Breaded Eggplant

Speaking of customizing, this one was pretty far out there even for me!  It is based on this amazing eggplant dish I used to eat at least once a week at a Tapas restaurant in Accra - yeah you heard me right, a Spanish restaurant run by an Indian in Ghana - and it was delicious.  It was lightly breaded and fried eggplant that they drizzled with honey and topped with feta cheese.

So I had an eggplant and decided it was time to try it out again.  I set up a little assembly line of egg (2 eggs with some salt and pepper in there) and about 1 cup of panko bread crumbs.  I sliced the eggplant into thin slices and then dipped each slice into the egg and coated it in breadcrumbs.  The eggplant was pretty big so I went through half of it and ran out of space on my cookie sheet and ran out of egg and panko so I left the rest for another day.

Obviously I baked it instead of frying it because I had to healthify it and am not very good at frying things.  So I put them all on a baking sheet and drizzled a little bit of olive oil onto each one.  I baked it at 375 for what ended up being about 30 minutes altogether and flipped it halfway through.  They ended up being super crunchy and delicious, which I was pretty excited about because there's nothing worse than mushy (or uncooked) eggplant and I had no idea what I was doing!

Once they were done, I took them out and put some crumbled feta (ok fine I used goat cheese but I know not everyone is a fan, but they both work well) on top and then drizzled honey over the whole thing.

In the spirit of sharing vegetable recipes, I thought I'd share this one - it will seriously surprise you - I'm going to have to start making it for people so that you'll actually give it a chance but I swear it was amazing!

Next up is eggplant parmesan because I have to do round 2 with the rest of the eggplant tomorrow.

Halftime Chili

I got this recipe from Heidi and Meagan and I have made it with them before. Now that I'm flying solo and have about an hour and 15 minutes to wait while my chili simmers, I figured I would immortalize the recipe by adding it to the blog.

2 T olive oil (I truly hope that the capital T means tablespoon :)
1.5 cups chopped onions (There's nothing like onion crying away your sorrows at 6:00am.)
8 garlic cloves (I purchased a garlic press for this adventure.)
3 lbs ground chuck (Too bad they always come in 1.25 lb packages)
5 T chili powder
1 T ground cumin
1 t dried basil
1/2 t dried oregano
1/2 t dried thyme
1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes in puree
1 14.5 oz can chicken broth
1 12 oz bottle of beer (In case you were curious, I used Coors Light.)
1 6 oz can tomato paste
1 15 oz can chili beans
2 cups frozen corn

Heat oil in dutch oven over medium heat. (Danny couldn't keep a straight face when I told him I was making the chili in my ditch oven.)

Add onions and garlic. Saute until onions are translucent, this should take about 8 minutes.

Add meat and saute until brown. This should take about 5 minutes...unless you have 3.75 lbs in there. It takes longer. If you have a ridiculous amount of meat, I suggest taking some out and figuring out a plan to repurpose it. I think I'm going to make a meat sauce for pasta.)

Add chili powder, cumin, basil. oregano, and thyme. Stir 2 minutes.

Mix in tomatoes, chicken broth, beer, and tomato paste. (I recommend putting the tomato paste in before the beer so you can pour the beer into the tomato paste can and get any residual paste out of the can.)

Simmer until thickened to desired consistency, stirring occasionally. This should take about an hour and 15 minutes. (That's where I'm at right now.)

Mix in beans and corn.

Simmer 5 more minutes.

This note at the end of the recipe broke my heart a little when I read it this morning: Best when made the day before. That would have been great to know yesterday. But now I'll remember that for next time!

P.S. This a great recipe to make and freeze.

P.P.S. I didn't stir for 2 minutes between adding the liquid ingredients. I wasn't trying to be a rebel; I just missed that part since the recipe was written in paragraph form and I missed that step. It seems to be fine :)

Summer Chicken Marinade

Since this is my very first post to the blog, I need to get some things off of my chest.

The main reason that I haven't posted anything to the blog until now is because the only recipes I make have come from other siblings who have access to this blog. I feel like it would be a mixture of plagiarism and stealing someone's thunder to post his or her recipe. People then told me to change up a recipe and then post that. I refer to this process as "customization."

Now I would like to explain why I'm still on the fence about customizing recipes. There are four main reasons:

1) We live in a specialized society. Instead of trying to master every skill, we choose one to specialize in and master. I don't want an architect teaching children and I don't want a teacher designing buildings. With that being said, I'm not a chef, a cook, or a culinary artist. People do those things professionally so that I can focus on educating high school students.

2) When I spend the time to make a meal, I will not have the patience or time to start over if the original customized meal falls through. It's just too risky!

3) Comfort zone, people! Recipes that were created and perfected by culinary artists are my comfort zone. They include measurements, temperatures, and times to make them idiot proof for people like me :)

4) When you add things willy nilly, it makes it hard to recreate in the future. What if it turns out to be a gem but you can't recreate it?!?

With all of this being said, I also happen to have a sparse kitchen. (Whether or not I can use sparse in that manner, you know what I mean.) My kitchen isn't one that you can walk into and whip up your favorite recipe since I probably won't have the ingredients that you need. I don't have the spices or items that most people feel are essential to cooking. This is why I had to make a custom marinade for Danny's chicken breasts. I know..it shocked me, too!

I put in olive oil to keep the chicken from drying up. I tossed in lemon juice to add some summer zing; the lemon is what turned this experiment into a "Summer Chicken Marinade," as promised in the title of the post. I figured garlic and fresh ground pepper would give it a nice flavor. I let them hang out in there for 24 hours and flipped them over a few times throughout the marinating process.

I made some bow tie pasta and tossed it with olive oil and Danny grilled up the chicken. It was delicious! I know I didn't invent something brand new here (like the original peanut butter and jelly sandwich guy), but it was a big step for me. Thanks for reading! Don't worry; my future posts won't be this lengthy :)

Kale, cauliflower, and broccoli

I'm currently trying out Kurt's zucchini recipe and I thought I should share that I think adding olive oil and parmesan makes all vegetables better really.  Baking kale drizzled in olive oil with salt and parmesan basically turns gross kale into delicious potato chip like things.  Chopped up cauliflower with olive oil, salt, parmesan, and lemon juice is amazing.  Or if you put some butter, parmesan, and bread crumbs all over the top of a head of cauliflower and bake it in the oven, it also turns out pretty tasty.

And I know we're not supposed to say things like we like vegetables plain because they're so delicious, but have you ever just stir fried broccoli in olive oil?  Somehow steaming, boiling, pretty much anything you do to broccoli makes it somewhat gross to me, but stir frying it to the point where it's almost burning gives it little crispy edges and with some salt, it's strangely delicious.

Anyway, I just wanted to do some vegetable promotion because I think we all need inspiration in that department.  I'm working on operation make veggies delicious this summer so I'll try to keep it up.

Grilled corn, avocado, and tomato salad with honey lime dressing

This salad is pretty amazing and I've decided to start using this dressing on everything I eat.

Ingredients:
1 pint grape tomatoes
1 ripe avocado
2 ears of fresh sweet corn

Honey lime dressing:
Juice of 1 lime
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp honey
sea salt and pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
dash of cayenne pepper

Directions:
Remove husks from corn and grill over medium heat for 10 minutes, or if you're lazy like me, just stir fry some frozen corn.  Whisk all the ingredients for the dressing together.  Combine the sliced tomatoes, avocado, and grilled corn with the dressing and mix gently so everything is combined but you don't mash the avocados.  Let sit for 10-15 minutes to let the dressing soak in.

PS Heidi - I just added some quinoa to the salad because obviously I always have to make weird customizations and I thought it would make it more filling (plus didn't add the avocado out until lunchtime so it wouldn't get brown) and just had a delicious lunch out of it.

Hummus

I thought this recipe made a good hummus.

http://www.inspiredtaste.net/15938/easy-and-smooth-hummus-recipe/

I am mostly posting this so I remember it!!!  I will be making it again.

Thai Basil Chicken

I made Thai basil chicken tonight and it was pretty delicious - super easy to make and not spicy (unless you want it to be) or scary in any way.  Here's the recipe and pictures - pretty advanced, I know...

Ingredients

10 ounces chicken breast or thighs, boneless and skinless
1/2 medium bell pepper (green or red), cut into 1/2-inch squares
5 tablespoons canola oil
1 teaspoon chopped garlic
6 fresh hot chiles, roughly chopped (obviously not necessary if you don't like it spicy)
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce (or hoisin sauce - no idea if those are interchangeable but I did it)
2 tablespoons water
20 whole leaves fresh Thai basil
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon cold water

1. Slice the chicken into thin strips. 

2. Pour oil into the cold wok (ok fine--I'm not advanced enough to have a wok so I just use a big frying pan) and add the garlic and chiles (I used some of Kurt's secret hot sauce, which by the way I'm panicking about because I'm down to about a tablespoon and I am very concerned about how I'm going to make my own from here on out). Cook over high heat until the aromas start to release. Add the sliced chicken and stir-fry for about 2 minutes.

3. Add the fish sauce, sugar, and soy sauce and stir-fry for another minute. Add the oyster/hoisin sauce and 2 tablespoons of water and cook for 30 seconds.

4. Add the peppers and 16 of the basil leaves and stir-fry for 2 minutes, until the peppers start to soften.

5. Dissolve the cornstarch in 1 tablespoon of cold water, add to the wok, and stir-fry for 1 minute, until the sauce thickens.

Serve with steamed jasmine rice.