Sweet & Sour Chicken

Lately I've found myself craving the "comfort foods" of my youth and thanks to the reminder by an old roommate, I cooked up one of my favorites - Sweet & Sour Chicken from the "Cooking For Two" cookbook that my mom gave me in college.  It's been awhile since I made it but, after I did, I remembered why I love it so much.  I cooked this a lot with my roommate in college, as you can see from the stained page and pencil notations to the recipe:

Needless to say, it was in regular rotation during my college days.  It was kind of fun cooking it now, many years after I started my cooking journey, to see how I made slight changes to the way I cooked it based on things I've picked up.  For one, I've learned that when you have something that mixes wet ingredients with dry ingredients, you should mix all the wet together and all the dry together before mixing the two.  It makes for less lumps, which was always an issue with this sauce before.  Here's the wet and dry ingredients ready to be mixed:

And then the final product:

I also prepped all the vegetables (I didn't have tomato or pineapple on hand, so I skipped those steps):

The picture above also shows off my super cool (and super sharp) Japanese knife that I got as a gift.  The knives are hand-forged steel with wooden handles and each has the Japanese congi of the person who made it.  It's a great knife, even if I've almost cut off two of my fingers using it...

Then I got the chicken dipped in egg and cornstarch cooking:

The next step is to stir fry the veggies until tender, then add the sauce and bring it to a boil so that the sauce thickens:

The final step is to add the chicken back in and let it simmer for a few minutes, to absorb all the flavors and thicken the sauce a little more.  Here's the final product, which I serve over white rice:

Making this dish brought back so many great memories, I plan to put this back in regular rotation in my cooking schedule.  In case you want to make the dish yourself, I've listed the recipe below.  I usually double the sauce recipe - it's the best part of the dish so the more there is, the better the dish is!

Sweet & Sour Chicken - Cooking for Two
3/4 pound lean pork or chicken
1 egg, beaten
About 1/4 cup cornstarch
About 2 1/2 T oil
1 small onion, cut into 1 inch squares
1 medium-sized carrot, sliced diagonally 1/4 inch thick
1 small clove garlic, minced or pressed
1 small green pepper, cut into 1 inch squares
1 can (8 oz) slice pineapple, drained
1 medium-sized tomato, cut into 1 inch cubes

Sweet & Sour sauce
1 1/2 tsp cornstarch
2 1/2 T packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp fresh ginger OR 1/8 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tsp dry sherry
2 T wine vinegar
2 T water

Dip the chicken pieces in egg, drain briefly, and roll in cornstarch until lightly coated (shake off the excess).  Heat 1 1/2 T of oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat.  Add chicken and cook, turning constantly until browned.  Lift chicken from pan and set aside, scrape free and discard any brown bits, leaving oil in pan.

Add enough oil to pan to make about 1 T and place over high heat.  Add onion, carrot and garlic, stirring for about 3 minutes, or until veggies are tender-crisp.  Add green pepper, pineapple, tomato and sweet and sour sauce.  Cook, stirring, over high heat until mixture boils.  Add chicken, stirring for 1 min longer, to heat through and coat chicken with sauce.

Salmon cakes

Because I live in a place that has great access to fresh (caught the same day) seafood, I've decided that I need to try cooking more seafood.  One recipe that caught my eye was a salmon cake with lemon caper yogurt sauce.  I love crab cakes but crab can be expensive so I thought I'd try a salmon cake and see if it could be a good substitute.  Here's a picture of the crab cakes, waiting to be fried:

And a couple of them after frying:

When I made these, I didn't use capers (don't like them) or saltine crackers (substituting panko bread crumbs instead) and didn't bother to make the dipping sauce from the recipe.  Instead I just hit them with a dash of fresh lemon juice.  I thought they were a little heavy on the mustard and tasted better with the panko crumbs but they're no substitute for crab cakes.  Still, it was a fun recipe to try.

Pizza Party

Against my better judgment, I've decided to sit for the California bar exam in July.  The only way that I could think of to save money and ensure that I still eat while I stick to my crazy work/study schedule was to cook big meals on Sunday's and eat the leftovers throughout the week.  I decided that one easy meal to make would be a couple of different kinds of pizza since it tastes good, keeps well and reheats just fine.  Pizza dough was my first attempt to learn how to become a baker and, after several disastrous attempts, I've finally found a Wolfgang Puck pizza dough recipe that is super easy to make, doesn't have to rise a lot and tastes really good (the honey is a great addition).  Once I had my dough ready, I went searching for a couple of new pizza recipes to try.  Once again, Giada De Laurentiis came to the rescue and gave me a caramelized onion, sausage and basil pizza recipe and an arugula, ricotta and smoked mozzarella pizza.  I started with the caramelized onion, sausage and basil recipe since it took longer.  Here's the onions getting ready to caramelize in my favorite pot, my Le Creuset 5 quart stock pot:

Here's the onions after caramelizing:

Here's the pizza with the sausage, onion and goat cheese (I used chevre) added:

And the final product (topped with basil) after it came out of the oven:

Of the two new recipes I tried, this pizza was, by far, my favorite.  The recipe called for spicy sausage but I only had regular pork sausage on hand.  Next time I think I'd have more caramelized onions and less sausage, but that's the only tweak I'd make.

Next was the arugula, ricotta and smoked mozzarella recipe.  Here's a picture of the topping, after mixing it in my Cuisinart:

 

I didn't have any tomatoes on hand so I skipped that part.  Here's the dough topped with the topping and drizzled with some olive oil:

I must say that this pizza did not taste good to me.  It's hard to know if it was the lack of tomatoes, the arugula or the smoked mozzarella that didn't taste good, but I ended up scraping off the cooked topping and just eating the crust.  If I try it again, I'll try it without the arugula, substituting basil, and without the smoked mozzarella, substituting regular mozzarella or maybe some fontina.  I'll post my results after trying these changes.

Finally, I made my favorite kind of pizza - mozzarella cheese and basil.  There's something about the combination of those flavors that I love, and this time did not disappoint:

All in all, it was a successful pizza party and I had plenty of leftovers to last me a few meals during the week.  I'm hoping to keep up the plan to cook big meals on Sunday's so if any of my readers have recipes they'd like to suggest, I'm all ears.

Easter Dinner

A friend of mine and I decided that we wanted to try cooking Easter dinner together, as a practice run for when we have to cook Easter dinner for our future families.  The menu consisted of ham, cheesy potatoes (also known as funeral potatoes, which seemed the wrong name to use for Easter dinner) and homemade rolls.  We started with the ham because it was to cook the longest.  We had a bone-in shank ham weighing about 10 pounds, which is a lot of ham (the ham was free, we weren't in a position to complain).  I'd gotten a new roasting pan a few months ago and so we decided to cook the ham in my roasting pan, basting it with brown sugar and honey for the last 30 minutes of it's cooking time.  Needless to say, much to our surprise, the ham turned out really well.  Here's a picture:

Next were the rolls because they needed time to rise.  The recipe my friend had used lecithin, which was a first for me.  We used rapidrise yeast because that's what I had on hand and before we knew it, the dough had quadrupled in size!  Here's a picture:

At first we worried that we'd done something wrong but we decided to bake a batch and see how it went.  The rolls turned out well and tasted really good.  We brushed them with a little butter after they came out, to enhance the flavor:

The final step was to make the cheesy potatoes, which I love with ham.  Here's the final product (after cooking them twice as long as the recipe called for because my oven can't keep a steady temperature):

For this being my first Easter dinner without my mom's help, it turned out better than expected.  I learned some things long the way (be careful when using rapidrise yeast) but think that this is the start of a great Easter tradition.

Peanut Butter Cookies with Jam

As I'd mentioned in one of my previous posts, I'm not a baker and, despite my many attempts to become one, have never really developed the skill.  I've decided to try once again to see if I can bake something and saw this peanut butter cookies with jam recipe and tried it.  The recipe called for blackberry jam but all I had on hand was grape, so I went with it.  It doesn't make too many cookies (I got 9 out of my batch) but the cookies are amazingly chewy and soft, which I loved.  Here's a picture of the final product:

I still don't consider myself a baker but the fact that I could make these cookies was a small miracle.  I'll be trying more recipes in the future, let's hope they turn out as well as these cookies did.

Penne with Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese

Ever since I learned how to make butternut squash lasagna, I've always been on the lookout for great recipes that use roasted butternut squash.  Thankfully, Giada De Laurentiis came to the rescue with her very easy but really tasty penne with butternut squash and goat cheese recipe.  I've never used cheese as the only part of a sauce with pasta but the goat cheese, when it combines with the pasta and the squash, really makes a great sauce.  Here's a picture of the squash and onions after I roasted them:

And the final product:

 This recipe is great and will definitely get added to my regular rotation.

Weekend Roadtrip to LA

I recently went on a roadtrip to LA with some friends and got to see family, friends and try some new restaurants.  The first restaurant we ate at was Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles in Hollywood.  I've heard a lot of people talk about this place and how good it was but I'd never tried it.  I can now say I've eaten there and the waffles are tasty!

Here's a picture of my waffle plate (the "Natalie's Special" is just two waffles, I was scared to try the chicken):

People who know me well know that I don't usually eat a lot but I finished my entire plate!  The waffles have a slight cinnamon taste and are light and fluffy, which is unusual for a waffle.  I washed my Natalie Special down with one of Roscoe's specialty drinks, the Sunset.  It's a combination of fresh squeezed lemonade and fruit punch.  Here's a picture:

Needless to say, I'm now a Roscoe's fan and will plan to visit next time I'm in southern California.

I also got a chance to visit Santa Monica and ate brunch at a great cafe, which was recommended to me, called The Rose Cafe & Market.  I ordered the veggie quiche:

The quiche had asparagus, leek, oven-dried tomato & fontina cheese and was served with an arugula salad.  I love quiche and this one was very good - I think I might try and re-create it at home when I feel like taking on a cooking project.  I'd definitely recommend the Rose Cafe to anyone looking for a good place to eat in Santa Monica.  They also had a bakery with some amazing-looking desserts, next time I'll try one of those.

All in all it was a great weekend - great weather, great food, great family, and great friends.