Sangria anyone? -- Recipes from my housewarming party

Homemade Sangria... mmmm.

I know it has been a little while since my last post, but I am here and coming back in full force with a few recipes.  This past weekend I held a housewarming at my apartment which I now have to myself.  I decided I wanted a Spanish themed party, so I created a menu of Sangria and Tapas.

The weekend ended up being a little hectic because I had to go into work on the night of my party for a couple of hours.  The result of this fiasco was that I had to cook very quickly and sadly do not have any photos of the food I made.  I think I have more than a couple of witnesses who can testify that the food tasted pretty damn good, though.

  Regardless of the lack of photos, I am including in this post recipes for:

Sangria

Garlic-Thyme Chicken Wings

Tortilla de Patatas

Tuna Steakpops

SANGRIA

3 liters of lighter bodied red wine 

(I would go for Pinot Noir, Red Zin, or Merlot... boxed wine works great for Sangria and is wallet friendly!)

1.5 cups of fruit flavored brandy (I used blackberry this time around)

2 oranges cut into1 inch pieces

3 apples cut into 1 inch pieces

1 lemon cut into 1 inch pieces

1 lime cut into 1 inch pieces

1/2 cup sugar

1 liter citrus flavored soda (My soda of choice is usually Fresca)

Mix all ingredients except the soda in a large container and keep in the fridge for at least 6 hours to let the flavors harmonize.  I kept mine overnight and the fruit was super wine-steeped and delicious.  When you want to serve the sangria, you can either pour the soda into the container with the sangria or top off each glass with a splash of soda to brighten up the drink.  Don't forget to serve each cup with some fruit in it!  What could be better than getting your daily serving of fruit and getting tipsy at the same time?

GARLIC-THYME CHICKEN WINGS

3 lbs chicken wings 

(Since I was on a budget I used one of those big bags of frozen wings, but you can also use a pack of fresh ones)

6 cloves garlic, crushed with the back of a knife

1/3 cup olive oil

1 cup white wine

1 cup water

1 tbsp Adobo powder

3 sprigs fresh thyme

2 dried bay leaves

1 tbsp Vietnamese chili garlic sauce (I use the one with the  green cap and the rooster on the front) or red pepper flakes

I sort of improvised on this recipe because I didn't really have all of the ingredients the recipe I was referencing required.  It was risky, but it ended up turning out great!  Also, this is the easiest recipe ever!  

Preheat the oven to 375.  Place wings and all other ingredients into an oven-safe vessel.  Stir to settle everything together and bake.  40 minutes if the wings are thawed and 1 hour if the wings are frozen.  Serve either in the dish with the cooking liquid or take wings out onto a plate.

**** I made these before I had to go to work on Saturday and ended up putting them into the fridge.  Everybody at the party ate them cold a couple hours later before I got home and STILL loved them!  I will definitely be making this chicken again. ****

TUNA STEAKPOPS

Good seafood is becoming available in the supermarket again, and if you live in Krogerland, you can buy some great fresh fish pre-seasoned and/or marinated in the seafood section.  My Kroger happens to sell tuna steaks coated in coarse ground black pepper and includes teriyaki butter.  I try to buy these tuna steaks whenever I can find them for a fair price.  In order to make them into party food, I cut the steak into cubes and pan seared them for about 5 minutes on med-high heat in olive oil.  Depending on your preference, you can leave more or less pink in the center.  I usually cook my tuna to medium.

Dipping Sauce:
Teriyaki butter (or if you don't have any pre-made from Kroger use 1 part teriyaki sauce to 2 parts butter)
Soy sauce
Rice wine vinegar
Chili Garlic Paste (the Vietnamese one from before)

Combine over low heat in a pan using proportions that taste good to you!  I am saying this because I didn't really measure, but, basically, experiment with the flavors until you like the way the sauce tastes.

I ended up serving the tuna bites on colored toothpicks (hence the name tuna steakpops) with the sauce poured over them, but I think a dipping bowl of the sauce would have been a bit more effective.  They were a big hit!

Steakpops, Cakepops!  I almost forgot!  My awesome sister made Cakepops for dessert.  Red velvet cake coated in milk chocolate and nuts or white chocolate.  NOM!  They were amazingly delicious.  I had some for breakfast this morning.  She also made some tasty chocolate covered strawberries, but they were gone too quickly to get photographed. 

I plan on making a small tortilla for breakfast in the morning, so I will take photos and include a detailed recipe tomorrow.  Get excited.

Give Peas (and Pesto) a Chance Pasta

In case any of you readers have never met me (unlikely), this is me cooking!  Kuddos to Patrick for taking a flattering photo!

 
  I chose to give this pasta such a corny name because it's inspired one of  Rachel Ray's recipes.  If you know anything about her you know she's crazy and gives her recipes particularly corny names.  Also a quick shoutout to my sister Christie and our friend Katie Paige.  Let's see if they remember singing the All-That version of this song on the playground as kids.

  Now, if you know anything about me, or you have read my sweet potato chili post, you know I'm particularly obsessed with pesto.  I have been known to say I would eat cardboard if it were spread with pesto.  This week I really wanted to start posting pesto-related recipes.

  I regularly make pesto eggs and pesto pizza, but a little google searching brought me to Rachel Ray's recipe for a 3-veggie pasta with pesto.  Her three veggies included zucchini, asparagus, and green beans, and she makes her own pesto.  I love pesto, but I don't yet have the tools to make my own, so I got refrigerated store bought.  I like Buitoni or the made-in-supermarket kind, but not the kind in the jar in the pasta aisle with the spaghetti sauce.  Try the refrigerated kind, and you'll never go back to the other stuff.  I could eat it with a spoon, but usually try to be a bit more civilized and use it as a dip (i.e., eating it with an edible spoon). 

***The trick with pesto is to eat it fresh, as it is.  You can warm it up with the heat of some food (pasta, veggies) or eat it cold, but never cook it!***

  Alright, if I don't stop myself, I could be raving about pesto for who knows how long.  So, here's the easy and veggie-packed recipe for Give Peas (and Pesto) a Chance Pasta.

Mis en place!  A french phrase I have retained since high school "Intro to Culinary Arts."  It's a little snooty, but it makes for a good ingredient photo for this blog and helps me stay organized =P

-1/2 lb of you favorite pasta shape
-1/2 cup frozen peas (these were not in Rachel's recipe, but I thought they would be a good addition... plus peas lend themselves to good titles)
-1 small zucchini
-8 stalks of asparagus
-A handful of fresh green beans
-3/4 cup store-bought (refrigerated) or homemade pesto
-Parmesan cheese for serving

Put a pot of water on the stove to start boiling for the pasta.  You are going to cook the pasta and the veggies in the same water, so get your veggies prepped while the water is boiling.

Cut green beans, asparagus, and zucchini into similarly shaped, 2 inch pieces.  This means cut the tips off the green beans and cut them in half, remove dry ends and quarter the asparagus, and cut the zucchini into little planks.  Set those veggies and the the peas to the side. 

 At this point your water should be boiling.  Dump in the pasta and salt the water.  Let the pasta cook for 6 minutes (it won't be fully cooked yet).  Now it's time to add all four veggies.  Let the pot come back to a boil and cook the pasta and veggies for 3 more minutes.  You want both the pasta and the veggies to be al dente.

Before straining, take out 1/2 cup of the pasta water and set it aside.  Strain the pasta and veggies and dump them back into the same pan with a little bit of olive oil to keep everything from getting sticky.  Add pesto, salt and pepper to your taste and thin the mixture with the pasta water you saved.

Serve immediately with parmesan sprinkled over the top.  As you can see we ate ours with some Rogue Hazelnut Brown Ale.  This was our first time trying this particular Rogue brew and it was goooood, especially alongside this bright and tasty pasta dish.


P.S. For those living in Richmond, Kroger-made pesto is quite good and fairly-priced.  I found it in the deli section with the fancy cheese and the hummus.

Ground Chicken Burger Pitas

Experimenting with food has it's risks.  Sometimes I get over-ambitious when something should just be simple.  The result is food that is edible, but could be a lot better.  That is what happened with these chicken burgers.  I added an egg to the meat when I should have left it out.  It was a good meal, but it would have been a lot better without the egg.  So if you try this recipe, make it huevo-free.

Here's what you need:

1 tsp Adobo

1 tsp Salt

1 tsp Black pepper

1 tsp olive oil

1/2 lb Ground chicken

1 chopped shallot

Pita bread

Lettuce (I prefer arugula or some sort of baby lettuce)

Tomato

Rosemary and Garlic Mayo (Mince garlic and fresh rosemary and mix into mayo.  If you make it the day before, the flavors will be nicely blended.  This mayo recipes is thanks to Giada de Laurentiis.)

Before you start cooking, wrap the pitas in foil and put them in the oven on 250 to warm.

Combine ground chicken, the spices, the shallot, and olive oil.  Yes, there's the egg peeking out from underneath the shallots.  Pretend it's not there.  Squish the ingredients together with your hands and create patties in the size of your choice.

Cook patties on a grill or pan until cooked through.  This is chicken, so make sure they're well done!  If you can keep yourself from squishing them with the spatula while they're cooking, they'll stay juicy.

Spread the mayo in the warm pitas and stuff with chicken patties, tomato slices, and lettuce.

I ate mine with a salad of lettuce, grape tomatoes, olive oil/rice wine vinaigrette, and cheese.  ¡Que aprovecho!

A quick nod to Cakewrecks

Yay!  I used my new mixer for the first time last week.  Isn't is awesome?  It came with dough hook, whisk, and standard mixing attachments AND a spatula.  Thanks Mom!

  


  Anywho, I read about 5 blogs somewhat regularly and 3 of them happen to be food blogs.  Cakewrecks is one of them.  It's like a failblog for professionally decorated cakes.  Maybe that doesn't sound so funny to you, but let me tell you, it's hilarious.  http://www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com/  The Cakewrecks author is a funny lady and often has posts dedicated to cakes decorated in chocolate icing in extremely unfortunate shapes.  More about that later. 

  So last week I made a cake because I had cake mix.  It was pretty tasty.  Here are a few photos:

Mixing up the Duncan Hines Butter Golden cake mix.  Yes, I condone bake cheating.  Now, I think most things taste better if made from scratch, but cake from a mix just tastes so good! 

This is the mix in the greased and floured pan.  I included this photo because I was amazed at how much the cake mix increased in volume, but you can't really tell with my sub-par photography.

I cut the cake into 2 halves so I could layer it and used a homemade chocolate buttercream icing.  Easy peasy.  It's just butter, shortening, cocoa, powered sugar, and a little milk.  No measurements necessary, in my book.  Just get it to the consistency and flavor that you like.  An electric mixer help when you like really fluffy icing.

Back to my Cakewrecks reference.  So I iced the cake and had a good amount of icing leftover.  The author likes to point out that many professional bakers make swirls of chocolate icing that very unfortunately look like swirls of poo.  Generally it's unintentional, but it's hard to think of anything else when looking at a brown swirl of any kind of paste.  So poop-swirl trim it was on the Tuesday cake!  I'm 23 and poop jokes still make me laugh.  What can you do?

Chocolaty, buttery goodness.  NOM.  My next post will be slightly more experimental and will include a recipe, not to worry.  Happy eating!

Sweet potatoes are 75¢/lb right now. Just sayin.

  For those of you who know me well, you might be aware of my two main food obsessions:  Sweet potatoes and pesto.  I could dedicate an entire blog to recipes I have invented for these two foods.  

  Today, however, I will stick with the sweet potato.  They are the super food.  They are nutritious, delicious and cheap (no joke, they are 75¢/lb in the store right now).  Hash, pasta, fries, the possibilities are endless.

  I looked at my pantry (aka the shelf above my counter... hey, a girl can dream) today and saw black beans.  Thus began my usual recipe creation process.  Type in random foodstuffs one has in one's pantry into google.  See if any recipes pop up.  Read a few recipes for inspiration.  Combine new ideas with established food knowledge.  Start the experiment.

  Sweet potato chili?  How did I never come up with that??  So I did a little research into how others made theirs, wrote down a few tips, and then went to cooking.

I have been making chili for years and years, first with my mom, and then on my own as an easy one-pot meal.  The above have become my staple chili ingredients, then I can expand from there.  That's 2 cans of Rotel with green chilies, one can of black beans, and one small can of corn.

And these are my staple chili spices.  Adobo is the wonder seasoning.

I started by peeling and dicing 2 large sweet potatoes and sauteing them in olive oil until slightly browned on the outside.  Then, add one heaping tsp of cumin, one heaping tsp of chili power, a Tbsp of adobo, and a few dashes of cayenne pepper to the potatoes.  Let the spices warm up in the pan with the potatoes for a minute or two while you get your canned ingredients open.

Open the black beans and corn into a colander and rinse with water.  The Rotel will add enough liquid and the potatoes will add enough starch, so rinsing the beans and corn and straining them is important.  Add the beans, corn, and 2 cans of Rotel to the pot.  If you like a thick chili, add a teensy bit of cornstarch to the pot, if you like a soupier version, leave it out.  Bring it all to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes.  This is going to make a LOT of chili, but it freezes well, not to worry.

And boom!  There you go!  Chili is one of the most simple and satisfying things you can make.  I like to eat my chili with some sharp cheddar grated over the top and the white girl in me likes to eat it with saltines.  I imagine cornbread or tortilla chips would go just as well with this chili, haha. 

The beurres

Tilapia with lemon shallot beurre blanc

Tilapia with lemon shallot beurre noisette.

I am an avid fan of cooking shows... Alton, Ina, Anthony, they are all my TV buds and my inspiration.  This is tricky since I haven't had cable tv for the past 2 years, but I am getting off track.  Regardless, the show that has made the biggest impression on me is Alton Brown's Good Eats.  His shows were lessons in gastronomy and have taught me quite a bit...plus, he never fails to make me laugh. It is because of this that I chose his recipe and guidance for my very first attempt at the infamous sauce, Beurre Blanc.

  I have tasted many a beurre blanc at Sensi and have watched several videos on how it is done.  It is delicious, no doubt.  It's the battle of white wine, lemon juice, butter, and cream that scared me.  How could this be done without curdling?  In terms of the other beurre colors, noir and noisette, the task is a bit simpler.  As long as you don't burn them into oblivion, they're going to taste pretty darned wonderful.

Clockwise from left: Cream, salt, pepper, parsley, white wine, lemon, tilapia, shallots, butter.

Get everything you need together (mis en place).  The photo above shows the ingredients needed for beurre blanc.

1 Tilapia fillet
1 minced shallot
1/2 c white wine
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp cream
6 tbsp cold butter
salt, pepper, and parsley to taste

Season with salt and pepper and pan sear the tilapia in olive oil on med high heat to create a nice crust on the outside of the fish. (I cut the fillet in half down the middle.  One side is always thinner than the other.)

Place in oven on broil in a foil packet to continue cooking while you make you sauce.

Add shallots, white wine, and lemon juice to a pan on high heat and cook for 3 minutes to reduce the liquid.

Once reduced, add the tbsp of cream and let bubble.  Reduce the heat to low.  Then, start adding the butter one tbsp at a time, whisking to incorporate.  *** This is the tricky part!  The idea is to not let the butter completely melt, but just to soften it to a stage somewhere between liquid and solid.  To achieve this, take the pan on and off the heat to regulate the temperature.  You never want to let the butter bubble.***

 

 

Once incorporated, your sauce should look a little something like this.  Thick and smooth (besides the shallots).  Add parsley, salt, and pepper to taste.  

When you read you begin with ABC, when you blog you begin with...?

  So here I am, still awake at 2am, post-Valentine's Day pandemonium at Sensi (my puppies are barking!!), beginning this blog. A friend convinced me to to start this a few months back and I finally stopped procrasterbating today.  I got a surge of energy when I saw all of the excited responses to the tilapia I posted up on Facebook.  It looks like some people want to see what it is that I'm cooking and how I'm cooking it!  Who knew? 

   As an amateur cook I tend to occasionally follow recipes to the T, often morph recipes into my own, and, as of late, create recipes off the top of my head.

  I'm not 100% sure yet how this space is going to flow, but you can be sure that I will be sharing recipes, photos, and thoughts on food I've made and maybe even good food someone else has made for me.  I think I'll start with 2 recipes per week with wiggle room. 

  So stay tuned if you would like a virtual window into my kitchen... and then come over and eat!



P.S. A cookie for anyone who can pick out my intentional misspelling =P