Who Says Mexican Has To Be Heavy?!

Hello all! So as everyone knows, this past Monday was Cinco de Mayo, which is when pretty much everyone either cooks Mexican food, or goes out and gets Mexican food. Everyone except me lol. I actually had leftover spaghetti on Cinco de Mayo but decided that I would make a Mexican dish this weekend and what I decided on was a Rachael west coast version of a Mexican dish, tacos. Here is Rachael Ray's "Margarita Fish Soft Tacos with Pico de Gallo Rice Pilaf".

So the first thing I did was get the fish marinating. This recipe calls for you to use either Mahi Mahi or Halibut. The local grocery stores around me either don't have a fresh seafood counter, or the fresh seafood counter smells absolutely awful. Rachael Tip: Don't buy seafood that smells bad. Most people just assume that seafood stinks. If the seafood is fresh, it should not have an unpleasant odor to it. It should merely smell fresh. I opted to drive to Whole Foods in Yonkers NY to get these groceries so that I could get nice fresh fish that was one, fresh and didn't smell awful, and two, that was sustainably caught. Whole Foods didn't have fresh Mahi Mahi or Halibut so I used Tilapia instead. Any firm white fish will work for these. These are called margarita fish soft tacos because you are basically marinating the fish in a margarita. You make a marinade of tequila, lime zest and juice, vegetable oil, old bay seasoning, and chili powder. Add the fish fillets into the marinade and coat them and let them sit while you begin preparing the rest of the meal. I also put my flour tortillas in some foil and popped them in a warm oven to soften them up once I had the fish going in it's marinade. 

Once you get the fish marinating, you can start on the rice pilaf. In general, when I make rice pilaf, I always use orzo pasta to get it started, and that is actually what this recipe calls for. But, I had about 1/4 lb of spaghetti left over from making the broken spaghetti soup a couple weeks ago so I used that instead. Rice pilaf is simply a mix of toasted pasta and rice. Rachael Tip: You can use the leftover bits from your pastas in rice pilaf. Save the bits left in the box and when you have enough, use them for pilaf! If you don't do that, and being perfectly honest, I never think to save the bits of pasta, you can either use orzo or broken spaghetti. Since I rarely have just a little bit of dried spaghetti on hand, I usually keep orzo in the pantry for making rice pilaf. Add a little EVOO to the pan over medium heat. When the oil ripples, add in the broken spaghetti. Toast it until it is deeply golden brown, but be careful. It will go from toasted to burnt really quickly. Once the pasta is toasted, add in the rice and chicken stock. When the stock begins to boil, turn the pan down to low, place a lid on it and cook for 18 minutes. When it is finished, you will fluff it up with a fork and add in your Pico de Gallo! The instructions for the Pico are coming up!

Once the rice is underway you can begin working on the tomatillo sauce that you use inside the tacos! Drizzle a tablespoon of veggie oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Chop up a small purple onion (I refuse to call them red onions, they are not remotely red, they are purple), a couple cloves of garlic and a jalapeño pepper. If you don't groove on super spicy food, you can remove the seeds and rib from the jalapeño. The heat in chili peppers lives in the ribs and seeds so stripping those out will tone down the heat level. Once the veggies are chopped, add them to the pan and sweat them out. While the onion, garlic and pepper softens, you can begin working on the tomatillos. Tomatillos look like small green tomatoes and come with a papery husk on the outside. They are actually not related to tomatoes at all, but are in the gooseberry family and have a very tart and sweet flavor. Tomatillos have a lot of pectin in them and when you remove the husks off of them, you will feel that the skin is tacky. Rachael Tip:  Rinse the tomatillos under a little cold water and it will remove the stickiness from the skin. Coarsely chop them and when the onions are soft, add in the tomatillos and season with salt, pepper and 1/3 palmful of cumin and toss to combine. You'll let them go for about 8 minutes until the tomatillos are breaking down and becoming very soft. When the tomatillos are broken down, remove them from the heat and let them stand for about 5 minutes. Then you can add them to a food processor or blender with a ripe avocado coarsely chopped, a nice tablespoon of honey and the zest and juice of a lemon. Blend it until it is farely smooth and set it aside until you are ready to serve. If by some chance you can't find tomatillos, you can purchase a good quality salsa verde and simply puree that with the avocado, honey and lemon. This sauce is so tasty and the recipe makes a ton. It would be good with tortilla chips or even poured over grilled chicken. If you have leftover, freeze it! Once you add the tomatillos to the pan, heat up your griddle pan over medium heat. If you are making this on the grill outside, you'll probably already have it heating. 

Once the tomatillos are in the skillet, you can make the Pico de Gallo that you will toss with the rice pilaf. Finely chop a purple onion, a jalapeño pepper and seed and chop 4 plum tomatoes. Rachael Tip: To seed the tomatoes, cut them in half and give them a gentle squeeze over the GB. If you don't speak Rachael Ray lingo, GB is the garbage bowl :). This will seed the tomatoes so that the Pico doesn't add too much liquid to the pilaf. Combine the veggies with the zest and juice of a lime and a little salt to taste. Rachael Tip: Be careful not to add too much salt to the pico. Lime hits the same points on your tongue that salt does so if you over salt, the added lime juice may make the dish come across as too salty. When the rice is finished, fluff it with a fork and add in the Pico de Gallo!

So the last thing to do is to cook the fish. Once the griddle pan is hot, spray it with some cooking spray and cook the fillets about 3-4 minutes per side. My pan would only accommodate two fillets at a time so I cooked them in two batches. While the fish is cooking, shred up a half a head of purple cabbage (again, it's not red) to put in the tacos. Rachael Tip: To remove the core from the cabbage, cut into quarters and slice into them on an angle. When the fish is finished cooking, you are ready to plate up the tacos. 

Take your warmed tortillas and put a couple on your plate. I found one fillet would give me enough for 2 tacos. Take a fillet and flake it up with a fork. Add it into the tortilla. Top the fish with some of the tomatillo sauce and then put some crunchy purple cabbage on top. Plate up a serving of the Pico de Gallo pilaf along side and enjoy. This one was really tasty, and it's pretty light. I had never tried fish tacos but had always wanted to try them. This recipe was very tasty and definitely brings out a Mexi-Cali flavor. Hope you guys enjoy this one! Buon Appetito!

Recipe: 

This meal was featured on Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Meals and the recipes can be found at the following links. 

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/margarita-fish-soft-tacos-recipe.html 

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/pico-de-gallo-pilaf-recipe.html

New Version of an Old Favorite

Hello all! On tonights menu is a nice and light soup that's pretty figure friendly and has great flavor. According to Rachael, she came up with this recipe, quite comically, out of laziness. She was home by herself, didn't feel well, was a rainy day and was going to make Minestra. For any that might not know what Minestra is, it's a traditional Italian soup that generally has white cannellini beans and escarole, otherwise known as "Beans and Greens". Shockingly, Rachael didn't have any cannellini beans at home and didn't want to go to the store so she came up with this recipe. Here is Rachael Ray's "Broken Spaghetti Soup with Escarole".

So the first thing you deal with is the broken spaghetti. To start the soup, melt a couple tablespoons of butter in the soup pot over medium heat. When the butter foams up, you can break up 3/4 of the 1 lb. of spaghetti noodles and add them to the pot. The leftover 1/4 of a pound of pasta can be reserved for another dish called Green Harissa Chicken Thighs that will be featured in my blog soon, or if you are going to follow the Week in a Day strategy you can toast up the whole pound and simply save the 1/4 pound when you add the toasted spaghetti to the soup the night you serve. You want to let them toast until they get a nice golden color. Now, not every noodle will turn that golden brown color. If you waited for all of them to toast, you'd end up with burnt spaghetti noodles long before they toasted. Also, watch them closely, they will go from toasted to burnt very quickly and then you have to start over. Once they are toasted, remove them from the pot and set them aside. This recipe was taken from Rachael's show Week In A Day and is intended to be made ahead and reheated and served later in the week. If you are going to do that, store the cooled, toasted spaghetti in a container until the night you are going to serve. 

Once the pasta is removed from the pot, add a couple tablespoons of EVOO and add in the onion, garlic and herb bundle and season it with salt and pepper to taste. Unlike me, make sure you have all the fresh herbs in your fridge. This herb bundle is made from fresh Thyme and fresh Italian Flat Leaf Parsley. I was positive that I had fresh Thyme in the fridge so I didn't pick any up at the store. Once I started making the soup, I opened the package only to realize that the Thyme had all turned black except for one lone sprig. So, I tied that sprig in with the parsley and tossed it in. To bring out the Thyme flavor, I added a good pinch of ground thyme. But, be more prepared than I was and make sure you have what you need ;). Once the onions have sweated out and are nice and soft, you are ready to add in the escarole. 

Escarole is a bitter green that is part of the endive family and is high in folic acid, fiber, and vitamins A and K, so it's a great way to get some good nutrition. Like most bitter greens, escarole wilts way down when cooked. So to handle the escarole, take the large bundle or the two small to medium bundles and coarsely chop them. You are going to have a mountain of greens on your cutting board. Don't panic. Again, they are going to cook way down when you wilt them into the soup pot. So once you chop them, add them to the pot and season with nutmeg. I also seasoned with salt and pepper. Like Rachael, I find if you season every layer of a dish, you end up pretty close to hitting the nail on the head when the dish is through. The escarole will wilt down in just a few minutes. Once it is wilted, add in a quart of chicken stock and two cups of water. Again, this meal is intended as a make ahead meal. If you are doing that, this is when you would let the soup completely cool and store it. If you are serving it when you cook it, you are now ready to add in the spaghetti.

Tuen the heat up a bit and bring the soup to a gentle boil. At that point, add in the spaghetti and cook it to al dente. When the spaghetti has finished cooking, you can turn off the heat and add in the lemon zest and juice. Serve the soup up in a shallow bowl with some grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese. This was a nice, light soup that was surprisingly hearty. While it's a meat free dish, you could absolutely make it a vegan dish by replacing the butter with EVOO, the chicken stock with veggie stock and by omitting the parmigiano-reggiano cheese. I, am not a vegan. So, mine was meat free but by no means vegan. This one was really tasty and one i'd definitely make again. Hope you all enjoy it? Buon appetito!!

Recipe:

This recipe was featured on Rachael Ray's Week In A Day and can be found at the following link.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/broken-spaghetti-soup-with-escarole.html

Classic, With a Twist

Hello All! To my 5's of 10's of readers, I apologize for taking so long to post. Gonna try to be more regular about posting here! Today's recipe is actually adapted from a couple of different Rachael Ray recipes "Wild Mushroom French Onion Soup" and "French Onion Dip Soup with Dijon and Gruyere Croutons". So here is my version!

French Onion soup is one of those dishes that is a classic comfort food and a pretty basic recipe. One thing that Rachael does is try to reinvent it to some extent. In both the recipes this version is adapted from, there is something added in to spruce it up a little. I took what I liked about both the recipes and combined it into one. So to start the soup off, you need to caramelize a TON of onions. I used vidalia onions and you need 4 pretty good sized ones. Slice the onions and caramelize them. You are going to have a mountain of onion on your cutting board, as you see in the picture. (This picture was actually taken from another recipe I did that had potatoes, but it was the same amount of onions. There are no potatoes in this recipe so pay no attention to them). Don't panic, they will cook way down. Rachael Tip: Don't rush the onions! To get the onions really caramelized, you have to be patient. Set the burner on medium heat, no higher. It takes anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to get them to a nice medium caramel color. If you turn the heat higher, the onions will char at the edges before they caramelize. You can caramelize them in 1 of 2 ways. Rachael uses butter, 1 TBS per onion, or you can use EVOO. Since I'm trying to lose a little weight and watching what I eat a little closer, I used 1 TBS of EVOO per onion rather than the butter, but by all means, if you aren't watching what you eat quite so closely, or you happen to be one of those lucky people who can eat whatever you want and never gain weight, go for the butter. It will give it a little richer flavor. Once the oil ripples and wafts smoke, or the butter begins to foam, drop the onions into the pot. Add in salt, pepper, a couple fresh bay leaves, 4 cloves of garlic thinly sliced and a good pinch of ground thyme. If you don't have fresh bay you can use dried, but i've found that if you keep fresh bay leaves in the refrigerator in a plastic food storage bag, they will keep for weeks and weeks and the flavor comes through stronger from the fresh. Again, allow the onions time to sweat out. I let mine go for about an hour to get that nice medium to deep caramel color. I also looked at my Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking  and in the book Julia recommends adding a 1/4 tsp of sugar to the onions to help them to caramelize. I didn't do that because I didn't check the book until after I had already finished with the onions but I'll probably give it a shot next time! I mean if Julia says to do it, it has to be right!

When the onions are about halfway through their cooking time, you can start on the mushrooms. For this you'll need a 1oz. package of dried porcini or dried wild mushroom blend. Most grocery stores have these now. My store had them in 0.5oz packages so I got two. I've also seen some that are 0.75oz. packages. If thats' what they have just use that, don't buy a second package for 0.25oz. Remove the mushrooms from the package and add them into a small to medium sauce pot. Cover with enough beef stock or water to just cover the mushrooms. You will need a total of 5 cups of stock for the soup. You can use water for the mushrooms and then 1 quart of beef stock in a box if you want to save a few bucks and only buy one box. I had a box of chicken stock open in the fridge so I used that for the mushrooms and only used 1 box of stock in the soup. Bring them to a boil and reduce to simmer and allow them to steep in the water or stock while the onions finish cooking. Once the onions are caramelized, remove the mushrooms with a slotted spoon and coarsely chop them and reserve the mushroom stock that has been made. Now, if mushrooms aren't your thing, you can absolutely omit them. 

Once the onions are caramelized, deglaze the pot with 1/3 - 1/2 a cup of dry sherry. If you don't have dry sherry you can use dry white wine. If you don't have either and don't want to buy them, omit it and you can deglaze with the mushroom stock, but the dry sherry adds this nutty aspect to the soup that is killer. When you add the sherry scrape the bottom of your soup pot with a wooden spoon to scrape up the little bits that are trapped on the bottom from the onions caramelizing. Those bits = awesome flavor! Once the sherry cooks out for a minute or two, add in a good rounded tablespoon of Dijon mustard! It's that little thing in the soup that makes people say "hmmm, what is that?!". once you stir in the Dijon, add in the mushrooms and mushroom stock, if you didn't use it deglaze in place of the sherry or white wine. Rachael Tip: When you add the mushroom stock, add all but the last couple spoonfuls of the stock. When you reconstitute dried mushrooms, some grit from the mushrooms can settle at the bottom of the pot and if you add all of the liquid, you'll add that grit as well, and that can be unpleasant. Once you have added the mushrooms and stock, add in your quart of beef stock and bring the soup to a boil, then reduce to simmer and let it simmer while you make your gruyere croutons!. 

Now, I didn't actually make the gruyere croutons for this. Instead, I melted the gruyere cheese in a skillet and  then put that on top of the soup. I actually recommend making the crouton as it will float on top of the soup, not sink into it like mine did. To do so, simply take some slices of baguette and top with a mound of gruyere cheese. Place under the broiler and let the cheese melt. Serve the soup up with a crouton served on top. 

This one was really good and had great flavor. Hope you guys will make it and enjoy. I'll put the ingredient list below since I adapted this from a couple of different recipes. Until next time, Happy Cooking!

Ingredients:

4 Tbs. Butter or EVOO
4 sweet onions, medium to large
4 cloves of garlic
Salt and Pepper to taste
Healthy pinch of Ground Thyme
2 Fresh Bay Leaves
1 oz. Dried Porcini or Wild Blend Mushrooms
5 Cups of Beef Stock, or 1 Quart plus 1 Cup of Water
1/3-1/2 Cup of Dry Sherry or White Wine
1 Tbs Dijon Mustard

Not Your Average Burger!

Hey y'all! Hope those of you who read this are doing well. Tonight's dish is actually what I made for dinner last night. This one came from Rachael Ray's "The Book of Burger" and it was really good! On the menu was "Big Beef Burgers with Crunchy Sour Cream Onion Rings"!!

First comes the onion rings. These were really tasty and very easy to make! First up, get the oil heating to 350 degrees. If you have a fryer you can set the temp. I don't have a fryer so I use my dutch oven. If you place the burner between medium and medium high, it should be around 350 in 20 to 30 minutes. If you have a candy thermometer you can test it with that. Rachael Tip: If you don't have a candy thermometer, take a wooden handle spoon and put the handle down in the oil. If bubbles fly rapidly off the handle, the oil is ready to go! While the oil is heating, take a yellow onion and peel it and then cut into fairly thick slices and separate the rings. In one bowl you mix the buttermilk and sour cream. In the second dish, add the flour, chives salt and pepper. Soak the onion rings for a new minutes and then toss in the flour, then in the buttermilk mixture and then the flour again. That's right, double battered goodness! Fry them in batches about 4 minutes per batch and turn them once while frying. These were really, really good and made a great side and topper to the burgers! 

While the oil is heating and the onion rings are soaking in the buttermilk and sour cream mixture, you can start the burgers. These burgers were seasoned really simply. They consist of ground chuck seasoned with worcestershire sauce, lots of black pepper and a tiny sprinkle of kosher salt. Rachael Tip: Kosher salt gives a great crust to meat! Mix the meat till all the ingredients are combined, but don't over mix it as it can become tight and end up with a tough burger. Rachael Tip: This is a two-fold tip. First is Rachael's tip to get patties that are roughly the same size. This comes in handy since we've all been making either hamburgers or meat balls and get to the end and have this tiny amount of meat and we end up with a patty that is way smaller than the others. To stop that from happening, form the meat into one mound and score it into 4 equal parts with the side of your hand. This way you know that each section is about the same size and the burgers will be roughly, the same size! Second part of this tip is how to battle the burger bulge. When forming the patties, make them a little thinner in the middle. All burgers rise in the middle when they cook so making the patty thinner in the middle allows for you to have a flat burger when they are done. Otherwise, they bulge up in the middle. This also helps the burger to cook evenly! Once the patties are made place them in the skillet and cook to desired doneness. I cooked them for about 7 minutes on each side for well done. They were still very juicy and not dried out at all! FYI, when I put the burgers in the skillet, that is when I began frying the onion rings. Timing wise they were done at just about the same time the burgers were done!

While the burgers are cooking you can mix up the special "Red Ranch Sauce" Rachael paired with this. Combine buttermilk, sour cream, a little ketchup, dash of hot sauce, salt, pepper, lemon juice, chives, parsley and dill in a bowl and it's done. Once the burgers and onion rings are done, you're ready to build your burger. Place the burger on the bun bottom, top with lettuce (I used romaine but any crisp lettuce you want is fine), crunchy onion rings and spoon the red ranch sauce on the bun top to act as the glue that holds the top on the burger. I used the extra onion rings as the side for this instead of making french fries to go along with it! As Rachael says, this burger was as big as my head! I have a big mouth and it was still a stretch to fit it all in one bite! But, it's totally worth it. Hope you guys enjoy this one! I sure did! One of the many reasons I enjoy Rachael Ray and her take on food, she helps you rethink what a classic, ordinary food like burgers can be! Enjoy and until next time, happy cooking! 

Recipe: This recipe can be found in Rachael Ray's book "The Book of Burger".

Vegetarian for a Day

Hello All! I apologize for the absence. My sister was recently married and I was home in Alabama for two weeks. Needless to say, I didn't have to do a lot of cooking. Was great to be back home and have some of my mom's home cooking, but I'm excited to be back in NY and back cooking! On tonight's menu was a vegetarian meal that was really great! Tonight I made Rachael Ray's "Lemon Spaghetti with Leeks and Hot Tomato Bruschetta". First up, the pasta!

So this pasta is very fresh and herbaceous. Fill up the pasta pot and put the water on to boil. The recipe originally calls for ramps rather than leeks. I have actually never seen ramps anywhere in my life and because Rachael made this meal in march and said it was a seasonal thing, I assume they aren't available in freezing cold November, and opted to use leeks as a substitute just as Rachael suggested. Leeks are a bit of a unique thing. Most things you clean and then chop. Leeks are not that way. You first must chop them and then clean them. Leeks are grown in very sandy soil and as they grow up and the various layers form, sand gets trapped in each layer. Rachael Tip: Chop the tough, green tops off the leeks and chop the root ends off. Slice them in half lengthwise and then chop into half-moon shapes. Once chopped, either fill up the sink with cold water or fill up a large bowl with cold water. Drop the leeks in, separating them as you go and give them a swish in the water. Let them sit for a few minutes. This allows the grit to fall to the bottom of the bowl or sink. Then remove them and dry them on a kitchen towel and they are ready to go! Once the leeks are ready to go, add them, the garlic, fresno chile, lemon zest, salt and pepper to the pan and let them sweat out. At this point the water should just be coming up to a boil. Add the wine to the pan, turn down the heat to low and drop the pasta. The pasta I used is a pasta that has lemon flavor baked into the pasta, which I found at Buon Italia located in Chelsea Market in NYC. This would probably be available in a specialty Italian foods market but if it isn't available, regular spaghetti works fine. Be sure to salt the water! When the pasta is done, reserve a little of the starchy cooking water and drain the pasta. Turn the heat back up and add in the lemon juice, starchy cooking water and butter. The recipe calls for meyer lemons. I've heard them described before as having he flavor of a lemon, lime and orange all in one. I couldn't find them so I used plain lemons. The recipe doesn't clearly say whether to toss the parsley and mint with the veggies or just top the pasta with it. I tossed most of the herbs with the veggies and pasta and then garnished with a little more. Toss the veggies with the pasta and the pecorino romano cheese. Toss it for a good minute or so. This will thicken the sauce around the pasta! Plate it up and garnish with a little of the parsley and mint! This one is very good and would actually be a great pasta supper in Spring or Summer when the veggies and herbs are more in season! Either way, it was still good!

Rachael paired this meal with merguez sausages, which are a spicy lamb sausage. I wasn't feeling sausage so instead I decided to reach back to an old 30 Minute Meals and make "Hot Tomato Bruschetta". The "Hot" in the recipe title isn't referring to the temperature but to the fact there are red pepper flakes in the tomatoes, making them a little spicy! I actually didn't look up the recipe for this. It's really simple and really good. Turn the oven on 450 and let it preheat. I had some baguette left over so I used that. Slice it up and arrange on a baking sheet. Once the oven is preheated and ready to go, put the bread in and let it toast till golden brown. Watch it closely as it goes pretty fast. When you start the pasta water, you'll start the tomatoes that go on the toasted bread. In a skillet, add enough EVOO to coat the bottom of the pan. Add in enough tomatoes to fill the pan. The original recipe called for cherry tomatoes.

I actually bought a container of mixed tomatoes so i had red, orange, yellow and red with green specs. Basically, get whatever small tomatoes are looking great at the store. Add a few cloves of chopped garlic then sprinkle with salt, pepper and some red pepper flakes. Turn the pan onto medium-medium high and put the lid on the pan. After about 10 or 12 minutes, the tomatoes will begin to burst. Once they have burst and started giving off their juices, you can use a potato masher and break them down a little more. Take the lid off and let the mixture reduce and thicken up. Once thickened, add in a little chopped basil and turn off the heat. Spoon onto the toasted bread and top with a little extra basil. This one is one of my favs and I might have enjoyed it more than the pasta :)

Hope you all enjoy this one. It's a great vegetarian meal and if you left out the romano cheese, it would be a vegan meal. Why you would wanna leave out the cheese, I have no idea ;). Have fun with this one. Until next time, happy cooking!

Recipe: The pasts recipe is found in Rachael Ray's book "My Year In Meals". The bruschetta recipe can be found at the following link: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/bruschetta-with-hot-cherry-tomatoes-recipe/index.html

A Trip To España...

Good evening everyone! So for tonight's dinner I took a little trip to Spain! On the menu tonight was Rachael Ray's "Piquillo Pepper Chicken with Spanish Rice". Olé!!

First up you start the rice. To begin with you place a good handful of sliced almonds into a skillet to toast them. Rachael Tip: Watch the almonds closely. This goes really quickly and they can burn. As Rachael says "Your nose will know when they are done"! When the nuts become fragrant and slightly browned, take them off the heat and reserve them. Also, to get the greatest shelf life out of your nuts keep them in the freezer. Nuts have oil and oil can spoil so keeping them in the freezer gets you the longest use out of them! In the meantime, put the chicken stock, saffron, turmeric, golden raisins, salt and pepper in a pot and bring it to a boil. Drop the rice, reduce the heat to simmer and let it cook for about 18 minutes. Once the rice is done, add in the sliced almonds and flat leaf parsley and it's good to go! 

While the rice is cooking, prepare the chicken. The chicken is really simple. Season it with salt and pepper, and when the EVOO ripples and wafts a little bit of smoke, add the chicken breasts in. If the breasts are 6oz, they should cook about 6 minutes on each side. Luckily the breasts i bought were really close to this. Two of them were a little big so I pounded them out with a meat mallet to get them to a uniform thickness with the smaller chicken breasts. Worked perfectly! Obviously, if the breasts are smaller they will take less time and if they are larger allow a little more time to cook. Once the chicken is done, you can remove it to a plate and cover with foil to keep it warm. Into the skillet you cooked the chicken in, add the piquillo peppers and let them heat through a minute or two. Piquillo peppers are a small spanish pepper that is usually in the same section of the grocery store as the roasted red peppers. The small grocery store next to my apartment didn't have them so I had to use roasted red peppers instead. If your market has the piquillos go with those but if not feel free to substitute roasted red peppers. Next, add the dry sherry and deglaze. I would recommend cooking the chicken in a stainless steel pan or cast iron pan if you have it. Using a non stick skillet won't allow the drippings to stick well to the bottom of the pan. When you use cast iron or stainless steel, deglazing with the wine pulls up all the bits on the bottom of the pan and adds tons of flavor to the sauce. If you have only non stick, that's fine. Still gonna taste great. But when i need to deglaze, i prefer a cast iron or stainless steel pan. Anyway, deglaze with the sherry and let it reduce a minute or two. I didn't have sherry and this small grocery store didn't have a wine section. Since I didn't feel like stopping by the wine shop and getting sherry, I simply used white wine. Sherry is a more spanish ingredient to use and if you have it use it and if you're gonna have to buy wine anyway, go ahead and pick it up. Rachael Tip: DO NOT use the cooking sherry that you might find over on the vinegar aisle. Cooking wines tend to be overly sweet and when you cook with wine it concentrates the flavor. As a general rule, if you wouldn't drink it, you shouldn't cook with it. Once the sherry reduces a little bit turn off the heat, add in the butter and parsley and stir around to melt the butter and it's done!

To serve this up simply plate the rice, then lay a chicken breasts on top and top with the pepper and sauce mixture. This one was a really tasty meal. It took me back to when I was a kid and my mom used to buy the yellow rice packages in the grocery store that she used to serve up with her baked chicken and green beans! That's the great part about cooking! It can instantly take you back! As Rachael says, cooking is good for the soul and after the day i've had, it was much needed! The almonds in the rice add a nice bit of crunch and earthiness and the golden raisins give a nice sweet bite here and there! The sauce over the chicken has great flavor and is a real winner! Hope you guys enjoy your own little trip to Spain! Until next time, Happy cooking!!

Recipe: This recipe is featured in Rachael Ray's "Look + Cook" cookbook! However, it was also featured on her talk show so the link is below!! Enjoy!!

http://www.rachaelray.com/recipe.php?recipe_id=1407

Maybe I am Italian..

So my friend Dawn used to tell me that she was convinced there was Italian in my heritage because my Italian food seems to always be a hit! After tonight, I think she may be right. On the menu tonight was Rachael Ray's "Pork Chops Smothered with Peppers & Onions and Buttery Tomato Spaghetti".

The first thing I did was start the pasta side dish. Put on the pasta water to boil and then start the sauce. The sauce for this is probably one of the easiest pasta sauces you'll ever make. This sauce comes from Rachael's mother. Her mother doesn't like to chop and so she created this tomato basil sauce that doesn't require any chopping! Almost no chopping at all involved in this one!! Start out by melting 6 Tbs. of butter in a pot over medium heat. Yes, 6 Tbs. is correct, after all it is called "Buttery" tomato spaghetti. So melt the butter and then add the tomatoes and veggies. You simply peel an onion, cut it in half and toss it in, grate one clove of garlic in, add a few leaves of torn basil and season with salt. Now a couple things. I also add a bay leaf. The recipe doesn't call for it but I love the flavor of bay with onion and tomato. Secondly, I actually roll up the basil leaves and chiffonade them.  When you chiffonade you slice the basil leaves into very thin strips like a basil confetti. I don't like biting into big pieces of basil so I go with the chiffonade. If you don't mind the bigger pieces, just tear them  and throw them in. Let it reduce over medium heat for about 20 minutes and it's done. The recipe calls for crushed San Marzano tomatoes. San Marzano tomatoes are imported from a specific region in Italy and are a rich sweet tomato. Rachael Tip: Make sure if you buy San Marzano tomatoes that you are actually buying a product from Italy. Look for DOP on the label or make sure that San Marzano isn't the brand name. Some companies use San Marzano as their name but the tomatoes are not imported. I couldn't find crushed San Marzano so I substituted crushed Italian plum tomatoes and it was still fantastic. If you start the pasta water to boil and then begin the sauce, you should drop the pasta and finish the sauce and just about the same time. Once the pasta reaches al dente, reserve a cup or so of the starchy cooking water and then drain the pasta. Add the starchy water to the sauce and then toss with the pasta until it forms a nice sauce on the pasta. The starchy cooking water is essential in this. It is what helps the sauce to stick to the pasta.

Rachael Tip: This tip is for the storage of your basil. Most herbs can be washed, dried, placed in a plastic food storage bag and put in the refrigerator. Basil doesn't tend to like the cold as much so the best way is to place in a cup or vase of water and keep it on the countertop. I brought mine home today and did just that and in about an hour, it was drooping. Rachael's tip to extend the life of the basil is to take a plastic food storage bag and place it over the cup of basil. This creates a greenhouse effect and can help to extend the life of the basil by a few days!

Once you have the pasta sauce underway you are ready to start the pork chops. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees to begin with. Before you start cooking at all, take the chops out of the refrigerator to knock the chill off of them. Rachael Tip: Bring the chops up to room temp before you put them in the hot pan. Placing super cold meat in a screaming hot skillet will cause the meat to seize up. Also, pat it dry before seasoning and placing in the skillet to get a great caramelization on the meat! Once the chops are at room temperature and you've started the pasta sauce, heat the EVOO in the skillet until it begins to ripple and waft it's first bits of smoke. At this point it's ready for the pork chops. Add them to the skillet and leave them alone! You want to leave them on one side for a few minutes to develop a nice brown before you flip them to side two. Once they are browned on both sides, remove them to a plate. While the chops brown slice the onion, peppers, chile pepper and chop the garlic. The chile pepper for this is a red fresno chile pepper.

Rachael Tip: Fresno's are a mild chile that have a sort of fruity heat to them. If you have a higher heat tolerance you can slice it with the seeds and ribs left in. If you have a lower heat tolerance, remove the seeds and ribs from the pepper and then slice. The seeds and ribs are where the heat lives in any chile pepper.  Once the chops come out add another drizzle of oil and add in the veggies and add in the fennel seeds. Cook until the veggies soften up a bit and then add in the tomato paste and cook it out for a minute. At this point you can deglaze the pan with wine. You can use either a white or red for this dish. I prefer red and my favorite red wine is Nero D'Avloa. Nero D'Avola is a red wine from Sicily that is great. It's usually inexpensive but if you have a red wine that you really enjoy, by all means, use that. Once the wine cooks out for a minute, add the chicken stock to the pan. Slide the chops back in, including all the juices that have collected on the plate, and then place the onions and peppers on top. Put the chops in the oven and then let them finish cooking through for about 10 minutes or so. 

This one turned out to be really good. If you enjoy the drinking wine, it would be great with a glass of the Nero D'Avola. I myself don't like drinking wine so for me a nice glass of sweet tea was enough. This one was really good and I think you'll all love it. Until next time, happy cooking!!

Recipe: Both recipes were featured in Rachael Ray's book "My Year In Meals". The buttery tomato spaghetti was also featured on her Food Network program "30 Minute Meals". The recipe for the spaghetti can be found at the link below! Enjoy!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/buttery-tomato-spaghetti-recipe/index.html