got to the chicken before I could. :( Damn freezer burn.

Kyle, you should make this.

I made a discovery!!

Chicken stock is my new favorite cooking device. My second new favorite cooking device is the wok that I stole from my dad. Chicken stock + wok == best stir-fry evAr. Well, maybe not ever, but you get the drift.

I made quinoa again, but this time I used chicken stock instead of water and oh boy, it was 8000 times better. I used the quinoa instead of rice again and it was an excellent addition to my stir-fry, which consisted of a bunch of vegetables that I was going to use then or throw out. Veggie stir-fry is becoming my new default because chicken takes too long and I'm lazy. I maintain that it's healthier than fast food.

So at the grocery store, I bought a couple cans of chicken stock. My new game is going to be to see what all I can incorporate it into. I also got asparagus. Stoked about that! I'm thinking of trying risotto soon, but I couldn't find arborio rice. Sadness. Maybe later this week, I'll find it.

Other new discovery... the cookie recipe I was using is better if you forget the recipe and run out of vanilla. I think the new best way of dealing with it is to use two eggs (instead of 1 egg + 1 yolk) and to half the amount of vanilla. I made them again by actually following the recipe and was a bit disappointed; however, my friend Dave decided that he likes the actual recipe better. So I guess experimentation (i.e. forgetting the recipe) is the best.

Corn bread+ instant polenta

I've been reading through cookingforengineers.com for awhile now, but I never really got around to making anything until last night. They had a recipe for sweet cornbread which was actually really good. It tastes more like the Jiffy corn bread mix, as opposed to buttery corn bread with a side of butter that's wrapped in a bit more butter. There's actually no butter in this. They came out a bit on the dry side, but, again, it's corn bread and it probably wants some butter, which I am opposed to doing.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and grease an 8x8" or 9x9" pan.

Combine:

1 c cornmeal
1 c all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt (I forgot it at first and I tasted the batter because, well, I'm me and I was wondering what was wrong until I realized what I had forgotten)
1/2 sugar
1 tbs baking powder

1/3 c vegetable oil (I used corn oil)
1 c whole milk
1 large egg (take out the albumen)

Gently fold the wet ingredients into the dry ones. Yum. Bake for ~20 minutes or so, or at least until you can put a toothpick in the center and have it come out clean.

So yeah, it came out a bit dry, but it was a lot sweeter and lighter than the previous attempt. I guess it's just a matter of personal taste (pun?) when it comes to corn bread. Given my non-existent sweet tooth, this could seriously be my birthday cake.

So after that, I had the brilliant idea of trying to make polenta because I apparently love love love corn meal. I stole Chris' instant polenta and had at it. Essentially you boil 3 c water and then add 1 c polenta mixture and 1 tsp salt and just stir for five minutes. This is only the instant kind. I figure that one day I'll make it for realsies. I didn't have *that* much flavor. It kind of reminded me of cream of wheat, except way thicker. Or that time I brought cream of wheat to work for lunch and it was all gross and coagulated. I decided to try to fry it, but it didn't work. I used too much oil because I had seen it deep-ish fried so i was trying that. I still have a bunch left that I guess I'm going to experiment with later.

Also, my new favorite trick is to take a piece of food, hand it to someone and say "try it", and then watch them eat.

Oops

Okay, so I haven't updated in forever, but I have intentions of updating again soon. Tomorrow looks like "experiment with polenta" day and also, I have a new cornbread recipe that I'd like to test out. I suppose I just got super busy, but the problem is that I'll make something and it'll last me a week because I'm one person and my stomach is not a bottomless pit. I made curry again, this time with non-light coconut milk and saw almost no difference. I did, however, impress one person enough. I also made mashed potatoes for the family thanksgiving with brie, garlic, and fresh basil. Those came out nicely too and this time I roasted the garlic which was different and made my aunt's house smell yummy. I'm currently campaigning to get Christmas Eve dinner and cook it with my brother. I'm thinking roasted chicken with risotto. Any thoughts?

Homemade apple sauce!

Yum-O! Actually, I should use some Alton Brown saying, since this was the best we could come up with from one of his recipes. It's actually pretty simple.

Combine:

1 c unfiltered apple juice (or apple cider)
6 medium-sized apples (3 tart, 3 sweet)
2 tbs butter
3 tbs honey
2 tbs cognac
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Peel, core, quarter the apples, add everything in a sealable container... shake really hard. Microwave for 10 minutes. Go at it with a stick blender.

Serve with a piece of cheddar cheese or ice cream. Ice cream == way better.

So the problem that I had with the recipe is that the intermotron wasn't working so we had to make up the recipe from memory-ish. It worked out okay, albeit a little watery. We used 1.5 c, not 1 c of cider, 2/3 shot of cognac (although, could that be 2 tbs?), and 1 tsp cinnamon. If I could do it all over again, I'd use less cider, 1 tsp. cinnamon, and I'd seriously reconsider the cognac because it smelled like death. Or maybe this is my disposition against liquor speaking.

Pumpkin Pie (revised)

So in the holiday spirit, Chris hosted pie-stravaganza and it was amazing. I made a pumpkin pie and he made the apple pie and there was much happiness and rejoicing. A bunch of the grad students + Katie went bowling, but whilst they were chucking 12 lb gutter balls, we were hard at work in the kitchen.

This pie was particularly rewarding because I made the crust my own damn self. Also, the exact amounts could be off, so I'm going to have to check with Chris to see if it's right.

Crust:

1 1/2c flour
9 tbs cold butter
1/2 tsp salt
3-4+ tbs cold water

Cut the butter into the flour until it appears to be a crumb-like texture. Begin to form it into a ball and add water in order to make it stick together. The amount of water varies as the humidity varies, so good luck. Wrap wad of dough into a ball and put in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Take the dough out and roll it until it's ~1/4 in thick/large enough to suffice as a pie crust. Place the dough into the container and press it into the corners making sure that there's enough dough around the edges where the wall of the pie tin meets the bottom. Prick the bottom with a fork. Cut off the excess dough and then you can make "pie leaves", which essentially boil down to creating an edge crust for the pie. I cut out stars and moons because I'm sweet like that, but it's kind of unnecessary if you just leave enough edge on the pie. Put back into the fridge for 20 minutes.

Take it out and place pie weights in the center of the pie and pre-bake for 12 minutes at 400 F. Take it out again and then take off the pie weights and put back into the oven for 6-8 minutes or until the pie looks goldenish. If you do it right, the crust should lie flat against the bottom. If not, no worries, the weight of the filling should be enough to compensate and if not, then who cares? It's pie. Everyone loves pie.

Filling (do whilst things are in the oven or something)

2 c pumpkin filling
1 c heavy whipping cream
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
4 tbs corn syrup
1/2 c brown sugar, packed
2 eggs, beaten (and take out the albumen!)

I think this is all there is to it. Essentially all you do is mix thoroughly and hard. Apparently there is an advantage to incorporating air into the mix.

Pour the filling into the crust and bake at 375 for ~40 minutes or until the crust had browned and the filling appears to be set. Pumpkin pie is best served the next day after it's had time to set.

So this was from a recipe from a cookbook that I don't own. I think in the future, I'm going to be more careful/anal about how I handle the dough and I'm going to play around with the pumpkin pie spice. It was good, though and pie-stravaganza was a success.

Tapioca Pudding

Okay fine, everyone thinks it's gross, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't taste yummy. In fact, I know one person who would agree with me and ate most of it. It turns out that my new cooking m.o. is to cook with so much dairy that I cannot feasibly eat what I've created. Oops.

So tapioca is actually kind of more complicated than I had thought.

First day/Part 1
1/2 c dried tapioca balls
2 c H$_2$O

Soak the tapioca in the water overnight. Okay, that part isn't that hard.

Part 2
2 1/2 c milk
1/2 tsp

Drain the excess water off of the tapioca. This is harder than it would seem. In a double boiler, heat the milk until it's no longer cold and then add the salt and tapioca. Heat until small bubbles appear at the side and then turn the heat wayyyy down until it'll basically keep the mixture warm. Cover and cook for an hour.

Part 3
2 eggs (separated)
1/2 c sugar

Separate whites and yolks and set the whites aside. Take out the albumen from the eggs, for pete's sake (I know no one does this and this means that I'm anal as hell, but still... eww). Beat the sugar and yolks together. Add a bit of the milk+tapioca mixture to the eggs and mix in the bowl. You have to do this in order to ensure that the egg mixture isn't cold when it's added to the hot milk mixture because then you'll have sugar-y scrambled eggs (I hate flan). After mixing the egg and hot stuff to regulate the temperature, add the entire mixture to the double boiler and turn to medium heat, stirring constantly until it thickens. It takes 10ish minutes or so.

Part 4
2 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla extract

Now take the egg whites and beat them until they're stiff and then gently fold into the tapioca mix and then stir in vanilla.


I had the fortune of not only not having a double boiler, but also having the world's crappiest sauce pan. It's okay, though, because the pudding actually turned out really well and I was all proud of myself because it was the first time I had made pudding that wasn't instant. It also turned out to be way too lactose-y but fortunately, one of my friends couldn't chew on anything, so he ate most of it and has yet to keel over from it.

Mac'n'Cheese remix

So in the past month, I've made mac'n'cheese twice. I still have one lonely blue box sitting in my apartment, but I have a feeling that that's going to be sitting there for quite some time. Go me!

The roux that I had made in my previous attempts had never been that great until I was prompted (thank you Joe) to add salt. This made things *way* better. Also, the inclusion of non-skim milk probably helped. So my final mac'n'cheese sauce base looks like this:

2 tbs butter
2 tbs flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 c milk
1/3 bag of cheese

And basically the only instructions are to add those things in the aforementioned order and keep stirring. The first time I made the mac'n'cheese, the cheese mix that I got turned out to be reduced fat and I didn't realize this until I tasted it and was so so sad. Salt is amazing and I used that to cover it all up. The second time I did this, it was with the intention of feeding it to someone else without poisoning them, so I made extra super sure that it wasn't low fat. I also added in almost an entire block of edam. It was really good, but it's mostly going to waste now because I can't eat it without getting pretty sick. Yay lactose intolerance. I learned my lesson from the first time and I now have a can of plain bread crumbs too. So it's add, stir, put cheese sauce over pasta, add more cheese to pasta, sprinkle LIGHTLY (I had issues with this once) with bread crumbs, and place into a 500 degree oven for 7-8 minutes.

I think I'm finally learning how to cook...

Stir Fry part doo + schwam, with quinoa!

I think my new obsessions are stir-fry and KT Tunstall --stir-fry because it's easy and KT Tunstall because her new CD has some really sweet jams (in Michaelese). So today I went on a gigantic grocery adventure and came back with, amongst other goodies, quinoa, which is a grain initially cultivated in the Andes.

Side note: I started this post about a month ago and never finished it because i got way too busy, but i feel like it's time to update this thing for my own sake.

Quinoa is starting to become popular in vegetarian/vegan food circles. Actually, it isn't starting to, it actually is popular and since I live in the midwest, I haven't gotten around to trying it until recently. It's small and round and actually a seed, so it's not exactly like rice. You cook it in much the same way you cook rice, with 2 cups of water per 1 cup of quinoa. Simply bring to a boil and let it soak up the water for about 15ish minutes.

My first (and sadly, only) attempt with it was really as a rice replacement. I made stir-fry with a store-bought stir-fry sauce and just put it on the quinoa. It was actually pretty good. I'd say that it bridges the gap between white rice and brown rice in how nutty it is. I like it. I'm going to make more of it soon, especially since I've replenished my broccoli supply.

Home cooked goodness

So if Kyle and I end up at the same grad school, we're going to room together and it's going to be amazing because we're going to come up with incredible culinary creations. We made a home-cooked meal the other day and it was amazing. I discovered how easy it is to fake like an adult and Kyle discovered that chicken doesn't have to be completely bland. Yay for instant mashed potatoes and meat rubs!

chicken
random meat rub
olive oil

2 tbs flour
2 tbs butter
2 c milk
broccoli
mushrooms
more butter
garlic salt
cheese (in this case, we used mild cheddar... shredded sharp cheddar seems better)

water
mashed potato mix

We made the chicken by covering it in some voodoo rub and then just putting it in the pan with a tiny bit of olive oil (just enough so that it wouldn't burn) and then cooking it until we didn't die. The broccoli with mushroom-cheese sauce bit was slightly harder, but still a learning experience. Boil the broccoli until it turns bright green, sautee mushrooms in butter and garlic salt (since they seemed so sad and plain) until they darken a bit, and then make the cheese sauce, but probably not in that order. I'm the queen of run-on sentences. Melt 2tbs of butter and then add flour whilst mixing vigorously. Add in warm milk and keep stirring until it thickens. Add in cheese. Preferably enough. Also, you probably want to halve the amount of sauce that we made because it was too much and the sauce ends up being too bland because there's just too much roux-like substance. Pour this over drained broccoli and tasty mushrooms. Finally, the hardest bit (at least for Kyle) the instant mashed potatoes: boil water, ADD TO DRY POTATO MIX, stir.

It all came out lovely and homecooked-like. It was kind of exciting. Also, we made cookies and those came out slightly too well done, but still okay. Someone needs to calibrate their oven. *ahem*. I think that I want to experiment with making my own rubs because it was a little voodoo. It was also delicious, so it's some sort of balance between being in control and not. It's probably also a waste of time, especially from now til November 3rd.

dun dun dun.

Stir-Fry, part doo

So I had a busy week such that I have frozen chicken sitting in my refrigerator and a bunch of stuff that I had to throw out. Sadness. However, I did, indeed find some time to cook in Austin. I like cooking in other people's kitchens because they're not all cramped as hell. So yeah, I got to take over Kyle's kitchen for a night and we made yummy stir fry.

a bunch of carrots
a handful of mushrooms
a lot of broccoli
half a red bell pepper

chicken
dry seasoning stuff
olive oil
random stir fry sauce

Cut things, season chicken, dump in pan with olive oil, cook for a bit, add sauce, dump in veggies, add more sauce, cook until a) the chicken won't kill you and b) the veggies are no longer raw.

It was actually really tasty and way better than the stir fry I tried to make before. I think I'm getting over my fascination with balsamic vinegar... except for the "on salads" bit. Oh, and bread. Yay bread. I think this stir-fry sauce was what made it good, but it was a store brand (HEB) to a store that is located nowhere near Michigan. But it tasted a lot like the ginger-soy vinaigrette at Omi, which is, perhaps, the best salad dressing I've ever had.

this is why I'm lame

I haven't posted in here in forever because I didn't feel that Cream of Wheat or salad merited an entry. Also, I've been busy as allgetout; thus, I have not been able to cook. However! I have chicken and hope. So hopefully I'll be able to figure out a way to cook something and post about it. Oh, and this lack of time to bake things is draining my soul.

Mustard Chicken

Okay, so I haven't posted in awhile. I haven't really cooked anything in awhile and I cooked this a couple weeks ago. It's been pretty bad. I've been eating out a lot lately (oh god, my waistline!) and I've been making a lot of pasta and salad.

I did find time, however, to try breaded, pan-fried chicken. It didn't work out perfectly, and I feel that the next time it should be baked... if there is a next time. My usual grocery store was out of basil and chicken breasts the last time I went. How do you run out of chicken breasts? And basil? All forms of fresh basil. Lame.

Anywho, so the instructions are as follows.

2 chicken breasts
1/2 c bread crumbs
4 Tbs whole grain mustard
2 Tbs honey
olive oil

1. Combine 1/2 c bread crumbs and 2 tbs-ish of the mustard. In a separate bowl combine the rest of the mustard with the honey and mix well.
2. Cover the chicken in the honey sauce and then dredge (is that *actually* the word I'm looking for?) the chicken in the bread crumb mixture
3. Put it in a pan and cook it until it can't kill you.

It ended up taking a lot more olive oil than I had hoped, which is why I think baking it is the answer. Also, I had Italian bread crumbs on hand... which maybe wasn't the answer.

So lesson learned... more baking, no oil, and PLAIN bread crumbs.

Also, I need to figure out some dishes to make for November.. gah...

Pretentious Mac'n'Cheese

This one may make me sick. It has so much dairy in it, I'm apt to explode, but it's okay because I learned what a roux is *actually* supposed to look like so... go me!

I've been buying random cheeses at will at the grocery store lately and then trying to incorporate them into my cooking. It's been somewhat amusing, although I have to admit that a lot of the cheese is put on crackers and then into my tummy which is way easier than cooking. The last time I got fontinella cheese, which is fairly strong.

I've also taken to not really measuring things for cooking anymore. Mostly I've been eye-ing things and then tasting, but that only really works when you're not cooking for anyone else... but lo and behold, I'm not.

2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs flour
2 c. warm milk
Fontinella cheese (or any cheese, really)
elbow macaroni

Boil water, add mac, clean up the sink whilst you're waiting for things to boil. Melt butter and then add flour and stir so things don't burn. Add milk a little bit at a time and let it heat until the mixture thickens. Add mixture to the drained noodles and then add cheese.

It came out tasty. I assume I didn't use enough cheese, though. It was okay, because I added breadcrumbs and pepper... so it was less bland. Given that this occurred several hours before, I also ate the leftovers and added tomato sauce to make it a palomino. Mm mm good. Or something. I guess the next time I'll use a higher moisture cheese.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

So I haven't updated in awhile because I've been battling a bout of bronchitis for a week and finally got the gumption to go to the doctor. That was a lot of alliteration; I'm immensely proud. (And awesome assonance!) Anywho, I haven't really cooked anything new or different as a result. Also, no one cares whether or not I update because no one reads this.

So the only really "new" thing that I've attempted of late was a chocolate chip cookie recipe that I stole from Chris which was modified with complaints. I baked them three times over the summer, with varying results. I guess I bake best unwatched. Or something.

2c + 2 tbs. flour
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
12 tbs. butter, softened
1 c packed brown sugar
1/2 c granulated sugar
1 large egg + 1 yolk
2 tsp. vanilla extract
lots of chocolate chips

Set oven to 325 F, grease baking pans (or be lazy and use parchment paper)

Whisk together flour, salt, and baking soda. In a separate bowl, combine brown sugar, granulated sugar, and butter until creamy. Beat eggs and add vanilla. Add mixture to the sugarbutter and then add in dry ingredients in parts. Add in chocolate chips.

Take 1/4c of the dough and roll into a ball. Rip the ball in half and smash the two smooth ends together. It should look like the world's saddest snowman.

Bake for 15-18 minutes, until the bottom is golden brown and the tops still look like they need a little more time. You can rotate in the middle of the bake time, but this is for people who aren't lazy.

So I was studying for the GRE with Colby and mostly felt completely inept, so we decided that it was cookie time. We made a half batch (which was hard with the eggs...), but they turned out to be pretty decent and I foisted them upon my physics friends.

Cheesy Smashed Potatoes

So given that I had this corn bread (which is pretty much the heaviest bread I've ever eaten and almost a meal in itself, but not quite), I needed something to go with it, so I made mashed potatoes with baby Yukon gold potatoes, garlic (fried in olive oil), basil, and brie. The brie was creamy enough such that I didn't need to add butter or anything else, really. And I found out that my metal spatula is perfect for smashing potatoes. The basil was left over from the MSU Organic Farm club (which is AWESOME and I can't wait to buy more stuff from them).

So my new favorite game is typing in things I have in my refrigerator and "pantry" in google and seeing what kinds of recipes I get. This was one of the first hits I got with "potato brie basil garlic". Yay dinner!

Corn Bread

This one was stolen from Chris. Again. Also, I made it a couple days ago, but I've been busy... not that anyone reads this. Mostly, I wanted to log it for posterity... or something.

And I also managed to take a picture here because I had my camera out and I was uploading all of the pictures from Hawaii onto my computer. There are some pretty awesome pictures from Keck and Mauna Kea and Volcanoes National Park.


1 c flour
1/3 c sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 tbs baking powder
1 1/2 c corn meal
1 1/2 c milk
2 eggs
14 tbs butter, melted


Sift together flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder. Add the cornmeal and make a well in the center. Whisk together eggs, milk, and butter. Try not to freak out when the butter gets solid in the milk... just keep whisking. Pour into a WELL GREASED bread pan and throw into an oven for 45ish minutes at 400 F and try not to get butter all over the bottom of your oven. It's kind of a pain to clean up.

It actually turned out a lot more savory than I had anticipated, but in a good butter-soaked sort of way. I also didn't grease the pan well enough. Oops. It's okay, though. The bottom was all crispy and delicious anyway.

Balsamic Chicken Stir Fry

This one didn't work at all. It sounded good in theory... chicken+balsamic vinegar+garlic+fresh basil, but most unfortunately it never came together.

chicken
glug of olive oil
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup chicken stock
2 tablespoons sugar
1 clove garlic, crushed
several basil leaves
mushrooms
broccoli
zucchini

Create a marinade with the vinegar, chicken stock, sugar, garlic, and basil. Let the chicken sit for 20 minutes. Pour the marinade into a small saucepan and let it reduce and then cook the chicken in a separate pan with the olive oil. Add the reduced sauce and veggies+fungi. Cook until you will no longer die of food poisoning. Serve over rice

So I suspect that what didn't work was a combination of me being a subpar cook and the fact that my ingredients weren't the *best*. I didn't have chicken stock, so I ended up using soup mix instead. Oops. I should get on getting a box of actual chicken stock. I also think that my love of balsamic vinegar extends only to the salad world. I foisted the meal upon one of my friends who thought it was fine and, "tasted like stir-fry."

I was all excited about getting the basil and zucchini. The MSU Organic Farm club was having a sale outside of the Aud today and I picked up a nice zucchini and some nice basil for two dollars. I was all happy about it. The basil will probably become part of something pasta like tomorrow, as I have it and I have no more meat. Sadness. I'm trying the curry again soon. I have Thai basil, garlic, and I'm going to get actual chicken stock next time, damnit.

Dad's Famous Eggs

Dad's Famous Eggs should probably be called Dad's Famous Egg, given that it consists of toast topped with cheese (preferably American, hey I need to pay respect to my white trash roots) and one poached egg. So I wanted to see how to poach an egg. Attempt number one didn't work.

I used the toaster as an egg timer, but when I cracked the egg in the pan, it didn't really stay together well. The white started to cook, but the top didn't, so I put a lid over it to try to "steam" the top cooked, but that didn't so much work well because the water managed to boil and the egg stuck to the bottom of the pan ever-so-slightly such that a lot of the yolk ran into the pan. I did salvage it enough to put it on my toast'n'cheese. Oh well. Maybe next time.

At least I have cheese'n'crackers...

Thai Green Curry Chicken

So I was introduced to the sweet sweet nectar that is Thai food this summer in Honolulu. The absolute favorite was definitely Thai-style curry. The first dish I cooked when I got back to my apartment was green curry with chicken. It came out too bland to justify the amount of spiciness, but I know what adjustments I want to make to it the next time.

1.5 Tbsp green curry paste
14 oz. Lite coconut milk
3 pieces of boneless Tyson chicken (really small pieces) cubed
1.5 Tbsp fish sauce
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1/3 c. chicken "stock"
1 small golden potato sliced thin-ish (about .75 cm)
1/4 green pepper, thinly sliced
1/4 serrano pepper, very thinly sliced

Add curry paste and coconut milk to pan and combine on medium heat for five minutes. Add diced chicken, as well as everything else. Cook until the chicken is done enough such that it won't kill you immediately after ingestion... or even shortly thereafter.

So the next time, I'm adding fresh garlic and basil. I'm also decreasing the curry paste by about 0.5 tbsp and ditching the serrano pepper because I'm fairly certain the one I was using wasn't ripe at all. Oh well. I'm also (hopefully) going to watch the next one more closely and not let it get to a boil. To top it all off, I won't burn the rice the next time and I'll get real chicken stock, as opposed to making broth stolen from the Mrs. Grass' noodle soup packet.

Inaugural Address

So I'm not giving this out to anyone. I might bury it in facebook and see if anyone cares, but mostly I want a diary of my cooking adventures in cliche blog form. Maybe it's because everyone else has a food blog... or maybe it's because I really wish I could be a food blogger too. Maybe, just maybe, one day I'll post foodpr0n... but porn is usually something desirable, I think. (I wouldn't know.) Don't hold your (you plural, not you personal) breath.

Recipes and stories to follow...