Tag Archives: homemade

Chicken and Cheese Enchiladas

Posted on February 12, 2010 | 1 comment

I have been making this dish for several years now and it’s always been a big hit. I have made it with different fillings, different sauces, different tortillas- but all in all, I am almost always happy with the way it turns out. For this go-round, I decided to stick with the basics, chicken and cheese with easy, store-bought sauce and lots of cheddar cheese. I did experiment with one thing though- the tortillas. I made half of the enchiladas with whole wheat, low-carb tortillas (5 grams of carbs per tortilla) and half with regular tortillas. I was really happy with the low-carb tortillas and did not feel that the dish suffered at all with them and whole wheat is always a good alternative!

I started off by poaching the chicken in water and chipotle seasoning. I boiled the whole package of chicken breasts (one of those large packages from Giant) and saved about half of them for tomorrow’s dinner. I shredded the remaining chicken for the filling. You could also chop them, but shredding is more palatable for this dish and is not that much more labor intensive than chopping.

I filled a 13×9 dish with shredded chicken.

Also, I cut up some fresh jalapeno for the filling as well. I considered sauteing the jalapeno first to soften the texture and pull out some of the heat- but didn’t end up doing it.

When making enchiladas, I find it a good practice to be prepared and ready to make them all at once. It’s messy and you will probably need a helping hand if one is available. There really is no other way to do this other than rolling them by hand. You want the dish to be saucy so don’t be hesitant to get down and dirty for this! It will be worth it, trust me!

“Line” the baking dish with a 1/8 inch thick layer of sauce.

You also want to put a layer of sauce down on a plate. You will be dipping each tortilla into the sauce first, before filling and rolling. This is to prevent the tortilla from cracking and it will keep them moist when they cook. You don’t want to soak up too much sauce, but just a little dunk on each side is all you need.

Then you just fill each one with the amount of filling you like. I try to really stuff them as full as possible.

Roll ’em tightly and place in the baking dish. One after the next, until the baking dish is full.

Cover with the remaining sauce and cheese.

Ok now it’s time to bake! It needs about 20 minutes in the oven and then another 5 under the broiler.

Let it sit for 5 minutes (or longer- I have no patience when it comes to this!) before you cut it.

Top with some green onion and serve with sour cream.

Try this dish- it is SO good and everyone always likes it!

Recipe for Chicken and Cheese Enchiladas

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Posted in Chicken

Tagged cheesy, chicken, dinner ideas, homemade, low carb, Mexican

Tiramisu: attempt # 1

Posted on February 11, 2010 | 1 comment

I rarely make desserts, but I wanted to give tiramisu a try. As I began the research process I was already a bit overwhelmed because there are literally hundreds of variations and recipes out there. I looked through A LOT of recipes and decided to go with two recipes that were fairly similar. One was from Giada De Laurentiis and the other one I found somewhere else on the internet (?). I integrated the second recipe because it was very similar to Giada’s (which I already had all the ingredients for and there was 30 inches of snow on the ground) and because it directed me to cook the egg yolks, which Giada did not. I was bringing this tiramisu to a Superbowl party and I did not want to make anyone sick, so I decided to combine the recipes to make sure I cooked the eggs properly.

It all started off ok…

I first separated the egg yolks from the whites.

Next I added the sugar.

Then it was time to beat. According to Giada I could have just mixed this for five minutes and then integrated the marscapone. As I mentioned though, I had some reservations about serving uncooked eggs to the masses so I mixed for five minutes and then continued to beat the mixture over a double boiler (as suggested in many recipes I read).

Since this process heated (cooked?) the egg/sugar mixture, I placed it in the fridge to cool before I beat in the marscapone cheese. I took this time to set up the other ingredients. In all of my recipe digging, I learned that it was very important to use authentic ingredients, including savoiardi lady fingers, marscapone, and Italian espresso.I never used marscapone before and it’s American equivalent is supposedly cream cheese. I found the texture to be way more gooey than cream cheese, but many recipes say you can substitute for it.

Once the eggs were cooled, I mixed in the marscapone cheese.

This mixture was not only the filling, but also the topping. It tasted really good, but as you can see the texture is not right. It’s not fluffy enough. Many other recipes integrated whipped cream at this point and now I know why. I didn’t have any whipping cream so I just went with what I had (and what the recipes I had told me to do). I poured it over a layer of espresso/rum soaked lady fingers with hopes that maybe the cheese filling would fluff up in the fridge.

Repeat.

I refrigerated it for a couple of hours, but it didn’t fluff up at all 😦 I was pretty dismayed because it doesn’t look like tiramisu, or at least what I am used to seeing. I went ahead and added the chocolate powder (and later added shavings) anyway and continued to refrigerate it, hoping, hoping, hoping, but to no avail. This is what it ended up looking like.

It ended up tasting ok, but the texture was off and obviously it didn’t look right either. I learned a lot from this initial effort though and next time I make it I will definitely work off of a recipe that includes whipped cream or egg whites, or something to fluff it up! I bought too many lady fingers, so the next attempt may be sooner than later. I will keep you posted!

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Posted in Desserts

Tagged dessert, espresso, homemade, Italian, rum

Wings- 2 ways

Posted on February 9, 2010 | Leave a comment

Wahoo! Super Bowl Sunday has finally arrived! This is one of my favorite days of the year. It’s really a holiday to me, complete with it’s own traditions, foods, and drinking privileges. For the past few years we have made homemade chicken wings in the classic buffalo style with homemade blue cheese dressing for dipping. This year we did the same, but added a second variety of wings to the mix- garlic parmesan.

The first question is whether to use fresh or frozen wings. There are arguments for both of course, but we have found that either will be just fine and to get whatever is on sale or the cheaper one. With the frozen ones the most important thing is to make sure the wings are completely thawed. With the fresh wings, you may have to cut off the wing tips, which is not for the faint of heart. Either way you go, the first step is to rinse the wings well and make sure they are dry. If there is any moisture on them, it will pop in the oil and splatter.

The next step is heating the oil. Heat to 350 degrees.

(or 351.5 degrees, who’s counting)

We would have much preferred to have done this deep frying outside but were unable due to the massive amounts of snow. Things get pretty rowdy once the wings go in.

Once the wings are fried, set them aside.

For the classic buffalo sauce, it couldn’t get much easier (or fattening). Hot sauce and butter.

for transport and to keep them warm, we put the cooked and sauced up wings into a crock pot

For the garlic parmesan it’s essentially the same process, just with a different sauce.

Add now for the blue cheese dressing… because I mean what’s eating a chicken wing that’s been deep fried and soaked in a butter based sauce without some seriously creamy, cheesy sauce to dip it in? We are American. It’s our right.

Well, some good food for a good game! The Saints ended up winning, which I am really happy about. Greg picked Indy on the spread and the over and I took the opposite of his picks because that was my only chance in our playoff pool, as I was down by 2. We ended up in a tie and I won the tiebreaker! Kind of shady because I took the opposites and didn’t make my own picks. Anyway, at some point when we don’t need a snow mobile to get around, we will go to our celebratory dinner to Black Market Bistro. Can’t wait!

Recipe for Classic Buffalo Wings

Recipe for Garlic Parmesan Wings

Recipe for Blue Cheese Dressing

Check out Garlic Parmesan Wing Dip

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Posted in Chicken

Tagged bar food, blue cheese, chicken, dinner ideas, football, garlic, homemade, low carb

Curry Chicken Salad with Thyme

Posted on January 27, 2010 | Leave a comment

For lunch I decided to make chicken salad. We had a leftover rotisserie chicken in the fridge and some leftover thyme that needed to be used. I decided to try to make a healthier version of chicken salad and used nonfat Greek yogurt and light mayonnaise instead of using tons of full fat mayo. Also, I included some pungent spices to supplement that lack of flavor that could have come from the lack of fat in this recipe. I placed the finished salad into a “cup” of cabbage leaves and it was ready for me to grab in the morning to take to work.

The recipe made about three servings and it came out really good. I ran out of curry powder, which is why it’s not super yellow. However, the flavor was still very present. The cabbage leaves provided a nice crunchy base and I used them like I would a tortilla or cracker. I also discovered that the plain Greek yogurt tasted a lot like sour cream and may be a good substitute for that down the road.

Recipe for Curry Chicken Salad with Thyme

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Posted in Chicken

Tagged chicken, homemade, low carb, low fat, lunch ideas, thyme, yogurt

Two Pizzas

Posted on January 26, 2010 | 2 comments

For dinner tonight we decided to make pizza at home because trying to find good pizza in suburban Maryland is IMPOSSIBLE. We went to a local Italian market called Marchone’s to get some of our ingredients. We bought enough dough for two pizzas, their homemade red sauce, and two hot sausage links. We decided to make pizza number 1 a barbecue chicken pizza and pizza number 2 a margherita style with sausage. Both came out great and highly recommend Marchone’s for any ingredients you need for an Italian meal. Also, the sandwich line was very long, which is also a good sign that their subs are good too! We must try those soon…

Pizza #1

After several hours of thawing...

both doughs

chicken mixed with Stubb's bbq sauce

the good stuff

before baking...

after baking

there was some extra crust so we folded it over

Recipe for BBQ Chicken PizzaPizza #2fresh hot sausage from marchone's.. i love when food comes in deli paper!

before baking

after baking

Recipe for Margherita Pizza with Sausage

Making pizza is an activity I highly recommend! If you live where we do, you will surely be pleased and you get to add whatever toppings you like, making it even better.

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Posted in Chicken, Pizzas, Pork

Tagged basil, cheese, chicken, homemade, pizza, pork, Wheaton restaurant

Gratin dishes

Posted on January 21, 2010 | 1 comment

One of the best parts of being newly married is using the new things we received as gifts! My sister gave us four gratin dishes from Crate and Barrel and we used them tonight for Greg’s famous mac and cheese. To know Greg is to know his mac and cheese. It’s SOOO good. He was making it for a work function on Friday and made a little extra to go with our steaks tonight. The steaks were also a gift and were shipped to us frozen a few weeks ago. Anyway, on with the mac and cheese prep…

Greg started out by making a roux.

lots of black pepper

…and then he put in an entire bottle of Cholula hot sauce hence the vivid orange hue.

…and then he forgot to take pictures of the rest of the process! Essentially, he added the cheese to the roux and once it was thoroughly mixed in and melted he poured it over the cooked pasta. He topped it with more cheese and baked it to perfection!

We enjoyed it with the seared steaks and broccoli (which was cooked with a little olive oil and parmesan cheese).

dinner at the bar

We are still working on the honeymoon planning as well. I think we are getting closer to making a decision and may be heading to Jamaica! Hopefully by the weekend we will have this settled… either way it will be great and I can’t wait!

Recipe for Mac and Cheese (almost fire version)

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Posted in Sides

Tagged American, cheese, homemade

Chicken Carbonara Casserole

Posted on January 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

It’s Thursday night and we have made some really good meals this week. Energy and motivation are slightly down for me, but not for Greg. He was the creator of this dish, which utilized some of the leftovers we had in the fridge. He ended up making what he dubbed, “chicken carbonara casserole”. Once you read the recipe you will see that it is a perfect title- except if you are expecting to see fettuccine noodles or some other pasta derivative. We aim to eat low-carb for most of the week, but this could have easily and quite tastily been served over said carbs. Honestly though, I didn’t even miss them. This was that good.

He started out the casserole by chopping up the leftover broccoli we had from the broccoli cheese soup, blanching it, and placing it on the bottom of the casserole dish.

Then added some chopped mushrooms, which he sauteed first with some oil, salt, and pepper.

Then he re-heated a leftover bacon and onion mixture and placed it in the casserole.

bacon makes everything better

He then chopped up some leftover chicken from last night and added that.

Now on to the good stuff: the carbonara sauce. For this he made a basic roux with some roasted garlic, added half and half and skim milk, “Italian” mix cheese and some grated Parmesan, and generous amounts of ground black pepper.

He then poured the gooey cheese sauce over the casserole and added another layer of the Parmesan.

Lastly, he baked it for about ten minutes, and broiled it for an additional 5 to get the top nice and brown.

After a garnish of fresh chopped tomato and basil, dinner was served!

After dinner we continued to work on the honeymoon planning. I think we have narrowed it down to the Domican Republic, but we still have some details to figure out, like which resort to go to. It’s hard to tell from the websites what they are really like, but at some point we are just going to have to pick one and trust our instincts. My only criteria is that I would like the resort to have a swim-up bar (priorities people!). Oh, and also that it’s clean, has decent food, and has some sort of nightlife 🙂 Hopefully, we will find just what we are looking for very soon and then we can really start to get excited for it! Below is the recipe for tonight’s dinner. I have to admit we did not measure out everything so these are my best guesses. We used the half and half and milk mixture to cut some fat but you can use 3 cups of any dairy that you like. There should at least be some fat in the dairy though as skim only may be too thin.

Recipe for Chicken Carbonara Casserole

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Posted in Chicken

Tagged bacon, cheese, chicken, dinner ideas, homemade, Italian

The Perfect Sunday

Posted on January 11, 2010 | Leave a comment

Even Bogie enjoyed the down time!

Today was the perfect lazy day. We lounged around all day, watched football and braised some beef! The first game was very disappointing as New England just didn’t show up at all. The second game started off similarly but became a really good game and it was nice to just lay around all day together.

It’s NFL playoff time! For the third year in a row Greg and I decided to do an NFL playoff pool where we pick each playoff game’s winner and over/under based on the spread. At the end of the playoffs, the loser has to take the winner out for a nice dinner. This year’s dinner will be to Black Market Bistro in Kensington. I have been very successful in years past, but got off to a rough start yesterday going 1-3. Greg went 4-0 so I had some ground to make up today. Unfortunately only one out of my four picks differed from his, but it was a winner! Going into next week Greg has 5 and I have 3.

For dinner, we decided to break in our new dutch oven! We scoured the internet for recipes and ultimately went with this one by Emeril because this was the kind of meat they had at the grocery store. Also, the dutch oven is made by Emeril too, creepy.

This was one of the only times that we’ve followed a recipe and the cooking times were spot-on. That was exciting and we actually got to eat a Sunday dinner before 8pm! It came out really tender and it was very easy to shred. It needed a little seasoning, but overall it came out great and was very tasty!

At the half-way point

After shredding the beef, we put it back in the pot. Here is our version of Beer-braised pot roast in the dutch oven

the final product

Recipe for Beer-Braised Pot Roast and Vegetables

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Posted in Beef

Tagged Beef, dinner ideas, homemade, roast

Souper Saturday

Posted on January 11, 2010 | 1 comment

Ok. I know this title is a little much, but I assure you they won’t all be this awesome. Just kidding… I just couldn’t resist. This Saturday was pretty great though. We woke up after a good night’s sleep, which is always much needed after the work week. We spent much of the day hanging out and got in an episode of Big Love before football came on. It’s freezing outside so I decided to make broccoli cheddar soup for dinner, using this recipe from CDKitchen.com, which attempts to mimic Panera’s version.

This recipe came out great! The last time I made it, I tried the whole pureeing thing. I really didn’t like the consistency of it, as the tiny bits of broccoli gave it an odd texture. This time around, I cut up the broccoli into really tiny pieces and did not puree it. This left the soup velvety and thick. I think it was very similar to Panera’s version and it was delicious! Next time, if I add chicken again, I will probably make the broth a little thinner by adding another cup of chicken stock and another cup of half and half so it will be more soupy. With the chicken and all the veggies it was pretty thick, but still really good and overall, pretty easy!