Monday, April 19, 2010

Bacon Egg Soup!

Tonight's experiment:

Ingredients:
4-6 slices of bacon diced up
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 onion chopped
3 garlic colves minced
1 tomatoe diced
1 can chicken stock
1 can water
1 lemon quartered
pepper
4 eggs
2 slices provolone cheese


Recipe:

In a medium sauce pan brown bacon, and then place on a plate with paper towel to drain fat. Leave about 1-2 tablespoons of fat in pan. Add olive oil, butter, garlic, and onion and cook down 3-4 minutes over medium heat. After onion is cooked down add diced tomatoe and cook for about a minute. Add in chicken stock, water, drained bacon, lemons, and season with pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove lemons from soup. Crack one egg in a boil and add to soup to poach, about 2-3 minutes. In soup bowl place a slice of provolone cheese. Remove poached egg and place on top of cheese in soup bowl. Continue this with the rest of the eggs, 2 eggs per bowl of soup. Laddle the soup over the eggs and enjoy!

This experiment ended up really yummy! I loved the lemony,creamy, bacony flavor the soup had. I will defenitely be making different variations of this soup!

What is your favorite soup?

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Quick and Simple!

I wasn't planning on grocery shopping till after the wedding, well that is what I told myself. Instead today I found myself at Albertson's hungry and buying way too much food. My mom had been there yesterday and told me about the meat that was on sale, which is probably why I ended up going but instead of buying just meat I bought out the whole store! Trying to decide what kind of meat to make for dinner, I thought I was craving seafood, that is untill I got to the pork and saw the boneless pork ribs! I think I was drooling in the store so boneless pork ribs it was. Along with the pork ribs I had grabbed some asparagus and then I saw it more pork, prosciutto that is! Before I was home I had figured out dinner!

Quick and easy Boneless Pork Ribs

Ingredients:
5 boneless pork ribs (more depending on how many people you are serving)
Steak Seasoning
Extra Virigin Olive Oil
1/2 yellow onion roughly chopped
1 bottle of beer
1 bottle of your favorite bbq sauce

Season the ribs on both sides with the steak seasoning. Coat the bottom of the crock pot with the olive oil and place ribs in also. Add in the onions, beer and then top off with the bbq sauce. Cook on low for 6 hours or high for 4. If you have a temperture gauge on your crock pot you can do 2 hours at about 375 to 400, the longer you can cook the better.

Simple Side: Prosciutto wrapped Asparagus

Ingredients:
1 bunch of asparagus
1 package of prosciutto
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and Pepper

Preheat oven to 375.

Wrap 3 to 4 asparagus with 1-2 slices of prosciutto and place on baking sheet. After all the asparagus is wrapped drizzle with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. Bake for 20 minutes and enjoy!


What are your favorite quick and simple recipes??

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Butter Chicken

Here is the butter chicken recipe:

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken
2 sticks of butter
Salt and Pepper

Preheat oven to 350

In the baking pan place one stick of butter and place in the oven while it pre-heats. Rub the other stick of butter over the chicken and salt and pepper. Once the butter has melted in the pan remove from oven and place chicken in the pan. Cook for about 1 hour - 1 hour and 20 min!


I have done this with chicken breasts also and pork chops! It always turns out amazing!!

Chicken Broccoli Rice Casserole

There is probably about a million different ways to make this casserole. I can think of 5 different ways just off the top of my head. The love for chicken broccoli casserole started back when I was a kid, my mom would make this all of the time for dinner. There was always nothing left of this casserole when my mom made it for dinner and if there was it didn't make it past the second day. Since I started cooking a few years ago one of my favorite things to do is to take the recipe and put a different spin on it, or add different ingredients. My mom's famouse chicken broccoli casserole did not have rice in it, but ever since I started making it I add rice or pasta it just makes it that much better.

Not even thinking about dinner while I was working today I started to smell the aroma of melting butter and it kept getting stronger and stronger. I had to pull myself away from the computer to see what was cooking and there it was, what I call Butter Chicken. Basically baking a chicken in a pan of butter with butter rubbed all over the chicken, oh so good! My mom was making this chicken for her weekend out at the Nascar races, but since the chicken wasn't cooked before they left she told me I could take it. From that moment on I had casseroles running through my head, what was I going to do with this butter chicken?

Finally finshed working, cut up the chicken, and came home just to catch the end of the Rachael Ray Show . Still all I could think about was chicken casseroles. After looking in the pantry I came up with a recipe, now this isn't a hard recipe or a gourmet recipe but it was yummy here it is:

Ingredients:
1 lb shredded chicken (I used the butter chicken)
1 box chicken flavored rice cooked
1 can cream of celery
1 bag frozen broccoli
1/2 a can of chicken stock
1 bag shredded cheese

Preheat oven to 375. Combine chicken, rice, cream of celery, and frozen broccoli and place in an 8x8 baking  sheet. Pour over the chicken stock and top with the cheese. Bake for about 30-40 minutes untill the cheese is bubbly and then enjoy!

What I love about this recipe is switching out the "cream of soup" you could use chicken, mushroom, or potaote!

What is your favorite chicken casserole???

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Potatoe Enchilada Bake!

Finally today I was able to go to a spin class at the gym. It was amazing I probably burned about 600 calories, so in my head I thought I could eat anything today. After eating a healthy breakfast and lunch, all I could think about for dinner is enchiladas!! Well I had already defrosted ground chicken and I had green enchilada sauce in the cabinet but did not have any tortillas. So after thinking about what I could make that would taste something like enchiladas I figured it out, I had potatoes and I could make a casserole with the enchilada sauce and ground chicken! Not to mention I started unpacking all of my presents from my bridal shower and I really wanted to use my new pots and pans. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:
5 potatoes peeled and thinly sliced
1 shallot minced
4 garlic cloves peeled and grated
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 lb ground chicken
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
3-4 sweet peppers (mine were small and different colors yellow, orange, red)
1 can diced tomatoes with green chiles
1 big can green enchilada sauce
4 cups shredded cheese  (I used a mexican mixed cheese)


Preheat oven to 375. 
Keep the sliced potatoes in water so they do not turn pink. In a skillet over medium heat add the extra virgin olive oil, shallots, and garlic. Sautee the shallots and garlic untill they are translucent and then add the ground chicken to the skillet. Add the red pepper flakes and diced up sweet peppers. Cook untill chicken is cooked all the way through. Add the can of tomatoes and green chile to the chicken. In a baking pan pour a little bit of the green enchilada sauce and then a layer of the sliced potatoes. Add half of the chicken mixture on top of the potatoes and then more enchilada sauce and then cheese. Repeat with another layor of potatoes,chicken mixture, enchilada sauce, and cheese. End with another layer of potatoes, enchilada sauce, and then cheese. Bake for 1 hour and enjoy! Well let it cool off a few minutes first!

This was a great dish, although I was hoping mine would have turned out a litte more cheesey it was great. I am pretty sure I ate back all the calories I burned this morning at the spin class!!

Untill next time~!