Quick and Healthy Desert

When I say that this desert is healthy, I am comparing it to all of the other deserts that are really fattening. It isn't that fattening, since it only consists of two basic ingredients.

1. Bananas
2. Milk

I was in the mood for something sweet, but I didn't want to eat something that would consist of a lot of calories. I had seen from a website that this lady had mashed up some bananas and created it into a tasty desert. So I decided to try that.

I got one full banana and peeled it. Then I sliced the banana up into parts and placed them into a Ziploc sealed bag. I tossed the bag into the freezer and came back to the kitchen two hours later. At that time, the bananas should have been frozen enough to make into a tasty treat. There could be multiple ways to take the next step. There was a possibilty of putting the bananas into the blender, or using one of those electrical whisks to mix it up. I couldn't find my blender, so I used the whisk.

I emptied the bananas into the bowl and mixed them up in the bowl. It took a while to mix the bananas into a paste like mixture. I added about a tablespoon of milk into it to make it easier to blend. I poured the mixture into a small bowl and then put it into the freezer for a bit longer. I would suggest to put it in longer than two hours before hand, especially since my freezer isn't good.

Once I waited another 30 minutes, it was done. I squeezed some whip cream onto the top of it and sprinkled some cinnamon over the cream. There are other things that could be put on top, like syrup or nuts.

Easter Dinner Dissapointment

Over Easter, I went over to my grandmothers house to eat Easter dinner. Unfortunately, I did not really get to make anything spectacular. I was planning on making a quiche with bacon and cheese, but my mom didn't want me to make anything. So then I had to ask my grandmother if I could do anything at all. I ended up frying potatoes and making baked beans, bushes to be specific. It did taste delicious, but I wanted to do more.

I had to move on Friday over spring break, so packing the house was very stressful. The only food I had in the house for two was bacon, eggs and Orange juice. I don't think I've ever eaten so much bacon in my life. I'm only complaining a little bit, because my tastes buds were getting bored.

The most recent food item I made was yesterday. I cook almost everyday, since my moms goes to work and doesn't come home until later. I can wait sometimes, but I get very hungry. I seared chickens in a pan and made a cheesy baked Potatoe. See, I don't like a plain baked potatoes. So what I do is that I cut up the potatoes and mix butter and cheese together. It taste really good. It is an easy and fatty recipe.

What am I planning next? I am not super sure, but I want to create something complicated. I have  made a lot of simple dishes and only a couple of complex ones. I can not wait to see if this ends out great or ends in a disaster!

A Fabulous Chicken Parm!

I wanted to make a new dish, something that could potentially be more complicated. Although, it was pretty simply at the end. This dish is great for the family and tastes so good! The ingredients are simple along with the dish itself, and the flavors would fill your mouth with joy!

The first step to complete for the chicken parmesan is the sauce. It's a basic tomato sauce, but there are different ingredients than for a usual tomato sauce. I chopped up a yellow onion and some garlic. I placed the onion into an oil filled pan and seared it until the pieces were golden brown. Then I tossed the garlic in. I cooked that for about two minutes and then sprinkled over the red pepper flakes into the pan too. I added a can of tomato sauce after, being careful, so it wouldn't explode everywhere. I added in some balsamic vinegar, about a tablespoon, and then stirred for a minute. I covered up the pan and let it cook for about ten minutes. Then, once cooked, I scattered the basil leaves on top of the sauce and stirred it into the sauce.

The next part was the chicken! I set up a system for breading the chicken. I put the flour, bread crumbs, and eggs into separate dishes. I seasoned them each with salt and pepper. I then used a meat tenderizer and flattened the chickens out, so they would cook equally through. I patted each meat into flour, then into the egg, making sure all of the excess egg is off and then rub it in the breadcrumbs. After that, spread some oil onto a pan and seared the chickens. When the breadcrumbs were cooked to a golden brown, I put them into a baking dish with the sauce and tossed some slices of fresh mozzarella cheese on it. I made sure to sprinkle some pepper over the cheese. I had preheated the oven before to 350 and then waited about 10-15 for everything to cook. I was very pleased!

The cheese made it look a little messy, and maybe I do need to work on my plating!

 

This picture is better. I tried  really hard with the plating; I think I did an alright job.

 

So, my next step! My mentor for cooking is obviously a chef, but I want to contact him and maybe even get to visit where he works. It would be amazing if he could at all give me some tips to cook and maybe even let me see a professional kitchen. I would love to see an actual chef's kitchen. I may die! 

 

I've also been wanting to cook something that would push me out of my comfort zone. Right now I am not sure what I want to do, but I will be finding out soon. This weekend is a busy weekend, but my mother said I could cook something for Easter. I would love to show my family how good of a cook I really am!

Turkey Burger Success!

I was very happy how this meal came out to be! I had saw a recipe that was called Roasted Garlic Turkey Burgers on an app called Relish Recipe Dish. The turkeys burgers consisted of roasted garlic, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, breadcrumbs, 2 stems of thyme, half an egg, and also a layer of cheese to place on top.

It took about a little over an hour to cook. The time to roast the garlic took the longest. I cut the top of the garlic head off and drizzled olive oil over the top of it. Then I placed it into aluminum foil, closed it up, and then let it cook in the oven for over forty minutes until it was golden brown. The garlic cloves are supposed to have a squishy texture, and added so much delicious flavor to it. All of the ingredients got mixed in with the turkey meat, and then rolled into patties.

Then while the burgers were cooking, I decided to add a side of french fries. I simply used a bag of frozen french fries, but I had to do more than that. I got a plastic bag, put some extra virgin olive oil in, tossed the fries into the bag, closed the back, and shook the bag until the oil was spread over the fries. Than I added salt, pepper, and paprika into the bag and shook it again. I dumped the fries onto the cooking pan and placed it into the oven. It tasted pretty good, all of the seasonings made the fries taste fresher and not have a frozen french fry taste.

The burgers came out really tasty. The turkey patty temperature would be 160 degrees, or around there. The squish of the roasted garlic, made the burgers have a nice texture and a burst of flavor. The thyme and sauces also added a sweet flavor. Then I placed the burgers onto an amazing ciabatta bread. It's a nice Italian white bread and tastes so good.

I was very proud of my burgers! The only thing I would change was only adding one slice of cheese on top, because the double slice made it too cheesy. And the fries could have been fresher, but it was really excellent! My mother tried it and she said she liked it very much too! So, I am very happy!

The Perfect Steak

Valentines Day has passed, so that means I had finally made my steaks! My sister came home for the weekend and we decided to cook for ourselves. We went to the store and bought to filet mignons; I was pretty satisfied with the price.

The process on how to make the perfect steak:

1. Rub salt over the steaks, and then let them sit for a half an hour.
2. After the half an hour is up, wash the salt off the steaks. The salt allows the moisture to soak in, so it will be more flavorful than usual and overall taste much better. I would associate the term brining in with this.
3. Than searing the steaks in oil. I was a little uncertain about this at first, because I didn't want to burn it all and overall ruin the whole steak in the process. I put the steak in the oil and let it sit for about two minutes and then flipped it. I did the same thing on the other side, and then set it aside on a tray to put in the oven.
4. I minced up some garlic cloves, and dropped them into the pan with the oil and steak juices. I put the heat on low and let the sauce cook on its own for a couple of minutes.
5. Earlier on, I set the computer to 350 degrees. I put the steaks in the oven and then after five minutes, poured some of the garlic sauce onto the steak and let it cook more into the oven.
6. I checked every two minutes or so, and put a meat temperature thermometer into it. The correct temperature for a nice medium rare steak would be 130 degrees.
7. Once the steak is at the right temperature, take it out and let it sit for ten minutes. This allows for the juices to compact together and make the steak juicer.

• Brining: "Salt is added to cold water in a container, where the meat is soaked anywhere from 30 minutes to a few days. The amount of time needed to brine depends on the size of the meat" (Wikipedia). 

I was impressed and delighted when I tasted my steak. It came out very nicely, as my sisters did too. The only thing that I think I could have improved on would be that I would have cooked it for a minute less. My sisters steak was rarer than mine, and I would have preferred if mine was like that too. Next time I'll just cook it at a lower temperature, because even if it is under 130, it would still be cooked enough to eat.

I also liked the steak was pretty on the outside. Sometimes when I make food, it is not that appealing to the eye. I would like to work on my style a lot more when it comes to cooking. 

 Two days ago, I had made some cocktail meatballs that I enjoyed very much. I did not take pictures this time of the steps though, which is upsetting... I would probably have to remake them. The meatballs were pretty tasty. The sauce was whiskey mixed with some mustard. It's actually more of a glaze, which I think is better! At first, I thought I wouldn't like this recipe but it turned out to be tasty! 

I really want to make that layered macaroni and cheese too. The problem is that the cheese cost a lot of money, so I would have to be asking my mother about a loan for cooking this. I would soon also like to incorporate turkey burgers into the mix. I really like burgers in the first place, and I want to try something that I haven't before. I've eaten turkey burgers before, but I would like to just make it different this time around instead of the usual condiments on it. 

Messing Up

When I'm cooking, I absolutely hate messing up. A trigger in my brain goes off that I failed, and that I will not be able to do it again. But I think it is significant for all cooks to fail a couple of times, or a lot. If the cook didn't mess up, then they couldn't find the different ways to make it taste better or the correct way to cook it, so the chef wouldn't mess it up again. I know my many weaknesses when it comes to cooking.

Recently, I attempted to make donuts. I poured oil into a pan, and than put it on a medium temperature to slowly heat it up. I made the donut dough with the usual baking ingredients, adding some extra vanilla and cinnamon in it. I always have a bite of the dough, because your baking and the dough is the absolute best part! So, the dough tasted really good, which made me very excited to eat these donuts. The next step was to fry them, and this is where it went wrong. The oil was at the right frying temperature. The way that I had tested it, was that I put the end of a wooden spoon into the oil and it began to bubble around the end. Then I put a single donut in at a time, and cooked it quickly until golden brown. I also used plastic tongs at first (horrible idea, just bends them). I took the doughs out of the oil, and waited a couple of minutes for them to cool off. I took the oil off the stove, because if the oil got a certain temperature to catch on fire. Never put water and burning oil together. Once five minutes have passed, I bit into the donut and it tasted gooey. That means it's really undercooked... :( 

Another one of my failures was that I put way too much garlic salt into my garlic butter sauce. It only needs a slight seasoning of garlic salt, and more on the butter side. It was much better when I did it the second time!

Now, I am also really bad at breading chicken. It's not the technique, it was the breading. The breading I used was under seasoned, and practically tasted like nothing. I was pretty disappointed. I also tried a second time and messed up again, with the fear of over seasoning and making it taste bad. Unfortunately, the chicken's breading was flavorless again. The chicken was delicious though! I'm pretty proud of juiciness of the chicken, and the perfect color of white. (The chicken should never be pink). The next time I am going to bread the chicken will be successful! The chicken had to be at a temperature of 160 to be done. Then I let it sit for ten minutes so the juices were compacted in the chicken, so when I took a bite of it, my mouth would water and my taste buds would be fulfilled. 

This is my breaded pork, where the breading was successfully done. I also made some four cheese pasta next to it. I still have the skin on chicken, because I like the meat like that. It's your choice to take it off. 

Next Recipes

1. I have a delicious pork recipe that I'm going to try soon. My mom's recipe is what I am basing it off, and it's like a Pork Wellington. The pork will be wrapped around Prosciutto and a puff pastry. There will be goat cheese to give it that extra flavor. I don't know what other mixtures would go together yet. I was actually thinking of maybe putting pesto instead of the cheese, because I think that would taste really good together. 
2. My next recipe would be a 5-7 layer mac and cheese. It may be seven or it may be five cheeses. I wasn't sure where I wanted to take it. I feel like the over combination of cheeses may be to strong. I was thinking about searing the ham and bacon with garlic, and then adding it into the mac and cheese. Also, maybe mixing in some breadcrumbs and some hot peppers. 
3. Red Velvet pancakes. I would add some sweet cream cheese sauce and some toasted cinnamon pecans, and that would be a breakfast to enjoy! Another batch of pancakes would be blueberry pancakes with some extra vanilla snuck in, and maybe the same sauce. 

Than of course my birthday is coming up, so I want to make something then too! It may be the mac and cheese recipes, since all of the cheeses make the price go up. I'm hoping to be able to eat the macaroni along with my delicious ice cream cake. 

Valentine's Day Is Coming Up!

Valentine's day is coming up in a little more than two weeks! Of course, my sister and I have reserved for the spot for each other as each others valentines. Usually valentines is based on chocolates, and love, and hugs, and all of that mushy stuff. This year, since I pursued cooking to a higher level, I've decided to create a fabulous dinner for her. My sister also enjoys cooking herself, which means that she wants to help me out. As a cook myself, I don't like to cook with others and I like to do all of the work myself because I feel more accomplished if I do.

My sister was thinking along the lines of a Filet Mignon with Cabernet Reduction sauce. This recipe has a beautiful look to it, as the color of red wine reduction is a pretty dark red.

It would actually be great if I could replicate the picture perfectly. A steel pan is suggested instead of a non-stick pan. The little bits of the steak that sticks to the pan is the foundation of the sauce, and the term is called "fond". The fond would dissolve into the Cabernet Reduction sauce, which is actually called deglazing. When the pan is deglazed that means other ingredients for the steak can be thrown in. 

I've learned about the multiple temperatures in cooking a steak. I prefer steak to medium rare to rare, but I only cook my steaks rare with certain types of steaks. I have found this out by going to multiple restaurants before I started to cook. The most common steak that I found that needed to be rare was a New York Strip Steak. I always order this steak rare, because the medium rare still tastes to dry for me. And for the Filet Mignon, I would have that cooked to medium rare. 

Here's a basic temperature chart for cooking steaks: 

If it's possible to read, it just gives the description of how the steaks are cooked, saying how red and tender they are. I have never cooked any steak to the level of it being blue rare, because I think that is way to undercooked. The blue rare steak practically looks like it came out of the grocery stored, and slightly seared in a pan on the stove. It also really depends on the steaks thickness, because some cook quicker than others. All the temperatures vary a little bit from the chart above, but it's mostly accurate. 

I was happy when I found about the temperature chart. I had no idea about it before, and there's also temperature charts for different types of meats and poultry. My mother actually doesn't use the temperature of the meat at all, but instead slices down the middle of the meat. That is another method to do it, but all of the juices flow out of the steak that way. I have started using a meat temperature thermometer. It was convenient because we already owned one, but no one used it for whatever reason. 

I did actually cook my own steak recently! I was very happy with it. It was a medium rare cooked steak that was drizzled with a garlic butter sauce. At first, I messed up the sauce. It consisted of garlic powder, minced garlic, and butter. It sounds really simple, right? But I didn't have any garlic powder, because the one that was in my spice drawer was two years old! Now, I tried to use the powder at first but I physically could not shake it out of the container. So, as it stuck to the plastic container, I used garlic salt as it's substitute. The only bad part was that I added to much garlic salt, and it was disgustingly salty. The first attempt was a fail, and tasted horrible. Then I redid it, added more butter, and seared the minced garlic in it. The smell is absolutely amazing and lightly salted the sauce with garlic salt. This time it tasted delicious. Then I made a simple packet of couscous, and placed the steak over it. I poured the sauce over the steak and the couscous. I was proud of this recipe :) 

I'm not much of a photographer. Next time I am going to try to take a better picture of it, and the sauce went over to the side a little bit. All together it tasted really good. I enjoyed dinner that night very much.

As an improvement, I'm going to cook the sauce correctly and sear the steak in the sauce instead of pouring all of it on the steak. This way it would be more flavorful. I'm really excited for Valentine's Day this year (as I usually am not), but I can't wait to cook for my sister! I'm going to upload the pictures on my blog that day or after it. 

Two Simple Recipes

I've only started the project a little bit over the break, creating two easy recipes. I was thinking about creating simple ones first, and then slowly transforming into complicated dishes. The hard part of this process for me is improvisation, as I need to learn more about the specifics of cooking. 

1. The first recipe that I created was really simple. I was aiming for the breakfast area, I must have been in the mood, and then I thought, let's combine a meat and squeeze in a soft taste into it. I bought some croissant dough and sausages. Unfortunately, I used frozen sausages instead of searing them in a pan. Cooking them on the stove would taste much better than frozen sausages. This is a simple dish, but there's always a tricky part involved in some type of process. When I placed the sausages and cheese (any is fine, your preference) in the croissant and rolled them up, placed in the oven, baking it was a little difficult. The bottom part of the croissant would burn easily, because of the cheese. I would suggest laying the cheese on top of the other item placed in it. I made sure to get that golden brown color. Overall, it tasted delicious! There are so many possibilities with croissants. I even made a desert out of it, by stuffing marshmallows into it and sprinkling a dash a cinnamon on top of each one. It's quite simple and taste great.

Breakfast Croissants 

 I was thinking about putting the calorie amount, but I am not completely sure yet. 

2. I created another at home recipe. I went to a Chinese restaurant and ordered one of my favorite soups, Egg Drop Soup. I like the gooey texture of it, with the egg whites floating around in the liquid. When I came home from a tiring a day of school, I was starved, since lunch is near noon and I only have a simple bag of chips usually. I'm not usually hungry during the school day, and a lot of the time it motivates me to cook when I get home. What's better than simple ramen? But I was in the mood for more than just ramen. I thought, why not make something like a ramen egg drop soup? So I did! I boiled the noodles, tossed in the egg whites, stirred, shook the chicken seasoning in, and then stirred some more. I saved the egg yolk in a bowl and then slid it into the ramen. I let it boil for less than a minute, to make sure it was cook. I poured it all into a bowl and then stirred it all together to create that gooey, delicious texture. I added a little cilantro on top to make the appearance better, plus add a touch of flavor. 

Ramen Egg Drop Soup

Those are the two recipes I've created over the break. Over course I wanted to cook for Christmas, but my mother decided to take over and didn't want me to "play", even though my food can taste much better. I want to create one or two recipes every week. I was thinking one on the weekend, and another one during the weekdays. It's just that school sometimes makes me very exhausted, and I would be too tired and full of homework to want to cook. 

The type of cooking I want to try really badly is frying something. I have never fried food before. And the type of cooking I am not really looking forward too would be baking. I am not good at baking. I don't burn the cookies or cakes, but they don't taste like I want them too. I've nailed chocolate chip cookies, but that's about it. 

I have a mentor to help me out, but it would be great if I got other's input too. Criticism would be the best way for me to learn! :)