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.