Risotto!

Hey! Hey guys! Look what I did:

This is Garlic Chicken Risotto with chopped onions. 

Here's a closer look:

You see how it looks all soupy? That's a good thing. It gets really creamy as you cook it.

Ingredients (what you can do different):
1 cup uncooked rice
a couple teaspoons of vegetable oil
7 cups of broth (7 cups of any broth and/or water)
1/4 white wine or white wine vinegar
1 small onion chopped (chopped vegetables or cooked meat)
a couple dashes of garlic powder (any spice you'd like with rice)

So you need a pot, a pan, and ladle. Pour the broth into the pot on a stove top at medium heat. Also put the pan over medium heat and put in your oil. Once warm, add your cup of rice and mix it around. After that, add the wine and stir it in. Gradually ladle in broth and stir. Repeat till all the broth is gone. This won't happen all at once. It took me about 45 minutes to stir in all my broth, and it was my first time making this wonderful dish.

This would be great if you were to put a big piece of chicken on top of it.

I'll definitely make a video to better explain more clearly later. But look! I have pictures now!

New Things!

I hope all of you had a great holiday! I am happy to say that my Christmas was wonderful! So here's why that matters.

I got a whole new kitchen set. A bunch of awesome stainless steel pots, pans, utensils and a "chef's pot." I'm throwing out all my Teflon stuff and replacing it with my new toys. :D
I don't like Teflon because it doesn't work forever, it gets into your food, and all hell breaks loose if you scratch it.

The second awesome thing that I got was this big cook book full of new recipes I get to try out. When I do that, I will redo a recipe to work better for me, which in this case, I can make simplified versions of recipes to show you guys how to make. :D

Lastly, I got a new video camera! Which means I can now film videos! Yay! So I can start showing videos in fall! In addition, it takes photos, so I can take pictures of my little concoctions for you!

I hope the rest of you are having as good of a break as I am! Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

FAILURE.

I had my first failure in the kitchen the other day (since starting this blog), and I though it was worth sharing.

Okay, so one of my current roommates is a vegetarian and I like to cook for the world, including her. In the past I made these really good chicken breast stuffed with my spinach pesto. (Eventually I tell you guys how to make it, it's so easy.) Well, I wanted her to try it so badly, but she doesn't eat chicken, so she suggested I put the pesto into pasta shells. It does sound pretty awesome after all.

Well, she's gone for the break, but I'd thought I'd give them a try anyway. So I made the pesto, boiled the pasta shells, and stuffed them with the pesto. Well, the pasta to pesto ratio was, to me, way off. Pesto is great, but it's good to taste something else when you bite into it. For instance, it would be great as a noodle sauce where there's more noodles than pesto. Anyway, the reason why the pesto is too much is because it is extremely runny. I remembered that when I cooked it in the chicken, the outside got crusty and provided a good texture which contradicted the inside inside which became creamy after roasting in the oven. I thought it would work the same with the pasta. What I expected was that the pasta would become like the side of a lasagna when it's cooked, you know, kind of crunchy, but still good.

Well, after some time in the oven, the pesto just leaked everywhere and the pasta became really tough and chewy. It was less than pleasant. So if there's a next time, I may also put some sort of meat into the pasta to make the balance of tastes better, but I still have to figure out what to do with the pasta. We'll see, I guess.

LEEKS (Part 1?)

So, I tried out leeks. They're some cool . . . things. They taste like onions without the bite. I fried them. They were REALLY good. I can't wait to explore these cool little guys a lot more.

One thing I've learned is that leeks are dirty vegetables. Not only dot you have to rinse them off, but there is is still more dirt and sand in between the layers. The way most people clean leeks is by separating the layers and swishing them around in water so all of the dirt and sand can fall to the bottom while the leaks float on top.

As I was frying these little guys, I was snacking on the other little guys that didn't make it into the pan. Like I said, they are like onions without the bite. They are related after all (also in the family is scallions and garlic). So once I start making videos, I may go over leeks a bit so the viewers who still refuse the good ol' onion may have a good way to transition into liking those wonderful guys with the help of our good friend the leek.

Orange Ginger Chicken

This is an easy recipe! It's so easy that if you care to take a gander at the above title, you will have read all of the ingredients needed for this meal. It's TOO EASY.

So I decided to make this meal when I was given a large amount of bitter oranges. They really weren't good, and I love oranges. So that was a problem, but I'm not one to let food go bad. I've let food go bad and I feel guilty on the rare occasions that it happens.

So here's what I did. I went to the store and bought a small chicken, just a few pounds. I preheated the oven to 375 degrees (Fahrenheit) and put the chicken in an 8" x 8" pan. I then cut all my oranges in half (about 6) and squeezed them flesh side up over the chicken till I was out of oranges. I then took some fresh ginger that I had laying around in my fridge. If you have never used fresh ginger before, then you should start; it is an awesome flavor. I peeled the skin off of the ginger with a knife and chopped it into about 7 small pieces, rubbed it around the chicken, and tucked them into various crevices in the chicken. Pretend the ginger is soap and "clean" the chicken. Stick the pieces under the wings and legs. If you have extra, just place them on top of the chicken. Stick that baby into the oven for an hour and a half OR an hour, take it out, flip it, and bake for another 20 minutes.

BAM. Orange Ginger Chicken. Hopefully I will get a camera soon (Christmas!) so I can start showing you what I'm cooking up in my kitchen so you know that I'm not making this stuff up.

In other news, I have bought a few leeks. I know nearly nothing about leeks, but soon I will know ALL THE THINGS about leeks.

So hopefully that goal will be settled by sometime next week.

Yay! Things!

So I'm aware I haven't put out a blog in a few weeks mostly due to finals at school. Things have been pretty busy and I haven't had the time to make anything new cooking-wise. I don't think as of right now, I'm going to have a lot of things to blog about until I actually get a chance to start filming the episodes this coming summer. Until then, I'll only have posts here and there, so please keep reading. (Add me to you RSS feed so it can notify you!)
Also, once I get a good camera, I'll probably be able to take pictures of the things I want to blog about so you have a better idea of what's going on.
I'm thinking my next dish could be pasta salad? I'm going to need some more readers so I can get feedback on what people actually want. So what do I need to do to for you?