Green Chili Stew

So it's been a while since I last posted a recipe.  (It's been about that long since I last cooked anything at home!)  Finally last night I decided that enough was enough and set to work making something to make me forget about the dreary weather we've been having in Seattle.

Before I begin let me give you a little bit of background as to why I don't cook anything worthwhile all that often. 

My husband, Lucky, is a tattoo artist and typically doesn't get home until 10 or 11 at night.  That just leaves me and the kids from when I get home from work at about 5:45pm until they go to bed at 8:30.  And we all know how picky my kids can be refusing to eat anything remotely healthy if it doesn't include peanut butter, honey, and/or pasta.  So there isn't really anything besides bread, peanut butter, pasta, butter, and honey in my house at all times.  If I want something else I have to go to the store.  With two little kids.

Say it with me people: P.L.A.N.N.I.N.G.

Planning.  I'm not that great at planning.  I'm normally at the store before I decide what I want for dinner and that normally it's something quick and easy that I don't have to think about.  Or I just wait for Lucky to get home and we'll eat Thai takeout or pizza.  Yes, I know, VERY HEALTHY.

Early in the day I knew that I was going to the store after work so I decided that I wanted to cook something for dinner.  Looking out my office windows it was dark and dreary outside so I figured something hearty and comforting would do the trick.  My go-to food style is Mexican (I'm from San Diego) and it took me about 30 seconds to decide on the Green Chile Stew with Pork recipe from AllRecipes.com would be just what the doctor ordered.  I changed up the recipe a little bit and used chicken instead of pork but other than that I used all the other ingredients.

I also was so focused on making my stew (while making a separate dinner for Kate and Oliver) that I forgot to take pics of the process.  It was pretty easy.  Just sauteeing the chicken and throwing the rest of the ingredients into the pot.  We can all imagine those pictures in our head right? ;)

Green Chile Stew with Pork

Adapted from AllRecipes.com

3 pounds boneless pork loin, cubed (I only used 2 pounds of chicken instead of pork, sliced into strips)

3 tablespoons peanut oil

3 stalks celery, chopped (I only used 2 stalks)

2 tomatoes, chopped (I only used 1 tomato)

7 green chile peppers, chopped (I only used 5 peppers)

4 cloves crushed garlic (Heck yeah I used all 4 cloves!)

4 cups chicken broth (I used roughly about 3 cups)

1 (10 ounce) jar prepared green chile salsa  (Maybe only a cup)

salt to taste

 

1.In a large pot over medium high heat, brown the chicken in oil, for 4-5 minutes. (Until the chicken is almost completely cooked.) 

 

2.Add celery, tomatoes, chilies, and garlic.

3.Add green chile salsa and just enough chicken broth to barely cover the ingredients and bring to boil. Cover and simmer until stew is thick and meat very tender, about 1 1/2 hours. Add salt to taste before serving. If stew is not hot enough, add a bit of jalapenos salsa.
 

 
The recipe turned out great.  The last time I made it I used pork and had put everything into a slow cooker to cook for 8 hours.  Both times the stew turned out amazing.  This is definitely a keeper; all I get are rave reviews on the recipe and if there's not enough to go around, I get faces like this:
 

Oh yes, that is a real face from Oliver when my stew was gone...

Salted Brown Butter Rice Crispie Treats

So, after being told MANY TIMES from my colleague, Violet, I finally decided to give these "most delicious Rice Crispie treats in the world" a try.  I wasn't skeptical - Violet's an expert when it comes to amazing food - but I never make dessert so I never put ingredients on my store list.  I was in one of my "baking moods" but didn't want to spend a large amount of time in the kitchen so I turned to a jazzed up version of an oldie but goodie.

I turned to the ever-wonderful Smitten Kitchen blog and searched out the Salted Brown Butter Crispy Treats recipe.  Looking at the recipe, there wasn't much difference between a regular rice crispy treat recipe and this marvelous version except for the addition of a little salt and cooking the butter a little bit longer.  But man, those little tweaks made all the difference in the world.

Salted Brown Butter Crispy Treats
Makes 16 2-inch squares or 32 1- x 2-inch small bars

4 ounces (1/4 pound or 1 stick) unsalted butter, plus extra for the pan
1 10-ounce bag marshmallows
Heaping 1/4 teaspoon coarse sea salt
6 cups Rice Krispies cereal (about half a 12-ounce box)
Butter (or coat with non-stick spray) an 8-inch square cake pan with 2-inch sides.

In a large pot, melt butter over medium-low heat. It will melt, then foam, then turn clear golden and finally start to turn brown and smell nutty. Stir frequently, scraping up any bits from the bottom as you do. Don’t take your eyes off the pot as while you may be impatient for it to start browning, the period between the time the butter begins to take on color and the point where it burns is often less than a minute.

As soon as the butter takes on a nutty color, turn the heat off and stir in the marshmallows. The residual heat from the melted butter should be enough to melt them, but if it is not, turn it back on low until the marshmallows are smooth.

Remove the pot from the stove and stir in the salt and cereal together. Quickly spread into prepared pan. I liked to use a piece of waxed or parchment paper that I’ve sprayed with oil to press it firmly and evenly into the edges and corners, though a silicon spatula works almost as well.

Let cool, cut into squares and get ready to make new friends.


First I had to enlist one of my favorite helpers to test out a key ingredient.

Turns out, the little munchkin was testing out both the marshmallows AND rice crispies behind my back.  Every time I would look at her she would cover her mouth like she was fooling me....

We followed the directions exactly as mentioned and were done in a matter of minutes.  The longest step was making sure the butter was cooked long enough.

The butter turned a brown color as mentioned above and I was worried that it would make the treats turn out an unappetizing brown but I could hardly notice a different when it was all mixed together.

How did they taste?  Let's just say that if Lucky and I weren't already married I would have garnered a marriage proposal right then and there.

Magnifique!

Simmering Tomato Sauce with Butter

I was perusing my cookbooks on Saturday trying to figure out what to make the kids for dinner.  Normally I wouldn't have a problem deciding on one recipe however nothing was sounding good with my current list of recipe requirements.  Mind you, I have a 15-month-old son that will eat anything and everything under the sun - except lately because he's teething and his mouth is sore when he chews.  I also have a 4-year-ol daughter that doesn't like anything she hasn't tried before and apparently doesn't trust dear old Mom and Dad to assure her that whatever we give her will be really good.  We promise.  Isn't she supposed to stop trusting us when she's 16 and finally realizes we've been telling her lies all these years just to see her reactions?

So, mushy food and something relatively similar to meals we've had in the past.  And it must be quick.

Awesome.  That makes for an exciting dinner from one of my cookbook recipes.

So I decided to skip dinner for the time being and focus on dessert.  We normally don't have dessert but I was in "a mood" and wanted to cook or bake something sweet.  That reminded me of an amazing recipe at Smitten Kitchen that was recommended to me from Violet, and if my memory served me correctly the recipe was both easy and quick. Perfect!

Now that the dessert is out of the way, back to the main course.  I decided to scroll through some of the other recipes at Smitten Kitchen and I came to a rediculously fast, easy recipe that catered to all of my meal requirements.  Four ingredients with one of them being pasta?  Heck yeah!

Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onions

Serves 4 as a main course; makes enough sauce to lightly coat most of a pound of spaghetti

28 ounces (800 grams) whole peeled tomatoes from a can (San Marzano, if you can find them)
5 tablespoons (70 grams) unsalted butter
1 medium-sized yellow onion, peeled and halved
Salt to taste

Put the tomatoes, onion and butter in a heavy saucepan (it fit just right in a 3-quart) over medium heat. Bring the sauce to a simmer then lower the heat to keep the sauce at a slow, steady simmer for about 45 minutes, or until droplets of fat float free of the tomatoes. Stir occasionally, crushing the tomatoes against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon. Remove from heat, discard the onion, add salt to taste (you might find, as I did, that your tomatoes came salted and that you didn’t need to add more) and keep warm while you prepare your pasta.

Serve with spaghetti, with or without grated parmesan cheese to pass.

 
I followed the directions and it took literally 3 minutes to get everything into a saucepan and the temperature to medium-high.  And then I was done.  I stirred it every once in a while and broke up the tomatoes but that was it.  I actually made my dessert while dinner was cooking because I felt lost just standing there.

When I was done both Kate and Oliver decided that they wanted only buttered noodles instead of having sauce with it but I'm sure it was just because the noodles were so cool to look at.

Overall, I felt it was a good recipe to have when the summer days are long and there are too many tomatoes in the garden to know what to do with.  Although this recipe called for a can of whole tomatoes and the sauce ended up being a tomato-y sweet goodness, I have the idea that fresh tomatoes are going to make it taste even better.  Next time I'll also add italian seasoning and maybe some fresh garlic to cater more towards the family's tastes.  Nevertheless, this recipe was a great, fast, easy addition to my growing collection of "good 'uns."

Leftover Easter Eggs into Deviled Eggs

Last weekend my four-year-old Kate dyed 18 eggs into bright colors as part of our Easter celebration.  We took the eggs over to our friend's house Easter Sunday where I had every intention of turning those bright eggs into deviled eggs.  Well, that ended up not happening so I brought the bright, hard-boiled eggs home where they sat in the fridge for a couple of days before I finally had a chance to make deviled eggs.

Let me give you a little background on my relationship with eggs:

1. As a small girl I only liked the yolks of eggs, not the whites.
2. Growing older, my likes completely changed and started liking the whites, not the yolks.
3. As an adult I tend to not like eggs in general but when I do eat them I still prefer the whites over the yolks.

Except for when it comes to deviled eggs. 

For some reason I can eat a dozen by myself and I still have no idea why I like them so much.  I has to be the mustard and vinegar-y, creamy taste - which completely masks the taste of the yolks.  I'm still boggled why this has to be this way.  That's ok, my sister's worse: she can't stand anything with tomatoes in it - except for ketchup.  Which she puts on everything.  I mean EVERYTHING.  I"m more of a mustard fan than ketchup, so GROSS!

Anyway, back to eggs.  I finally had a chance to make some deviled eggs however I couldn't find a recipe that I wanted to try in my cookbooks so I went to my trusty backup, Allrecipes.com.  I love that site more that almost every other site. And that's saying a lot!

I searched for a deviled egg recipe that looked tasty and I had all the ingredients for.  I was originally going to try a basic deviled egg recipe with mayonnaise, mustard, and paprika but I had a feeling that I would have to use a lot of mustard to mask the taste of the yolks. 

I found a different recipe that looked kind of basic but interesting, with sugar and white vinegar being a few of the ingredients.  I decided to use only six eggs so that I had a few left over if I didn't like this recipe.  Turns out, I don't need a different recipe.  This was a great egg recipe that gave you a ZING! from the vinegar but doesn't overpower the overall taste of the egg.  I think this might be my go-to deviled egg recipe however I might try the cheese and bacon recipe once or twice because, really, how can you go wrong with cheese and bacon?

Deviled Eggs

6 hard-cooked eggs

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon white vinegar

1 teaspoon prepared mustard

1/2 teaspoon salt

Paprika (I am out of paprika but it still tasted great)

Slice eggs in half lengthwise; remove yolks and set whites aside. In a small bowl, mash yolks with a fork. Add the mayonnaise, sugar, vinegar, mustard and salt; mix well. Stuff or pipe into egg whites. Sprinkle with paprika. Refrigerate until serving.

I'm Hungry

What do you do when you start talking about cookbooks when you're hungry?

Start a blog.

That's right, folks, the great minds who bring you zombie lego keychains and button cookies come together to make you salivate as much as possible.  So you can be just as hungry as we are.  Sorry. 

Sort of.

I'm really excited to actually go through my cookbooks and make recipes out of them.  Some of those babies have only been open when I first got them and quickly flipped through the recipes.  I always come home and have absolutely no idea what to make for dinner completely disregarding the fact that I have TONS of cookbooks laying around just waiting to be cracked open.  I knew I had quite the collection of books, I just never really KNEW.

I'm going to promise to everyone that as long as I'm contributing to this blog I will continue to make recipes out of my cookbooks so help me God.  I might get some revolt from my four year old who doesn't like anything but turkey sandwiches and mac & cheese at the moment but I don't care.  I'm the boss.  (Isn't that why we become parents in the first place?)

Cheers for now!

~Erin