Indian Spice, Oriental Nice

So in addition to the Portobello's cooked tonight, I found some large White Button mushrooms causing trouble in my kitchen. They had to be cooked unless total anarchy break out!

I grabbed my cutting board and quickly severed the stems from the mushrooms by hand, placing the stems on the cutting board and caps to the side. Once this was done, I grabbed one of my kitchen knives and proceeded to chop up the stems into small pieces.

At this point, I grabbed my large saucepan (freshly cleaned for some odd reason?) and lined up the liquid portion of what they will be cooked in...sake, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, lime juice, and a small portion of spicy mustard. This all goes into the pan right as I turned on the burner to just above medium. Add the spices in and stir to make sure it mixed properly. Give it about thirty seconds before next step.

Add the diced up mushroom stems, stir into mixture of spices and such.

Leave the stems alone in there and grab your mushroom caps. Place these all gill side down. Cover saucepan. Proceed to have a drink or water (or something stronger perhaps?) because cooking is hard work!

Ok, your minute is up. Now uncover the mushrooms and flip them over so the gills face upwards. Leave it uncovered and enjoy the aroma fill your kitchen and beyond.

Let them cook this way until they are spongy, then take off to serve. The stems you mix in with the caps either on top of them or to the side, either way they will be tasty.

Spice Mix:
Oriental Hot Mustard Powder
Ground Tumeric Powder
Ground Black Pepper
Curry Powder
Shredded Tarragon Leaves
Smoked Hot Spanish Paprika
Garlic Salt

Doppelbock Portobello's

Tonight brought about another experiment at using beer to pair with food. I chose to use a local beer, Rahr Brewery's The Regulator, which is a Doppelbock.

So I used a mix of spices which mainly consisted of Hot Oriental Mustard Powder, Ground Tumeric, Ground Black Pepper, Garlic Salt, and Smoked Hot Spanish Paprika.

I had a metal mixing bowl filled about 1/2 way with Rahr doppelbock, then put the mushrooms in for about 20 minutes.

After that I started up the burner for my large saucepan. In this went the mushrooms, gill side down, and most of the beer they soaked in, about 1/2 way up on the mushrooms.

Then about 1/2 the spice mix on the mushroom caps.

Wait about 2 minutes, flip mushrooms, then put rest of spice mix on top.

Wait about 2 minutes, they should be close to being done. You can tell this by checking if they are all spongey, if so they are done. If not, keep cooking.

OPTIONAL: the stalks of the mushrooms you can dice up and just add into the mixture. Also, topping with shredded cheese is always a nice way to add a little extra.

Summertime Lunch

So today I decided that my girlfriend needed a tasty lunchtime snack because she was quite famished. So I decided to use the Capresi Skewers with a small salad and guacamole.

I won't have an overall recipe with this post since the Capresi Skewers are already mentioned in this blog. The only recipe I will say was new, was the basil sauce used in the Skewers recipe, and by new I mean changed. I changed the recipe to equal parts olive oil and italian caesar dressing plus the basil and herbs mixed in. I sprinkled that on the skewers and salad, and added the guacamole to the side. Enjoy.

Chef's Choice Chili

So as many of my friends around here know, I absolutely LOVE to make chili. I love it. I make it a lot during the colder months, however after making the Tomato Sauce yesterday, I decided that I have gone too long without chili.



Homemade Tomato Sauce:
-Get your soup pot or large saucepan depending on how much you are making. Mine filled a large saucepan since I did not make my normal amount(about 1/2 of normal).
-Mix all your spices together in a bowl to your liking, or straight in the pot like The Chef does. I went heavy on the basic ingredients as well as the Tumeric and Cajun Perfect Pinch. The rest I went light on since they are just there to smooth out all the flavors.

-Now that your spice mix is making your kitchen smell amazing, onto the food processing happy times! Basically I like my chili smooth with not a LOT of huge chunks in it. The order I processed was Roma's, Greenhouse Tomatoes, Onion, Carrots, Poblano Peppers, Jalapeno Peppers. Add to pot as you go, turn the heat on med-high when you add the Roma's and stir them in with the spices. A little olive oil will smooth it out if necessary.

-Grab your grouping of green onions and dice them up almost to the white part. You can put the green onion's roots into water and they will grow back! Add to pot.

-Stir everything together evenly and turn to medium heat. Once it starts boiling, change the temperature to low or simmer.

-Let simmer for about an hour, then it should be tasty enough to eat!

Homemade Tomato Sauce:
6 Roma Tomatoes
2 Greenhouse Tomatoes
1 White Onion (Large)
2 Jalapeno Peppers
2 Poblano Peppers
4 Carrots
1 cup diced Green Onions

Spices for Tomato Sauce:
Cayenne Pepper*
Chili Powder*
Garlic Salt*
Ground Cumin*
Ground Allspice
Ground Cloves
Paprika*
Celery Salt
Ground Black Pepper*
Ancho Chili Powder*
Ground Tumeric Powder
Curry Powder
Mesquite Seasoning*
Perfect Pinch Seasoning - Cajun

*are the basics, the rest are choice ingredients.

For Chef's Choice Chili:
-First get a pot the size you think you need for the chili, or maybe a little bigger.

-Get your pound of ground beef and brown it in the pan with Lowry's Seasoning, maybe some butter too if you love calories as much as I do!

-Once the beef is all browned and tasty smelling (yes take a sample to make sure, you know you want to!), you get your tomato sauce and add it directly into the pot. Stir.

-Use food processor for white onion, then add it in. Stir. Let it cook on low to medium-low for about 30 minutes.

-That time frame is just a rough estimate of time needed, so whenever your frequent tastings of it say it is done just dish it out.

Ingredients:
1 lb. Ground Beef
1 White Onion
Lowry's Seasoning
Shredded Cheese

Sourdough Pizza Snackers

Alright, so in addition to the previous post of Capresi Skewers, I decided that Pizza would be a great snack as well. So I searched through my kitchen and found several things that could make this happen. Ingredients: Sourdough Bread Loaf (pre-sliced) Shredded Cheese Tomato Sauce Spice mix of basil, sage, oregano, & thyme With this you can choose any sauce/cheese you would like, so I went with Asiago shredded cheese and generic heart smart tomato sauce. This recipe is a simple one anyone could do, and it is so tasty! Take a plate, put three slices of the Sourdough Bread on there. Cover the bread slices with Tomato Sauce, but not so much as to touch the edges of it since that can result in one big tasty mess. On top of that I sprinkled the spice mix on, which in turn was covered by the shredded Asiago cheese. At this stage you could choose to put it in the oven or even cook it up on a skillet, however I went with the device known as a Microwave. Yes, I love microwaves. They make some recipes so much easier. I put the plate in there for approximately 3 minutes, or until the cheese melts thoroughly. Then take out, let sit for about a minute so it's not too hot, then enjoy!

Capresi Skewers

Today was a great day to stay inside in the AC out of the Texas heat. So naturally, I turned to the kitchen and created Capresi Skewers. I started off with the Capresi Skewers because I wanted to see how it would turn out. To make this dish you need the following: -wood skewers -cherry/small tomatoes -mozzarella cheese -basil leaves -mix of sage, thyme, and oregano spices -EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) (also a food processor or small blender) In the food processor, I combined the basil leaves, spices, and EVOO...and created a great tasting and smelling sauce. I would say it reminded me almost of pesto, but not quite. On the skewers I alternated tomatoes and chunks of cheese(try to keep them somewhat close in size) and placed them on a plate together. Once I had 2 skewers done, I grabbed the food processor and spooned out the sauce on top of the skewers and poured the rest next to them.