Scratch-made Shake-and-bake

Here is a great success story in my efforts to try and get my kids to eat the food that I make. 

Most of us remember that old commercial. "It's Shake and Bake - and I helped!" Well, in my search for potential low-cost high-reward meals that my children will eat, my wife suggested we try shake and bake chicken. I certainly did not want to buy the branded box of stuff to try to avoid the high sodium count, so I decided to make my own. It was nice and easy, and once everything was cooked up was super tasty as well. 

The basic recipe is pretty simple, and if you want to change or edit any spices to your taste it is easy to do that. Here it is:

• 2 cup panko bread crumbs
• 1 tbsp canola oil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground pepper
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 tsp thyme

As for everything but the bread crumbs, oil and salt you can adjust to whatever your tastes are. I kept things pretty basic for the first time, but I will certainly adjust things based on what I cook alongside this. This time I made some simple brown rice and mixed in some sautéed carrot, celery, and onion - a blend also referred to as mirepoix. Once you have the mix blended up, put the mix in a large plastic bag, add the chicken one at a time, and shake! 

Once the chicken is coated, put it on a sheet pan in a 400 degree oven and cook until the internal temperature reaches 160 degrees, and then tent the chicken for a good 5-10 minutes. This will allow the chicken to continue to cook up to the 165 degree recommended temperature for chicken. As you can see from the pictures below, both my boys absolutely ate it all up. 

Will you come with me back to your childhood with this easy and tasty meal that - at least in my experience - kids really love?  I strongly recommend that you do. Let me know what you think of this classic preparation in the comments below or on Facebook!

Tamago Gochi

Yo Adrian!

Few things inspire uneasiness in the kitchen like raw egg. We handle them like glass, we clean up after them immediately, and we never ever eat raw eggs. Unless we want to be like Rocky, then we chug 6 of them at 4:30 in the morning before going on a run through Philly. Despite the advances in pasteurization we are still concerned about food poisoning - and we should be. I myself have had it a couple of times, and I will spare you the gory details but suffice to say it was not fun. So you can imagine my discomfort when I came across a Japanese breakfast that made use of a raw egg, and why it took me a few days to get over my fear and try it.

Tamago Gochi is a classic Japanese made - in it's simplest of forms - with only three ingredients: Cooked rice, a raw egg, and soy sauce. It is also simple to prepare. Cook the rice, place about a cup of this rice in a bowl and create a crater in the middle. Crack a raw egg in the crater, and splash with soy sauce to taste. Then take your chopsticks (or fork) and stir the egg into the rice. If you want to be fancy, you can toss some sesame seeds on top. Let's take a moment to contemplate this:

My first tamago gochi

That little egg down in there looks unassuming, but is in fact the engine that makes this little dish run. Consider what happens in the step following this one: That egg is beaten into what amounts to a liquid, and then comes into contact with every side of all of those freshly-cooked rice grains. As you stir, that heat that is stored in the rice permeates the egg, allowing it to become a rich and creamy sauce that is now fully cooked and absolutely delicious. This is similar to what happens in a pasta carbonara, if you are familiar with the dish. In a carbonara the eggs are cooked by the pasta and bacon fat in the pan, and not the rice. Different cuisine, same principle.

Tamago Gochi after stirring

For those of you on the fence about this dish, I heartily suggest you hop over. Sure the grass is the same color, but the tamago gochi is steaming hot, and ready to fill your bellies in the morning. This dish will surprise you in it's humble complexity, and is a great way to start any day - or even to serve at a brunch or lunch table. The egg sauce transforms the rice from humble bland grains into flavorful fuel for your day, and the feeling of cupping the bowl in your hand and eating the rice is second to none.

Will you or won't you? Share your experiences with this my new breakfast favorite in the comments below or on Facebook!

Vacation blueberry corn salad

Since I was at the shore and on vacation with family I didn't have much of a chance to cook last week. While at the house all of the families take turns cooking for the days we are there, so apart from some help procuring knives I didn't have much to do in the afternoons and evenings. On the night that my family cooked, I did make one thing that I did I will share with you, and that is this blueberry corn salad that I made. It was easy to make and everyone really enjoyed it.

I will start with the basic recipe, because I expanded it by about 4 times so that I had enough to feed all of the mouths in our house:

• 6 ears of corn
• 1 cup fresh blueberries
• 1/2 cup red onion (minced)
• 1/4 cup lime juice
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 6-8 leaves basil
• 1 tbsp honey
• salt and pepper to taste

Since I had a grill available I did grill the corn, though you could easily boil the corn if that is how you like it. This gives me the opportunity to share a great trick for getting the corn off the cob once you have it cooked and cooled enough to handle. Get a large bowl and invert a small bowl inside of it. Stand the ear of corn up on the bottom of the small bowl and slice down with a good knife. The corn will fall off into the large bowl and not go all over the place as it would if you just did it on a cutting board, and the inverted bowl keeps your hands and knife out of the large mass of corn that is already cut. It may not be super handy for one or two, but when you are cutting down 24 ears of corn like I was it is a necessary trick. 

Once you have the corn cut all that is left is some basic salad assembly. Put the cut corn, onion, and blueberries in a large bowl. Cut the basil into a chiffonade and add to the bowl. Next mix the honey, lime juice, and olive oil in a small bowl and whisk until combined, and pour over the salad to dress, and then salt and pepper to taste. 

If you're not sure about a chiffonade, it sounds fancy but is super easy. Take the basil (or mint or other large leaved herb) and make a small stack - no more than 6-8 leaves. Then take these leaves and roll them longwise into a tight roll, then run your knife through the roll. What you end up with is crosswise cuts of herb that make a great visual component to a salad, and a nice garnish too if you want to use the herb as a garnish. 

Cutting a basil chiffonade

Once you have all of that done all there is left to do is enjoy it! We served this as a salad to accompany our "seafood feast" of fresh fish and other seafood that is cooked by my family. My Dad does a wonderful job directing all of the cooking and everyone always looks forward to our meal each year. There really is nothing like fresh-caught seafood at the beach. What will you serve this salad with? Let me know in the comments below or on Facebook!

Pioneer Biscuit update

About a month ago I posted about my Pioneer Evening, where I made a pair of recipes from Ree Drummond. I loved the pot roast recipe that I got out of that, but the biscuits left definite room for improvement. Yesterday we hosted some friends for breakfast, and it seemed like the right time to give those biscuits another shot.

Well, another try was made and this time they ended up much more successful than the prior attempt. I made one change to the recipe and used a combination of bacon fat and shortening instead of butter, and I heated the oven to 425 degrees instead of 475 degrees and watched the biscuits until they were done. They did take a little bit longer to bake, but not so much longer that it would have thrown anything off. It took them about 12 minutes instead of 8-10 like the recipe says. 

The biscuits were soft and flavorful, probably owing to the majority of bacon fat that was used instead of butter. I did also sprinkle in a little thyme and some onion powder to add some additional flavor to the mix. Add these biscuits to a breakfast with scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon, mimosas, and some fresh fruit and you definitely have yourself a winner!

Thanks for sticking it out until I had a chance to try these biscuits again - if was definitely worth the wait!

Is it really vacation if you bring your kids?

Apologies for the several-day hiatus from the blog, but I have only been doing this for a few months now and I was not sure how to get ready to really keep up a solid momentum of posts while away on vacation. However, sitting here pondering a few things - mostly revolving around my children - I really realized something. These week-long vacations are not much fun with really young kids around.

Don't get me wrong - I love my kids. But it is hard enough to get them to go to sleep at a reasonable time at home, let alone in a house with 20 other people. They want to stay up later, they try to get away with things more, they push boundaries - how kids do. It's just way more frustrating when all you want to do is go sit on the beach with a good book and relax and you have to worry about the 1-year old's diaper status and the 6-year old running off into the street because he sees his big cousins doing it and thinks he should be able to do it too. Dinners are cooked by committee and it is not always easy to find things that picky eaters will eat, so meal times can be rough. Then there is the general over-tired feeling that comes from being near the beach and playing in the sun, and we all know how fantastically well-behaved kids are when they are over-tired.


We are not going to stop coming on this trip - it is a family tradition and we would miss it terribly if we would not come, as we have some years. I would miss seeing my nieces, nephews, brother, sister, cousins, aunts, uncles, and other family members for this week-long family reunion. Our family would miss the beach, as this is about the only time we get to spend down the shore in a summer. It takes some getting used to - this whole vacation with kids thing. By the end of this week I think I will have it just about figured out - which means that next year it will be completely different all over again.

I guess that's the beach for you - the only constant is the water and change. Tides ebb and flow, sand washes in and is washed out my storms, grasses grow and dunes enlarge, and always and constant is the pounding surf. Somehow it is like having children. Children will always be there - their moods will ebb and flow, they will eat and grow larger and more capable and more independent. I guess the point I am trying to make is that no matter how hot or bothersome the sand is, no matter how many times the seagull swoops down and steals your granola bar, and no matter how many times you thought you reapplied sunscreen but still ended up burned anyway you should be thankful you have the opportunity to be at the beach.  Just as I should be thankful for the opportunity to have children. Having them a the beach and getting off of their routines and schedules is not the greatest, but watching my son play in the surf and his brother building and demolishing and then rebuilding and then re-demolishing sand castles with his older cousin is the point of it all. So I think the answer is yes - it is a vacation if you bring your kids - because bringing your kids is the point of the vacation. It's just up to the grown-ups to try and remember that from our own childhoods.

I have earned...one half portion

OK, I admit it. I have been slacking a little lately. I think the heat must be getting to me. Which is clearly no excuse if you make your living scavenging around inside the guts of a Imperial Star Destroyer for spare parts just so you can eat a meager ration. If you haven't see Star Wars Episode 7 yet (you need to get on that if you haven't) I am not going to reveal much about the plot of the movie here so no need for spoiler alert warning. One thing I found cool is that Star Wars actually released a recipe that goes along with food that is consumed by one of the characters on screen. The character Rey eats a bread ration that she makes by rehydrating a packet that is given to her by her boss. Now you too can have this bread in your own home!

(Before I give you your portion for reading this blog entry, I must give a shout out to my friend Erik Meyer who gifted me with my first portion of this bread. He has a blog too - you should go check it out at The Fine Art of Listening.)

Now - the portion bread:

• 1/2 tsp vegetable oil
• 4 tbsp cake flour
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp matcha powder
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp whole milk
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

To make and distribute, mix the flour, sugar, matcha powder and baking powder and give out in small bags, and make sure to include the instructions below as well as to make sure they add the wet ingredients as well. 

To make the bread, grease a coffee mug with the oil, mix all the ingredients together in the mug and microwave on high for 45 seconds. It won't look EXACTLY like the movie, but you will get close. Now you have a snack to munch on while you watch The Force Awakens! 

You have seen it, right?

How do you top that?

So I don't have much to say about things today, except that fruit goes great with ice cream. There you have it - no fabulous tips, no great recipe. Just restating the obvious fact that fresh fruit and ice cream were made to go together.

How do YOU fruit and ice cream? Do you specifically pick out fruits to go with the ice cream, or do you start with the fruit and then pick the ice cream? My house tends to go seasonal with the fruits, and simple with the ice creams. The picture to the left is peaches, plums, and cherries on vanilla ice cream. We don't tend to go super crazy picking out ice cream flavors and mostly stick to the basics - chocolate, vanilla, maybe some salted caramel or cookies and cream if we are feeling extra fancy.

So do you go for the creamsicle and toss some orange supremes on vanilla? Perhaps you like to go whole hog and do it up with a banana split, or maybe you like to be more playful, and top some chocolate ice cream with strawberries? Will you dare to be like me tonight and combine the chocolate ice cream with blueberries for a rich dark taste? The combinations and flavors are as endless as your imagination. What are some of the pairings you like to sit down with? Let me know in the comments below or on Facebook!

So who was "Lorraine" anyway?

Last night, in an attempt to try to use up eggs before we head off on vacation net week, I made a really fantastic quiche. I love my recipe for quiche, since it bakes up super fluffy and doesn't use a lot of strange ingredients. It is also not super complicated. The egg filling is straightforward, and it is easily customized to whatever ingredients you happen to have on hand. I even make the crust from scratch, so I don't have to worry about going out and buying a pie crust!

So let's start from the bottom up, because if you don't have a good crust you don't have a good quiche. I make my crust from scratch, and the recipe and method are super easy. In a medium bowl, mix 1 1/4 cups of AP flour and 1/4 tsp salt and stir to combine. Into this add one stick of cold butter, cut into very small chunks. Mix this together, making sure to incorporate all of the butter into the flour. At this point the dough should not be moist, and you should not see any chunks of butter. Slowly add cold water to the bowl, about 1 tbsp at a time. Be very careful not to add too much water - you only need enough to get the dough to come together into a ball, not to become wet and loose. Wrap the ball of dough in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 4 hours, though overnight is best. Roll out on a floured surface when ready to use - this will make one 9" pie crust with enough to have some leftover scraps.

Now let's move onto the quiche. For the filling, you will mix together 1/2 cup of milk and 1/2 cup of mayonnaise in a bowl, whisk together until it is smooth. Into this beat 4 large eggs until the mixture, and this is the custard base for your filling. Now, for any vegetation or anything else, you want to keep yourself to about 2 1/2 cups total, except for cheese. The cheese will melt in, so it won't take up a lot of volume, but with anything else you want to limit the size. I use about 8-10 ounces of cheese, generally cheddar. Pretty much anything can go in. Mushrooms, zucchini, peppers, ham, onion, spinach, and a lot of other things can go in. I made a classic recipe referred to as quiche Lorraine. This is a reference to a classic recipe that comes from the Lorraine region of France that was traditionally made with a salt-cured pork. Modern quiche lorraine uses bacon instead of the pork, and more often than not also includes wilted spinach. For this part of the meal, I cut up the bacon (about 6-7 slices) into strips and cooked them in a pan, then once they were cooked up I removed the bacon with a slotted spoon and then added in the spinach to wilt it in the bacon fat.

Once everything is assembled in the pie plate cover it with foil and pop it in a 400 degree oven on a cookie tray for about 40-45 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 10-15 minutes until the top is browned and the custard is set. Let the quiche cool and continue to set for about 10 minutes, then cut and serve. What do you like to put in your quiche? Let me know in the comments below or on Facebook!

Succulent Squash Pasta Toss

I must once again thank my friend Leni for the influx of magazines. Recently BAMBI came home with 4 or 5 different magazines, and then proceeded to methodically start looking through them for recipes she wanted me to make for her. I am not sure how many she has earmarked for me, but I am sure that it will take me quite a few weeks to get through everything. I don't think I can manage a new recipe every day, and I also still need to produce meals that my kids will eat. Today's dinner recipe came from the July issue of "Cooking Light" magazine.

This Basil Squash and Tomato pasta toss was bright, full of flavor, and easy to make. I was even able to convince my oldest son to help me with some of the prep work on the dish, though I think the big attraction to that was him being allowed to hold one of my sharp knives. I will say that he did a reasonable job cutting up my summer squash for me, and stayed very safe while holding my 6" utility knife. I WAS hoping that by enlisting his help with the cutting of the ingredients I would be able to get him to taste the finished dish. While he did eat most of it, he still stayed well away from pretty much anything that was not pasta.

The thing that really made this dish good - for me - was the parmesan cheese. I normally think of parmesan cheese in something really heavy, like on a big pile of pasta with red sauce, in an alfredo with shrimp, or - perhaps my personal favorite - melted in a mushroom risotto. The thing about all of these dishes is that they are really heavy, wintry dishes. I was expecting a dish with as much parmesan as was called for to be a lot heaver than this was. The sauce was fresh and airy, the cheese added the right amount of umami to the dish, and the rest of the ingredients were light as a feather mixed in with the pasta. I will say that I used a whole box (12 ounces) of rotini pasta - rather than the 8oz that was called for in the recipe, so I used a little bit more cooking liquid and a little bit more parmesan than was in the recipe, but it all worked out well in the end.

Basil squash and tomato pasta toss paired very nicely with a shandy. 

So this was tonight's dinner - keep an eye out for more magazine-inspired dinner menus in the weeks to come. I am sure this meal will not be the last one from this latest batch of magazines. Where do you get your inspiration for new dinners? Blogs? Websites? Email newsletters from recipe sites? Let me know how you find new meals in the comments below or on Facebook!

Creative infusions

Summer is here and there is a danger lurking for all of us - dehydration. Many people probably are dehydrated most of the summer, but it is especially dangerous on those super hot days when you don't even have to move around outside to start sweating. If you are outside and you notice you are thirsty, you are probably already dehydrated. The best thing to drink for dehydration is water but let's face it - water is kind of boring. Thankfully there is a simple way to combat plain boring water if you plan ahead a little bit.

Mint-infused water

Infused water is a simple yet effective method of adding flavor to water without adding a lot of calories - if at all. All it takes is a little planning and some simple ingredients. Ultimately the limit to flavor is your imagination, but there are some things that work better than others. Using fresh ingredients is best, whether they be a fruit, a herb, or a vegetable. I also find that a combination of flavors produces the best results, and I find that the best ones are combinations of produce and herb. Some of my favorite pairings are blueberry-ginger, cucumber-mint, strawberry-basil, and blueberry-mint. Mint and basil work pretty well just on their own - the oils in the plant infuse into the water quite easily, and produce what basically amounts to a tea with no heat and minimal effort.

To infuse water, the method is simple. Just take the vessel of water, add the ingredients to be infused, and let the water sit in the fridge overnight. It really is just that simple. Some ingredients - like mint - can add a lot of flavor in a short time, so you may want to infuse the water and then strain it so that the flavor remains mild. If you are using a fruit or vegetable, make sure you cut it up to expose the flesh of the produce. If you are using a small fruit like blueberry you will want to mash them slightly to expose the flesh of the fruit. If you are using fresh herbs, make sure to mash them slightly, crush them, or tear them to start the infusion. 

Blueberry-ginger infused water

Aside from allowing you to be creative, this is a great way to make sure you and your family drink enough water. There is no size limit to your container, so you can infuse amounts of water starting as small as one glass to one gallon jugs to a whole multi-gallon serving vessel. Restaurants understand this principle - often times they will give you a glass of water with a lemon wedge in it! 

What do you infuse your water with? Let me know in the comments below or on Facebook!

A quick tip for using onions

In my endeavors to try to have more cold or room temperature meals this time of year, I eventually run across recipes which use raw onion. It is great in a coleslaw, in a black bean salad, or in a cold veggie salad, but the strong taste is definitely not for everyone. Some people love it, others abhor it, but there is definitely a way to make (mostly) everyone happy.

Firstly, a note about cutting onions. If you just glance at an onion, you might think that chopping across the circles is the best way to cut an onion, but if you look a little closer you will see that the structure of the onion actually runs top to bottom. This means that cutting across the belly of the onion is actually cutting "against the grain" and will release more liquid, which will result in more tears. The best way to cut slivers of onion is to chop off the top and bottom of the root, and then cut lengthwise from one side of the onion to the other keeping your knife parallel to the grain of the onion. This will release less moisture, and result in less tears. If you really like to get those nice round circles, you are just going to have try my next tip for dealing with raw onions.

Another tip for serving raw onion is to give it a soak before serving it. Once you have it cut however you want it, give it a quick soak in some warm water for about 5-10 minutes. Giving it the warm water bath will pull out some of the sulfur-containing compounds that irritate the eye and the palate, and give a milder and less acidic taste.

Do you have any other tips for dealing with these veggies? Share in the comments below or on Facebook!

Pita in your pocket

So recently I put together a nice light evening meal, but I'm not really sure what to call it. I was calling it "tapas" but it's not really what this was. It definitely had a theme going with it - Mediterranean flavors going on throughout - but other than that I'm not really sure what to call it. Other than delicious. I made some fresh hummus, which the boys LOVED by the way. I don't think I could have forced them to eat chickpeas by themselves, but grind them up into hummus and they were attacking their bowl with nothing but a spoon. Definite Dad dinner win on that one. Alongside the hummus we had some crudite (celery, peppers, carrots, apples) some homemade pickles, two kinds of olives, some jasmine rice, and a really nice cucumber salad that was a leftover from a dinner out. To hold all of this together I had decided to make some homemade pita bread. I searched around for a decent recipe and found one in the cooking section of New York Times' website, which can be found HERE.

I was expecting a slightly more complex dough, but it was simple enough. It reminded me of a pizza dough, though it was a little drier and had less salt and sugar than my pizza dough does. That being said, the procedure was way more complex, but definitely worth it. I ended up using my round baking stone to cook them in the oven - which worked out pretty well. The oven was hot and there was a lot of in and out, so if you're thinking of doing this on a hot summer afternoon I would suggest that you either plan to do it in the morning or the night before.

 As for creating perfectly round pitas with fantastic pockets I didn't do particularly well there either, but I really wasn't too upset about it. I kind of liked that they were a little misshapen - really gave them a homemade feeling, you know? And - let's face it - the taste and smell are the ultimate test of any food, and these passed with flying colors. Tender warm pita bread fresh from the oven and covered in hummus or carrying a bite of cucumber salad to my mouth was amazing. The only thing I will say is that I tried to follow the recipe as exactly as I was able to. It really was a lot of work to make the rounds, bake them off, and then make the next one, but if you are really wanting to get that fresh pita taste I would absolutely recommend this. My guess is that with this being the first time I did this it was a little difficult for me to get into any kind of rhythm since I was constantly looking at the directions and second-guessing myself. If I make these again, I will write another post to let you know how Pita 2 goes.

Peek-a-boo, I see you!

Speaking of hummus and all those other goodies, what is your favorite thing to eat with pita bread? Do you prefer a curry, or are you more of a falafel and salad kind of person? Let me know in the comments below or on Facebook!