Tech Delights

Some breaded chicken.

We have a lot of breadcrumbs lying around in the kitchen, and on a whim we decided we’d bread some chicken tonight.

Using a breading is nice because it gives the chicken a good crunch and it also keeps the chicken from losing moisture as it cooks, resulting in juicy chicken.

I’ve got a little technique I’ve been using for breading things that I picked up somewhere along the way.  Basically, I set up three bowls.  One bowl with bread crumbs, one with eggs and a bowl of flour and some salt. 

Dredge the chicken in the flour to dry it off.  This really helps to get the eggs to stick to it.  Next, dip the chicken in the egg mixture and then roll it in the bread crumbs.

In terms of cooking, we put some oil in a pan and browned it and then threw the chicken onto a baking sheet and finished it for 15 to 20 minutes in the oven.

Paired with a simple vegetable stir-fry with garlic, green onions, mushrooms and carrots, this went pretty well with some rice.

On another note, Mali recently found a large slab of chocolate at the supermarket.

We gave it a face.

Then we ate it.

Crime scene below.

-Thomas

Cornflake Chicken

So, we were going through the kitchen in desperation trying to fix a meal or surrender to chinese food when Peter came up with a brilliant idea. Cornflakes are good, chicken is good, cornflake chicken must be great, right?

He asked his friend for a recipe which involved sticking the cornflakes on the chicken with butter, which sounded really tedious to me so I looked up some recipes. It seems like butter is indeed a way, and mayo or egg is pretty common too. Since we only had egg left I opted to go that way.

We didn’t have any cornflakes left so we stole Felipe’s. Of course, we went to Price Chopper right after and replaced it so he never even knew. Muhuhahah.

I pretty much just whisked an egg (for 3 large breasts) and put some chili powder in it. Then Justin crushed the cornflakes and I dunked a piece of eggy chicken into the cornflakes and smushed it a lot till the cornflakes stuck. Lather, rinse, repeat. Then, I put them in the oven at 375 and let them sit there until they got nice and brown. Easy stuff.

Note to self, add tons more spices next time. Also, don’t accidentally post this on my damn IQP blog. Durrr.

~ Mali

Pineapple Cashew Chicken

Last Friday night was another after-climbing-hungry-food-shopping night.

We went through the supermarket looking for ingredients that we could mix together — we ended up with a can of pineapple, a bottle of cashews and something like 5 pounds of chicken (most of which we froze for later!)

We started off by toasting the cashews in the pan for a little bit.  They softened and left behind a nice bit of aromatic oil.

Next we sauteed some chili flakes and green onions with the chicken.  When that was finished cooking we threw in some red pepper and onions and stir fried until they softened.  Finally, near the end of the cooking process we threw in some pineapple.

The result was a nice combination of sweet and salty, and the picture below should speak for how much we enjoyed it.

-Thomas

Chilean Sea Bass

My mother gave me a nice chunk of chilean sea bass that we decided to make our dinner tonight.

Along side it we stir-fried some green peppers and carrots with garlic and green onions which turned out to be a great combination of aromatics.

Here’s Mali cleaning out a green pepper, followed by some seemingly high speed cutting of vegetables.

We don’t have a lot of experience with fish, so an easier recipe ensures that we won’t ruin it.

We found some cooking times for chilean sea bass on the internet and simply baked the fish with a little spice rub.

Chilean sea bass!  Rubbed on both sides with salt, pepper, cumin and chili pepper and placed in a greased pan.

We baked the fish for about 15 minutes at 425 degrees while the rice cooked and we stir fried the vegetables.

The fish was amazingly juicy!

Deliciousness ensued.

-Thomas

A whole lot of snow peas

Two posts in one night?!

Tonight was sort of a “throw whatever’s left in the fridge into a stir fry night”.

This the first time I’ve tried to cook brown rice without a rice cooker, and it worked out OK even though all of the water it was in magically disappeared while we were cooking it.

We stir-fried some frozen fish cakes with some left over mushrooms and a lot of snow peas.  It was pretty good!

A lot of snow peas though…

-Thomas

First post!

So we’ve been thinking about doing some sort of a food blog for a while now, and something has possessed me to actually get started with this.

After rock climbing last night, we were HUNGRY.  We ran to the supermarket and got some ingredients and whipped up something nice and simple.

Our main course consisted of some jasmine rice with flavored with onions and garlic with some pan fried salt and pepper beef and some oven roasted asparagus.

The beef was straight forward — we rubbed it with some salt and pepper and simply pan fried it with some onions.

I saw someone on TV do asparagus like this once, and it was easy.  When you’re hungry and it’s getting late, easy is great.  We washed the asparagus and lined some baking sheets with aluminum foil.  Aluminum foil is great since it saves us the need for clean up afterwards.

Drizzle the asparagus with some olive oil, sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper and bake in the oven for about 15 minutes at 350˚ F.

We also made a little salad…

We threw together some greens (Red leaf lettuce and cucumbers) and some blueberries and topped it off with a lemon pepper vinaigrette — simply some lemon juice, black pepper, apple cider vinegar and some olive oil.

The pictures are a little rough.  We were really hungry and I couldn’t be bothered to grab my tripod for our dimly lit kitchen.

Fortunately the food came out well and we were pleasantly appeased!

-Thomas