Baked Barbecue Bird

This is the eleventh entry in this blog, and you might be wondering why it is that I've managed to make over 10 posts in a cooking blog without ever using an oven.  The fact is that I'm moderately afraid of ovens.  I don't think that this is an entirely unreasonable fear, given the fact that it's a box of hot that burns more people than would admit.  Well, this  entry finally breaks beyond my semi-rational fears and embraces the oven.  This is largely the result of wanting to cook some chicken smothered in BBQ sauce rather than some move to prove that I'm over my fear, or some statement about ovens and how they are a tool rather than the last resort of a fool.  

Anyhoo, now that I'm done justifying my partially legitimate fear of ovens, it's time to move on to the grocery shopping trip that resulted in this story.  As I was going back and forth through the aisles of my local grocery store a bottle of barbecue sauce caught my eye.  It was a bottle of Mad Dog & Merill's Spicy BBQ sauce.  Given the fact that I enjoy a good barbecue sauce (this bottle makes for number 3 in my fridge at the moment) as well as an enjoyment of some heat led to me opting to pick up this sauce.  After I decided that the sauce was worth a purchase I felt obliged to justify this purchase, so I wound up picking up a pair of boneless skinless chicken legs as well.

Ingredients:

1 Package of Boneless Skinless Chicken Legs

1/3-1/2 Bottle MDM Spicy BBQ Sauce

1 Box Southwest Style Scalloped Potatoes

1 tblspoon margirine

.5 cup milk

1/2 Bag Green Beans (Frozen)

Chili powder

Cumin

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350

Grease 2 pans

Add Chicken and BBQ Sauce in Pan A and mix together

Stir Potatoes and milk and butter in Pan B

Put both pans in oven and wait 30 min

Remove bag of green beans from freezer

Realize that said bag has been frozen for far too long and is not more ice than bean

Begin the process of thawing slash randomly stabbing the ice apart

Season the bejeezus out of the beans on account of them being over frozen

Begin cooking beans

Turn oven up for the last 5 minutes

This worked out by and large the way that I'd been hoping that it would.  The chicken was flavorful and juicy.  The BBQ sauce had some kick to it, but wasn't quite as hot as I'd been hoping that it would be.  The scalloped potatoes actually had more heat to them.  The only part of this that didn't work was the beans  This was partially due to them being overly frozen and partially due to them being overly seasoned.  Definitely a meal worth doing again, but with better vegetables.

Gochujang Cones

This is a meal I'd had the general idea about for a while.  I'd initially been planning on using a buffalo sauce, but upon the realization that I had the bottle of gochujang sauce in my fridge I opted to mix things up a bit.  In the end, I'm glad I did, because this worked out extremely well.

Ingredients:

1 Package of Large Shrimp

1 Bag of Frozen Pearl Onions

1 Bottle of Gochujang Sauce (most of it anyways)

1 Bag of Frozen Chopped Broccoli

Some Rice (I believe I used 2/3 cups of rice and 4/3 cups of water)

Instructions:

Begin cooking rice because it's a super slow process

Deshell shrimp (or buy deshelled shrimp if you want to skip this)

Begin pan frying said shrimp

Start cooking the broccoli on the stove

Add Pearl Onions to the pan and continue cooking

Add Gochujang sauce to the pan and continue cooking

Also add gochujang sauce to the broccoli, because green greens are overrated

Cook until everything looks done

Put the shrimp on the plate so they lay flat

Balance the pearl onions onto the shrimp

Add rice and broccoli to the plate

Spoon some excess pearl onions onto said rice and broccoli

This turned out extremely well.  I'm not sure if this is due to the gochujang sauce working well with shrimp, or if it's just a sauce that's just pretty dang good.  The amount of effort involved with stacking a pearl onion on top of a shrimp.  Luckily this can be bypassed by just mixing the shrimp, onions, broccoli, and rice together.  Sidenote: this would make one heal of a burrito.  

Just about the only thing I would change about this would be to use larger shrimp.  This is entirely due to the fact that it will make the act of stacking the pearl onions easier.  It will also make the cones look more conish.  But overall it's a recipe that just works.  Onions go with all meats.  I'm pretty sure this is a fact.  If there are any meats that don't mix with onions, please let me know, and I'll immediately put it to the test.

Porkloin Pasta

This is the story of the pork loin that I knew what to do with.  It's a lot less interesting than the pork loin I had to figure out something to do with.  Partially because I knew what I was going to do so there was less making it up as I go along, and partially because what I had planned was super simple.  It's also been about a month since I made this, so I'm a bit hazy on the details.

Ingredients:

1  Roasted Garlic & Herb Marinated Pork Loin

1 Jar Pasta Sauce (I believe what I used was Ragu Hearty Traditional)

Some Spaghetti (I can't remember who much)

Instructions:

Preheat Oven to 375

Put Pork in Oven and Bake for 30m Per Pound (was about 50m for me) {If this seems familiar, it's because it's from the last recipe verbatim}
Cook the spaghetti as per the directions on the box
Heat the sauce in a pot
Cut the pork loin into slices
Layer the pasta, the pork, and the sauce

This turned out basically the way that I thought it would.  It's hard to mess up meat, tomato sauce, and pasta.  I'm sure I could pull it off if I really put my mind to it, and I probably will at some point in the future.  But a garlic and herb pork loin goes hand in hand with an Italian(ish) meal, so this meal was basically in the bag.  It's an easy recipe that I can easily recommend.