Week16 - She surprised me!

Chicken Enchiladas

 

Enchiladas have been on my radar for a while. But I did not think my wife would like them, but then she brought home the fixings to make them and I thought “All right”.  A quick browsing of the Internet brought 2 basic methods for making them.  The first involved dipping the tortillas in the enchilada sauce before rolling them up, which looked like too much work to be honest. So I decided to just fill them up, roll em’ up, and then cover with sauce.  For filling I used a mixture of ground beef and a shredded Mexican cheese mix, along with some onions.  I made 2 pans worth, one with red enchilada sauce for my wife and a green chili batch for myself.  Each batch was then topped with more cheese.

 

Both turned out incredible.  By making them myself, I was able to get the amount of sauce and cheese that I desired.  Too often in restaurants they overdo both the sauce and cheese.  Topped them off with sour cream and lettuce and served with sides of cilantro-lime rice and black beans.  Yummy

 

Until next time

COOK ON!

Week 15 - No bonesabout it!

 

Pan-fried Buffalo Style Chicken

 

 
Like wings, but hate the bones? Try this easy dish.

 

Ingredients:

4 chicken breasts

Buffalo style wing sauce

Directions

1. Use a meat mallet to pound breast to ½ inch thickness,

2.  Heat 2 table spoon of oil over medium heat.

3.  Cook breast until center is no longer pink.

4.  Add ¾ - 1 cup of buffalo sauce.  Coat both sides of breast with sauce, and cook for an additional 4 minutes per side.

 

Serve with your choice of sides and a salad (with blue cheese dressing of course) and you have a quick and easy week night dinner.

Until next time:

COOK ON!

Week 14 Spring Break - Camp cooking!

Chicken and Tia Curry Rice

 

Spring break!  Time to go camping.  Nothing like a few days in the desert to flush out the work cobwebs.  Also a good chance to try out a new recipe.   My hope was to find something that would not only work for car camping but for backpacking as well.  The key to this is a relatively easy prep; which mainly involves boiling water. The answer Knorr sides. Knorr has a large selection of sides which need only water, or milk, and 10minutes or so of boiling.For this trip I decided to try to make a curry chicken dish.

 

Ingredients

1 can chunk tuna

1 package Knorr Tia Curry Rice

 

 
Directions

Cook rice according to package.  The last five minutes of boiling add chicken to warm it up. Serve with an ample side of sunset on sandstone and nothing could be better.

 

My only change would be to add a little extra curry powder, as I like mine a little spicy.

 

Unitl next time:

COOK ON!

Week 13 - Lite Mexican

Chicken Taco Bowl Salad

 

This week’s new recipe comes courtesy of my wife.  When I asked her wanted she wanted for dinner the other night, she said something lite sounded good, perhaps some sort of taco salad with chicken in it.   Her wish was my command and my challenge.

 
Overall this is a really quick and easy dinner to prepare.  The hardest part was finding the taco shell bowls, as our regular grocery store did not carry them.  Luckily the next store I tried did have 1 box in stock (no dust on the box, so it must be O.K…. Right?).  I also was lazy and saved time by buying pre-cooked and seasoned chicken.  All I had to do was to reheat it in the skillet and drop it in the salad.  Once we had the basic parts for the salad it became a fix it yourself affair.  For mine I chose sour cream, hidden valley ranch spicy ranch dressing, fresh pico de gallo (from the store – so-so), cheddar cheese, avocado, salad and chicken.  It was so good I had to make a second.
 

Until next week –

COOK ON!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                              

Week 12

 

Week 11: Chicken Pasta with Creamy Basil Sauce

A new use for yogurt. I would not have thought to use yogurt as a sauce, but it turned out good.  Next time I would probably add a few more spices as the dish was a little too mellow for my taste.

 

Ingredients:

3 cups Bow-tie pasta

2 cups broccoli florets

1 pound boneless chicken breast

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1cupchicken broth

1 teaspoon sugar

1 red pepper

4-5 mushrooms

¾ cup plain yogurt

3 – 4 tablespoons chopped basil

 

Directions:

1.          Cook pasta according to directions.  Add broccoli during the last 4 minutes of cooking. Drain.

2.          Sprinkle chicken with garlic powder and pepper, and cook to no longer pink.

3.         In bowl mix cornstarch, sugar and broth.  Add broth mixture, mushrooms and red peppers to skillet:  cook 4 minutes until sauce has thickened. 

4.         Stir in pasta, broccoli, yogurt and basil. Heat over low heat until just hot (do not boil)

 

 

 

Until next week:  COOK ON!

Week 10 - Pita Pizzas

While it is my goal to try and cook a new recipe each week, I thought it would be fun to include the whole family this week with Pita Pizzas. This turned out to be a very fun meal.  My 3 year old loved making and the eating his own pizza, and the size was perfect for him. From spreading the sauce to levering on the pineapple and cheese, he thought it was about the best thing.

 

Ingredients

6” Pitas

Spaghetti sauce

Mozzarella cheese –shredded

Pine apple

Onion

Roasted green chilies

Cream Cheese

 

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 450° degrees

2.  Layer pitas with sauce, toppings of your choosing, and of course cheese

3.  Cook for 12-15 minutes

 

 

While my wife and son played it safe with just cheese and pineapple.  I decided to go with my favorite cream cheese (trust me it’s really good), roasted green chilies (from the farmer’s market this fall), onion and pineapple.  They all turned out great.  The crust on the first batch was a little softer than we liked, so for round two we increased the cooking by 2 minutes.  This was a quick and easy dinner that will be guaranteed to take its way back to the dinner table time and time again.

Until next time COOK ON!!