Recipe:

1 box of penne pasta (you can use any pasta)

1 lb of chicken breasts/tenders/skinless boneless thighs

5 cloves of garlic

1/2 an onion sliced or chopped

2 cups of sliced mushrooms (fresh or canned)

2 Tbs of olive oil

2 Tbs of butter

1/2 tsp of salt

1/2 tsp of black pepper

1 tsp of crushed red peppers (can adjust to taste)

2 Tbs of soy sauce

1/2 cup of light cream

a splash of a good white wine (optional)

Directions:

1.  Before you start prepping the chicken.  Start to boil water for your pasta!

2.  Slice chicken into small slices  (1/2 inch x 1 inch) place in bowl

3.  Slice or chop half an onion

4.  Mince garlic cloves

5.  Add garlic, soy sauce, salt, pepper, crushed red peppers to chicken

6.  Put oil in a big pan, medium to high heat

7.  Sautee Onions until the onions are soft, then  add mushrooms, if you’re using fresh toss them until slightly soft then add your optional splash of wine; canned mushrooms are already soft so there’s no need to wait

8.  Add chicken and cook thoroughly then add cream

9.  Add cooked pasta into pan and toss until pasta is covered in sauce

10.  Garnish with slice scallions and chopped cilantro (optional)

Serves 6 to 8

I want to point out that it’s always a good idea to try your dish before you serve it and that it suits your taste buds.  Although I follow recipes, I don’t follow them to a tee.  Everyone’s palette is different.  The first time I made this dish, I didn’t add the mushrooms, wine, and cream.  Boy it sure made a difference, and the cream didn’t make it too heavy.  You can omit these ingredients and the dish would still turn out great.

I own a ton of cookbooks, but usually cook from memory or create new dishes on the fly.  I had to really pay attention to take a stab at putting this recipe together.  Please feel free to test it and give me feedback.

True, I definitely need to write well. REALLY well. However, no one wants to just see endless words. That gets very boring after a while. While I’ve illustrated my work in previous blog posts, I realize I have a lot of room to grow in the illustration department. I may as well dedicate some time and effort into learning more about the art of food photography. As it seems I always have a camera ready to snap a photo of something I am about to eat, just prepared, or food I happen to be passing by.

A valuable resource I’m using is Digital Food Photography by Lou Manna.  I also occasionally use  a photo light box and some lighting I bought in a package deal on Ebay.

I’ve used a Kodak EasyShare Z740 for a long time. It’s a point-and-shoot with 10x optical zoom and 5.0 megapixels capability. The pictures taken with this camera have come out pretty decent. I also own another little point-and-shoot, the Olympus FE-20. Its features are 3x optical zoom with 8.0 megapixels. This camera is more convenient to carry around for those frequent drive-by food shots. Not bad for a sleek small camera which can fit easily into your pocket.

The camera I am most proud to own is the Nikon D80. It is a digital SLR and while I’ve owned it for over 2 years I don’t know much about it. (Yes, what a shame and I intend to change that very shortly.) I have used it and it has yielded some great pictures. It just intimidates me. One, it was quite expensive. Two, it’s not just a point-and-shoot. Three, I don’t want to somehow break it. It’s quite bigger than the other cameras I have and it is heavy.

I’ve been digging through my storage boxes and I’ve found the manual for my Nikon D80 and have resolved to conquer the beast once and for all!

As I post, I’d like to not only receive comments about my food work, but would appreciate constructive feedback and tips on my photos.

Remember, if you have any photos you would like to share with me and would like to see posted on here email me!

I am still working out and learning some of the technical features to get this blog exactly where I want it to be. I am fortunate to always be able to turn to Alex, owner of Sliqua Enterprise Web Hosting. Not only does his company host my blog site, but he is really the one who has helped me to even get this far.

I need to clean up my categories and tags along with setting up a way for my readership to contribute their materials. I would eventually like to allow people to share recipes, stories, and photos. For now if you want your work to be featured, please send me an email to GotFood13@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you!

I stayed up until now (3 AM) to fix my slideshows on some of my posts. I added some widgets and also tried to download some free plugins, but I don’t know how to upload them correctly. So I’ll just have to wait to get help this coming week. Basically, I want to set this site up so I can just do what I am really here to do. That’s to blog.
I’m exhausted but I’m smiling, because despite having a whirlwind of madness buzzing around my head, I took some time to get moving again. One of the best things is when I look at my archives. Although there are huge gaps I still feel good that over the last 2 years I’ve put some content in. Now I just need to commit to keeping it up and avoiding the big dry spells.
Next project is to figure out how to upload to my directories, then clean up the categories and tags. I somehow need to figure out how to redirect visitors going to asamatteroffood.wordpress.com to this site now. When I’m active, I have many visitors to my site. I think I want to change out the theme too. This plain blue theme just sucks. It is so boring.
Well I’m ready to catch some shut eye because now I’m just exhausted, but feel great!

This movie gave me renewed hope and inspiration after a long bout of stress and just drifting.  I still have a lot of work to do ahead of me in the next couple of months, so no real time to blog about anything other than my thoughts.  THIS, however, is a good start.  At least I was able to figure out how to log back in!  I will take time whenever I can to clean up this blog, fix the slideshows, and just start organizing my thoughts again and come back to the one place which has helped keep me grounded in the past.  Here on my blog, writing about the one thing that has always given me comfort and has always made me feel the most certain about myself.  Cooking.  Food.

I can completely relate to both Julie Powell and Julia Child.  At 33, I’m still searching for that which really means something to me.  Don’t take this the wrong way.  I have many things that mean very much to me.  My family and friends.  But what I’m talking about is the thing that is just YOURS.  The feeling which makes you feel like you’re standing alone on a mountain, with your arms spread out wide at your sides while embracing a strong gust of wind, and feeling as if you’re soaring.  Perhaps I’ve just been looking in the wrong places or the wrong direction.  I think it’s time to once again, and this time, look within.

So here I am again.  Going back…well more like continuing on my journey, accompanied by the one certain thing I’ve known for more than 25 years.

I will treat this as a journal but hope that my journey and experiences will inspire someone as Julie’s and Julia’s stories reignited my spark.

Each year, my husband’s grandmother, aunt, mother, cousin, and her daughter, spend days before Christmas making cookies and candy for Christmas. I have not joined them yet in this tradition, because they always gathered up in the mountains at the vacation home. So this year I decided to just do something here at home. My girlfriend and I went to the store and went nuts buying this ingredient and that ingredient. We spent way too much time and money at the store! I had all these great plans of making 3D sugar cookies and a whole list of other things. We ran out of time and ended up using Pillsbury’s sheets of sugar cookies. We made mini chocolate cupcakes and decorated them with vanilla frosting Christmas sprinkles. Okay, so we didn’t get to be super pastry chefs but we had sooo much fun! After all, that was the point of this experience. To spend time together and have fun, talk, and share time in the kitchen. We definitely had several tastings to make sure that our cookies and cupcakes were good enough to give as gifts. Oh and they were so delicious.

Once we were done I put them in two big boxes. One for my girlfriend to take to work the next day and one for my mom to take to her work. I also made a little box to share with my other girlfriend and her husband.

Here is the recipe for Christmas Sugar Cookies which I was going to use, but ended up having to pass on.

Christmas Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. almond extract

2 3/4 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

2 Tbs. milk

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, combine butter, sugar, egg, vanilla and almond extract.
2. Add flour, baking powder, salt and milk; mix until blended.
3. Gather dough into a ball and wrap wit plastic wrap.
4. Chill dough for 1 hour. Heat oven to 400 degree F.
5. Divide dough into fourths. On lightly floured surface, roll dough portion to 1/4-inch thickness.
6. Dip cookie cutter in flour; cut dough with cutter.
7. Place 1inch apart on cookie sheet. Bake at 400 degrees F for 6-7 minutes, until edges are lightly browned.
8. Cool completely. Repeat with remaining dough.
9. Frost and decorate as desired. Allow frosting to dry before assembling.

Makes 2 dozen cookies

Royal Icing

Ingredients:

1 egg white

1 3/4 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp water

food coloring (optional)

Directions:

1. Combine egg white and powdered sugar, and beat on low until well blended.
2. Add water, and mix until well blended.
3. If icing is too think, add water, drop by drop.
4. If too thin, add a small amount of powdered sugar.
5. Add food coloring, if desired. Icing will harden on cookies.

This is the only 3D cookie which was made. My girlfriend was determined to at least make one.

I bought a 3D cookie cutter set from Plow & Hearth over the Summer to try out.

Boxed mini chocolate cupcakes.

An assortment of sugar cookies. YUM!

Planning my Christmas dinner menu has been harder than I anticipated. Now I’m down to planning just the big Christmas Eve dinner. My family, being of Asian decent and having lived in Europe, we make a bigger deal about Christmas Eve than Christmas morning. We would eat and go to midnight mass and then come home and open presents. Luckily, my husband’s family and he follow the Christmas Day tradition. So it’ll work out just wonderfully! We’ll spend Christmas Eve at our house, have my parents and siblings come over. We’ll head out to midnight mass and then come home and open presents. Christmas Day we’ll head up to the mountains to spend time with his family. Sounds pretty simple, but it isn’t. Some of you probably can relate to how I feel. Unless we have access to and can afford a personal shopper, a maid, a chauffeur, and a chef, things just get away from us. My ambitions of throwing a get-together for our friends and then Christmas Eve dinner for my family was great, but now looking at our work schedule and some of the things we have to do (not food related at all), it just doesn’t seem realistic anymore.

If I find time to have a small gathering with friends, I’ll go with hors d’oeuvres only and drinks. I have a few drink recipes up my sleeve as well. I can always whip up a pretty mean Long Island Iced Tea that’s really yummy and of course my wide array of martinis. (I learned these from my days of working my part-time job at Tabouleh Mediterranean Restaurant in Gaithersburg, MD) I think that would be fun!

I am planning on something really scrumptious for a main course for my Christmas Eve dinner. I’m going to prepare a Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding. Here’s a recipe:

Roast Beef
Serves 8

1 Prime Rib of Beef Joint (6 lbs / 2.7 k)

2 Tsp Dry English Mustard

3 Tbsp All-Purpose Flour

1 1/4 Cups Red Wine

1 1/4 Cups Beef Stock

2 Tsp Worcestershire Sauce (Optional)

Salt and Pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F / 230 degrees C.
2. Season the meat to taste with salt and pepper. Rub in the mustard and 1 tablespoon of the flour.
3. Place te meat in a roasting pan large enough to hold it comfortably and roast in the oven for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 375 degrees F / 190 degrees C and cook for 15 minutes per 1 lb / 450 g, plus 15 minutes (1 3/4 hours for this joint) for rare beef or 20 minutes per 1 lb / 450 g, plus 20 minutes (2 hours 20 minutes) for medium beef. Baste the meat from time to time to keep it moist, and if the pan becomes too dry, add a little stock or red wine.
4. Remove the meat from the oven and place on a warmed serving plate, cover with foil, and let stand in a warm for 10-15 minutes.
5. To make the gravy, pour off most of the fat from the pan (reserve it for cooking the Yorkshire pudding), leaving behind the meat juices and the sediment. Place the pan on the stove over medium heat and scrape all the sediment from the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle in the remaining flour and quickly mix it into the juices with a small whisk. When you have a smooth paste, gradually add the wine and most of the stock, whisking constantly. Bring to a boil, then reduce to heat a gentle simmer and cook for 2 – 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and add the remaining stock, if needed, and a little Worcestershire sauce, if you like.
6. When ready to serve, carve the meat into slices and serve on warmed plates. Pour the gravy into a warmed pitcher and take direct to the table. Serve wit Yorkshire pudding.

Yorkshire Pudding
Serves 4

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F / 220 degrees C.
2. Make a batter with 3 1/2 oz / 100 g plain flour, a pinch of salt, 1 beaten egg and 10 fl / 300 ml milk and water mixed. Allow to stand for half an hour.
3. Heat 2 Tbsp roast beef dripping or olive oil in an 8-inch square roasting tin in the top of the oven.
4. Remove the tin from the oven, pour in the batter and bake for 25-30 minutes until it is puffed up and golden brown.

***Recipe taken from ‘Steaks, Chops, Roasts, & Ribs’ by Parragon Publishing

]]> http://www.asamatteroffood.com/2007/12/planning-your-menu-christmas-2007-part-ii/feed/ 0 http://www.asamatteroffood.com/2007/12/comfort-food-one-pot-venison-stew/ http://www.asamatteroffood.com/2007/12/comfort-food-one-pot-venison-stew/#comments Tue, 04 Dec 2007 03:35:06 +0000 jpham http://asamatteroffood.wordpress.com/2007/12/03/comfort-food-one-pot-venison-stew/ As much as I love to cook, I must admit I sometimes dislike to do dishes. If it’s one or the other, I’m fine with washing dishes. It may sound silly but it’s soothing and allows me to have time to think or just not think. When I have to do both, I don’t enjoy washing dishes so much. Therefore, I welcome one-pot meals. Less pots to wash, maybe not so much the dishes.

Here’s a stew I put together tonight. I went with the “whatever-I-have-on-hand” concept and cooking without a recipe. That is really how I cook. I really don’t follow recipes and just do it by taste and my knowledge of what spices, sauces, and just flavors in general go together. Freestyle!

• 2 lbs of venison loin, cubed
• 5 stalks of celery, chopped
• 5 large carrots, chopped
• 8 medium sized Red Skinned potatoes, quartered or halved, depending on size
• 1 onion, quartered
• 5 bay leaves
• Ground Cumin
• Garlic Powder
• Salt & Pepper
• All Purpose flour
• Cooking oil
• 2 large cubes of beef bouillon ( 2 cups of beef broth)

1. In a large pot heat oil. Whisk in a 1/4 cup of all purpose flour until it turns a golden color to create a roux (usually done with butter and flour).
2. Add venison which has been coated with 1/4 cup of all purpose flour and brown meat.
3. Add chopped celery and carrots. Stir and cook for 3 – 5 minutes. Then add 4 boiling cups of water or enough to cover meat.
4. Add potatoes, quartered onion, bay leaves, and beef bouillon. Cook for 10 minutes on medium heat.
5. Add about 1 tsp of cumin, 1 tsp of garlic powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and 1/8 teaspoon of pepper.
6. Simmer on low to medium heat for 20 – 25 minutes or until meat and potatoes are tender.
7. Serve with bread.

Here’s a really quick and short way to do it!

1 lb of turkey chops / boneless turkey breasts / turkey loin (turkey slices should be about 1/2 inch thick)

A pinch of salt to taste

A pinch of black pepper to taste

2 jars of fat free turkey gravy

Cooking spray

1. Spray skillet with cooking spray and heat on high.
2. Brown turkey on both sides.
3. Lower heat and add gravy.
4. Simmer for about 20 minutes or until turkey is cooked.

Serve with mashed potatoes and stuffing of your choice.

I use boxed mashed potatoes and stuffing. Follow the instructions on the box!

Enjoy!

Are you planning a holiday get-together this Christmas? Maybe two or three? One for your family and then two or more to get all your friends together. I plan to have one to get my family together. Then I have to pick a date for my friends. So here are already 2 opportunities for me to create some great meals to please the crowd.

My head is buzzing with ideas. There are the Christmas decorations, lights, and the tree. Then the biggest buzz is the one that involves planning my menu(s). I served up an incredible meal for Thanksgiving. It took a lot of prep time and my back is still aching until this day. Hehehhe… BUT if there’s anything I’d like to always outdo myself in it is cooking and creating pastries.

Here are some ideas for a main course I’ve thought of:

• Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding served with Pan Gravy
• Roast Lamb
• A Rack of Lamb
• A Turducken
• A Chicken Dish

As you can see, I’m still in the early stages of planning, but there’s much to do so I’ll have to narrow it down and decide. Not only do I have to pick the main course, but also the sides which will have to complement the main course and each other. Then there is dessert! I will take the most time selecting the dessert(s) I’ll be making this year. I am absolutely thrilled and plan to make it the least stressful for myself and the most enjoyable for myself and all my guests.

Last, I suggest you decide on how many people you will entertain and feed. Whether you want a sit-down dinner or go buffet-style, make sure you plan well ahead. This time of year is stressful enough, don’t make it so you will end up ripping out your hair as I have in the past.