Italian Chicken Bake over Potato and Squash Casserole

As my love for cooking progresses through the months, I find that I have preference for vegetarian dishes. On top of being so healthy and so filling (not to mention I love the logistics behind the different digestive properties of vegetables). Also, I'm lazy and I don't like having to wait for meat to thaw. Needless to say cooking chicken to a tender, juicy consistency isn't a strong point of mine.

The recipe featured in this post was one of those few attempts at cooking poultry. Chicken is more challenging than other meats like beef or pork in that dries out quickly and can quickly lose its tenderness. On top of that, you have to cook it all the way through. No "medium-rare" chicken fillets. That means you have to find that sweet spot.

Fortunately for my impatient self, the reasons that chicken is so tricky to deal with are the same reasons it cooks so quickly. A trick I learned from a coworker at Marble Slab is that you throw the chicken in a pan full of water on medium heat straight from the freezer. It thaws it out and cooks it through in just a few minutes, then you're ready to prepare it for cooking. It comes out tender, juicy, and cooked white all the way through.

Now that I've shared that nifty little trick, on to the featured recipe:

Chicka-chick-OW! Chicken Bake

[You're not allowed to have it unless you say the full name]

"Chicka-chick-OW!" Chicken Bake (Serves 2)
Ingredients:
Four medium, thawed chicken fillets
Salt and pepper
Italian dressing (or improvise one like I did)
Parmesan cheese
onion powder
Bread crumbs
Potatoes (pick your choose)
Couple of decent sized squash
Red onions chopped
Red pepper sliced
Olive oil
Rosemary
Cumin
Baguette or artisan loaf if you're feeling fancy

Directions:
1. Cook that chicken just like I told you. Nifty, eh?


2. While that's thawing out dice up your potatoes into chunks, slice up your squash, then throw in the red onions, red peppers, rosemary, cumin, salt to taste, and a good bit of pepper all into a glass bake dish.

3. Drizzle olive oil generously until it gets all slimy then hand toss it. Don't be a pussy. Get yo' hands messy, punk!


4. By the time you're done with that bit the chicken should be cooked. Take it off the stove and place it on a dish for now. Preheat the oven. Does 350 degrees sound good? 350 degrees sounds good to me. Lets go with 350 degrees...

5. Fill a sandwich bag with the parmesan, bit o' salt, few pinches of black pepper, onion powder, and bread crumbs. Get your shake and bake on. When you get a nice even coat on the chicken with the breading, place it in a separate bake dish and drizzle it with your chosen salad dressing. I recommend a vinegar-based dressing.

6. Throw both bake dishes in the oven. Let them bake. Do a jig.

7. After about 15 minutes take out the dishes, turn over the chicken, stir up the potatoes and squash, stick it back in, do another jig.

8. Let another 15 minutes pass, take out the chicken. That's done. Turn up the temp to 400 and throw in a baguette of some French bread. This will go pretty well with the food. The reason why we did this is because the higher the temp, the quicker the surface cooks to a crisp while the core is not penetrated by the heat, leaving it soft on the inside. You like bread that's warm and soft on the inside with a crispy crust, right? Also, it roasts the vegetables.

9. After five minutes (maybe a bit shorter than that) take out the veggies and the bread.

10. Drizzle some olive oil on the sliced baguette, place a chicken fillet or two on a serving of the casserole, and serve with a side some peas or whatever strikes your fancy. Goes good with an Irish red beer. Sammy Adams makes a nice Irish Red. Enjoy, mofugga!

Crab Pasta

So my mood doesn't determine my cooking, but the expiration dates on my food. Right now I'm making a lot of foods that require lettuce. A. Lot. However, I decided to take a break from the lettuce and work on using my peppers so last night I made crab pasta.

Magical.

It's a really light dish and each of the vegetables really stand out. Also, if you're vegetarian I'm sure this would be just as good with tofu instead of crab. It goes great with a dark fruit juice or...cough cough wine cough. I can't recommend that last one since I'm technically not supposed to imbibe it yet.

I had a bunch of fun making this, and in the process of having so much fun I forgot to record how long it takes to prep and cook. Probably took about 45 minutes. Roundabout. Ball park figure. Guesstimation. Mmkay, time for some pasta:

Magical Crab Pasta Bonanaza [pending title] (Serves 2)

Ingredients:

• Half a bag of ziti noodles
• Olive oil and balsamic vinegar
• Salt and pepper
• Chopped cilantro
• Clove of garlic
• Tablespoon of mayo
• chopped red peppers
• Chopped green peppers
• Stick of imitation crab leg
• Avocado slices
• Parsley flakes
• Feta cheese
• Cucumbers

Directions:

1. As you set the pot to boil, dice your peppers, chop up your cilantro, get slivers of crab, slice your avocado, and slap your troubles away on the red onions.
   
   
   
2. Then smash up and mince your garlic. I used a hammer and the flat of a really dull knife to smash mine up because I had nothing else. Keep half the garlic for the frying pan, but the other half for the ingredients.
3. Hand toss all those ingredients together in a bowl then add a tablespoon of mayo then stir it in. Stick it in the freezer for now to chill. Word.
4. If you're like me, it will probably take you until the water is boiling to do that stuff. Stick in the ziti and pour in some salt to keep them from sticking together.
5. After that, get a non-stick frying pan and pour in some olive oil and the half of garlic that you set aside. As it starts to simmer, grab the crab salad out of the freezer and throw it in. Stir it around and toss it to get everything cooked evenly. Cook it until you're satisfied, I guess. It didn't take me long to cook because I'm easily satisfied when it comes to food.
6. Once the noodles are done drain them, put them on a plate, then drizzle them with balsamic vinaigrette.
7. Take out a cucumber then slice it up. Place the slices over the noodles. This will be the platform to set the crab salad on.
8. Scoop out the crab salad onto the noodles and cucumbers, sprinkle crumbled feta around the crab salad then salt, pepper, and parsley flakes on top for garnish. I've really been working on garnishing since a good portion of a person's attitude towards food is how it looks. Also, it makes for better pictures.
   
9. Profit

**10% of that profit goes to me.

Izzy Pop Glo

Sup sup, homies. I've had a couple of days off from work so I was cleaning the hallway right outside my bedroom. It's pretty much a small nook hidden away from any windows so it's constantly dark and uninviting.Aside from neating up the bookcase and adding a mirror to bring in more light and space, I made some fancy little bottles that glow under a blacklight. I got the idea from a cousin back in Murfreesboro (Pronounced: "Muh-free-burrah"). They're really cheap and easy to create, and they look pretty damn awesome.

Step 1: Get your stuff together, man. You'll need hi-liters, an assortment of glass bottles, and a blacklight. You can go out and buy a multicolor pack of hi-liters for a dollar at Walmart and you can get whatever kind of bottle strikes your fancy, but I find that the best ones to use are Izze bottles.

Aside from being absolutely delicious, Izze bottles have the logo (which I think borders on chique) printed right onto the bottle rather than a label wrapped around it. This allows more light to pass through and it makes the effect look way better. Glass coke bottles work well, too.






Step 2: Pry the cap of the end of the hi-liters. Some needle nose pliers should do the trick. I would suggest doing this somewhere that you wouldn't mind getting hi-liter ink all over the place, just in case. Also, wear some gloves. I didn't in the pictures I took, and I ended up having hi-liter ink all over my hands.







Step 3: Fill up the bottle with water then squeeze the ink out of the sponge stick until the water becomes opaque with the hi-liter fluid. It's best to fold the stick in half that way you can squeeze the ink out of both ends instead of squeezing some out the top end and all over your hands. If the water doesn't become opaque after using a whole stick, add some flour to the mixture to thicken it up. Also, you might want to add some rubbing alcohol to prevent it from molding in the future.

Step 4: PROFIT.

On Revitalizing Online Journals and Naming Foods After Creepy Celebrities

Alrighty, lets see if I can't renovate this dusty old blog and breathe some life back into it!

From here on out, I'll be posting to this blog all the projects I do to keep my busy. I do everything from painting to prose to DIY projects, so I don't think there will be any shortage of material....but maybe a shortage of spare time once nursing school rears its ugly head again. *sigh*

Today, I'll be sharing with you something I cooked a couple of days ago. I had just harvested the first of the zucchini out of my garden. It's my first time gardening, so you can imagine this is a pretty big deal for me. It was rather large as far as zucchini go, but it was still sweet which meant that it had plenty of time to grow larger. I was eager to cook it up in something and I wanted to do something new, something beyond just another sandwich or pasta. I decided to cook it in a curry.

I started traversing "teh interwubz" for a semi-authoritative source on curries. Turns out I hit the jackpot with Curry Frenzy. It broke it down to the fundamentals, which allowed me to improvise rather than follow a recipe. It's not like I follow those things anyway. 2 Teaspoons? Psh. 1/3 cups? Balderdash. A man doesn't follow directions! He pioneers his own creations with reckless abandon!

Really though, what makes a great curry centers around a few select things: 1) you can't have curry without onions or garlic...you just can't, 2) It's all in the spices. Don't settle for store bought "curry powder". Make your own. This is where knowing what spices and herbs you're working with really comes into play, and 3) most importantly, you need to understand the sensation of taste. There are five different tastes your tongue can register: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami (savory). There needs to be at least two of these tastes present in your curry in order to make it delicious. I went for sweet and salty. And now, without further delay I present to you my curry.

I call it...

TIM CURRY!

Yeah, I didn't think naming it "veggie curry" would do the dish justice. However, in retrospect, naming it after Tim Curry doesn't appeal to one's appetite, does it? Anywho, let me try to belt out a makeshift recipe. I'll warn you: to me, cooking isn't an exact science. I just throw stuff at it (edible stuff) until it tastes right.

Tim Curry (serves 1)

• Prep: dice a fourth of a red onion, half a large zucchini, and half a green pepper. Start 2 cups of rice in the cooker.
  
• Set the stove to medium heat and throw in some olive oil. You'll need a good bit of it, like a little bit less than 1/4 cup.
• Next, throw in a few Tbsps of cumin (for me, it was accidentally pouring out half the container then vigorously scooping it out with a spoon), some minced garlic, light brown sugar, crushed bay leaves, parsley, and paprika. Let it simmer until it looks like the flavor is coming out.
• Throw in the onions, peppers, and zucchini. Throw in enough water to let the veggies cook in it. You'll know it's cooked enough when the onions are browned.
  
  
• As the onions are nearing "cooked" status, throw in some raisins, fresh spinach leaves, and a few squirts of lemon juice.
• Stir in some more water, about as much as you want curry sauce, then thicken it with a few sizable pinches of flour. I used all purpose, but I don't really see the point of being picky with what kind of flour you use.
• Around the time all this is done, the rice should be ready. Spoon it out onto a plate and make a little paddy out of it.
• For the finishing touch, give the curry a few spritzes of lemon juice and maybe a teaspoon of salt. The salt isn't for taste, but to bring out the other flavors.
• Pour it onto the rice, say your prayers (take from that what you will), and enjoy.