Cooking adventures! Part One

Part One, that is, because I'll probably have more. It's the first one I've posted, but not actually the first one that's actually happened.

(The last was a delicious pasta dish I proceeded not to improve on the next three times I made it because it was so good, and the first was a delicious stir fry which I only got up the confidence to make after I asked someone (Asian, no less) if he knew how to make stir-fry, and he looked at me like I was insane and told me that was like asking him if he knew how to dance or write. The answer was obviously yes because he was physically capable of holding a pencil and not crippled in the legs. Boyfriend of mine, lovely man that he is, confirmed to me that it was delicious, but I have trouble justifying making it because it requires so many different kinds of VEGGIES. I love veggies, but they are pricey and go bad...Tangent over, sorry. It's 6 am and I've yet to sleep. On to adventures!)


This is why it's an adventure: I'm terrible at cooking, and right now I'm being guided by a mother who only ever made bland food around me (she told me years later that it was because it was all my brother would eat, and he'd smother it in soy sauce, but I regret that I never got to experience the full range of her cooking potential) and my best friend, you know who you are, who is an AMAZING and not-at-all-bland cook, who kindly typed out for me a bunch of recipes in small words like "fry" instead of the many ways to say "fry" that would freak me out, like "pan-sear". What a sweet-heart that girl is. I'm also living in a spare room in a house that happens to have anything you could possibly need in a kitchen, if you're willing to hunt for it and hopefully what you're looking for isn't perishable.

But it's giving me confidence, and, as we know, necessity is the mother of invention. I invented good chicken today.

The problem was, I didn't think ahead, so I didn't get any ingredients for anything SPECIFIC...nor did I leave my pre-cut chicken breasts to defrost all day. This led to a hard frozen chunk of multiple chicken strips with separator sheets embedded in it that I only vaguely knew how to defrost using a microwave. I did that, and I think it was reasonably successful. The only problem was that apparently there was still a lot of moisture in it, so when I tried to "pan-sear" it, it all melted into puddles and just sort of boiled my chicken. It wasn't pan-fried, it was boiled chicken.

Have you ever had boiled chicken? It's about the most bland thing in the world. And I hate bland food. It's not that I can't stomach it, necessarily, but I have trouble making it REACH the point of my stomach. The effort of stuffing it into my mouth, going through the motions of chewing it while allowing it in all its awfulness to come in contact with my tongue, is almost too much for me to bear. As you can see, I didn't have fun eating my mother's food, since while my brother only wanted bland food, that was something that I could barely get myself to live on...and when I had to eat something as bland as boiled chicken, my solution was to SMOTHER it with Laurie's Seasoned Salt - known in my family as Magic Seasoning and rightfully so. In fact, that was my solution with bland veggies, eggs...pretty much anything that didn't have enough flavor for me, which was all of my mother's cooking. Magic Seasoning was to me what soy sauce was to my brother, I suppose, except it's not that I liked the taste as much as it was better than the alternative. But enough of that.

I smelled that boiled chicken as it boiled in my pan, and I knew I couldn't eat it. I would try and try and kick myself for it but I would eat it a piece at a time until it would go bad, grimacing the whole time and then I would just expect it to be so awful that I wouldn't notice when it went bad and then it would make me sick and it would kill me, and therefore I would not win this torturous battle. I already knew I would lose a confrontation with bland food. Drastic measures became necessary, before it was too late!

It's worthwhile to note that of all seasonings, Magic Seasoning is the ONE we don't seem to have in this house. Honestly I don't know that I could even think of another one that isn't here, and a lot of the ones that are here, I hadn't heard of before I took a spice inventory. So, my drastic measures ended up being: open jars and sniff everything, and add whatever smells like what you intend for this meal. And however good it smells, Leo, don't add chili powder because you WILL regret it (I can't handle spices/the sandwich I was making was intended to be Italian-style).

Which ended up being liberal amounts each of garlic powder, coriander (what the heck is coriander?) and - wait for it - chardonnay.

Yes, I live in a house with a bunch of grad students. Yes, there is liquor on the liquor shelf, but there is also wine in the fridge and it is ACTUALLY for cooking. It makes me want to never go back to living with undergrads.

Garlic powder, coriander and chardonnay. One of those things I hadn't even HEARD of before I put it in my meal. I'm secretly hoping that not knowing what I'm doing will give me some advantage, like Denna's music in the Kingkiller Chronicles (READ IT), it will make me really creative because I can trample over all sorts of established boundaries and be the Queen of Something for adding coriander and chardonnay and garlic simultaneously to chicken.

Sorry if I sound a little melodramatic, I've been reading too much hyperbole and a half.

The problem with this theory, of course, is that "established boundaries" in cooking, I'm pretty sure, are made up just to be broken. If you've ever watched a cooking show you know that established traditions are not exactly in vogue. So until I start making my own green-onion-flavored ice cream in pretentious little not-nearly-enough-ice-cream-balls, I'm still out of my league.

But, despite getting burned (again!) by hot oil, I didn't end up with any large welts this time! That's definitely an improvement.


So I guess for the time being, along with my posts about jewelry trials and tribulations (I made something awesome! Pictures up soon!) I'll succumb to that temptation that bloggers seemingly all run up against, the temptation to post recipes. My excuse is that since I'm so terrible at cooking, anything I post will be helpful to other people who are terrible at cooking, and who are as afraid as I am before each and every one of these cooking ventures...rest assured, my friends, you can be completely incompetent and still make this stuff.

And a note on the pepper: Like I said, I didn't buy ingredients for anything specific. Realizing that I like Italian food more than anything, I bought a bunch of things that could easily be used in some meal or another, like pesto, pasta, and a couple of pricier things like sundried tomatoes and fresh mozzarella that I proceeded not to regret at all because I rarely much enjoy eating and they make getting sustenance a lot more fun...after I learned to roast peppers, I put red peppers on my list of things to buy, even though they're veggies and go bad, because I've discovered that if I make Italian food at least once a week (and I am likely to) I can probably find somewhere to put roasted red peppers, and you can keep them and put them in a sandwich with practically anything whether meat or veggie or tuna salad, so there's no disadvantage in keeping them around. That's why I had a red pepper, though it may seem like a strange thing to have.


Today's meal: Italian Chicken Pesto Sandwich...so good I ate one and a half, and only another half because we ran out of bread.
Chicken strips, A single red pepper, pesto, bread, fresh mozzarella cheese (my splurge and vice)

Take some chicken. Defrost it. Cut it up into chunks the size of which you'd want to eat in a sandwich. Put it in a hot pan with oil in it and let it turn white and knobby and rubbery and weird. Poke it a little.

Put whatever you can find in this chicken that doesn't say "Mexican Blend" on it and doesn't smell like lobster bisque. In my case, sprinkle garlic powder and coriander on it - not too much but enough that you can see it on the chicken. Stir it around lots, especially if the water's all evaporated. Add a decent splash of chardonnay and if you can't smell it after stirring that in, add some more.

Stir it around until the water is all gone, and you've got a little yellow crusting on the outside of your chicken, (that's how I know it's done, at least...and if you break a piece open with a spatula or something it should look like chicken and not like raw meat, and separate cleanly) and then turn off the heat.

I only know how to do this part with a gas stove, so bear with me - but if you don't have one of those, google how to roast red peppers and there's some other versions I believe. If it's gas, just turn it on and put the pepper on the cooktop right above the flame. Turn it when the skin turns black. When it's black all over, take it off, put it in a tupperware container or bag for five minutes to let it "sweat" (don't ask me what that does, I just follow wikihow) and then take it out and cut it up. The skin comes right off. I messed this up the first time I did it, so learn from my mistake and wait until it's ALL black. Only the black parts are roasted, and only there will the skin come off easily. If you stop it too early you have parts of a pepper that aren't roasted and that's no fun because the skin doesn't want to separate and ugh fresh pepper taste and blah. Just give it enough time. Chop it up and now you've got your roasted red peppers.

Spread your pesto on both slices of your bread. Assemble sandwich from those components you've assembled. It should be delicious and if it's not, well, it's on you, because mine sure was.

Anyway, perhaps that will help someone out someday. Soon maybe I'll post the components of that awesome pasta recipe. The stir-fry was pretty uneventful except, uhh, marinade your chicken and tofu for a little while and you won't regret it. I also recommend Trader Joe's Island Soyaki sauce because Trader Joe's is the closest store to my house and it does well. I can't speak for any other kind of sauce.


Also: pro-tip for getting enough protein when you don't even eat enough in the first place and don't eat red meat: add chicken sausage to everything. They sell lots of kinds at Trader Joe's and they've got lots of protein and it makes you feel slightly better about your diet because now it has something meaty in it, even if you're not a meat person (I'm not either). But recently I added "smoked apple chardonnay" chicken sausage to an Italian dish, and then shortly thereafter, mango chicken sausage to a cheese-and-broccoli dish, and they both were excellent and not too overpowering and fit surprisingly well. So that's my advice.

Wish me luck on my grand adventures of life-without-dining-hall. And I hope this makes someone look back with nostalgia on her first "place", and think...I remember when stir fry was intimidating. Ahh, those days.