Dave's Turkey Burger Chili

So this adventure comes from a failure that I experienced, but didn't write about.  My friend Shelly let me try some turkey burger chili that her husband Dave had made, and I really liked it.  I asked Shelly to get the recipe for me, and it seemed fool proof - ground turkey, beans, tomato sauce and chili powder, who can screw that up right?  Turns out that I can. And I did.  I ended up with way too much meat in relation to the all the other ingredients, the chili was way too thick (I like thick chili, but this was ridiculous), and it wasn't spicy enough.  It wasn't supposed to be super spicy, but even my mom said it wasn't spicy enough, and she's the one who can't handle spicy food.
The chili was good, but I knew I could do much, much better, I just needed to figure out how to do it so that it wasn't too meaty or too thick, and was more spicy, but not too spicy.  Easy right?
When I started thinking about trying again, I thought about what I like when I eat chili, and I like sweet and heat.  I like a little sweetness in chili, and I like heat, but not overpowering heat.  That's what I wanted to add to Dave's chili, a little bit of sweetness, and something that would add heat (not slap you in the face heat, but heat that you can feel on your tongue after you swallow - after burn).  
I started with the tomato sauce in the slow cooker, added some chopped onions and a little bit of minced garlic, and then added some brown sugar for the sweetness.  I cooked the ground turkey, added that, and then added kidney and black beans.  For the heat, I added a small can of diced green chilies - they were mild, just enough heat that you could tell they were there.  Then I just let it all party in the slow cooker for a few hours.
Much as I hate to say it, I failed at this chili again.  I did manage to avoid the mistakes from the first time - I used about half as much meat, the moisture from the slow cooker kept it from being too thick, and I used more chili powder along with the green chilies, which, I think, made the heat level just about perfect.  What was my new mistake, you ask?  Too much sugar - the chili was too sweet.  I actually liked it, and so did my dad, but nobody else did, so I have to chalk this one up as a failure.  Nobody else finished theirs, and I'm pretty sure Andy only took a couple of bites and then made something else to eat for herself. It's ok though - I'm not giving up.  I will not let this disservice to Dave's chili stand!  I'll try again, next time with a lot less sugar.  There's a balance between the heat and the sweet, I just have to find it.  Stay tuned 'til next time!

Chicken and Spinach Penne

I'm a big fan of pasta, but I don't ever really make a lot of pasta dishes that don't come out of the freezer or start with a mix, so I decided to try making a dish from scratch just using stuff that we already had in the house (using what's available - how's that for ingenuity Iron Chef America?).
I knew I wanted to use chicken, so I sauteed some strips of chicken breast in some olive oil while I figured out what else I wanted to add to my dish.  I can't make my own pasta (yet), but we had some penne noodles, so I decided to use those (it was either that or spaghetti).  My family really likes pasta with alfredo sauce, so I tried making my own.  I just cooked some minced garlic in butter, then added cream, parmesean cheese, and a little parsley.  Not exactly a traditional alfredo, but a white sauce with enough flavor to fool people into thinking it might be. :)
I didn't want just chicken and sauce though, so I looked in the freezer and found some frozen spinach, which I love, and I added some of that to the sauce once it had started bubbling.  I added the pasta to the sauce without cooking it first, which was a bit of a mistake.  The pasta did cook through, but it took a while, and I think it would have gone faster if I had pre-cooked the pasta for a few minutes before adding everything all together.
I also sauteed some mushrooms to go on top of the pasta - I would have just added them in, but not everyone likes them, so I kept them separate.  It turned out really well - I liked it, and I'm pretty sure everybody else did to (there weren't any leftovers, a good sign right?), so I'm calling it a success.  After this, I think I'd really like to try making a homemade red (tomato) sauce to go with some pasta.  An adventure for another day? I think so.  Stay tuned!

Banana Chocolate Chip Pancakes

One of my family's favorite things is breakfast for dinner.  We have it every once in a while - bacon, sausage, eggs, pancakes, etc. But I've been thinking to myself - we almost never have this kind of breakfast for breakfast - it's always been cold cereal, toast, or maybe a frozen waffle in the morning for us.  I decided I wanted to make my family a big, delicious breakfast for breakfast, so I invited everyone over and decided to make it a cooking adventure.
I don't like pancakes - I don't know why and I've never been able to explain it satisfactorily to anyone who can't believe that someone wouldn't like pancakes, so I thought maybe I should try flavoring them with something that would make them taste different (better).  I found a recipe for banana chocolate chip pancakes, and since I have five nieces and nephews who like pancakes, why not make something that's a little adventure for them too?
I just made a normal pancake batter from a mix and then added smashed bananas and chocolate chips to it and cooked them on a griddle (I'm using griddles a lot lately, have you noticed?).  Most everybody put syrup on their pancakes, but I decided to try peanut butter on mine because I really like peanut butter and bananas.
They turned out to be really good - the first thing I noticed is that they're a lot more dense than normal pancakes - probably because of the bananas.  I really like them, the different flavors did make them taste delicious.
I also tried another recipe I've never made before - home fries.  You know those potatoes that you get in restaurants instead of hash browns that are just potato chunks that are really crispy?  Yeah those.  I love them - I've always wanted to make them.  Turns out they're super easy - you just coat them with olive oil and a couple of spices and then bake them until they're crispy delicious. Since I managed to make the home fries (which I love) and the pancakes (which I didn't hate) without any major issues - I'm calling this one a success. Oh, and they fact that my nieces and nephews all liked the pancakes too doesn't hurt. :) Stay tuned!

Chicken Fajita Burgers

Believe it or not, I have never tried anything with ground chicken in it. I'm not a big fan of ground beef, so I guess I figured I wouldn't like any sort of ground meat.  Well, it turns out that I really do like ground chicken (and ground turkey) a lot more than I like ground beef.  As you can probably guess, I don't like hamburgers, and so, by association, I have never tried a ground chicken burger.
I will admit, that was a BIG mistake.  I made chicken burgers today, and they were awesome!  I had come across a recipe for chicken burgers that are seasoned like fajitas, and since I love fajitas, I wanted to try them.  Basically, I seasoned the chicken with fajita-type spices - chili powder, cumin, a little bit of pepper - made it into patties and cooked them on a griddle.  I wanted to grill them, but the ground chicken patties weren't really firm enough and I was afraid they would just fall through the bars of the grill, so griddle it was.  I think I overcooked them - I'm paranoid about under cooked poultry, so I was determined to cook them until the meat thermometer read a safe temperature.  A mistake on my part, but the topping brought back a lot of the moisture.
Once the patties were cooked, I just put them on a bun and topped them with sauteed onions and red and green peppers, just like you would with fajitas.  I didn't even put anything like mayo or ketchup on mine - the peppers and onions made it moist enough that I didn't have to.  They were cooked to the point where they were mostly soft, but still a little crunchy, which is how I like them.
Overall, I would call this one a success, even though I overcooked the burgers.  I thought they were good, and I will definitely make these again.  Stay tuned for my next adventure!

Stuffed French Toast

So Mother's Day this year gave me the opportunity to try making something I've always wanted to try: stuffed french toast!  We usually make my mom breakfast in bed, but she never lasts very long, she always gets up before the cooking is done.  So instead of getting up at a ridiculous hour to cook, and since both of my sisters are mothers as well, I invited everyone over for a Mother's Day brunch.  Of course the star was the french toast.  
It wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be, I just had to be really careful when I was slicing an opening into the bread.  I figured that it would be easier to make it with Texas style bread, and I was right about that.  I just cut an opening in the bottom of each slice of bread that reached to the middle.  Then I used a pastry bag to pipe in the 'stuffing' - it was a mixture of cream cheese and powdered sugar to sweeten it.  Then it's just like normal french toast - dip it in eggs and cook on a griddle until it's browned on both sides.
It turned out to be really good - the recipe called for the bread to be dipped in crushed corn flakes after being dipped in the eggs, but I forgot about that part until I was ready to cook, so mine didn't get the extra coating.  I thought it turned out delicious even though I left out an ingredient, but I can see how the corn flakes would give it an extra texture.  I'll have to remember to use them next time. :)  I call this one a definite success.  On to more cooking adventures!  Stay tuned!

Chocolate Bread Pudding

Ok, so I've been avoiding making a dessert because I already know I can do it - I've been trying to stay out of my wheelhouse so to speak. Then I figured, if I tried making something I didn't think I would like, it was still a cooking adventure, right? My game, my rules. :) Now, I am not a fan of soggy bread - I will eat a french dip, but I have to be able to control the moisture level - if it's too soggy I won't eat it. Anyway, I like to watch the Food Network (surprise!), and one of the desserts that always seems to go over really well is bread pudding. It always looks delicious, and I figured, why not?
Well, I'll tell you why not. The bread was soggy. I actually found a recipe that sounded really good - the custard the was poured over the bread had cocoa mixed in and there were chocolate chips mixed in as well. As far as that goes, it was tasty, but I couldn't get past the soggy bread. It was baked in a 13x9 pan, so there was quite a bit of it, and the bread on the top was crunchy and tasted really good, but the bread on the bottom was still pretty soggy.
I was talking to my Grandma about this particular problem and she told me that if you add raisins to bread pudding they soak up the extra moisture so that the bread isn't soggy - that would have been nice to know from the Food Network. Maybe I'll try it again and use rasins next time.
For now, I'm chalking this one up as a failure, partly because the bread was soggy, but mostly because after I tried it and found the bread was soggy, no one else would try it (they all feel the same way I do about soggy bread). So not only did I fail, there was a ton of left over bread pudding that won't be eaten. That alone = fail. Oh well, on to the next adventure! Stay tuned!

Shrimp Satay with Peanut Sauce

This month's cooking adventure was Thai food - I've always wanted to try it just because I'm fascinated by some of the techniques they use. I really want to try making pad thai because it looks so delicious, but I decided to go with something that was relatively easy (less possibility of catastrophic failure), and made shrimp satay with peanut sauce, and I also made a vegetable and noodle stir fry to go along with it. Now, I am not a fan of Asian food, I never really have been, but I went to an Oriental restaurant the last time I was in Salt Lake (I don't remember the name, I'm sure my sisters know it) and it was...not so bad. I decided that if I could tolerate someone else cooking it for me, I could at least give it a shot myself, this is supposed to be a cooking adventure after all.


The shrimp satay was pretty easy, it's just shrimp mixed with some turmeric, coriander, sugar, salt and cream, and then fried until the shrimp are cooked through. I must have written part of the recipe down wrong because I could tell right after I started cooking it that there was too much liquid - I tried draining some of it off, and it helped a little, but the pictures I looked at showed the shrimp as being pretty crispy, and mine were most definitely not. They still tasted good though! I was worried about it being too spicy (mom), but there wasn't that much heat to them.


The peanut sauce, on the other hand, was super spicy. I knew that going in though, because the recipe calls for Thai red curry paste and I know enough about oriental cooking to know that their sauces are usually pretty hot stuff. I also made a point to taste all of my ingredients by themselves (including the dry spices, blech!) before cooking with them just to get an idea of their taste. I've never had a peanut sauce with a meat dish, and I think that's what I was most looking forward to - I wasn't disappointed, the shrimp and peanut sauce together was awesome. After a few bites of that sauce though, my head felt like it was on fire!


I also made a veggie and chow mien noodle stir fry just to add some more textures and tastes to the meal. It's the first time I've ever used a wok (sweet!) and they turned out ok. It was just some red peppers, onions, and snow peas (I also hate peas, but I made myself eat a couple) fried in sesame oil, but they were good too. I would have mixed everything together, but I didn't want to drench everything in the peanut sauce - I think that it was better to let everyone control the amount of heat they were getting, plus I wanted to try the shrimp plain instead of mixed together with everything.

I'm pretty happy with my meal overall. Once again, the sauce was the star of the show - at least I know I'm good at making sauces. :) I'm still set on trying to make pad thai someday, for now, I'll keep thinking about what to make for next month's cooking adventure. Stay tuned!