To Those Who Claim They Can't Cook

All of you who claim you can't cook - I'm calling you out. That's nonsense. One year ago I started cooking with nothing more than a cookbook, and a hungry belly. Honestly, most of cooking is about following directions. So, here's a meal for those who are living off of ramen noodles. It's cheap, it's easy, and it's damn right delicious.

Dry-rubbed chicken with coconut rice. Honestly, this takes 10 minutes to prepare.

This meal you can't mess up. The rice is coconut rice. Buy one can of unsweetened coconut milk, and mix it with 1 3/4 cups of water in a pot with 2 cups of rice. Add a pinch of salt and two pinches of sugar. Give it a stir, put a cover on, and bring it to a boil, then lower the heat down to barely nothing. Let this sit for 20 minutes, simmering gently after you reach a boil. At around 20 minutes, check on the rice. Stick a spoon in, and stir around. Most of the water should be gone. If it is, good, take the pot off the stove (it's done!). Otherwise check back on it in 5 minutes.

Ok, the chicken. Buy some chicken thighs. Preheat the oven to 350. Mix up a dry rub- equal parts of spices: oregano, ginger powder, onion powder, garlic powder, pepper, salt (slightly less than an equal part), and paprika. Add some chili powder if you like it spicy. Rinse the chicken in cold water, pat it dry, then rub the dry rub all around it. Then, peel back the skin and rub the spices underneath the skin. Replace the skin. Drizzle with olive oil, rub it it, and place it in a pan (cast iron preferred).
Place the pan in the 350 degree oven and pull it out after 50 minutes. Perfect.

Plate the rice and chicken, and drizzle all that chicken juice from the pan onto the rice.
Wasn't that easy?

Baby, I'm Back

Sliced Skirt Steak flash fried to a crisp atop a thick mixture of cremini mushrooms and onion in a rosemary red wine reduction.

A bonus picture. Iceberg lettuce on bottom for a crunch, with tangy spring onions from the farmer's market.

After nine months of cafeteria food at college, I'm back in the kitchen making everything I desire to ingest. I'm back, and I'm hungry - get ready, it's going to be a wild summer.

Coming back from Ultimate Frisbee tonight, I knew I needed something delicious, absolutely savory to top my evening. So I fired up two burners, crisping up sliced skirt steak in a pan with olive oil at a high temperature. In the other skillet, I mixed equal parts of red wine and beef broth, reducing it with an onion that I sliced. As that simmered off I sliced a bunch of cremini mushrooms, sold to me at a farmer's market by a hippie claiming that his mushrooms were the "freshest". They were pretty fresh, but the hippie could have used a shower.

Anyway, I sprinkled some rosemary into the sauce, some salt and pepper, and a bouillon cube because I was out of stock. I spooned in some mustard to give it a bite,  then after tasting it, I realized a touch of cumin would neutralize the overwhelming floral taste of rosemary. After adding some milk and a pad of butter, I let it all reduce into a delicious mixture. I threw it all onto a bed of iceberg lettuce for a crunch, and sprinkled some tangy spring onions on top. I may have made up this entire meal, but it was great. The meat was crispy but juicy and a little pink inside. I left it unflavored, so it could be mixed with my onion and mushroom cream sauce. Offsetting all the richness was the crispy lettuce and tangy green onions. With a smile, I ate contently tonight.

A farewell.

So, the continual feast that has been this summer is finally coming to an end. A really anti-climactic ending. I was planning on a huge dinner to end it all, with all sorts of tasty stuff in it. Unfortunately, I realized how much food I accumulated this summer, and my final week in the apartment is being dubbed as "feast week" as I finish off my stores of food. Sadly I don't have anything left to cook except troves of canned soup.

However, it has been a great summer - a really delicious one too. So as I look back at all the good food I ate, it has been fun writing and photographing my food. Most importantly, it has been fun eating and cooking it as well. I hope I've inspired at least one person to enjoy a tasty meal, or at least made your mouth water.

May you eat decadently,
    -Chris

Garden Fresh

Some Fresh Cucumber from my mommy's garden. Also featuring olive oil, salt and pepper.

Spelt Pasta with Garlic Alfredo Sauce, mixed with garden Tomatoes and Basil

My weekend was awesome. My family came to visit me, and brought gifts! Along with a great weekend in Boston, they gave me a bunch of food from my mom's awesome garden. To start off this summer supper, I sliced some garden cucumbers and topped them with a drizzle of olive oil, some course salt, and ground black pepper. Crunchy, cool, delicious.

My main course was a very simple dish. I used some garlic alfredo sauce from the store on top of some spelt pasta, and added in an extremely flavorful garden tomato. To top it off, I shredded some basil leaves off the small plant I have growing on my windowsill. All in all, this was a simple dish and salad, but it was fresh, tasty, and fit in well with the summer weather.

Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken

Chicken Thighs, herb roasted, covered with Thai Maple Peanut sauce

Chicken Thighs without the sauce: Olive Oil, Oregano, Pepper, Salt

This was a simple meal. After waking up sore from a workout the day before, I craved protein. My shakes weren't cutting it - I needed real meat. So I picked up some thighs and made them perfectly, but simply. After rinsing them, I drizzled them with olive oil and rubbed in salt, freshly dried oregano, and lots of freshly ground pepper. In my cast iron pan, I cooked it at 425 degrees for around 30 minutes. I took it out, made a quick slice to ensure it was cooked, took a temperature reading for doneness, and put it on a plate. I poured on some Thai Maple Peanut sauce that I bought from a local farm, and dug in.

Apart from this delicious form of protein, I found a great way of eating a salad - raw and with a decadent meat dish. The meat was so rich that I didn't need a salad to go along with it. After eating some meat, I just took a bunch of washed lettuce in my hand and bit into it. It was a great pairing! The savory meat played with the sweet maple syrup-based peanut sauce. This all contrasted with the bitter, fresh, aqueous taste of straight lettuce. Did it look classy eating four chicken breasts and biting into handfuls of lettuce leaves? No. But it was a delicious dinner for a starving guy.

I Make Shit Up

Beans, Basil, Beef, Butter. Also, some Mushrooms and Elbow Pasta

So. I know it's been a while since I last blogged. A few lazy nights of soup, and then some captivating episodes of Breaking Bad left me looking at my camera and promising to myself, "I'll definitely write up the blog for that tomorrow". Yeah right. I am very decent at lying to myself. But I didn't lie to myself when making this dish - I just put in whatever I thought would be delicious.

It had been a couple of nights of non-cooking, and I was in the grocery food store staring at the boxes of instant Mac & Cheese and my hand was starting to gravitate towards them. Then, like a good guilty conscience, the image of that box of raw elbow macaroni in my pantry popped into my head. I had to make Macaroni and Cheese myself. But no- it wouldn't be any ordinary Mac & Cheese, it would be Chris's awesome version of Mac & Cheese.

So, I embarked upon a small journey of cooking an eclectic Mac & Cheese variant, using mostly ingredients I already had. I started off by defrosting a half pound of ground beef, browning it in the pan as it warmed up from a frozen block. When I could break it apart, I added a bit of butter and sliced mushrooms, letting them all cook together, blending flavors. After a few stirs, I added a can of drained black beans. I let it simmer until most of the water had evaporated Finally, I sliced up the entire block of cheddar and placed the slices on top of the concoction, letting it melt through as the steam and food heated it from below. After the pasta was finished cooking, I mixed it in with the sauce. With some salt and pepper, and enough basil leaves to de-leaf half my little basil plant, the dish was finished. What a meal.

Bok Choy & Chorizo

Chorizo sausage and sauteed Bok Choy.

I came home this weekend with some fresh chorizo sausage, and with a few spare heads of baby bok choy in the fridge. I cooked them up together, letting the juice leaking out of the sausage flavor and saute the greens. To enhance the flavor, I added a plentiful mix of chili flakes and chili powder.

This was an easy meal, which used the overpowering flavor of the spicy choizo sausage to play against the smooth taste of the bok choy. It ended up as a perfect balance of flavors and textures. Between the crunch of the greens and the chewiness of the meat, this meal was a savory blend of two different ethnic cuisines.