Chicken Bruschetta Pasta with Zucchini

Today I got a huge pampered chef order in the mail. This inspired me to make a new dish - which in turn I (of course) posted on Facebook. After being asked for the recipe and inspired to start posting my recipes onto my blog again I decided to log on and share!

Now since this is a spur of the moment post, I don't have my normal step-by-step photos for you. We are moving in a week, so once we've gotten settled I will do an updated post with photos!

What you will need:
2-3 Chicken Breasts
Spaghetti Seasoning to taste (I use enough to cover the top of chicken)
1 package spaghetti
1 bouillon cube or enough chicken stock to cook pasta in
1 zucchini halved and sliced
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
3-5 cloves Garlic
1 small package basil
1 package small tomatoes like plum or vine ripe
About a cup of Spinach
Fresh Parmesan
Salt & Pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Season the chicken breasts with spaghetti seasoning, salt and pepper. Drizzle with evoo. Bake 15 minutes
3. When 15 minutes have passed begin pasta. Boil a pot of water with bouillon or chicken stock. Let chicken cook until pasta is cooked.
4. While pasta and chicken cooks, make bruschetta sauce. In a food processor combine all but a couple leaves of basil with garlic and all but 2 tomatoes. Drizzle in oil. Once sauce is made, add a healthy amount of fresh Parmesan finely grated.
5. Remove chicken from oven and let rest 5 minutes.
6. Saute zucchini in a large pan with garlic salt and olive oil over medium heat.
7. Pan fry noodles with zucchini, a ladle or two of pasta water, spinach, bruschetta sauce, and chicken cubed.
8. Toss with a little extra olive oil, cheese salt and pepper. Garnish with left over basil, tomatoes cubed and more cheese.

Enjoy!

Spicy Chicken Masala

My husband and I went to a local festival that we go to every year. The sad part was this year our favorite food vendor wasn't there! After we recovered from the confusion we walked around for about an hour trying to find something to eat. We finally settled on an Indian vendor for chicken Masala and fell in love.

After about a week, we started craving it again so I decided to attempt to remake it myself. Let me warn you now, this recipe when I made it turned out to be a 500-star-sweat-out-your-eye-sockets hot. If you want it to be less hot, I suggest cutting down or omitting the chili paste and the cayenne pepper. It also gets hotter the longer it simmers, as well as the next day.

The entire meal was chicken tikka masala and rice, gyoza made like momo and some broccoli and cheese.

Ingredients:
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Sweet Chili Paste
White Pepper Salt
Paprika
Curry Powder
Cayenne Pepper
Tikka Masala Mix
Diced Tomatoes
Tomato Paste
Water
Chicken Breasts cut into 1" pieces
Frozen Pot Stickers (Gyoza)
Rice

Directions

• Heat wok pan over medium high heat.
• Add a little extra virgin olive oil and 2 spoons full of chili paste  
• Add tomatoes and tomato paste with about a can of water (I usually measure the water in the tomato paste can to get the extra bits of paste out)
• Add seasonings. I eyeballed it all, about 1 tsp of the white pepper, 1 1/2 tsp cayenne, 2 Tbsp curry and 1-2 tsp paprika. I also dumped what was left of my masala mix in which I'd say was about 1/8 cup. I got the Masala Mix in the spice section of a little market in my mom's town literally called "The Market". I have no idea what all was in it, but I am guessing curry, garlic, onion and ginger at least.

                                           

• This is about where I grill up the chicken and start the rice. My rice cooker was being used as a steamer for the broccoli so I cooked my rice the old school way. (1 cup of rice to 1 1/2 cups of water, bring to a boil, stir, turn down to low heat and steam 20-25 minutes.)

                                

• Once the chicken has some good grill marks, mix in with Tomato sauce. Let simmer on low until rice is finished. (Mine simmered about 30 minutes, because I started the rice late).
• While the rice and sauce are cooking cook the gyoza per package directions..

                                         
Once everything has cooked completely, serve up your rice and pot stickers covered in the chicken asala sauce and enjoy.
 
 

Sneak peak!

I just wanted to give you a sneak peak of what's coming! It's very time consuming but I hope to have the recipe up by Sunday at the latest! See you all then!!!

Yum!

Pulled Chicken in the crock pot!

I started a new job recently so the crock pot i got for our wedding has been super handy to have! Who doesn't love the simplicity of set it and forget it??

I mixed the left over bar-b-que sauce we had in the fridge with about a cup of katsup, 2 Tbsp brown sugar, garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste and cooked on low all day (about 7 hours) then I shredded it with two forks and served on toasted Hawaiian sweet rolls!

Cilantro Lime Chicken

I was looking for something new and fresh to make for dinner, and I was reminded of a teryiaki lime shrimp dish my neighbor used to make for our weekly bbq get together. Now for some reason I can't figure out exactly how he got his shrimp maranade to taste so good compared to when I make it, and became convinced that he had a secret recipe. This inspired me to dress up my chicken with a cilantro lime teryiaki sauce.

you can substitute boneless skinless and/or breast. I feel that the thigh is a cost-friendly and more flavorful cut of the chicken, so I tend to use it in a lot of my chicken recipes.

4 bone-in chicken thighs
1/4 cup fresh cilantro
1 whole good sized scallion (2 if they're small)
2+ cloves of garlic per taste (hey some people like their garlic!)
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 lime halved
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
*1/2 small white onion optional

Preheat oven to 500F. Prep chicken by scoring the skin side down the bone in 3/4" intervals.

Chop cilantro, scallion (up to green) garlic and *optional onion until fine. Emulsify with soy sauce, oyster sauce and olive oil in food processor. Seperate sauce into 2 bowls, one for raw chicken and one for cooked.

Line baking dish. Lightly season chicken with salt and pepper. Brush chicken with sauce.

Bake at 500 for 25 minutes. Set oven to broil, and let broil for 3 minutes to get a nice crust on the chicken. Remove from oven and let rest 5 minutes. It is very important for taste that you let it rest after cooking so all of the juices can settle into the meat.

When you plate this chicken, top with some of the extra sauce, the sliced up green parts of the scallion, some fresh black pepper and cilantro.

Two great ways to serve this dish is with rice and avacado or with a fresh cilantro and avacado salsa.

Content Writing

I started a new project so-to-speak, in a way I was testing out how well I would do as a marketing content writer. I took my first job a couple days ago and got complimented by the client, with an instant per-word raise. I was unaware at how well my writing skills could be perceived by others! To me I feel I am just over viewing things and babbling, but to others I am providing useful information to someone while making a little extra money for myself.

With that, I grew from a 3-star writer to a 4-star writer in a matter of days, and am working hard towards becoming a 5-star writer. I am getting a lot of high ratings for my brief articles in the "cities" writing department. Recently, I received a 5-star rating on an article I had a deep interest for. While writing about organizing your kitchen to utilize your small space, I learned how to do just that for myself.

Some great tips I learned are to eliminate unnecessary items, utilize your space well and de-clutter your counter-tops.  As you may know, my kitchen is one of my favorite rooms in my home, so learning how use that space as best as possible, I am learning how to appreciate the space as well.

Few and Far between!

I know I have been the worst blogger lately so I thought I would update you on my projects and why my posts have been so few and far between.

I have been really moving forward with my cookbook. It actually has somewhat of a format and now I am just working on filling it with recipes. This is a very time consuming process, partly because I NEVER measure when I cook, so I am having to go back through and make a lot of my recipes to come up with measurements, aaand because I tend to forget to write down ingredients. This means some of my recipes are a little different each time I make it. I have been going through and trying to figure out which ones are best to share in my very first book.

I am also enrolled full time this quarter and took on a huuuge load. I have 3 challenging courses this quarter versus the one challenging course and one easy fun course I had last semester. This has eaten up more of my time than I anticipated, but I let the add/drop deadline come and go and have decided I want to take on the challenge. I can do it! I just have to cut a few leisure hours a day. The first week of school, I was coming home from school around 11:30 a.m. and working on homework until around 6 p.m. leaving myself with undone work! Time to work on time management and less distractions during my free hour at school! :)

Now, with all of that being said, some of you may be wondering what I am going to school for, if it is culinary school etc. Well, no. It is community college and I am working on my BA in Music. Why? Music was my first love, thus my first priority. But don't you fret kids! Culinary school is in the cards for my future! I just wanted to get this degree out of my system. It is something I have dreamed about since I can remember. If that means teaching 9 months of the year and taking summer culinary courses, or if it means being a private instructor on my free time from culinary school, I don't know, but I will also get my education in food science so to speak. If only they offered a good culinary program at my local college, I could use my electives to get a head start. Booo! But I am working it so that if given the opportunity during my last 2 years of college, if a transfer is in the future, I have some elective courses open for it! okay, rant over.

Have a great snow day!

Oh Birthday!

My birthday is coming up, oh lord. It is the first big birthday for a while, haven't had much to celebrate since I turned 21. However, this year, my insurance rates drop and I am officially the age my mom was when I was born. You know what that means! (do the math) That being said, I got some photos done with Jordan today to commemorate the occasion. Ready to see them?