Cooking: Week 7 - Slow Cooking - Cilantro Lime Chicken

Week: 7
Theme: Slow Cooking
Dish: Cilantro Lime Chicken

We love our crock pot. I usually use it to make oatmeal, but we've made roasts and other stuff in it. For this week, we tried this recipe.

Cooking in a slow cooker isn't very exciting to photograph. Moreover, I didn't actually prep the food, Ofer made it while I was in class so I didn't take pictures of the process. So all I have are the end results.

There's not much for me to say. I didn't love this recipe. We left it in the crockpot for longer than 6 hours and the chicken came out dry. The sauce wasn't very delicious, though I think that would depend on what salsa you get (We got a Pace one). I didn't find the flavor of the chicken particularly good and the sauce was too pasta saucey. I'm not sure if I wanna make this recipe again. I have the leftovers sitting in my fridge but I haven't really touched them and it doesn't make me excited to eat.

On another note, we used a crockpot liner and they work wonderfully. We have a tiny shallow sink so washing the ceramic pot is super difficult. With the liner, we can just throw it out, wipe it down and it's clean. It's awesome.

Cooking: Week 6 - Love - Broiled Grass-fed Rib Eye Steak

Week: 6
Theme: Love Inspired
Dish: Broiled Grass-fed Rib Eye Steak

Ofer and I go rock climbing at Rocknasium, a local gym in Davis. One of the owners, Mark, is a super cool dude and is also a cattle farmer. He takes his cows to graze on plots of land in the area and they just basically eat grass at day. We decided to buy two steaks from him for our Valentine's Day dinner; it's become somewhat a tradition to have steak for Valentines. :)

This was actually a really stressful meal. We had originally planned to pan sear the steaks and cook it in our cast iron, which had been our pan of choice for meats, but we had heated up the pan much too hot. When we tried pouring some oil into the pan, it immediately burst into flames. Sorry for not having pictures of the fire as I was trying really hard not to freak the fuck off. Ofer was able to remain calm and made me fetch the baking soda to put it out. Phew. We did manage to salvage our pan and it still works fine, but now we know not to just put oil into a super hot pan.

With the cast iron plan nixed, we decided to just broil the meats. We got them nice and oiled up since grass-fed beef doesn't have as much fat as corn fed beef. We only seasoned with salt and pepper cause we had never had grass fed beef before and really wanted to taste the beefy-ness of it.

I didn't take any pictures of the cooking process because we were just broiling it and there was nothing exciting happening. We cooked the first side for 4 mins then the other side for 3. It didn't have as much of a crust, but we didn't want to overcook it.

We also made a quinoa salad. Quinoa has been really growing on me. I really like it.

It was really delicious! A bit chewier than the other steaks I've had, but the flavor is really up there. There was hardly any fat in this cut, but I didn't think it took away from the experience at all. Ofer says "It was super tasty."

Cooking: Week 5 - Alcohol - Flattened Chicken Breasts with White Wine Sauce

Hi everyone. Long time no update. I've just been super lazy about getting things done lately. :( And motivation to update the blog kind of petered away. Anyways, it's not week 5 this week; it's actually week 7. But we had cooked this dish on week 5 and I just never got around to posting this because I'm a lazy butt.

Week: 5
Theme: Alcohol
Dish: Flattened Chicken Breasts with White Wine Sauce

We took this recipe. Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of the pounding of the chicken, but Ofer actually pounded it out with his fists, lol. I don't know why he decided to do that, but it was quite entertaining to watch. We've been loving our cast iron, but we actually set it on fire the other day (post on that should be coming up!) but it seems okay. Cast iron is pretty resilient.

Mmmmmm, little chicken breasts, cook!

After pouring the white wine, it started bubbling like crazy. Felt like a witch with a cauldron. It steamed pretty heavily.

Stirring action!

More stirring! Our tongs are actually really hard to keep closed. They are just a cheap pair from ikea, but I think when we have more disposable income (or a good price comes around), we're gonna invest in a better pair of tongs that don't need that much force to close it. It really cramped my hand!

We served it with tortellini that we got from costco and made a simple homemade pesto sauce with it. It was really good. The chicken was super tender without being dry and the sauce really made it come alive. I'm not too big on white wine, but with the sauce, it was really good. It had the hint of white wine without it being too overpowering. We actually made a recipe like this again a few nights later.

Cooking: Week 4 - Pan Fry - Panfried Pork Shoulder Steaks

Week: 4
Theme: Pan fry
Dish: Panfried pork shoulder steaks

We really like panfrying. I bought Ofer a cast iron skillet as a belated Christmas present and we knew we wanted to break it in with this challenge. Whenever we have a good piece of meat, we try to minimize what spices we use. For this, we only used a generous helping of salt and pepper. And the basically cooked it on each side till it was done. We check the temperature using a meat thermometer before serving.

I didn't expect to like this as much as I did. It kind of felt like I was eating a steak with a different flavor profile. It was really satisfying eating it with a fork and knife. They were really cheap too, only a couple of bucks each. Very good.

We also made a homemade tomato sauce. It was a pretty simple recipe. We just eye balled the amount of ingredients.

We used:

• 1 onion
• 1 head of garlic
• A few handfuls of mushrooms
• 2 spicy peppers
• 2 cans of whole tomatoes
• 1 can of tomato sauce
• 1 small can of tomato paste
• A few stalks of celery
• A bunch of parsley
• Two bay leaves
• A bunch of basil
• Some smoked cayenne
• Salt and pepper

We just browned the onions and then added the other veggies. Then we just dumped everything else in. We took out the basil and bay leaves in the end and just left the sauce chunky.

Cooking: Week 2 - Chinese - Chinese Steamed Trout

Week: 2
Theme: Chinese
Dish: Chinese Steamed Trout

Hi everyone! This week's theme is Chinese. I'm Chinese so this theme has a special place in my heart. I had a lot of ideas on what I should make, wontons, congee, spare ribs, but I decided to go with something that I always crave when I go back to my mom's house: steamed fish. I think steaming gets a lot of flack in the US because people think it doesn't add any flavor, but Chinese people take steaming to a whole new level.

Anyways, I used Steamy Kitchen's Chinese Steamed Fish recipe. I didn't follow it exactly, but Chinese food is usually made without exact measurements. I also used a steamer that Ofer's sister had given us (thank you Aya!) but we hadn't had a chance to use it. It's perfect because I don't have any pots big enough to steam my fish in.

I also took out the cooking wine part because the steamer wouldn't be able to hold that liquid. I think it turned out fine without it and my mom doesn't use it either.

They smelled heavenly already at this point!

The prep was relatively easy. We bought our trout at Costco and it came in a pack of 4. They had already been cleaned, gutted, and descaled. Luckily, our steamer was able to fit two fish perfectly.

Steaming in action!

At this point, we were super excited.

Fish after the steam bath.

We had to move the fish into a baking dish because we didn't steam it in a pan. I think because of the shape of the baking dish, the soy sauce didn't nicely penetrate the fish as well. Also, I didn't double the sauce recipe, which I should have done since I was making two fish.

Saucy fishes!

Microwaving the sauce was pretty quick and easy. It smelled oh so good!

After the hot oil bath!

In the original recipe, she said that you should able to hear the sizzle on the fish after dumping the oil on it, but I didn't get that. Not sure why. It did sizzle like crazy in the wok though. Maybe I need a different oil (I used canola) or heat it up a bit more.

Sorry for the blurry pic, but you can see how flaky the fish is!

I couldn't resist showing you guys how flaky the fish was. It wasn't dry at all.

We ate it with rice! Naturally.

Verdict: It was really tasty! Pretty close to what my mom does with her fish. We made two fish for two people but one was enough to fill us up. My mom usually cooks one fish for a family of 6, but we have some other dishes along side it. I think one fish is good for just a meal with two if you don't plan on having other meat dishes. I wish we had made a vegetable dish, but I didn't feel like making more food that wouldn't be eaten.

The trout is more firm than some of the other fishes that my mom makes. But I found the meat to still be sweet and flavorful. It's not too "fishy". I really liked this recipe and even though it was my first time make it, it came out really well. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to try it.

Cooking: Week 1 - Eggs - Cooking Breakfast at Midnight

Week: 1

Theme: Eggs

Dish: Breakfast at Midnight

We ended up doing a simple fried egg with some hot links and bread for this challenge due to lack of time. Nothing spectacular, but Ofer did manage to successfully flip three eggs in the pan perfectly!