Vegetarian Greek Disk

I need help. I was asked to do a vegetarian Greek dish for Sunday. Any ideas? So far I've come up spinach pie or stuffed peppers. Any suggestions will help! Thanks :)

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Clams Casino

These are Clams Casino!!  It is calms with a bread crumb mix with bacon, green bell peppers, and red bell peppers.  The hardest part of this dish was getting the darn clams open!  First, if they're already open and you tap them and they don't close, then they're bad.  So the ones that we're good, I had to try to pry them open with a clam knife.  This task proved to be near impossible, these clams just didn't want to die!  I got most of them open but then I gave up and put them in boiling water so they would open themselves up.  (Also, if the clams do not open in boiling water or a steamer, they're also bad.)  After the clams were opened, I filled them with the bread crumbs and baked them until crisp.  Clams are a little too rubbery for my taste, but the mix of the clams with the bread crumbs made for a pretty good dish.  If you love clams, you'll love this!

In sadder news, I also had to kill a lobster.  It was the worst thing I've ever had to do.  There are no pictures because I do not wish to remember this event.  I did not boil it, but I shoved a knife into its skull to kill it (because it was supposed to be more humane).  The creepiest part was that it was still moving several minutes after being killed.  Just overall horrible.

Black Forest Torte!

This is what I made for my baking final!  It's a black forest cake made up of creme chantilly and cherries between layers of chocolate chiffon cake.  It's covered with more creme chantilly, chocolate shavings and cherries on top.  I was dreading having to ice a cake for my final but it turned out better than I expected!  (And I got an A!) All in all, a good torte :)

Beer Can Chicken

Beer Can Chicken

Root Beer Can Chicken

  First off, sorry it's been so long since I've updated!! School is very time consuming! But I'm happy to report that I got on the dean's list this past semester so I must be doing something right!  

 Now, back to food.  Above is the beer can chicken I made for Labor Day.  It was incredibly easy to make and extremely delectable.  I used whole Amish chickens and they were amazing.  The top picture is regular beer can chicken.  I made it with a "beer can" rub that I bought from Kroger and a can of Budweiser.   The root beer can chicken was made with Jones Root Beer that was reduced down to a sauce.  The chicken was rubbed with salt and pepper and while grilling, it was basted with the root beer sauce.  Both chickens were moist and very tender.  I would definitely make them again.  Great for a party or just a good family dinner.  We served them with cheesy potatoes and potatoes salad.  It definitely was a hit!

Zucchini?

Aaron from work was kind enough to bring me some of his harvest from his garden!  On the left are obviously baby tomatoes but in the middle, he claims, is a zucchini!  That is the LARGEST zucchini I have EVER seen if it is in fact one.  Anyone know what else this could be?  It has the coloring of an acorn squash, the shape of a gourd and the texture of a zucchini.  No joke, this thing ways at least 3-4 pounds.  Any suggestions on how to cook it?!  I was thinking about cutting it in half and baking it but I don't know what else to do with it!

Epic Fail

So, for one of my baking classes, we had to choose a recipe and change one ingredient 2 times to show how it changes the recipe.  We chose chocolate chip cookies and chose to change the flour used in the cookies.  The original recipe calls for pastry flour. I've made these cookies before at school with pastry flour and they turned out awesome.  Well this time, I used all purpose flour.  Not just any all purpose flour, Meijer brand all purpose flour.  This was the result.  The cookies burned on the bottom and were completely soupy in the middle.  I had to use a spoon to get the cookies off the cookie sheet!  I asked one of my Chefs why this would have happened.  I've made plenty of chocolate chip cookies with all purpose flour and they NEVER turned out this horribly.  I found out this, that all flour is different from batch to batch, from brand to brand.  For the most consistent flour, you should stick to a name brand flour, such as Pillsbury or King Arthur (although I can never find King Arthur anywhere).   Sometimes buying the store brand isn't the best I guess.

Chicken Chardonnay

This delicious dish above is chicken chardonnay.  It's made from a airline breast which is a chicken breast that has that bone still attached.  I think it's supposed to make it look fancy, oo lala.  The chicken is seasoned and sautéed.  The sauce is made from chardonnay, chicken stock, heavy cream, mushrooms and shallots.  I wasn't particularly a fan of mushrooms before this but this dish makes me love them. Bring on the fungi! (And the chicken chardonnay!)

Corn!

I love corn, especially on the cob!  This summer I've been trying to grill more and more so obviously I wanted to try my hand at grilling corn.  Let me tell you how easy this was.  You just throw corn that is still in the husk on the grill over medium heat.  Be careful because the husk will catch on fire from time to time.  Rotate a couple times to ensure even cooking.  Overall, they cook in about 10 minutes and taste wonderful.  I made a Mexican like sauce to put on it.  All that's in it is miracle whip, cayenne pepper, adobe pepper, ginger and black pepper. They were awesome if I do say so myself :)

Jalapenos!

My good friend Joe from work gave me these wonderful jalapeños out of his garden.   So, I stuffed them with cream cheese and wrapped them in applewood bacon.  While cutting and seeding them, the vapors were so strong that I instantly began coughing, but it didn't stop there.  It burns your fingers as well!  I only ate one bite of one piece and it was so spicy I had to chug milk to survive.  Now, I'm not not a wimp when it comes to spicy food but these were insane.  I heard that the smaller the pepper the spicier they are, but I'm not sure if that's true, but it sure seemed to be that way!  No one else seemed to have a problem with them because  they were gone by the end of the night :)

Samosas!

Homemade samosa's!  Samosa's are a popular puff pastry from India. They are a little spicy and commonly filled with potatoes, peas, onion and grated ginger.  These ones were deep fried and were super easy to make and super fantastic.  I love me some Samosa's.  

The center is filled with potato croquettes, which are basically fancy tater tots (and not nearly as good if you ask me).   They're potatoes that are mashed and then piped onto a sheet tray and cut into little pieces. The potato pieces are then breaded (these ones were breaded with panko bread crumbs) and deep fried.  

Tarts!

Mmmmm tarts.  The ones on the left are filled with raspberry jam, lemon curd and topped with fresh raspberries.  The one's on the right are filled with chocolate mousse and topped with creme chantilly (which is a fancy word for whipped cream) and fresh strawberries.  These were delish!  The hardest part was baking the crust.  For these tarts, the crusts needed to be baked before being filled so we put the dough in the tart pans and put baking beans on top of them (these are different than baked beans lol) to weigh down the middle so it wouldn't puff up during the baking process.  Well let's just say that these are not the first batch we did because those did not turn out.  They puffed up so much in the middle, there was no room left for filling!  (They still tasted wonderful though!) All in all, it was a good learning experience.

Quinoa

Quinoa (keen-wa)... It's a grain that is high in protein and essential amino acids.  What it is not high in is taste.  It's really mealy and bland.  I'm pretty sure there isn't anything I could possible add to this to make it appeasing.  The dish I made today (above) was just onions and quinoa with a little seasoning. To try and up the ante, I melted some gruyere on top but it still was not awesome.  I've heard you can make a sweeter version using brown sugar, but I still have my doubts.
Also, I made a fail dinner.  I tried making quesedillas.  Trying to spice things up, I used cream cheese with red curry, adobe chili powder, ginger, crushed red pepper and black pepper.  I then spread that inside a tortilla and topped it with cheese and bacon and pan fried it.  I think I may have put too much cream cheese in them though.  I didn't think they were very tasty, however my fiance and brother ate them all, so I guess they couldn't have been that bad.  I guess I'm my worst critic.  Next week is chicken.  I cannot wait to learn how to fabricate a chicken.  Should be very interesting :)

The Beginning

For the longest time I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I got a degree in something that I had no interest in doing for the rest of my life.  I want to be great at what I do.  I want to be passionate about what I do.  I want my job to be something I look forward to everyday.  In my search for this I discovered a love for cooking that I didn't know that I had.  This is going to be journey through food.  I hope you enjoy as much as I do.