Friday, July 29, 2011

Chap Chae

So, the other day I had a hankering for something Asian. Noodles. Rice. It didn't matter. I knew that I had sweet potato noodles in our pantry, and my co-worker, Hee Joo told me about Chap Chae, a traditional Korean dish. It turned out pretty well....I think!




















Ingredients:

1/2 lb. sweet potato noodles (aka glass noodles)
Sesame Oil
Vegetable Oil
Tamari or Soy Sauce
Onion, sliced
2 tbsp. minced garlic
2 Carrots, cut into matchsticks
1 bag spinach
Hot Chili Paste
2 pork chops, sliced
Sesame Seeds

Directions:

Boil noodles in water for 5 minutes. Drain, stir with sesame oil and a little soy, then set aside. Cut up a little with kitchen shears.

Place pork into a pan and marinate in 1/4 c. soy and 2 tbsp. sesame oil.

In a large pot, heat enough sesame & vegetable oil to cover the bottom of the pan. When shimmering, add onions and , cook until translucent. Add garlic and carrots, and cook for 2 minutes or until fragrant. Add spinach and cook until wilted. Add noodles, and season with soy, sesame oil and hot chili paste to taste. Stir to combine and remove from pan.

Heat enough vegetable and sesame oil to cover pan. Add pork and sauté until browned.

Serve pork on top of noodles. Garnish with sesame seeds.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Fried Chicken for Grandpa

Last weekend I went to West Virginia to visit my grandma and grandpa. I got to cook dinner for my grandpa, who likes good, ol' fashioned country style food! So, I made creamed corn, mashed potatoes, fried chicken and a berry-peach pie. Heaven! Here's the fried chicken recipe:

Ingredients:

3 large chicken breasts
1 quart buttermilk
Salt
Pepper
2 c. flour
1 tbsp. poultry seasoning
2 eggs
1/4 c. vegetable oil

Directions:

1) Season chicken with salt and pepper. Marinate in butter milk for at least 4 hours.
2) Heat oil in cast iron over medium-high heat.
3) Pat chicken dry.
4) Drench in flour, egg, then flour/seasoning salt (add more salt & pepper if desired).
5) Fry in cast iron for 45 minutes, flipping every 15 to avoid burning.
6) Allow to sit for 10 minutes, then serve (with gravy is desired)

Gravy:

Whisk 1 tbsp. flour, 1 c. chicken stock, salt and pepper into leftover pan drippings and simmer. Adjust each ingredient until desired thickness is reached.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Oven Fried Zucchini

This side dish/appetizer is inspired by the fried zucchini at Maggiano's, where my bestie, Regan, had her rehearsal dinner a few weeks ago (hey, girl, hey!). Our entire table was OBSESSED with this zucchini, and I immediately knew that I wanted to try to make it at home. I'm not a huge fan of frying things in oil (except for fried chicken, recipe soon to come), so I tried oven frying it in panko. It turned out well...although you definitely need to eat it with a fork (I don't think you can really get that handheld quality without frying in oil). Here's the recipe!

Ingredients:

2 large zucchini, thinly sliced into ribbons
2 c. panko
1 tsp. sea salt
1 tbsp. pepper
2 tbsp. italian seasoning
1 tbsp. garlic powder
2 eggs, whisked

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 F. Individually, dip zucchini into egg and then into panko, salt, pepper, garlic, italian seasoning mixture, making sure to coat thoroughly. Place each coated piece onto a half baking sheet. After coating every piece, sprinkle remaining coating on top of zucchini. Bake at 400 for 10 minutes, then broil (or bake as high as your oven will go) for 10 minutes. Serve with lemon aioli.

Lemon Aioli

Mix 1 tbsp. mayo, 3 tbsp. lemon juice, 1 tsp. parsley, 1 tsp. garlic powder, salt and pepper until smooth.

Chicken Wrapped in Bacon

Have I blogged this before? I don't know. It doesn't matter, because whatever I may have blogged before was crap compared to the chicken wrapped in bacon that I made tonight. It may be the 2 glasses of wine talking, but this was the BEST version of this dish I have ever made. I made it for John the first time he came over to my apartment for dinner. What better way to lure a man into your clutches, er, I mean, let someone know that you think they're great than to make stuff chicken wrapped in BACON? Vegetarians....sorry 'bout it. Here you go-

Ingredients:

1 LARGE chicken breast, pounded to 1/4 inch thickness
1 /2 package stuffing that took you 5 hours to make and DEFINITELY not the Wegman's brand Chicken flavored stuffing....(make sure you cool it first)
5 piece of bacon

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 350
2) Stuff chicken with stuffing (about 1/2 c.)
3) Wrap bacon pieces around stuffed chicken breast, making sure that entire surface is covered.
4) Place in square baking dish sprayed with olive oil cooking spray.
5) Bake for 30 minutes
6) Broil (or set oven to highest setting) for 5-10 minutes.
7) Remove from oven and let sit for 5 minutes before serving

We found that this made 1 John sized serving, 1 Emily sized serving, and 1 left-over serving.

Enjoy!

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Pesto Pasta

Quickie post about my lunch today. This morning was one of those mornings when you look in the fridge and say "I have NOTHING to eat..." This notion, however, is almost always false. Usually, it just means that we're out of salad fixin's and I start to panic about my lunchtime options. So, here is what I came up with!

Leftover linguini
1 tbsp. prepared pesto
10 sliced green olives
1 diced plum tomato
2 slices cooked bacon, chopped

Mix all together, microwave for 2 minutes, top with parm. SO good, and I ate a tomato. Plus!

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Cooking for Two-Chocolate Spiced Pork Chops

I think that we have been pretty good at the whole "cooking for two" thing. We've been cooking together for about 3 years now, and most of those times were just for the two of us (although sometimes we would cook for his house/my apartment/our families/random strangers). Last night was one of those successful times!


Chocolate Spiced Pork Chops

1 tbsp. brown sugar
1/2 tbsp. italian seasoning
3/4 tsp. cocoa powder
3/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flake
1/4 tsp. cumin
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
2 pork chops
1 tbsp. vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine spices and rub on one side of pork, allowing to sit for at least 5 minutes. Meanwhile, heat oil in cast iron skillet over medium-high heat until glossy. Place pork chops spiced side down on heat and cook for 3 minutes. Meanwhile, rub unspiced side with the remaining mixture. Turn and cook on other side for 3 minutes.

Let sit for 5 minutes before serving. We had this with steamed broccoli and my mom's homemade mac & cheese (which we finished, mom, so get cookin'!) <- she loves this, and we love her!

Thursday, July 7, 2011

We Got Married!

Shocking, I know. Like anyone who reads this blog didn't already know that I was getting married, or that wedding planning consumed my life (in a good way) for the past year! It was well worth it, though. I could not have been happier with the way that the ceremony and the reception went. Of course, I was high off of endorphins and happiness after getting married to my bestie, John!

Isn't he cute? He was playing poker, mind you...not contemplating his future....maybe.
I was the most hardcore wedding planning psycho bride ever (again, in a good way). My Google Reader was filled with blog upon blog of wedding planning ideas, engagement portrait sessions, cakes, favors, dresses...you name it. I probably saw wedding pictures from over 1,000 different weddings over the past year. They actually started repeating themselves on different blogs; "Oh, Simons-McCarthy wedding...stalked it last week." Needless to say, became a little obsessed with the whole wedding planning thing.

These were picked after much deliberation and wedding stalking, I mean, research.
I am SO happy with the way that everything turned out for the wedding, but I did learn that I stressed over a number of things that I ended up not even noticing over the weekend. So, here is a list of things that I learned about the wedding planning process over the past year:

1) Budgeting Is Your Friend

We knew our budget from early on a stuck pretty close to it. The Knot has a really excellent budgeting tool that was quite helpful. We also created spreadsheets for everyone involved in the planning process to keep track of how much was being spent where by whom.

2) Scheduling Is Also Your Friend

We made a "Wedding Weekend Information Packet" about a week before the wedding and emailed it out to the wedding party and families. It had schedules for the day before and day of, contact information, directions, packing lists, and a list of responsibilities for the wedding party. It was super helpful when things got crazy and I couldn't keep track of who was supposed to be where when, and (I hope) made the wedding party more confident in knowing what they were supposed to be doing!

3) Trust Your Vendors

I guess, first, I would say "Choose vendors you can trust". Our photographer and DJ were both friends from college, and I had seen both of their work before, so I knew that I could trust them. I got to know our florist, cake baker, dressmaker and reception site coordinator pretty well, and felt like I could trust them as well. The big thing here is that you just cannot control every little thing that everyone does, and it alleviates so much stress is you can just point your vendors in a general direction and then let them use their expertise to decide on the rest. I have a feel that we avoided a number of headaches by not deciding every single song that would be played or by letting the chef just choose whatever vegetable was freshest the day of the wedding.
Josh, our amazing photographer!

Jeremy, DJ extraordinaire!
4) Roll With The Punches

This, really, is not that hard. I was so happy and having so much fun that I hardly had time to notice anything that might have gone wrong! Sure, maybe my train broke and, ok, maybe I didn't get to eat...but really, it just didn't matter!
Haha...not.
 We were too busy dancing ALL NIGHT LONG to even notice anything that may or may not have gone the way I had planned. Which brings me to my next point:

5) Don't Sweat The Small Stuff

 Here is what I consider to be small stuff: favors, napkin colors, chair covers, ceremony programs, ribbons, candles, hair staying curled, anything to do with the cake, people switching seats, sparklers, rain washing off the car decorations, guest books...pretty much anything that isn't the actual act of you getting married and then celebrating!

This is, really, the only thing I thought about all night.Not cupcake liners, surprisingly.
So, I hope that this might help anyone who is going through wedding planning stress. It was such a fun year, but as soon as I got home I unsubscribed from every wedding planning blog, newsletter and website that I have been studying for the past 13 months. Am I now addicted to HGTV? Yes. But that's another post...