Updates of my latest cooking creations

Pasta shells with homemade tomato sauce garnished with parmesan cheese


Pasta shells, brussell sprouts sauteed in butter, and ham


This next dish is also a ham dish, which I received much assistance with from sous chef Justin. The ham was from Whole Foods and is accompanied by boiled cabbage, creamed onions, and mashed potatoes.


Flounder with a balsalmic glaze covered in tomatoes and parsnip


Chinese stir-fry (it actually came out decently!). The sauce was composed of a mixture of vegetable oil, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and hoisin sauce. Don't ask me how to recreate it - I just added the ingredients as I saw fit!


Creamed squash

Quite a long time :P

Here's some random dishes I've made, but like Chewy, not much description here since it's been quite a while since I made them.



These ginger cookies are very yummy! I didn't have any margarine, so I substituted butter instead. The recipe I used makes about 3-4 sheets of cookies, but they'll go really quickly.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Big-Soft-Ginger-Cookies/Detail.aspx

It's been a long time!

As you can see, over the past few months we haven't been posting our culinary creations. Well hopefully that will change! I've amassed many pictures, which are shown below. Unfortunately, the descriptions are limited due to creating these dishes so long ago!

Linguini with chicken, tomatoes, and asparagus:







Ground beef, rice, and tomatoes:



Baked tofu, rice, and long green beans:



Chicken nuggets:



Other various meals:






Saving the best for last - chocolate chip cookies with and without walnuts!

Adding a little extra bang...

Salsa Chicken Rice Casserole

Recipe Link

Here's a pretty easy dish to make! Setup is super easy, although it does take a bit of time while you wait for the baking to complete. For this recipe, I switched to 4 servings, which was enough to last me a couple of meals.

Here's some rice being cooked right next to the boiling chicken.

Mashing it all up here :)
Layering everything on! Unfortunately, I didn't have enough stuff to fill the entire pan, but it still turned out quite alright.


Here it is! Turned out quite yummy. It turns out that leaving a bit on the edges lets it turn out crispier when you bake it. A pretty good meal to make, although you'll end up making this twice, given the usage of half cans of condensed chicken & cream of mushroom.

All about presentation...

I don't have much time to write a long blog, but here are some meals I've made recently:

Chicken, green beans (from co-worker's farm!), and stuffing


Spaghetti with homemade tomato sauce


Tuna salad on a bed of spinach and sauteed green beans garnished with dried cranberries, almonds, and tomatoes


(On a separate note - Wayne where are all of your culinary creations???)

Yellow Squash Soup and Asian Lettuce Wraps

I recently had some odd cravings. Well squash soup made sense since my co-worker kindly gave me more organic squash and since I had stir-fried it last time, it needed a new medium in which to appear. I followed a simple recipe of 30 oz. of chicken broth plus 20 oz. of water that was salted and peppered in which I cooked one de-seeded and peeled yellow squash plus half an onion. A dash of rosemary was also used to flavor the concoction.

The recipe said to simmer for 45 minutes, but 15 minutes more than sufficed to produce translucent squash and onions indicative of their tenderness. The whole mix was cooled in the fridge for 10 minutes and then pureed in a blender. The puree was then warmed and cream added to give a thicker texture. As you can see, the soup is still quite thin and in order to thicken it, I haphazardly added some cornstarch.

What I realized later is that the recipe called for 3 apples. I had decided to take these out and stick to straight squash, not recognizing that the thick consistency of the soup would not be maintained without increasing the number of squash in the absence of apples. What you will see below is the next day when I cooked two additional de-seeded and peeled yellow squash in the soup and pureed them in a blender. The yellow color shows the increased thickness of the soup to the expected consistency.

Heat and serve with parsley as a decorative addition:


Now the part where the odd craving comes in...the very same day I decided I wanted asian lettuce wraps. Of course they don't mix well with squash soup, but none-the-less I made them. Basically the filling consists of ground beef with garlic cooked in a sauce created from soy sauce, hoisin sauce, rice wine vinegar, sherry, and sesame oil. Unfortunately, I didn't have ginger, green onions, or water chesnuts, which I would recommend adding. To create the wrap, wash iceberg lettuce leaves and fill with the stir-fried meat. Wrap and enjoy!

(They tasted really good despite not looking as enticing as they could have been with the additional ingredients!)