Chicken Stir Fry... And Top Ramen

Hello everyone, I'm back! I've been on a hiatus for the past 2 weeks, working on a big paper and making Halloween cakes for work. Ugh - I've already talked too much about work and school in this post. Food! Just because I've been super busy, doesn't mean I haven't been cooking, actually I have a whole list of things I need to blog. Today's post comes from one of those nights where you know you have to eat so if you're going to cook, you might as well put in some good effort - but not too much of course.

My chicken stir fry, that I sometimes replace with beef, is one of my favorite go-to meals because you can't really mess it up. As I'm sure you know, you can add whatever veggies you have with whatever proteins you have and you're going to end up with a pretty rockin' meal. The best part? There's only 5 ingredients in mine.

What You'll Need:

2 chicken breasts

2 zucchini 

1 onion

6 small mushrooms

1 packet of Ramen noodles (go with me on this)

Start by cutting your chicken breasts into 2 inch bite-size pieces. Put a little olive oil in hot skillet and add the chicken. I only added a little seasoning (Season All and garlic powder) to my chicken because I had some great veggies that I wanted to come through.

While the chicken is cooking, cut your zucchini, onions and mushrooms in rather large pieces. There's about a zillion different types of veggies you could use but my personal goal was to not go to the grocery store for this one meal and use only what I had at home. I think at the time, these were the only 3 types I had in my whole apartment.

When the chicken is done, put it aside. You're going to add to the skillet again at the end so you don't have to keep it warm. 

Put your zucchini in the hot skillet with a little more olive oil. When they soften up a bit, but they're not fully cooked, add the onions.

When the onions start to become translucent add your mushrooms. These need the least amount of time to cook. I've found that when mushrooms are with other veggies that intensify in flavor as they're cooked (like onions and zucchini), mushrooms don't stand out. They definitely taste more like mushrooms if there's still a little bite to them. Honestly, at this point I could have eaten the veggies just like this!

Now comes my little secret ingredient. I like some pasta or rice with my stir fries but I usually use a thin spaghetti noodle. The problem was that I only had enough spaghetti for a spaghetti dinner (which is another go-to for us) I didn't want to "waste" it on this....especially when I had Top Ramen in the pantry. It's the easiest cheat pasta to go to. You put it in a bowl, cover it with water, and put it in the microwave for two minutes (without the seasoning).

Add the cooked chicken back to the veggies 

Then add all of the noodles to the skillet and use a fork to break them up. I wouldn't recommend using the seasoning packets for any flavoring because I'm not really sure what's in it and I recommend just staying away... 

I meant it when I said I didn't plan on buying anything extra for this meal - if you know me, you know I'm serious about my personal food challenges.

So this is what I ended up with. The veggies play just as much of a part in the meal as the chicken and noodles. This might be my girl math, but this has to be pretty healthy if there's that many vegetables in it. Right? (Just tell me yes...) Overall this is super simple to make and packed full of natural flavor. Enjoy!

Pesto Pasta with Scallops

This meal is one of our favorites! I make this quite a bit and always change it up. I usually use a long stringy pasta and shrimp, but this time I made it with pasta shells (conchiglie) and scallops. This is a great one-pan meal, the kind of meal where you just keep layering flavor to a plan then serve hot. Deliciousness!

What You'll Need:

1/2 pound of pasta

2 1/2 T butter

1 1/2 T flour

1 1/2 C milk

1/2 C heavy cream

2 T pesto

3 cloves of garlic

2 T Parmesan cheese

1/2 tsp pepper

1 pound of seafood

Broccoli or Asparagus 

Start by getting your water boiling. There's only two of us so I only used half a box of pasta. As far as pasta is concerned I'd have to say shells are the best for this sauce. This was the first time I used them but because of the shape, they held sauce the best. I don't think I'll ever use another type of pasta.

Start the sauce by making a roux. Do this by letting your butter melt in a hot pan then adding the flour when it's melted. Let it get a golden color.

When the roux is done pour in your milk and cream. Keep it on low heat to let the liquids thicken up a little. I know, I know, I'm not suppose to use cream because of fat or whatever... ehhh...

While the liquid is thickening run your seafood (scallops in this case) under water to defrost them. I love frozen seafood because you can buy it once and have it ready to add to anything you want. As for my vegetables I like broccoli and asparagus for this dish, but it's just a matter of what I have in my freezer or refrigerator. This time I had asparagus in those easy steam bags - 3 minutes and they're done. The kind of veggies I usually have range from fresh organic to frozen organic to cheap frozen. All of it works for me - and this dish, so work with what you got.

By now your sauce should be a little thicker so you can add your pesto, garlic, cheese, pepper and salt to taste. It's really hard to mess up the ratio because everything really goes together.

When that's mixed, add your scallops. Again, shrimp rocks in this too but scallops were on sale. You know how that goes.

Add your pasta to the sauce...

Then add the asparagus....and stir.

   

I threw some Texas Toast in the oven for 5 minutes and had an amazing dinner.  

This meal is so creamy! Seafood is perfect in this dish because it adds a pop of freshness in the rich sauce. It's one of those meals where you keep on eating even after you're full. If you ask me, those are the best kinds of meals! Enjoy!   

Spinach Quiche

Quiche is one of the things I have always loved but left for other people to make. My favorite version is mini quiches - like the adorable ones that are always served at fabulous parties. There's something crazy good about a flaky crust filled with an almost creamy, fluffy, center. Not to mention I love any dish that can be made with pretty much anything I have. As a working college student I love me a no-fuss recipe. I adapted my recipe from Just Eat, it's such a great blog, check it out. This is super easy to make and really really delicious.

What You'll Need:

4 eggs

1/3 C milk

1 1/4 C cheese

2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 chopped onion
1 tomato

6 sliced mushrooms

1 1/2 packages of frozen spinach

1 cold pie crust (below)

Pie Crust

I started by making my own pie crust for this. If you usually rock a pre-made pie crust those work just as well but pie crusts are soo easy and they get really flaky. Here's how I made mine:

What You'll Need:

1 1/4 C all purpose flour

1/2 C cold butter (cubed)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

3-5 tblsp of water

Mix your flour, salt, and sugar in a mixing bowl. I still don't have a standing mixer but my grandma doesn't need one for her pie crusts so I'm going to say I don't either, I just use my hand-held dough cutter to, well I'm assuming, "cut" in the butter. Once it looks like course sand, add your water one tablespoon at a time. This time I ended up needing four tablespoons to get the consistency I wanted, kneading it continuously. Knead it into a ball and keep in the refrigerator until your quiche (or any other type) of filling is ready. 

First, preheat the oven to 350 so you don't have to wait later on, it's lame.

My quiche was filled with two kinds of cheeses, 1 cup of mozzarella and 1/4 cup of a Mexican blend (which included pepper jack and cheddar cheese). The pepper jack ended up adding a really nice, deep flavor to the quiche.

In a bowl I mixed the eggs, milk, and cheeses. Then I added the salt and pepper and set it aside.

In a large pan, saute the onion until they're translucent then add the mushrooms. I decided to add a little chopped garlic because I'd pretty much eat garlic on anything and this was no exception.

I wanted to add some tomato because I was sure they would add some awesome color to my quiche. Red pepper would have worked too but I always have tomatoes on hand and they seem to always add a great color, texture, and taste to my meals. I love the little things.

The last thing you want to add is your defrosted, drained spinach. The colors are about to get insane right now! Make sure everything is mixed and fully incorporated.

Add your spinach mixture to your egg mixture and fold in. 

Take out your crust roll it out on a clean, well-floured, surface. It's good to have the chunks of butter in the dough because that's what makes it flaky. Pour the spinach mix over the pie crust.

Place this in the oven for 25 - 30 minutes, until the top is a light golden brown.

When the quiche comes out you're going to see that this recipe is a keeper. Now, I'm a "sides" kind of girl, I love serving main dishes with some sort of side. I guess I feel that a meal isn't complete without them. This was an exception. This was the only thing on our plates and it's all we needed. The spinach was crazy, crazy, crazy it was so good and everything else was fluffy. You can taste every single thing that goes into this. And the perfect thing about this is, if you're like me and you get home late most nights, you can eat this and you don't feel like you over-ate even though you're full. I now have a great recipe that I can make into fabulous mini quiches or smaller personal sized portions.

Raspberry Iced Tea

Hello all. Let me start with a dilemma I've had for the last couple of years - I don't drink soda and I'm always looking for more drinks that are, in comparison, healthy and preferably sweet and not full of high fructose corn syrup. After my Real Strawberry Lemonade post, I've been looking for another beverage post and finally found it the other day when I was at Whole Foods. They had raspberries on sale so I bought two little boxes (12 oz.) of beautiful pink berries. Unfortunately raspberries aren't my favorite fruit so I had no idea what to make with them but I had ideas for tarts, muffins, and even cocktails. I was totally ready to knock something out when I read on some random webpage "...Served with raspberry iced tea." It could have been that I was parched at the time but I was instantly craving raspberry iced tea, so I made it.

What You'll Need:

12 oz. of raspberries

8 1/4 C of water

2/3 and C of sugar

5 Black tea bags 

This is possibly the easiest thing I have "cooked" on here. I split the process in half because I had to go to work. Before work I got the raspberries ready. This is really easy. Start by putting all of your raspberries in a medium sized pot with a 1/4 cup of water over medium heat. After about eight minutes the raspberries will start to break down and mush up. Now, I'm not going to lie but the smell of cooking/cooked raspberries is not my favorite and I'm glad that part only lasts so long. I also added 2 teaspoons of sugar because when I tasted the raspberries they were a little too sour and I wasn't sure how that would affect the tea. The tea was sweet enough in the end so you don't have to add the extra sugar at this point if you don't want.

When the raspberries are done then you need to strain the pulp. I was happy to see that A LOT of juice was strained (compared to the purees I do which is a gamble). Use a spoon or spatula to press the berries to make sure you get as much juice as possible.

Like I said, I had to split the work between work shifts so I poured the juice into a cup and placed it safely in the refrigerator to be used later.

Pure raspberry juice.

When I came home I made the actual tea part. Usually I'm a green tea drinker and only get black tea at Peet's Coffee or The Cheesecake Factory so I had to go out and buy some. In a medium sized pot or tea kettle, boil 4 cups of water. When the water is boiling pour in the sugar and simmer for for 5 minutes, until the sugar is dissolved.

This the water with the sugar added.

Turn off the heat and put five tea bags to steep in the water. The water is going to turn a really pretty deep color. I knew at this point this was going to be good.

After 8 minutes of letting the tea steep discard the tea bags and pour 4 cups of cold (filtered) water in a pitcher, then pour in the tea water.

Now it's time to add the raspberry. Stir cautiously.

You can either put the pitcher in the refrigerator for a while or just put some ice in glass like we did. This tea is totally worth drinking right away. It's just sweet enough to be addicting and not too sweet that it's not refreshing. I think I need to keep a pitcher of this stuff at all times because we're already almost done with it. Enjoy friends! 

Meatball Challenge #1: Grilled Italian Meatball Skewers

I'm doing my first personal cooking challenge. It started when my mom gave me a big bag of frozen meatballs that she didn't want. I was determined to make things other than spaghetti and meatballs or meatball subs (though I'll probably end up making these both). I wanted something new and different and I found my answer while looking through my pantry. Here it is, a simple meal that has tons of flavor and great textures - all on a handy stick.

What You'll Need:

18 meatballs (frozen or fresh)

1/2 jar/can of tomato sauce

2 zucchini 

cherry tomatoes

skewers

Start by preheating your oven to 350 degrees. Place around 18 meatballs on a foiled cookie sheet. I guessed I would probably put around three meatballs on a skewer and we would each have three skewers so I only cooked 18. Cook them for 15 minutes so they heat all the way through. I had no idea how these would taste but I went for it anyway.

Next you can get your zucchini ready. You're going to want the pieces around the same size as the meatballs so they cook evenly. I decided to make the pieces square so they would keep the skewers from rolling around with the round tomatoes and meatballs (I thought about this from past experience). This actually really helped.

 

 

Now I don't know about you, but I need more to my meal than three skewers of mostly veggies - especially when I had no way of knowing how they would turn out. I figured since we were having a relatively "healthy" meal I could add a little more fat. I decided to make potato chips too. Cut around 6 potatoes into thin slices and fry in two inches of oil. Place them on a plate with a paper towel on it and sprinkle some salt when they come out.

Lately I've been using the big cans of tomato sauce, but I usually only need about half a can when making food so I store the other half in an empty spaghetti sauce jar. I usually have sauce at hand all the time and I had half a jar in my fridge so I decided to use some to heat the meatballs in. This was a fabulous idea. Put the sauce in a sauce pan and keep on low heat to keep the splattering to a minimum. The sauce is already delicious on it's own but I added some black pepper, basil and oregano for some extra oomph. I think if I made this again I would add chili flakes for some extra spice.

When the meatballs are done, and while they're still hot, place them in your heated sauce. I left mine in for about 8 minutes so they could soak up some sauce (according to Mike and Alton Brown, this works. Good enough for me). At this point the meatballs have all sorts of potential for other dishes.

Mmmmm

When the meatballs were basically done, I left them in the sauce and got my veggies and skewers ready to start assembling. All kinds of veggies would be good with these too. Mushroom and onions would probably be amazing but this is what I had on hand.

I ended up only putting two meatballs on a skewer then I made an all veggie skewer (which was also delicious). Tell me these don't look good already...

I placed the skewers aside and heated up my grill. Confession: I'm slowly starting to fall in love with this grill... in a totally normal way though. It heats in a couple of minutes, DRAINS FAT, and makes food taste better. Yes my friends that is all love.

When my grill was heated I was able to fit most of my skewers on the first round. I cooked mine for 6 minutes with the top closed down, turned them, then cooked them for another 4-5 with the grill open. Since the meatballs are already cooked you just have to cook the zucchini to the texture that you want.

When they're done, plate them and pour more of your tomato sauce over them. Serve them with your potato chips, a cold glass of lemonade, and enjoy.

Overall, I don't think I did too bad for my first "challenge." The flavors were great and the meatballs had a great flavor. This was the perfect amount of food for us too. This makes me very excited about the food that's to come. Stay tuned my fellow foodies.