Chicken Piccata

I returned from my Xmas trip back home with a large sack full of lemons from my grandfather's tree. This isn't the first time I've been in such a lemon predicament, but I was again left with trying to figure out what to do with all the lemons.

One lemon-y dish that occurred to me and which I hadn't previously tried to cook myself was chicken piccata. As it turned out, I was able to get the 1/3 cup of lemon juice needed out of just two lemons, so this didn't turn out to be a particularly lucrative means to use up a lot of lemons. 

A quick trip to the store got me the capers I needed, as well as thin spaghetti which I wanted to serve it over. I had everything else (including chicken stock, frozen from prior December cooking endeavor). Thanks to Giada de Laurentiis for this C piccata recipe.

And can I make a comment on what a difference a good kitchen knife set makes?! I had to butterfly the BSCBs, and my new knife set made that act so effortless -- the knife cut through those BSCBs like buttah.

And speaking of buttah, this recipe calls for a lot of it. 6 TBSP in total. Along w/ the 5 TBSP of olive oil needed, this to a very booter n' aisle -heavy dish. Thanks, Italy.

I got my flour dredge plate ready, and heated up the B&O.

The breasts-es got nice and browned up in that B&O...

Once the chicken was going things went pretty smoothly -- I juiced the lemons, chopped the parsley, and rinsed the capers in prep for part 2 (where the sauce was made).

Capers, lemon J, and chicken S were added to pan, and brought to boil. Chicken was added back in for a 5 min simmer. After a few minutes of cool down while pasta finished up, the end result was... 

Grub as feeze. I doubled up on the chicken portioning cuz I was hungray. Two separate leftover plates await me.  I will make this again.

Tres Leches Cake Part Two

(Note: I wrote most of this on December 18th, but didn't get to finishing up & publishing until almost 2 weeks later!)

So Part Two (Day Two) of the cake preparation involved making the whipped cream topping and applying the royal icing lettering.

Heavy cream and powdered sugar where whipped together until... well, whipped.
 

Whipped cream was spread over the cake, making small peaks as prescribed per the recipe.  Cinnamon was also sprinkled on top.
 

And this is where the photos stop.  My skills with a piping bag are lacking (as I learned), and my cursive writing on the cake was kind of sad.  My care in applying foil over the top for transport to work did not help things either... the edges of the cake made contact with the foil and the writing was compromised.  Additionally, my use of too much leche pour-over from the night before was confirmed, as the cake actually leaked all over the passenger seat of my car in transit to my work.

All in all, the cake was hella good, but a pain in the ass to make given all the stumbles noted. Probably not going to attempt this again for a long time...

Tres Leches Cake, Part One

This cake and I go way back. An old friend and I have a longstanding joke about Tres Leches cake which never gets old. The punch line is "it's hella good." And it is, indeed.

So, my office organized a holiday potluck this year, and I decided to try and conquer Tres Leches cake for the event. My original plan was to use a recipe that said longstanding friend had sent me a few months back (by way of random USPS mailing, w/ the recipe on a page ripped from a magazine that had a post-it note attached stating "it's hella good!"), but after reading the recipe closely and seeing that (1) it took not only a 13" x 9" baking pan but also 13" x 9" platter (I do not own a 13" x 9" platter), and (2) the recipe was from "Cooking Light" magazine, I decided to scope out some more current-kitchen-cookware-friendly and more indulgent recipes for this said baking endeavor.

I decided to use Marcela Vallolidad's Tres Leches cake recipe from her Food Network TV show. The clincher for me was that it used a round cake pan -- which I already own. And, it sounded indulgent and delicious.

Over the weekend I did the necessary ingredient shopping to assure that I had the three types of milk needed (well actually two: the recipe called for sweetened condensed, evaporated & whole milk... I skipped buying whole milk and decided to use my 1% milk sitting in the fridge instead ). The one thing I didn't count on was realizing that the recipe called for a 10" round cake pan, and after a double-check I realized I only had a 9" round cake pan.

Wack. So I decided to try and find a 10" cake pan, but to no avail. After 3 separate store stops (today at lunch being the most recent), I decided I'd just go w/ the 9" cake pan and dump out any extra batter - and pay close attention to the bake time so as not to overcook.

So, Monday night was the big baking night. After a somewhat trying day at work no less... But hey, this is fun, right? I lined up all my ingredients on my kitchen counter to make sure I had everything .

Then, I got to business. I sifted flour with baking powder. I separated egg white from yolks. I beat the egg whites til frothy.

Then added yolks, one at a time. Then the flour mixture, traded off with regular milk additions. The end result was poured into my 9" cake pan.

This was another potential-shitshow moment: Another misstep was re: pan size: the recipe called for a 2" high pan; my pan was only 1.5" high. Meh, I thought to myself, my cake will just be extra fluffy. The pan took the full bowl of mix (note I didn't scrape the bowl clean when pouring into the pan, since I knew that that there should be leftover batter). 

Well, the cake proved itself to be quite expansive under heat and it grew very well out of its 9" x 1.5" pan.

I had to bake it for an extra 15 minutes so that it was done in the middle. 

The next unforeseen task was to trim off all the overcooked (read: burnt) cake edges to render a palatable, frostable cake.

My pour-over liquid went off without incident (dos of the tres leches plus heavy cream & Grand Marnier), although at the time I suspected I poured over too much...

And then there was the royal icing, to be used to ice the cake with an office-specific lettering tribute. I found that food coloring is messy.

Finally, piping bag was ready, and cake plus icing bag went into the fridge overnight. To be continued...

Chicken Stock

Yesterday's second culinary endeavor was homemade chicken stock. I had some leftover veggies that needed to be used up, and a conversation with a friend reminded me about making stock as well as that I had a frozen chicken spine somewhere in the back of my freezer.

So the night before I pulled the spine out and let it thaw. After grabbing some thyme from my herb "garden", I was ready to chop things up and dumped everything into my largest pot.

Documented progress at the 4 hour mark:

I ended up adding about 4 cups more water during the six hour simmerdown. The strained result was 2 plastic containers of stock, and a salvaged vegetable side for a future meal :)

The only other time I made chicken stock (maybe 8 months ago), I got some great chicken gravy out of it. This time I think I will make a soup...

French Toast & Scrambled Eggs

This morning I was successful in using up  the rest of my eggs, which were about to go bad. I can't remember ever making French toast before, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Thanks to Alton Brown for his recipe which I kinda followed.

My O'Keefe & Merritt old school stove isn't great with medium-low heat, so I struggled to keep the butter in the pan from smoking as I cooked these slices up. The results were a little underwhelming, probably because I didn't use half & half (used 1% milk instead) and only used maybe half of the prescribed amount of honey for the F toast batter.

Also, this took longer than I thought it would... future F toast meals will probably be consumed in restaurants -- I shall focus my cooking efforts elsewhere :)

F Toast & Scrambled Eggs: cooked and consumed.

Milanesa & Sauteed Brussel Sprouts

I've had some boneless skinless chicken breasts in my fridge most all week, and the orig plan for tonight was a stuffed chik breast meal. Wasn't feeling that ambitious after all, so I made a milanesa out of one of the BSCBs.

My side veg was already planned: brussel sprouts sautéed in a compound butter I made last wknd.

This ended up being a pretty quick meal, surprisingly. The sprouts could've used a lil more butter, but some sea salt and fresh ground black pepper gave them a nice extra note. And I can't go wrong with a milanesa...

Bon Appetit!

Coq Au Vin

Good lawd was this good!!! I've wanted to try coq au vin in a restaurant for forever, but the opportunity never really presented itself. Finally decided to try a credible recipe out myself. Chicken thighs were on sale, and with culinary curiosity piqued: good things were to ensue.

The thighs kicked it in a red wine, carrots, onions, celery & peppercorn bath for 24 hrs

A day later, purple chicken! And this is what it sounds like, when doves cry...

I braised the hell out of them thighs. Booter 'n aisle helped me braise. Then, everything got thrown together again for a 1.5 hr Dutch oven encounter.

In the meantime, I cooked down some lardons (pancetta), then 1/2 lb of mushrooms.

The end result? Coq au vin, with buttered noodles on the side. Thanks to Anthony Bourdain for the recipe. I skipped the pearl onions (pearl onions were $4 for a small bag!), but otherwise followed the recipe fairly consistently (although I just used chicken thighs; Bourdain called for use of a whole chicken ). 

Looking forward to my leftovers... I can truly say this is one of the best things I've ever cooked on my own.

Not the first thing I've ever cooked...

So.  I decided to create a blog to document the things I cook/bake/otherwise make for my own consumption (and sometimes others, ha). I've enjoyed cooking for most of my life, but have just recently made a decidedly more deliberate attempt to try new things in the kitchen. 

Last night I revisited my Bolognese sauce recipe, which I hadn't made in probably about a year? It was a recipe I lifted from a Bon Appetit mag and tweaked a bit to make it my own. This time I omitted the pancetta, but used dry white wine AND milk. I need to refine the milk component -- that seemed to be the one misstep. Although the end product turned out just fine, and I will be having a few leftovers meals out of what remains.

I wasn't motivated to boil the pappardelle pasta after all my bolognese efforts, so I sliced up a baguette and spooned the sauce over the bread.