My Adventures in Cooking

The best Roasted Chicken you will ever make!

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:08:03 -0800

I’m always getting grief from Austin about my addiction to Youtube. Now, I get even more grief from him because I have found a chef (Chef John) that makes videos and awesome recipes and I watch them ALL! My skills have improved and by following his suggestions, I have made some spectacular dishes that I would have never tried before unless I was feeling extra creative!

While I don’t have all the ingredients he used, I did what I would do any other time. I substituted and it came out perfect! Yummy is the only word I can think of to describe it! I’ve never made Roasted Chicken before. Thought it was too much hassle and bone in chicken has never been my favorite! But Chef John has totally changed my outlook on cooking! Way more exciting now! :) The trick with this one is making a compound butter. Which means mixing your butter with the herbs. Makes a world of a difference! While he used fresh herbs, I had to use dried herbs. Next I am going to get the fresh ones!

Also, like everything I make, you can substitute for what you have on hand or your favorite seasonings.

Isn’t it just BEAUTIFUL!?

Preheat Oven to 400

Ingredients:

4-5 pound chicken

2/3 C room temp butter

2 teaspoons each Rosemary, Italian Seasonings and Lemon Zest.

3 Cloves crushed Garlic

Salt and pepper

Whole lemon and Juice.

An extra 2 teaspoons of rosemary and Italian seasonings for the cavity

Olive oil or just regular oil.

First off, wash and get some of the extra fat off the chicken and remove the giblets and extras in the cavity. Place on paper towels and pat dry. Use a spatula or your hands and gently separate the skin from the breasts, starting at the back going towards the neck. Don’t go all the way down because you will want a seal so the butter doesn’t run out!

Now it’s time to make the butter. In a bowl, mix together the butter, rosemary, Italian seasonings, crushed garlic, lemon zest and 1 teaspoon each salt and fresh cracked pepper. Combined very well and divide in half.

Take half of the butter and place it under the skin on either side of the chicken. make sure you kind of massage it to cover the whole breast. Now, use the remaining butter on the other side. Oil the WHOLE outside of the chicken, under legs and wings and the back. Season with salt and pepper or whatever you like really!

Now you have to salt the cavity! Very important! Place the remaining seasoning in the cavity along with the juice of one lemon. Go ahead and add the lemon in. The only thing that can happen is more flavor! Place in a roasting pan and into a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes. After the 45 minutes, take it out and baste with the drippings. Place back in the oven, basting every 15 minutes until the chicken reads 160-165 degrees. In total, it should take about 1 hour and 20 minutes. Remove and let sit for 10 minutes before serving!

I hope you like it! It is a great dish! I made a delicious Jicama salad to go with it. I need to make it again to make sure the dressing is right before I post it. Till then, Eat well, live merry and enjoy life as it comes at you.

Tara

Baked French Toast.

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:05:23 -0800

Now this one is pretty easy and another thing that is great for using up left overs. This time I had a bag of mangos that was just begging to become breakfast! You really can make this with anything you have on hand and sounds good. if you like raisins or other dried fruit go ahead and let your creativity run wild.

Every one is going to buy different brands or ingredients and thats ok. Just play around with how many eggs you need and depending on your bread how much milk or syrup it will absorb.

Enjoy! :D

Day old bread loaf

1c Milk or cream

4 eggs

1/3c Syrup

1/3 c Honey

1 tablespoon Cinnamon

And a small bag of your choice of frozen fruit

Cube up your day old bread into 1 inch cubes and place in a greased baking dish. I used a 9x13 glass.

Beat your eggs and milk together. add your syrup, honey and cinnamon and frozen fruit.

Poor your egg mixture over your bread and make sure all the bread is soaking up the mixture. Cover the dish with foil and place in your fridge over night.

In the morning, take your creation out and bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes or until golden brown bread tips and all the egg and milk has been cooked.

Let cool 5 minutes and cut into squares and serve with your favorite toppings. And a tall glass of cold milk!

Cooking in General.

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 16:57:58 -0800

It has recently occurred to me that the reason I haven’t posted anything since the beginning is my style of cooking. I get bored eating the same thing all the time and am always adding something different, or more of one thing and less than another. And its kind of hard for me to put up a blog when it worked for me but might not work for someone else. So please bare with me while I get used to this.

Tomorrow morning I am waking up and making Baked French Toast with Peaches! I will post pictures and what I did to make it. On a good note, I at least have a good camera to take the picture with!

Taco Baked Potatoes!

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:58:16 -0700

When I think of baked potatoes, I think of butter, sour cream and some salt and pepper. There is nothing wrong with that except it can get kind of boring. So when I seen a recipe for taco baked potatoes, I was all over it! I’m not quite sure why I have never done something like this because I LOVE POTATOES! Fried, baked, mashed, souped, boiled, stewed, in a chowder. And the possibilities are endless.

For this recipe, i let my imagination go to work. I added some brown gravy powder to the beef mix and used Zoi greek yogurt in place for sour cream. The only thing i sort of messed up on was poking holes in the potatoes before baking them so they were kinda dry when they finished. But thats ok. what is a mistake if not a learning process.

So here is my finished Taco Baked Potatoes. Hope you enjoy it! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear them! Enjoy!

Taco Baked Potatoes.

4 large Russet potatoes

2 tablespoons oil

Sea salt.

Preheat oven to 350˚ Wash and scrub the potatoes and pat them dry with paper towels. Using a fork, poke the potatoes 8-12 times. place in a bowl and rub each liberally with oil then sprinkle with salt. Place on center rack in oven and let them bake for 1 hour. The skin should be crisp and the insides soft. Caution! They will be HOT!

Meanwhile…

1 half white onion chopped

1 pound ground beef

2/3 package of taco seasoning.

1 large tablespoon brown gravy mix

3 tablespoons ketchup

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1/2 C water

Add chopped onions and ground beef to a heated frying pan and brown of medium heat until meat is cooked though and onions are soft. Add in the taco seasoning, brown gravy mix, ketchup, soy sauce and water. mix well.

Now its time to get the toppings ready! This is pretty much where you can get creative. below is a list of some toppings I think would be awesome.

Grated cheddar cheese or any cheese you like.

White onion chopped

Green onions

Sour cream or Greek Yogurt plain.

Salsa

Guacamole

Crushed tortilla chips

Tomatoes

Bacon

Olives

Now comes the fun part! Assembling the Taco Baked Potatoes! Place a potato on a plate and using a fork, poke a line of holes down the middle and open you potato by pushing in on both ends. It may release steam.

Add your sauces first the top with the meat. from then on, you can be creative and create your dream baked potato taco! Just don’t for get to add the cheese on top! :)

Well for my first food blog, I dont think I did that bad! My laptop battery is dying so i will have to finishes this up. If I remember anything I left out, I will be sure to comment it. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy!

WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:57:38 -0700

France.