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.

Mesquite-O Bites

This was not the meal I'd intended to make when I went to the grocery store this afternoon.  However, they had BOGO pork loins, so I bought one, and then I got one.  One of the loins (which is the one that I like to think that I bought) I had an idea of what to do with.   This is not the story of that loin.  This is the story of the gotten loin.  The boughten loin will be dealt with at some point in the future.  When I got back to my apartment, I had 2 meals that I had a rough idea for, a piece of meat with an uncertain future, and some snacks.  So I took the obvious route of combining the meat with the snacks to make an uncertain meal.

Ingredients:

1 Pork Loin Fillet with Slow Smoked Mesquite flavor (Only about a third is used with this batch size)

15 Wheat Thins

Crazy Joe's Mushroom, Onion, and Jalapeno Dip

Hot Sauce(s)

Instructions:

Preheat Oven to 375

Put Pork in Oven and Bake for 30m Per Pound (was about 50m for me)

At ~5min Left, Begin Adding a Thin Spread of the Dip on the Wheat Thins

Remove Loin from Oven

Cut into thick slices

Cut slices into chunks of Wheat Thin comparable size

Add pork to Wheat Thins

Add a dab of hot sauce to the top if so desired

This turned out better than expected.  Though, I s'pose I wasn't really expecting much out of it since I basically threw it all together at the last minute.  The flavors worked well with each other.  I really enjoy the flavor of the MOJ dip (I'd been eating it on carrots while the pork was in the oven), but it's main purpose in this recipe was to act as a binding agent between the wheat thin and the pork.  To that end, it can be replaced with another suitably thick dip, or spread if you either can't find it or would prefer something different.  The hot sauce is another area that can be left to personal taste.  It is by no means necessary, so if you'd rather go milder it works just fine.  As for the hot sauce to use, I tried it with Tapatio, Frank's, and Sriracha, and of the three, I felt that Franks worked the best.

There are a few things that I would do differently.  First, while this is delicious, it's a terrible meal.  It doesn't come close to being anywhere near balanced, and it isn't super filling either.  So, while I'd definitely make these again, it wouldn't be for a snack, but probably for either a snack or a party offering.  Second, I would give the pork an opportunity to dry.  While the fact that it turned out juicy would have been great had I been eating it on it's own, I was eating it on crackers.  While the dip provides a seal against the juices, it isn't perfect and some of the crackers were less crisp than I'd have liked.  The last thing I'd change is to use thinner slices of pork.  While it worked out the way I'd cut it, the bites were a bit on the larger side.  To this end, I might be looking to acquire a mandolin in the near future, because over the course of this blog I'm beginning to realize that I cut overly thick slices.

Craburritos

This is an idea which I had apparently come up with at some point in the past while I was out shopping and had apparently forgotten about somewhere down the line.  I say this because the other day I was gathering up the bags that had accumulated at my door (I tend to set down the bags at my door, then unload the bags from there instead of moving them into the kitchen first, I'm not sure why) and I discovered that one of them wasn't actually empty and in fact contained three cans.  Remembering why I had bought these I made an unplanned trip to the store for tortillas and cheese (and chips, salsa, and hot sauce).

Ingredients:

1 6oz can of crab meat

1 10oz can of diced tomatoes with green chiles

1 15oz can of frijoles cubanos

1/2 cup rice

tortillas

shredded cheese

hot sauce

Instructions:

Add the contents of all the cans to a pan

Stir in rice

Simmer over medium heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally

When enough liquid has evaporated/been absorbed into the rice, reduce heat

Heat an additional 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally until the liquid is gone

Remove from heat

Spread a thin layer of cheese over a tortilla and microwave for 11 seconds

Open the microwave to discover this was not nearly enough time

Microwave for an additional 11 seconds

Scoop a spoonful of the mixture onto the tortilla

Top with hot sauce and wrap

This is a fairly standard burrito recipe.  Meat+tomatoes+beans+rice is a fairly easy burrito filling recipe that I've been eating for years.  This is the first time I've had it with crab though.  In fact, this is the first time that I've cooked with crab.  I've learned that cans of crab meat contain a paper cup thing to contain the crab meat.  I'm not entirely sure why this is a thing, but apparently it is.  

Overall, this worked out fairly well.  The crab was less noticeable than I'd been hoping, so if I try this again I think I'll go with 2 cans of it to see how that goes.  Also, as is apparently my trend with carbs, the rice was a bit harder than I'd been hoping.  I wasn't sure initially if I'd go with it, but when I realized how much liquid there was I realized that need to either add something to wick some of the liquid, cook it longer than I'd normally do in order to evaporate some of the liquid, or drain some of the liquid.  I do think that in the future I'd cook the rice for a bit before starting the main spiel.  One other option I'm considering, that is something that I've had before, is to switch the rice out with Zatarain's Spanish Rice, or something similar.

Buffalo Turkey Alfredo

If you remember back to the previous post, you might recall that I wound up with an extra potato and onion, as well as a gigantic pan I had forgotten to use for cooking large amounts of food.  This post will tell the tale of how I decided to cook the excess in the excessively large pan.

This is also the first post of a recipe that I refer to as "Fridge Podge".  You might be asking what fridge podge is, which is reasonable, because I'm pretty sure it isn't actually a word.  A fridge podge is a hodge podge of food thrown together from whatever you happen to have in your fridge.  Or, as my mother prefers to call it, "cooking with what you already have".  This recipe isn't technically a pure fridge podge, since I wound up picking up an onion and a pepper specifically for this while I was buying light bulbs, but the overall idea, and the majority of the ingredients were already owned and waiting for a good usage.

Ingredients:

1 lb ground turkey

1 onion

1 bell pepper

2 potatoes

8(ish) oz buffalo wing sauce

1 jar Ragu Roasted Garlic Parmesan Cheese Creation sauce

Instructions:

Dice onion

Begin browning turkey and onion

Forget about the pepper that is half the reason for the recipe

Chop potatoes and add to pan

Continue browning

Stir in buffalo wing sauce

Begin adding the "Alfredo" sauce to the pan

Remember the pepper

Finish stirring the sauce into the mix

Hastily cut the pepper and stir it into the pan

Simmer, covered, for several minutes

This mostly turned out really well.  The buffalo sauce and the pasta sauce combined considerably better than I'd been expecting them to.  The buffalo complements the creamier sauce without overpowering it, resulting in a sauce that is more than the sum of it's parts.  I suspect that this will work with any cream based pasta sauces, and I suspect I'll be experimenting with this in the future.  Unfortunately, I'd put the onions on too late in the process, so they wound up being a bit firmer than I'd intended.

There are a few things I'd do differently in the future.  First I'd begin cooking the potatoes at the same time as I started the onions and ground meat.  The potatoes being a bit softer would help the overall quality of the recipe.  The other thing I'd do is use a green pepper rather than an orange one.  This has nothing to do with the relative flavor of the peppers in respect to each other and everything to do with the aesthetics of the dish.  I'm not usually one to care for such things, but since the buffalo sauce causes everything else in the dish to be uniformly orange, a smidge of contrasting colors could really give the dish some extra pop.

In addition to the more important changes listed above, the ground turkey could be substituted with any other ground meat, or even chunks of meat.  The Roasted Garlic Parmesan sauce could also be replaced with virtually any cream based pasta sauce depending on availability and personal preference.  I'm sure I'll be experimenting with the possibilities in the days to come.

The Drowning Meal vs The Goopy Inferno

For roughly the past week and a half I've been jonesing for some curry.  This started last Saturday when one of the dishes at a wedding I was at was some Thai red curry.  I'd wanted to get more of the curry, but I felt like if I tried to eat anything more I would explode, so I opted against seconds.  I would have made some sooner, but on Tuesday I was invited over to help polish of leftovers from said wedding and I'd built up my hopes for more of the curry.  Upon arrival and discovery that the curry hadn't made it that long I realized I needed to take matters into my own hands.  Luckily I still had a box of S&B Golden Curry sauce mix left over from when I'd made curry chicken dip earlier in the summer.  

This meal almost didn't make it.  Between some overzealous shopping, some inattentive shopping, and some poor pan picks, the curry almost turned out both too thick and too thin.  A couple of pieces of advice before the recipe proper: If you have to ask if you can get more ingredients into the pan, the answer is no.  If you're looking to simmer something, be sure that said thing is in the water and the water doesn't come to the top of the pan.  Split chicken breasts contain both skin and bones.  If you put different amounts of water into two 

pans, you should also put different amounts of sauce mixes into the pans, particularly if it contains a thickening agent.  This recipe is intended to be served over rice, but I've yet to figure out a good way to do rice quickly and consistently, so if you have a preferred method, use it.

Ingredients:

2-3 lbs chicken breast

1 8.4 oz package of S&B Golden Curry Sauce Mix (pick heat level based on personal preference/gastrointestinal strength) NOTE: contains MSG, so if you think that bothers you either suck it up or skip this recipe

2 onions

2 bell peppers

20ish baby carrots

1 package sliced mushrooms

1 potato

6 cups of water

Instructions:

Oil Pan(s)

Cut chicken into chunks (this is considerably easier if you buy boneless skinless chicken breasts rather than split chicken breasts)

Dice onions (or long dice if you're lazy like me)

Begin pan frying the chicken and onions while you finish crying

Stir occasionally while preparing carrots and peppers

Cut baby carrots either in half or into thirds based on size and add to holding bowl(s)

Cut peppers in half, then into strips and add to holding bowl(s)

When onions have browned (or bowl{s} are ready) stir contents of bowl(s) into the pan(s)

Add water to pan(s)

Bring pan(s) to a simmer, then simmer for 5 minutes while preparing mushrooms and potatoes

Rinse mushrooms

Clean and dice potato

Stir mushrooms and potatoes into pan(s)

Simmer an additional 10 minutes

Remove from heat and stir in curry mix until dissolved

Simmer for 5 minutes (I assume this means to return to heat, so that's what I did)

If you're rocking two pans, compare the consistency of the mix between the two pans.  If there's a noticeable difference, consider doing what I did and combining the pans into one pot

As you might be able to tell from my pre-recipe tips, a lot of things didn't go correctly for this meal.  While I was shopping I got a little ahead of myself and wound up picking up one more potato and pepper than I wound up using (I have no idea yet how I'm going to utilize both of these into one meal yet but I'm sure I'll figure something out) and split chicken breasts instead of boneless, skinless chicken breasts.  On the bright side I now know something to look for while shopping, in addition to the fact that deboning chicken breasts before cooking them is more effort than I want to put for for a meal.

After my questionable shopping choices I proceeded to make matters worse with my pan choices and my refusal to compensate for the pans I had picked.  I own a fairly large frying pan, that could have probably fit either most, or all of these ingredients into it.  However, I'd forgotten about this pan until I was searching for lids to use on the pans I'd picked (you're supposed to cover the pan while simmering.  I'd opted not to both because I didn't have correct sized lids and because I wanted to get rid of some water).  Since I didn't realize I had that pan (which does have a lid) I instead decided to split the recipe in half and do half in my deeper pan (which will now be referred to as lefty) and my shallower pan (which will now be referred to as righty).  The problem with this is that lefty has more volume than righty, and this fact will come center stage shortly.

After doing a terrible job of deboning and chunking the chicken breasts and adding the chicken and onions to the pans I saw that one pan had more room left (heh) than the other, so I allocated more carrots and peppers for lefty than for righty.  Unfortunately, when I went to divvy up water between the two pans I didn't take the volume discrepancy into account initially.  So I attempted to put 3 cups of water into righty, but I realized that this wasn't going to work and put some of what was intended for righty into lefty, and scooped some more out to ensure a safer simmer level.

At this point lefty has more vegetables, water, and empty space than righty.  So when I add the potatoes and mushrooms I put more into lefty, which makes sense.  Unfortunately, the 8.4 oz packages of curry are separated into two individual trays.  So I put one tray into each pan, totally forgetting the discrepancy I'd been building in every step since step 2.  This resulted in lefty being both thinner in texture and lighter in color than righty.  In fact, looking at them in this entry's initial picture, they hardly seem like they have all of the same ingredients in them.

At this point I knew that something had to be done.  One pan had far too much water and was nearly drowning in excess fluids while the other was overly thick and would have had the texture of eating sludge, which is exactly as unappetizing as it sounds.  Luckily, the solution to this conundrum was present on my stove.  By pouring both pans into my pot, then stirring the mixture together and allowing it to use the residual heat from the pans to accelerate the merging of the two curries I was able to end with a single, delicious curry.