Cooking with Laia: Chicken Parmesan

Hello there again!

If there is one thing that I really enjoy eating, it´s cheese. I´m a fan of a lot of different varieties, but if I had to pick a top three for cheese, I´d choose Cured Manchego Cheese, Red Cheddar Cheese and Parmesan Cheese. As you can see, I´m a fan of stongly-flavored, aged cheese.

I also like chicken much more than any kind of meat (or fish).

This weekend, I wanted to make breaded chicken, one of my favorite dishes. I always accompany it with salad or french fries (depending on whether I´m feeling healthy or naughty).

Then I thought......"We have a wedge of Parmesan Cheese in our fridge. Why not use it to combine two things you like best?" So, I did.

Behold, Breaded Parmesan Chicken!

It´s quite easy, you just have to mix the grated cheese with the breadcrumbs and that´s it. You should put in enough cheese that it tastes like cheese, but taking into account your own personal proportion--just how cheesy do you want it to be? (My answer was: Very cheesy!)

I also cut the chicken thinner than usual, to make sure that the cheese didn´t burn or melt too much while the chicken was cooking in the fryer. 

Oh, and a recommended ingredient when breading: I´ve discovered Japanese "Panko"! It´s very cool, it´s normal breadcrumbs but treated somehow so that they´re still crunchy even after frying! You can absolutely tell the difference, and it´s also a different texture and crunchiness than when using corn flakes or regular breadcrumbs in the breading process. It was a very interesting change from my usual "breaded chicken".

Would you like to eat this? Are you also a "cheese fan"?

Baking materpieces: Banana-chocolate chip muffins

Hello everyone!!

I´m in the middle of correcting my kiddies´ third term exams at the moment, and calculating their final grades, but everybody has the right to take a moment to rest, right?

In my moment this weekend, I took the time to make some delicious banana-chocolate-chip muffins.It was a bit of a celabration for me when I actually found some chocolate chips--for some reason, they´re not easy to find here in Spain. I guess because it´s not really traditional to use them in our cakes and cookies and such.

The muffins!!

The kind I found was semi-sweet dark chocolate chips. I like milk chocolate better, but--beggars can´t be choosers. In the end, the semi-sweet dark flavor worked out best with the natural sweetness of the ripe bananas I used. They were Canary island bananas, by the way--they´re smaller and sweeter than the average bananas (so I had to use 5 instead of the 2 that the recipe indicated).

They looked good; quite professional!

Biting into them when they were hot and the chocolate chips were gooey was bliss.

The batter made 12 normal-sized muffins. With what I had left over, I made 12 mini-muffins. I could have made 6 more normal ones, but I really wanted to try out the mini muffin cups I bought at IKEA way back in February.

So tiny and cute!

The design on the small ones--the larger muffin cups were plain.

I had lots of fun with this quick project; it also enabled me to use up the overripe bananas that none of us really wanted to eat! I´m definitely going to repeat this recipe again; it´s been more popular than the banana-blueberry ones.

What´s you favorite kind of muffins?

Delicious cooking: Sausage, pepper and onion emapanda pie

I did promise that I´d put up pictures of what I´ve been cooking.

This is my latest creation: a sausage, green pepper and onion pie. Well, it´s translated to english as "pie" or "pasty", but it´s called an "empanada" in Spanish.

Yes, it´s quite large. Those two other visible things are plain sausage pasties.

 
I decided to make this because I had a lot of dough sitting in my freezer waiting to be used--and we all know that as soon as dough dries, it just doesn´t taste (or rise) the same.

Empanadas are quite thick. Do you like the stripes?

It´s actually very very easy to make this pie. You just need:

-4 long chistorra sausages (red sausages, uncooked)
-3 medium-sized green frying peppers (they can be other kinds too; I just don´t like other colored peppers)
-2 medium onions
-A pinch of salt
-Half a glass of water
-Dough (easily bought at the supermarket)

You cut everything into small pieces, and sautée it together. Peppers first, then onions, and when the onions are tuning transparent--add the sausage. To make the empanada filling a bit "juicy" instead of dry, just add half a cup of water after everything has cooked, and let the whole mix cook a few minutes.

Meanwhile, you prep the dough--roll it out, prepare the oven (220ºC) and make sure that it doesn´t stick to the baking sheet (I use olive oil to coat the foil when I´m cooking savory food). The dough should be divided into two sheets--one for the top, one for the bottom; or more if you want to put some dough apart for "decorations" (like my stripes).

Spoon the mixture (it doesn´t have to have cooled; it can be hot or cold or lukewarm) into the center of the dough. Spread it out evenly, leaving approximately 2-3cm of space between the filling and the edge of the dough (so that you´ll be able to close the empanada). Once you´ve put all the mix on, close the empanada by putting the "top" sheet of dough that you reserved onto it. Seal the edges using a slightly wet finger and a fork.

For the last step before the oven, you can go two ways: you can use a beaten egg to coat the dough so that it´ll get a certain "shine" and look toasty in the oven. Or, you can do like I did (absolutely improvising) and use some of the "sauce" that had been left over from the filling (because I made it a bit too liquid) to coat it and the decorations. That way, it takes a bit of a reddish tinge from the red sausage, but doesn´t become "shiny", just toasted.

Pop it in the oven and wait for however long it takes to cook--it really varies depending on the dough´s thickness and how long it´s been in the freezer. This time, it took approximately 15-20 minutes.

Let it cool a bit or completely, depending on whether you like your pies hot or cold (I prefer mine hot).

Ta-da!! Lunch!!

As you can see, I baked two things; the empanada and an experiment: I wanted to see if I could replicate the puff pastry I ate a week or so ago at a bakery. It was stuffed with a whole chistorra sausage.  As you can see, the dough is a different, flakier kind than the one used for my pie (which doesn´t rise). It was a delicious success as well.

The filling.

I was afraid that the pie might turn out a bit dry since I didn´t include any type of sauce/the traditional tomato sauce in it....but the onion and the extra "sauce" made from the water and sausage drippings did a great job keeping it just right.

My family loved it, I´m happy to say, because it was the first time I made this kind of pie. I totally winged it, hahaha.

Yummy snacks!

I´ve been trying to cut down on the amount of snacks I eat in-between meals. Occasionally, they´re alright for cravings. I tend to crave savory things over sweets, so the switch over to no-snacks or "healthy" ones such as carrots and celery or no snacks isn´t too bad. I do love potato chips, though.

I´ve discovered that the best method of not eating unhealthy snacks is to not have them in the house, hahaha. I couldn´t resist buying a few ones on Jlist, though. I´m always curious about strange new flavors.

Don´t they look delicious??

They´re spicy chicken flavored (bottom left), strange soup flavored (bottom right) and cheddar cheese flavored (top--not as wierd, hahaha).

I´ve tried the soup ones already. They´re not as great as the chicken tandoori ones I tried a while back (someday, I´ll find those again....), but they´re quite good! I´d absolutely recommend them.

Eating chips that are hard to get also encourages me to keep my snack portions small, so as to make them last.

What kinds of snacks do you enjoy eating?

Mitternachtsuppe: yet another culinary experiment

Yesterday, I tried my hand at cooking Mitternachtsuppe, a German "New Year´s soup". It has a lot of tomato, a lot of sausage, meat and yummy yummy kinds of beans. Also, it´s spicy. Have I ever mentioned how much I love spicy food? Well, consider it mentioned. I love it.

Voilá, our soup! (that´s my Dad holding the bowl, by the way)

Stews and soups are generally fun to try, because they´re easy to make. It turned out really nice! As spicy as we wanted it. To my surprise, the sausages floated. So we had to make sure to stir the soup before serving.

We used the following recipe: German Midnight Soup

The one significant variation we introduced (besides reducing the quantities of everything proportionally--and still, look at what a huge pot we ended up with) was adding a bit of green pepper to the sauteé, so that the onion wouldn´t feel lonely (LoL). Oh, and we completely forgot to add the bacon (a shame! We had some in the fridge ready and everything). Still, it turned out great; we weren´t able to resist snacking on it even before it was dinnertime.

General rating: Success!

Japanese croquettes:korokke

I´ve always been curious about how the Japanese have taken recipes from the rest of the world---and adapted them.

Being a huge lover of croquettes, I wanted to try this Japanese recipe out. Speaking of adaptations, why doesn´t english have an English word for "croquette"? I´ll admit that in all my years living in the US I didn´t see any at supermarkets, so I guess that that must be it. Here in Spain, you can´t leave a frozen foods section without seeing at least 5 different kinds of croquettes, of different brands. I wish we imported American "tater tots" and "hash browns"..... Spaniards should learn the addtional wonders of new potato fried/oven baked wonders.

Anyhow, the first thing that I noticed from this recipe is that it doesn´t use bechamel filling. It uses potato filling--which really brings to mind my grandma´s home-made cod croquettes. For cod croquettes, a potato base is used instead of bechamel; making them denser than regular ones.

The second thing I noticed was the size and shape--they´re a lot larger than regular croquettes, and they´re flattened out into patties instead of left oval-shaped.

Spanish version "croquetas"

Japanese version "Korokke"

I used this recipe: Japanese Korokke. It´s actually pretty simple and basic, you don´t need a lot of ingredients.....it´s just time-consuming. More time-consuming than I´d thought, actually (I have no idea why I was surprised, regular croquettes are even more time consuming since you need to freeze the bechamel before you can even roll it in beten egg, flour and breadcrumbs...). We ended up eating at 15.15 or so instead of the 14.30-14.45 I´d planned. But it was absolutely worth it.....to counter the fried korokke, we ate them with a side of salad. Yum. They were delicious.

Here´s the initial meat-and-onion mix, which was yummy in itself.

I boiled the potatoes in a regular pot. Next time, for speed, I´ll use out other one.

No pics of the in-between steps (my hands were too sticky), but here they are right out of the fryer.

Last picture of them, draining excess oil. I made, oh....about three times this amount. We´re a hungry family (and I´m bad at calculating amounts)

I would really recommend trying to make them, the patties are very fun to try.....the only problem is that, being made out of potato, the base can´t be frozen (unlike bechamel), but it can still be refrigerated to use another day if you have any left over (as I´ve done). 

Have you ever tried korokke? Or croquettes? What do you think?

Banana blueberry muffins

It´s been awhile since I last posted anything about cooking! Actually, last Thursday I made some muffins again.

I had some bananas that were riper than I liked (I like my fruit on the green side). In fact, they were riper than any of my family liked, but it seemed a shame to throw them out when they were still edible.

That´s when my cookbook came in--I remmembered that I had seen a recipe for banana muffins. I was right! Not only were they banana muffins, but banana blueberry muffins. I love blueberries, they drive me wild. We always have some canned ones at home, because frozen and fresh ones are insanely hard to find in Spain (and they´re insanely expensive too).

I decided to make them:

 

Though I actually had to make them in 2 batches; I had enough dough (?) to make 18. The original recipe said you could make 12, but since I was wary of "overflow", I made mine smaller.

This was the first batch of muffins; they cooled while the others baked.

I loved how they looked, with the blueberries in them.

They were actually on the small side. Next time I´ll make them bigger.

 

They turned out really yummy. Even I liked them, and I´m usually a chocolate-only sort of girl with muffins and pastries. 

This is actually a good muffin recipe for anybody who´s lactose intolerant; there isn´t a drop of milk in these muffins; the "liquid element" is provided by the eggs and the bananas (which you pureé). If anybody would like the recipe, I can post it.

Pork and Beef Gyoza

Yet another cooking post. What can I say, I´m feeling inspired. This time, it´s about gyoza.

Do you remember how, a while back, I bought a handy-dandy gyoza-maker (or shaper, rather)? I decided to test it out by making my family some gyoza.

Yes, this handy-dandy one. It´s a time-saver, no doubt about it.

I made mixed beef and pork gyoza, using a mix of these two (ground, of course) I bought at the supermarket. I also bought ready-made wafers. They´re not quite what you´re supposed to use for gyoza, but they work really well when you don´t have the time (or can´t be bothered to) make your own dough, roll and cut it out.

The wafers I used are supposed to be for making empanadillas (as seen above). 

I used the recipe found here, incorporating a few variations (I omitted the grated ginger, used olive oil since I had no sesame oil and substituted green onion for leek). It took longer than expected, since the cabbage took longer to boil than I thought. Darned cabbage. Who really likes cabbage anyway? Not me!

Next time, I´ll add more soy sauce and reduce the amount of cabbage a bit.  They were a bit too cabbage-y for my tastes, though they  still tasted great.

I used up all 16 wafers that were in the package, and approximately used about half of the mix that I cooked. Meaning that the gyoza on the recipe website are probably larger than mine (a possibility). I´d definitely still have had filling left over even if I had used 20 instead of 16.

I cooked 8 and 8 in my pan, seeing as how my biggest was being used by the filling.






My biggest fear when cooking the gyoza was having them burn. They are called "pot-stickers", but there´s a very fine line between sticking to the pot and toasting to them sticking to the pot and burning. As a note, I cooked mine on medium heat to toast them instead of high like the recipe suggests. Then I steamed them on low.

End result: Five gyoza per person, and the extra one (the small one) for my mom (cabbage doesn´t agree with her, but she wanted to try at least one). I served them with a side of pasta. Mine was smothered in cheese (of course) but my brother and father covered them in spicy chili sauce. Yes, plain pasta is untraditional, but hey, I was out of time. I got back home from work at 21:15, after all.

What do you think? Tasty-looking? Have you ever made this dish?

Chicken Fajitas

The other day, I made chicken Fajitas. I used to not like them because I was hung up on the fact that there was so much pepper and onion in it. You know, there is. More than chicken, in fact.  However, ever since I went to live in Ireland for a few months, I began to actually like onions....strange, huh? I call it suvival instinct. I will never get over how expensive fruit is over there. Makes you try out other alternatives, like veggies.

So, thank yo Ireland, for teaching me to finally enjoy de deliciousness of chicken mixed with peppers and onion and taco/fajita spices! I love making them now. They´re actually so fast to cook and delicous too! Just put it in a tortilla and voilá! Dinner!! (or lunch!)

I prefer to make them with less red peppers, to tell you the truth (I like green and yellow peppers more than red, for some strange reason). It´s worth mixing in a bit of red pepper, though.....It´s so colorful!

So, what do you think? Do you like chicken fajitas? Or do you prefer beef ones?

Hearty Chicken Bake

I seems that I have become a fan of making baked food lately.....but this time, it was dinner: a "Hearty Chicken Bake".

 This is my new Cooking Bible. Seriously.

It consists of a mashed potato, cheese and toasted onion (think IKEA swedish onions) crust, and a "filling".The filling of this singular "pie" is made of mixed chopped veggies (I mixed peas, carrots, green beans and potato), chicken cubes, cream of chicken soup and ground black pepper and garlic. All of it is baked 30 minutes in the oven, and then topped with more onions and cheese and set to "gratin", to toast the top. It is insanely delicious, and I´m proud that it turned out well, since it was the first time I tried making it by myself. My brother had been asking me to make it for awhile, and since his girlfriend came over for dinner, I figured "Why not?". All in all, it too between one hour and an hour and a half to prepare (including 35 minutes of oven-baking), mostly since I had to make quite a few of the components from scratch. I bet I can reduce that time to less than an hour next time.

BEFORE:

 AFTER:

We came. We gorged. We digested.

Baking adventures

So, lately I have been trying to bake things. I´m usually more for regular cooking: I rarely cook anything in ovens (other than my famous Santa Fe Burrito Bake) with the exception of baked potatoes, the occasonal fish or pizza and very rarely a stew.

Admire my great skills with puff pastry. (or not)

It has meat in it! And cheese! And peppers! What more could anyone possibly want?









I like salty things over sweet things, generally speaking. It´s one of the reasons why I´ve never been particularly interested in baking. besides, I already have one friend whose cosmic duty is to provide me with brownies and muffins; why would I want to go through the effort of making ones myself? Simple: I was bored, and made the mistake of looking though this book:

<-- It´s 10 cookbooks in 1! You could smash someone´s toe into a pulp with it. Don´t drop it!

They have one whole "cookbook" dedicated solely to muffins. Guess what? Not all muffins have to be sweet. See where I´m going? After drooling over the peperoni muffins, the three-pepper muffins, the herbed muffins, the bacon (BACON!!!) muffins.....I finally decided that I needed to do something. Fast. So, I made: 

Sausage Muffins of DOOM!!

Though tecnically, they´re called sausage cornbread muffins (I think my name suits them best though). I gorged on them. So did my Dad. They disappeared in two sittings. I can just imagine how delicious these would taste, as a side to an "american breakfast": orange juice, hash browns, pancakes and bacon (lots of bacon!). Must make more in the future. It was a nice baking experiment, and the first time I baked muffins.


Unfortunately, not everyone in my family was overjoyed at the thought of the sheer deliciousness of a muffin combined with that drooliciousness characteristic of sausages/hot dogs. My Mom and my brother both have sweet tooths a mile wide. So, for them I made:

Behold: Brownie muffins!

They´re really chocolate muffins with chopped almonds added in, but let me have my happy moment by combining two great ideas: brownies and muffins. Yum. They were very good too (if the speed at which my brother and mother proceeded to scarf them down was any indication). Second cooking experiment: A-OK, pass with flying colors!!

Unfortunately, yesterday I tried to bake some muffins as a gift for my aunt. My parents are visiting her and my cousins, and they (naturally) heard about my Mad Muffin Skillz. They wanted muffins, and they wanted them NOW! Or, well, THEN! So I set up everything, did exactly the same things as before---and to my horror, found the gorgeous beautiful muffins acting like dying souffles once I took them out of the oven. Deeeeeeeflate! How horrible, my poor muffin babies. Figures that the at-home muffins would look great, but the guest-family muffins would look like.....you can imagine what they looked like.

CRATER MUFFINS!

My brother had a great idea, though--the crater that was left in the center of each muffin was just perfect....for vanilla ice-cream! So we ended up eating something like this:

The flavor was every bit as good as the regular muffins, and the icecream was a great idea. Sometimes I think that my brother might be a genius. Then he goes and does something stupid, and I change my mind.


In the end we determined that the cause for my choco-soufflé panic was no other than....the baking powder. Darnit, we switched brands from one baatch to the other, and the powder in the second batch was much stronger and caused the muffins to rise excessively. Oh well. Lesson learned.

New recipe: Chocolate-almond muffin craters, for use with vanilla icecream.