A little foreplay goes a long way

Last week, I started my summer evening math class.

Calculus. Advanced calculus. On lovely summer evenings. As a matter of fact, yes, I am a masochist who enjoys having no life. Strangely enough though, having no life requires a lot of planning and forethought. I’ve got a tight bit of time between work and school to cook, eat, and do a bit of homework. Cause it’s not like I’m going to be doing homework at 10:30 at night after class. Yes, 10:30 at night. I love my life.

Believe it or not, I was actually smart enough to do a bit of cooking ahead on the weekend.

I made and froze a spaghetti sauce (with a few variations) that Recipe Guy likes. Some day I’ll make it again and show you the variations, not the least of which minimizes the number of dishes required (holy crap it’s tasty, but holy crap the dishes!).

The day I ate it, Wednesday, I boiled water, cooked pasta, and dumped the thawed-in-the-fridge-all-day sauce into the pot. I added a little extra cream to encourage the delicious sauciness of this dish. (wine would work too, but I’d somehow managed to run out)

I also prepared a vegan lentil and eggplant stew that requires variations of its own before I post it. On the day I ate it, Thursday, I let it thaw in the fridge, heated it in a bowl, and served it with a warmed pita bread and a couple olives.

And was running late and didn't take a pic. Dammit.

So, that was two dinners down. Friday, I don’t have class so I’m not going to worry about it, but I still had two days of cooking and eating dinner in about an hour.

One way to minimize cook time is with a crock pot. You can do all the preparation the night before, stash it in the fridge, and put it on to cook in the morning before you leave for work. The trick to this is remembering to actually turn the crock pot on.

Red beans are an awesome crock pot recipe. Yes, I made them on the stove in that version, but I’ve done them in the crock pot more than a couple times. Works just fine. And, if you make the rice on the weekend, dinner is waiting for you when you get home. Just add parsley. Yes, I like parsley.

Precooking rice also works if you’re planning a stir fry.

Stir fries are superfast cooking meals. But they are a little heavy on preparation time with all those fresh veggies to chop. But, since I was chopping the veggies for Monday’s Red Beans on Sunday, I also chopped the veggies for Tuesday’s stir fry.

Stir Fry In Advance

What you need:

In advance:

• Half an onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 small head of bok choy
• 8 mushrooms
• A handful of beansprouts
• 1-2 tsp cornstarch
• ½ c water
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp fresh chopped ginger
• ½ tsp sriracha (aka cock sauce) (optional)
• ½ tsp sugar

Um, that pic includes the red bean stuff... you'll just have to ignore those parts.

On the day you eat it:

• Peanut and sesame oils
• 1 small lean steak, like inside round or flank
• Rice that you cooked a couple days ago

What you gotta do:

In Advance:

Rinse, and chop all the veggies to the size you prefer. I like things a little smaller than bite sized. That way, I can eat a few pieces at a time, and they cook a little faster.

The beansprouts can just stay in their bag until the day you cook.

Store the chopped veggies in an air tight container or large ziplock bag.

Combine the cornstarch, water, soy, sugar and ginger in a small container or bag, and store it next to the veggies.

On the day you eat it:

Don’t forget to take the steak out of the freezer in the morning or the night before. Let it thaw in the fridge and don’t worry if it’s still a little frozen when you start cooking, it’s easier to slice steak thinly when it’s a little frozen.

When you get home from work, put a large pan or wok on the stove with a bit of peanut oil and sesame oil in it. While the oils heat over medium high, slice the steak thinly against the grain.

Takes about 2-3 minutes to slice the steak and heat the pan.

Drop the steak in the hot hot pan, the cutting board in the sink, and grab the veggies and sauce from the fridge.

The steak should only take a few minutes if the pan is big enough and hot enough, and if the steak is sliced thin enough.

So, we're at about 6 or 7 minutes now.

When it’s started to lose its pink, open the veggie container and upend the contents into the pan.

If you want these to cook a little faster, throw a tablespoon of water in with them and cover the pan.

That takes about 3 or 4 minutes.

Once the veggies are softened and the meat has lost its pink, give the sauce one last shake and dump it into the pan. Give it a stir to spread it around, add more water if necessary.

Stir in the beansprouts and put the lid on.

One minute to add and stir.

Turn off the heat and nuke your rice.

3 minutes for the rice.

You should be at about the 13-15 minute mark here.

Once the rice is warm, top it with the fast, healthy dinner that you just cooked in 15 minutes.

What's the fastest dinner you've ever made?

We Have Company!

Okay folks, we roped someone into cooking dinner for us. And boy do we ever need it. Taneasha is on day twenty something of eating road food, and I'm sure there's more to eat in my house than granola and yogurt, but damned if I can find it.

Thankfully we have the darling Gemma Halliday here to feed us!

Check it out!

...

Chicken Nacho Bake Experiment

First off, thanks so much to the lovely ladies here at Author’s Kitchen for hosting me today.  I’ve been salivating over their recipes for weeks.  The amount of cheese used on this blog makes my heart happy.

I’m nearing the end of my Hollywood Confessions Blog Tour, but please check out my website for the last tour stops, as I still have a few cool prizes to give away.  (Including gift cards, free books, cameo appearances, and Hollywood Headlines collectibles!)

Now, for the cookin’.  I have to admit, I’m not known as the world’s best cook.  In fact, up until recently, I had been a vegetarian for the past twenty years.  As you can imagine, when I finally switched to meat again, cooking it was way out of my comfort zone.  I’m slowly learn how not to burn it (only five kitchen fires later), but as the title of this blog states, I’m still more in the experimenting phase than the expert phase of my cooking journey.  So, here goes nothing…

Chicken Nacho Bake

What you need:

• ½ lb chicken
• 2 cups pinto beans (cooked)
• 2 avocadoes
• 2 tomatoes
• small bunch green onions
• tortilla chips
• Cheddar Cheese
• spices  (For mine, I used a good ¼ cup of mixed Mexican spices that I had on hand – chili powder, cumin, paprika, garlic powder, oregano, and onion flakes.  But you can use whatever flavors feel south of the border to you or what you might have handy, adding more or less heat depending on what you like.  I’ve even added cinnamon sometimes for an unexpected sweet note to tempt the kids.)

The first thing I did was put the chicken in a pan with just enough water to cover, and half the spices.  I’m still a meat novice, so I prefer the milder white meat, but any cut of chicken that you like works.  I popped this up on medium heat until the water started to boil, then let the chicken hang out there soaking up all the yummy spice juice.

While my chicken was enjoying its bubbly soak, I got the veggies ready.  I grabbed a bowl and mashed the avocado…

Then chopped up my green onions…

Then diced the tomato.

(By the way – Seeley isn’t kidding when she says it’s hard to remember to take pictures of the food.  Do you know how many tomatoes I chopped before I remembered to take a pic of one whole?  We’ll be having tomato soup later this week for sure.)

By this time, my chicken was looking nice and cooked and losing its icky pink center.

So, out of the pan it came.  I popped it up onto the cutting board, but left the pan on the stove with all the spice juices still bubbling.

Into the same pan I added my cooked pinto beans and the rest of the spice mixture, just to let the beans soak up a bit of the flavor before going in the oven.

(Oh, shoot!  I forgot the oven.  ‘K, go put it at 350.  Perfect.  Now back to the chicken…)

While the beans cooked, I grabbed a couple forks and started shredding the chicken.  This was probably the most boring part of the whole process.  I had no idea how long it takes to shred chicken.  It’s kinda tedious, really, trying to get just the right bite-sized pieces.  This is where I started staring off into space and daydreaming.  On the upside, I got the first two chapters of my next book mentally plotted out.  Bonus!

Okay, so now that the chicken is shredded, it’s time to start building our multilayer bake.  I grabbed a baking dish and spread a single layer of tortilla chips along the bottom.  If you’re really ambitious, you could make your own by frying fresh tortillas, but I am nowhere near that ambitious.  So, I grabbed some of my boyfriend’s stash from the cupboard.  (Anyone else think it’s slightly more than coincidental that he puts all the good chips, chocolate, and munchies on the highest shelf in the house? I had to grab a stepladder to break into it.  Not cool, dude.)

Once the chips were down, the shredded chicken went on top of those…

And the beans came off the stove and went on top of that…

And then another layer of chips went down on top of that.  I added a couple slices of cheese on top, but only on one half of the bake, since my boyfriend doesn’t eat dairy.  (He’s also gluten intolerant, which often adds another challenge to cooking.  But, I am happy to say for anyone else who might have these kind of dietary issues, this recipe is entirely gluten free!) 

Into the oven this went (which was more or less pre-heated at this point), for about 15 min, or until the cheese got all gooey and melty-licious.

Once it was warm and melty, I pulled that sucker out and add the veggies I prepared earlier in layers.  First avocado, then tomatoes, and green onions.

And… ole!  You’ve got a chicken nacho bake!  You can garnish with a little lime wedge if you like, and the margarita is optional. (Though highly recommended!)

Huh.  What do you know?  No kitchen fire today.  I must be getting better at this. ;)

Thanks again to Taneasha  and Seeley for letting me come play in their kitchen!  And to celebrate my actually edible experiment, (the boyfriend even had seconds!  Muy bueno!) I’m giving away a Hollywood Confessions tile kitchen coaster! 

Just leave a comment below and you’ll be entered to win.  I’ll have the munchie-hoarding boyfriend pick a poster at random tomorrow and announce the winner here.

Enjoy your fiesta!

~Gemma Halliday

http://www.gemmahalliday.com

HOLLYWOOD CONFESSIONS

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