First Try at Chibatta Bread

I love fresh baked bread.  There is just something about the smell of baking bread that takes a person home.  Even though we didn’t bake bread much when I was growing up, I think the smell just makes any place feel like home.  After mastering focaccia bread, I have been feeling confident in my bread baking abilities, so I decided to move on to another, more complicated Italian bread: chibatta.

Saucy Shrimp

There has been a bottle of tequila sitting on my fridge for about 3 months now with just about 2ish shots left in it.  I am not a tequila drinker that often, and I honestly can’t remember why I bought it in the first place, but it has slowly been emptied whenever I get in the mood for a margarita.  This week though I had a coupon of $2 off a seafood purchase at the store and since $2 worth of shrimp is just right for one person, I figured it was time to make a recipe that I have been wanting to try for a long time.  I am calling this dish “Saucy Shrimp”, but it really is a tequila lime shrimp pasta, but does the title really matter?  A rose by any other name…

Chicken with Spicy Sour Cream Sauce

This is a recipe only post of a very delicious spicy chicken I made the other night.  I have been dealing with some personal issues and have not had much energy for cooking or writing about my creations so this weekend I'm playing a little catch up.  I made this chicken as a quick dinner one night and was amazed at how tasty it turned out.  The cream sauce was spicy and had a good sour cream taste to balance the kick out.  I served it over my Mexican Rice and added some corn and green onion to it for some added freshness.  It was a perfect, quick meal that took my mind off the world at large and the things that have been making my life complicated in recent days.  Enjoy!

Pizza Roll-Ups

I don't know about any of you but I love pizza pockets but I hate how heavy and greasy I feel after.  I found this recipe on Pinterest and decided to spend a night and modify it into some kind of pizza roll-up with tasty fresh ingredients.  Apparently though, Astoria grocery stores do not believe in egg roll wrappers so I had to go with plan B: phyllo dough.  Not a big deal, nothing is better then improvising in the kitchen, some of my favorite meals have come from cooking this way.  Not only was I feeling adventurous, but it was the Civil War basketball game and I knew I wanted some kind of finger food to enjoy while watching the game.

Crispy Curry Chicken

I like curry, it is one of my favorite spices and I am always trying to find new and interesting ways to use it.  Sadly, outside of curry chicken and rice and curry stir-fry, most recipes call for a slow-cooker or ingredients that aren't readily available or within my single person budget.  In the past I had made chicken tenders with curry in the panko, but I knew there had to be a way to make that dinner a little bit more grown up.  So I did what any modern cook does to find a new recipe - I googled it.  There were quite a few recipes for basic crispy chicken with curry flavors but one stood out at AllRecipies.  It called for chicken to be marinated in a curry yogurt sauce and then breaded and fried in butter.  Sounded good but it seemed so heavy and I knew if there was a way to lighten it up I could find it.