Monday, November 10, 2008

Come on Baby Light my Fire...Potatoes!

This last weekend a couple of my favorite blogs featured potatoes... ZestyCook...For the Love of Cooking. These blogs gave me a hankering for my Fiery Potatoes.

There is a fun little Tibetan restaurant in Salt Lake called, 'House of Tibet.' I have been eating there since I was in high school. They have a GREAT lunch time buffet that you can taste each of their fabulous, flavorful dishes. One of my favorites after their noodles with cabbage are the spicy potatoes.

I bought my office dinner from House of Tibet and every LOVED their potatoes. One of my co-workers loved the potatoes so much he went online and found a recipe similar to what House of Tibet serves. I have modified the recipe he found as I didn't feel it used enough seasoning as the original recipe called for.

Life My Fire! Potatoes:
3 large garlic cloves (roughly chopped)
3-5 tablespoons olive oil
2-3 tablespoons pepper sauce
1 tablespoon turmeric
1 tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons pepper
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
6 medium russet potatoes (scrubbed and cut into 1 -inch chunks)
Notice from my picture I didn't include the garlic...yes, I forgot to add the garlic to the potatoes...they still turned out just as fabulous!
Preheat oven to 500 F.

Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl...you can do this on the cookie sheet you intend to bake them on...but I find it is easier to do it in a bowl. Toss and coat evenly. Place coated potatoes on a cooking sheet in the center of the oven for 15 minutes.

Remove, scraping bottom while stirring to expose uncooked potato.
Return to oven and continue to roast an additional 15 minutes or until tender when pierced with fork.
Talk about comfort food! These potatoes can mend ANY bad day! I love that they are spicy and baked!

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Six random things about me.

I was tagged by Meg of Megan's Munchies with this six random things about me Meme. Here are the rules and six things about me.

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.
1. I have two yellow labs Ruby and Alice. I have had Ruby since she was 16 weeks old. She is going to be 10 this Christmas...Yep! She is a Christmas puppy!
2. I LOVE sunflowers! I have a sunflower tattoo that got when I was 19...and I have never once regretted it!
3. I am a crime show addict. I love CSI, Law and Order, and City Confidential.
4. I have been putting of getting my master's degree because I am afraid of taking the GMAT...I am a bad tester. I know! I'm lame and need to just bite the bullet!
5. I LOVE vintage children's books. I like to find my childhood books on ebay and purchase them for my kids. I drew in all my books and ruined them. :(
6. Cooking relaxes me. I have a 70 miles commute everyday and cooking gives me some thing to look forward to when I am cursing people on the road.

This is who I am passing it on to (I love that Meg breaks the rules and only sent it to four...it makes me feel better about breaking the rules):

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Cooking with my Sis!

Last weekend I went up to Portland to see my sister and her family. What a great weekend trick-or-treating with my nieces and hanging out with my sister and her fam! The best part of the weekend was cooking with her, of course. :) She is so cute. When I arrived she told me we needed to cook something so we could put it on my blog.

My sister has a ton of cook books that are completely different than the ones that I have. She had a recipe for Mole that she had been wanting to try for awhile and she used this opportunity to make it. She and I always thought that Mole was a day long process, but this recipe was so simple and TASTY!!!!! It rivaled some of the authentic Mole I have had in restaurants and at the homes of Hispanic friends. Did I mention EASY?

Mole:
1 can chicken broth
3 T sesame seeds
2T oil
1 med onion, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 square semisweet chocolate
1/3 C golden raisins - I know...this sounds barf, but it isn't!
1/4 C slivered blanched almonds - what is blanching? Can any one tell me?
1 10 oz can mild red enchilada sauce
2 ready-to-eat taco shells, crumbled - we used tortilla chips
1 slice white bread, crumbled - my sister is healthy and only had wheat bread
1 t salt
1/4 t ground cinnamon
1/4 t ground coriander
1/4 t anise seed, crushed - we couldn't find anise seed so we used anise extract
1/8 t ground cloves
1/8 t pepper
Cooked turkey - We used 5-6 poached chicken breasts

In 12 inch skillet over med high heat, cook sesame seed until lightly browned; remove to paper towel. In same skillet, in hot oil cook onion and garlic until tender; stir in chocolate. Heat until chocolate melts.In covered blender container, blend 1 T toasted sesame seed, chocolate mixture and remaining ingredients until smooth. Return mixture to skillet and stir in chicken broth. Over medium heat, heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Spoon some sauce on chicken; sprinkle with remaining sesame seed.
We served this up in flour tortillas with a little cilantro over the top. YUM!

The only draw back to this meal was the spicy factor. I grabbed the bottle of red pepper flakes when I sat down at the table. But since we were serving up little kids, it was probably a good idea to keep the heat down. The kids LOVED it! All of them except my niece, Meagan. She thinks she is a vegetarian...she is just a picky eater. She eats hot dogs, hamburgers and almost anything with cheese on it. She sure is lucky we love her! :)

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Biscuits, Texas Style

Friends, our buddy the Homesick Texan makes a mean biscuit! I saw this post a week or two ago and have been dreaming about it since. Fortunately, I didn't botch it up. These little guys were surprisingly easy to make. I always thought making biscuits from scratch was a long and drawn out process, but it's not!


Biscuits:
2 cups of flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon of sugar (can add more to taste)
1/2 teaspoon of salt1 stick of butter, cold (8 tablespoons)
3/4 cup of buttermilk, cream or half-and-half

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Mix all the dry ingredients together. Cut the stick of butter into pieces, and work into the flour mixture with your hands or a pastry blender until it resembles pea-sized crumbs. Add the liquid, mixing until a bit loose and sticky. Pour dough out on a floured surface, and knead for a minute. Dough should be smooth and no longer wet. You can sprinkle more flour on the surface if you find it’s sticking. Take dough into a ball, and hit it with a rolling pin, turning it and folding it in half every few whacks. Do this for a couple of minutes.Roll out dough until it’s 1/4 of an inch thick, and then fold it in half.Using a round cutter (can use a glass or a cup if don’t have a biscuit cutter) cut out your biscuits from folded dough.Place on a greased baking sheet close together (so they rise up not out), and bake for 15 minutes or until the tops are golden brown.
Makes 10-12 biscuits.

I was kinda nervous about beating the biscuits so I only did it a couple of times. It don't know if beating makes them more dense or what...but they turned out FABULOUS! I expect to makes these a LOT! I am one step away from making biscuits and gravy from scratch for my Sweetie!

Monday, October 27, 2008

All made up!

I was reading For the Love of Cooking and got a hankering for some of Pam's yummy chili. Unfortunately, I didn't have any of the fixin's for red bean, red meat chili. I did however have white beans and chicken so I decided to make something up. I know...you're thinking...uh oh...we all know what happens when Sarah makes things up. But I pulled this one off FAMOUSLY!
White Bean Chicken Chili:
1 breast of chicken
1 serrano, chopped
1/2 white onion, chopped
1/2 red pepper, chopped
1 can crushed tomatoes
1 cup chicken stock
1 garlic clove crushed
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon sage
1 can great northern beans
1 can navy beans

Heat up a frying pan on medium high with a little olive oil in it and brown on both sides until the juices run clear and the chicken is cooked through.If you are thinking when you start cooking, you could cook the chicken up in the heavy bottomed stock pot instead of dirtying another pan. I, however, was not thinking when I started cooking and used a separate pan. Let the chicken sit for a second or two and then chop up into bite sized pieces and set aside.

In your heavy bottomed stock pot with a little olive oil cook up the onions, red onion and serrano until soft.Add the chicken, tomatoes, chicken stock and seasonings, bring to a simmer. Strain and rinse both cans of white beans and add to stock pot. Stir carefully so as not to break up the white beans. They are much softer beans than red beans and break easily. Simmer for 15 minutes until the beans are warmed through.
This was a pretty great creation. Even Alex was impressed. He has had to eat enough of my silly concoctions that he worries a little when I tell him I am winging it. :) We sure are lucky this one was yummy!

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Golden Ticket

O.K., so this post isn't about food per se, but it is about something you consume to compliment your food. I am curious as to the vitamins you all take. I have heard a plethora of things about vitamins from 'they give you tons of energy...you can live off these babies' to 'they make your waste expensive.'

I personally take a multi-vitamin and calcium. I don't really drink milk except to put soy milk in my morning cereal and iced latte's when I have them. However, a while back a co-worker told me that regular calcium pills don't break down in your stomach fast enough for your body to make use of the calcium. He is in the boat that vitamins make 'expensive waste.' He had me cutting my freaking calcium tablets in half for a while because I had bought a monster sized bottle of calcium at Costco.
I have been searching out alternatives to my Costco Calcium and got turned on to Viactin...those chocolate chews. They were pretty decent but went hard WAY fast. I found a GREAT alternative at Wild Oats...Whole Foods...I liked Wild Oats better. Their stores smelled like lavender and eucalyptus and Whole Foods stores smell like health food...but I digress. Nutrition Now has a product called, 'Calcium Soft Chews'. Kind of a lame name, but a GREAT product.
The 'Chews' come in individually wrapped golden packages that make you think you have won the golden ticket from Willy Wonka! The Chew its self is nice and soft. 500 mg of Calcium is what you need each day and each 'Chew' is 250 mg...so it gives you the opportunity to drink a glass of milk or eat some cheese and truly supplement your diet with a 'Calcium Chew'. The best part is that it gives you a great excuse to eat chocolate. Alex thinks that's why I get this particular brand of calcium...and he is probably right. I need strong bones so I don't get osteoporosis.

Tell me what vitamins you take to supplement your yummy blogs! I am curious to see how many pill cutters their are out there.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Love from Zesty!

The Premio Arte Pico was bestowed upon me by by blogging buddy ZESTY! His name is Cory, but he is my ZESTY COOK! You have to check his blog out because it ROCKS!...and I'm not just saying that because he gave me an award!

This award originates in Uruguay and is called the Premio Arte Pico from a blogger who makes dolls. You can visit her site here.
The rules of the Premio Arte Pico:
1) Pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award, creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogger community, no matter of language.

2) Advertise name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award-winner, has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

4) Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5) Share these rules.

I am passing this award onto the following:

Project Domestication: If you want cupcakes...check out this blog. She makes cupcakes, she reviews cupcakes and finds SWEET decorations for cupcakes. Maybe it is because she is from Utah too or because she frequents Williams Sonoma as much as I do...but I dig her blog!

Tracey's Culinary Adventures: Tracey had me at her Guinness Milk Chocolate Ice Cream . You got to love a blog that mixes our favorite Irish Beer with chocolate and cream. Great blog, Tracey.

Chocolate Shavings: I have a tendency to make things I perceive as 'safe'. Chocolate Shaving's has opened my mind to what 'safe' really is. Bacon wrapped scallops, pea puree in risotto, salmon tartare... I would normally pass over these dishes in a cookbook...but I want to try them after seeing them at Chocolate Shavings!

Sweet Sensations: Talk about good energy. You enter this blog and the background cheers you up. Then you start reading the recipes and start drooling. You gotta support the military wives! (I'm one too!)

Life, Lightly Salted: Self described"...lightly salted and slightly jaded... an aging punk rock princess" has a fun, dark blog with GREAT food! She has a signature dish called, 'Death by Garlic'...this recipe is how I would take my life with food. :) She is also doing her first giveaway...check it out.