Olive oil, chocolate and sea salt cookies

This was a super long summer because I overextended myself.  Sadly, the first thing to go when my time is limited is my baking.  I love to bake so I'm happy to report I'm back from my crazy summer with a fantastic cookie recipe.  I found this recipe via Capitol Hill Style and it's a keeper!  Soft and super chocolatey without being overly sweet, I ate like 4 when I was trying to figure out how to photograph chocolate cookies at 9pm in a kitchen with no natural light (not that it would've mattered after dark).  Shockingly, I didn't make any adjustments to the recipe though I'd like to throw out that the dough is weird.  Usually I eat about a cookie's worth of dough when I make them but something about the olive oil was a little off-putting.  The cookies are divine, the dough was weird.  Weird!

Olive oil, chocolate and sea salt cookies

Ingredients:

1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp hot water
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
sea salt for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 350.  Dissolve baking soda into hot water.  Mix olive oil and sugar together in a medium to large mixing bowl.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.  Add vanilla extract and mix well.  Add cocoa powder, flour and salt and mix well.  Mix in the baking soda and water mixture.  Mix in the chocolate chips.  Using a tablespoon scoop, scoop dough onto lined cookie sheet.  Sprinkle just a teeny bit of sea salt on top of your cookies.  Bake for 10 minutes.  Allow to cool for 5 or so before removing cookies from cookie sheet.  Devour with a glass of milk.

Bokum wings with feta dressing

One of Dave's all-time favorite Korean dishes is Jaeyuk Bokum, a spicy and sweet pork dish.  It's delicious and he's kind of known for loving it in my family.  I was craving some chicken wings and I wasn't feeling a vinegary buffalo sauce so I thought I'd give the bokum sauce another try.  You see, I attempted to make Bokum wings for the Super Bowl this year and used the same sauce I would for the pork and it almost burned my face off.

These wings definitely have some kick so I wanted a cool and creamy sauce to go with them.  I have a deep and undying love for bleu cheese and bleu cheese dressing but no bleu cheese in the fridge.  Bleu.  However, I have 2 containers of feta because Kroger was having a BOGO on it and you don't look a feta BOGO in the mouth.

Bokum wings

Ingredients:

15ish frozen chicken wings
salt
pepper
2 tbsps kochujang (spicy pepper paste from your friendly neighborhood Asian market)
1 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp vinegar
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Preheat your oven to 375.  While your oven is heating, mix kochujang, ketchup, honey, vinegar and garlic powder in small saucepan over low heat.  Bring to a simmer and let it cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Turn your burner to warm and let the sauce hang out.

Once the oven is hot, put your frozen wings on a foil-lined baking sheet and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Cook for 20 minutes, flip, sprinkle on a little more salt and pepper and let cook for another 20 minutes.

When your wings are done, heat a large frying pan to medium and add your wings and sauce.  Turn wings to coat and let cook only a couple of minutes.  The heat helps the sauce flavor the wings more than just pouring sauce on.

Serve with feta dressing

Feta Dressing

Ingredients:

1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/8 cup sour cream
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp garlic powder
2 oz. crumbled feta
salt
pepper

Mix everything together and stick it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.  Serve with hot bokum wings.

Philly Cheesesteak Sloppy Joe Sliders

I love cheesesteaks.  I've even been to Philadelphia before but not tried a cheesesteak.  I think it's to preserve the cheesesteaks I actually eat as somewhat authentic.  So anyway, I saw this recipe on Pinterest and got super excited.  I think this is an okay recipe but not nearly as amazing as I'd built it up in my mind.  Also, I want my sloppy joe's to be nice and sloppy.  This was more of a loose meat sandwich (which is a terrible name for a sandwich because nothing sounds appetizing about loose meat) so they were messy.

The original recipe comes from Blogchef.net and I opted not to make the cheese sauce, instead I just put 1/4 of a slice of provolone on my sliders.

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 lb ground beef
1 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
1/4 cup steak sauce
1 cup beef broth
salt and pepper
slider buns
provolone slices

Heat olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat.  Add ground beef and cook until mostly browned, breaking up pieces.  Add the chopped onion and bell pepper and cook until the onions become soft.  Add salt and pepper.  Stir in steak sauce and beef broth and simmer until slightly thickened, probably 7 minutes.  Taste and add more salt or pepper if needed.  Scoop onto slider buns and top with 1/4 slice of provolone cheese.

Recipe from blogchef.net

Recipe test - Honeyed Shrimp and Polenta

I have tried polenta in restaurants several times and have been wanting to have a go at it. Being vaguely cheap and conscious of always buying things and then having them go bad before I use them, I wanted to try cooking polenta directly from cornmeal instead of buying the pre-prepped tubes.

I found this recipe at thekitchn.com, and put it to use. It seemed to do the trick, though the polenta was pretty sticky and I am not sure if that is how it is supposed to be or not. I might consider trying to make it in smaller quantities in the future because this yielded a buttload.

Then I went on to step two, which was to incorporate the polenta into a dish from epicurious.com, Honeyed Prawns and Polenta. I don't like the word prawn, so from now on I will be calling them shrimp, like a good American. On all of the British TV shows I watch they call them prawns and it just sounds icky to me. And it makes me think of the aliens from District 9, which was a fantastic movie. Back to cooking...

I do love shrimp. I like to try almost anything with shrimp, and I like to try to make new things with shrimp. In fact, I tried cooking them directly over the flame of my gas stove on skewers the other day because I was too lazy to bother setting up the grill. A little iffy, but it works!

While the polenta looks like a solid thing here, once you pierce the crusty layer it is all jiggly and soupy. Polenta and shrimp baked and then plated in a pleasing manner with parmesan, parsley and capers because, as blogger The Pioneer Woman says, Martha may be watching.

And then I proceeded to douse it in more parmesan and devour it. The capers were unnecessary, and did not compliment the honey-sweet taste of the dish. Otherwise, pretty delightful. The brown bits of the polenta were the best parts by far. Not such a fan of the soupy part, so baking in a thinner layer would go better in my opinion. The recipe called for currants, which I did not have, and they may have added some more goodness because I can see that they may have been a fruitiness missing that I would have liked. Though I found that the polenta reminded me a bit of corn bread and then I really wanted corn bread and wished I had it instead of the polenta.

I am a bit torn on the shrimp. The tomato paste and honey did work on one level, but I think maybe it could have been thinned and spruced up in some way.

If you love polenta, then this might work out for you. If not, this might not be the best intro.

Chuckie's Pasta Salad

My brother makes the best pasta and potato salads.  Seriously, if I go home and he doesn't make at least one of them, I'll probably die.  These salads are so delicious (how delicious are they??) that they make me buy things I never do like bread and butter pickles and mayo.  I think mayo is one of the most over-used condiments ever and I don't like the way it feels on my finger when I'm wiping the last of it off the spoon I just used to make pasta salad.  It's the definition of sqwick.

But back to pasta salad!  I had some leftover pulled pork and needed a side to go with it so I called my brother and wrestled the recipe out of him.  He learned to cook from my dad who never measures anything so I basically scribbled down a list of ingredients and ranges of how much of each to put in.  That's how we do.  The recipe below is for a full pound of rotini but the picture shows but 1/3 of a bag of pasta.

Pasta Salad

Ingredients:
1 lb rotini, cooked according to package instructions
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp mustard
2 tbsp bread and butter pickle juice
1/4 diced bread and butter pickles
1 tsp garlic powder
generous sprinkling of black pepper

While the pasta is cooking, mix the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl.  Drain pasta and give it a quick rinse with cold water.  Pour the drained, cooked pasta into your dressing and stir well.  Chill at least an hour and then devour!

Thai Red Curry

Curry is one of those things that can be really good or really crappy. At least for me. Red curry seems to be my favorite, and the others I could take or leave. One of my favorite Thai restaurants has a lunch buffet and they often serve red curry and it is always one of my favorite trips. I even talked my mom into it on my last birthday and she liked it, which is saying a lot because my family does not eat very adventurously.

I have had a little bottle of red curry paste in my pantry for a few months now and I finally got around to breaking it out.

These were all my ingredients, aside from the meat. I used this handy recipe from the Thai Kitchen brand since that is the curry paste I had. Basically it just says chop up whatever vegetables you want and some meat. I used chicken and shrimp, but the shrimp wasn't so great it in, so I would stick with chicken in the future.

I pretty much followed the recipe exactly, heating the paste, adding the stock and coconut milk, then adding the fish sauce and brown sugar. Simmer for a bit, then add the meat & veg and simmer some more. So simple!

I think I simmered mine a little too long while I was cooking my rice, because it began to separate a bit. So don't over cook it!

Still tasted good anyway! I finished my bowl and thought about having another! The mushrooms tasted particularly good in there, and the asparagus worked too, even though I was a bit skeptical. I might even go heavier on the curry next time because I think it could have been a bit spicier than the recipe suggests and I already added a bit more than a tbsp.

Faux Soba Salad

I have never been a huge fan of pasta. Blasphemy, I know. It is occasionally a good vehicle for a worthy sauce, but I am ambivalent about it on it's own. I have become interested in finding alternatives for pasta and so far vegetables have done a damn good job! Spaghetti squash will be coming in a future episode, but this time I am using zucchini.

I found this interesting-looking recipe and wanted to modify it not to contain noodles. As soba are fatter noodles, I decided to slice up some zucchini and use it instead.

I sauteed julienned zucchini in sesame oil with some sesame seeds until it was slightly softened. This was one zucchini, which ended up not making a whole lot, maybe enough for 3 people as a side, so multiply as needed. Then cut up some tomatoes (I used cherry), avocado and cilantro.

For the dressing, I whisked together tahini, soy sauce, red wine vinegar (they suggest rice vinegar in the recipe but this seemed fine too), sesame oil, a little water, salt and pepper. I added a little sugar since I wasn't using the tofu cooked with sugar. The dressing seemed to need that sweet element and just adding a bit of sugar did the trick. As you know by now, I don't measure anything, and with a dressing like this, putting things in to your taste works best.

Then just stir it all up in the dressing! I am pretty impressed with this. It seems really fancy but is really easy.

My dressing ended up a bit thicker than that shown in the recipe, but I liked the flavor even thought it looks a bit less colorful and pretty than in the pro pictures.

I didn't realize what a peanutty flavor tahini has. I had to buy a gigantic can of it so I hope I find some good uses for it. This salad was a great departure from most of the flavors that I use all the time, without much of a change of ingredients. It almost has that Asian peanut sauce taste. I hope it holds up in the fridge overnight so I can have it with lunch tomorrow!

Post script: Thick dressing = bad idea. After being refrigerated overnight, the consistency was a little unappetizing. Definitely thin your dressing with more vinegar, soy or water based on your taste if it ends up looking like mine above!

Pork and Carrots, Take 2, only much better

So my leftover pork and carrots needed to be used, and this time I am much, much happier with the results. This time I decided on stuffed pork chops with apple and raisin filling. The carrots come in later, for a little spicy Moroccan dip.

First, assembling the filling:
1 peeled and chopped apple
1 small diced onion
ground sage
1 cup white bread cubes
1 egg, beaten
1 tbsp butter
salt & pepper
1/2 cup chicken broth
Several small pork chops (I pounded out mine)

Sautee the apple, onion and sage in olive oil until onion is translucent, about 5-7 minutes. Turn off the heat and add the bread, egg, butter, salt & pepper, then as much chicken broth as the mixture will soak up.

Lay out your pork chops on a lined baking sheet, and fill them to your hearts content!

Roll the pork chop over a bit to get it to stay pretty well closed. I didn't put in the energy of tying them up or skewering them and it was fine. Also, I put the extra filling between the chops on the sheet to cook it up, because I didn't want to leave any deliciousness behind. Bake at 375 for 25-30 minutes, it probably depends on the thickness of your chops, you may need more time. Pork should be cooked to at least 160 degrees.

Plate up and enjoy the amazingness! This was so so good that I can't recommend it highly enough... go... make them now! (Despite the kind of obscene color and texture of the pork, ignore that, I promise, no regrets)

Also, the small bowl of orange on the plate is this Morrocan-Style Spicy Carrot Dip, and it was also very very good. WAY better than yesterday's mash. Definitely choose this over that.

Successes and Failures, know your cauliflower limits

I tried to take on Whole30, and failed, but I still got some good things out of it. Meal planning is a super smart thing to do. It makes shopping and cooking much easier. I, however, very much require dairy and sugar. And "paleo" baked goods are disgusting, but cauliflower makes a good replacement for some things like rice and grains. I am going to continue to strive for a close-to-Whole30 30 days, but I have pretty much broken every rule in the 2 weeks up to now. According to the creators I am not doing it right, but it is still eating better so screw the rules!

So that leads to last night's meal. I decided to make all new things: breaded pork tenders with mint cashew pesto and carrot cauliflower mash. Spoiler alert... the pork tenders were the only really good part.

It all looks good right? Well, the pesto was way too salty and the mash had very little flavor. The pork tenders however were quite good. I just chopped some slices off a pork loin, dredged them in flour with salt and pepper, dipped that in beaten egg, and dipped that in a mixture of panko and parmesan (not at all Whole30). Popped it in a pan until brown and they came out moist and tender. Perfect!

I think part of my pesto problem was that I didn't have enough of the ingredients to adjust my flavors. I think it could be good. It is just spinach, mint, cashews, salt, pepper and olive oil blended together. I couldn't get it well blended because there was so little, and once it was too salty, I was out of spinach and mint to try and fix it. Not sure if I will try again or not.

The carrot cauliflower mash I had high expectations for because the ingredients were so good!

Even just in the pans it looks so good! For some reason my carrots never steamed. How does that happen? I boiled water under the steamer...? I am still confused by it. The onions were delicious on their own, I should have just eaten them: chopped onion, garlic, rosemary, thyme and olive oil. I steamed some grated cauliflower from another recipe in the microwave and then added it all to the blender.

I think I might try this again without the cauliflower. I had used cauliflower in so many recipes lately that I think I wore myself out on it. With salt and pepper it was edible, but I didn't eat much of it. Mostly I just ate the peppers out from underneath with the little bits of mash I didn't flick off. Also, maybe I just don't like mashed things... I am not sure about that, but it could be part of it. I am going to try another version of carrot mash, to be used as a dip, so maybe that will provide some more insight!

Awesome Guacamole

I love avocados. A lot. If there is an apocalypse then I am moving to Mexico to make sure that I continue to get a regular serving of avocados. I always have them in the house. They don't even go on the shopping list because I always know how many are left and if I require more.

So... I make a lot of guacamole. Recently at a few parties, people have raved. I figured I would throw my recipe into the ring with all of the others.

Ingredients:
Several ripe avocados (not too firm or soft)
White or red onion (your preference, I used white)
Fresh tomatoes (not canned!)
Lime juice (I get lazy here and use bottled)
Salt

Pretty much every single one of these ingredients can be added to taste. I choose to go about 2:1:1 on my avocado:onion:tomato ratio. 

First, chop up your cados, onions and tomats. There is a bit of an art to getting the flesh out of the avocado, and if you haven't mastered it, here are my tips:

-Slice the fruit (veg? who knows) in 1/2 long ways, and twist the 2 halves apart

-(this gets a bit dangerous and you can probably use a spoon, but I...) jab a knife into the pit and twist it a bit to loosen and pull it out

-Use a knife to score the flesh still inside the rind (peel? shell?) both long and cross ways so you have a grid

-Use a spoon to scoop out your lovely avocado cubes!

Mix up your chopped ingredients in your serving bowl. I try not to make it too uniform, I like the chunks. Add the salt and lime juice slowly, tasting and stiring to see how much you like. That's it!

I suggest making quite a bit more than you think people will eat, because it goes fast. But it also doesn't store well, and gets brown pretty quick, so you may have to eat the leftovers the same day (oh no!) if the browning scares you.

I didn't make this for Memorial Day, but the weekend before. We made steak skewers marinated in wine, which were delicious (though the wine seemed superfluous, couldn't tell they were marinated once cooked). Won't bother with a recipe because that was all there was to it! So pretty!

Hope you had a great weekend!