What’s On This Week

First up, Parmesan Chicken. Not quite the Chicken Parm that I originally went Googling for (you know, the one with pasta sauce and mozzarella), but this one looks realllllly good. I haven’t decided what side will go with this one though. Maybe some kind of noodles? Salad?

And even though I haven’t found a lot of casserole dishes that I really like (anyone got a favourite?), I’m going to give this Hamburger-Macaroni-Cheese one a try. Seems simple enough!

I’ve often thought about doing Sweet & Sour Pork, but I’m never in the mood for something that sweet. This week though, I’ll do it! Will probably just do rice on the side.

And since last week’s cookies are almost gone, I’m going to try these – Toasted Marshmallow Peanut Butter Cookies. If I had any flour in the house, I’d be making these right now instead of writing this post!

Lemon Baked Chicken & Garlic-Roasted Potatoes

I think potatoes are my favourite side. I could eat them with almost any dinner! I especially love roasted potatoes…and while these were good, and I might make them again – I am still on the hunt for the perfect recipe. I also need to work on my execution of course, but these just didn’t turn out crispy and fluffy for me. Too much oil? In the oven too long? Just not sure – but at least the flavour was great, so I’ll share the recipe with you! The chicken turned out pretty well too!

Let’s start with the potatoes.

starring tonight...

Not much going on here, but potatoes don’t need much help! I used really rich, yellow-flesh potatoes, and I’m wondering if that might be why they didn’t turn out nice and fluffy. Regular baking potatoes usually work pretty well, but I do like the flavour of these baby ones. (Plus they were starting to go bad and I had to use them up, haha…)

chop them up

Give the potatoes a quick chop – I did halves or quarters on these little ones. Keep the pieces roughly the same size, and they’ll all bake up nicely at the same time.

ready to go

Toss them with the oil in a baking dish, then add the other ingredients and do a second toss. I like to make sure I get everything evenly distributed. Then get the dish in the oven, and start on the chicken!

getting ready

Pretty simple stuff with the chicken too. I don’t generally drink wine, so I don’t often have it on hand – but I do like to cook with it!

start browning

First, you’ll want to brown your chicken. I was rushing it, so I haven’t done a very good job here – you definitely want more colour on it than that!

measure up

I probably didn’t need a full cup, but the trouble with not drinking wine is that I hate to waste so much of a bottle just for one meal – and it doesn’t keep well either! So I tend to go overboard when I do use it, haha.

bubbles!!

You’re using the wine here pretty much just to deglaze the pan – but personally, I use non-stick pans with a touch of oil or butter, so I don’t often have much left stuck to the pan when I’m done! Oh well. Go for it anyway!

Now we sit and wait…the hardest part at 7pm when you just want to eat already, haha. Make sure you give the poatoes several good stirs, especially if you’ve got them in a dish like this, not on a baking sheet. The more air that each side is exposed to, the crispier they get!

mmm potatoes

And they’re done! Now for the chicken…

chicken's ready

Keep in mind, I flipped these twice. Each time I did so, I added a little more salt and pepper. I think that worked pretty well, but I would like to find a way to thicken up the wine and turn it into a nice glaze or sauce. It was very flavourful and tasted great – but you couldn’t spoon it over the chicken because it just ran all over the plate! I hate that, haha. So next time I do this, I’ll experiment on thickening the sauce and let you know if I have any success.

dinner is served

Have I reminded you lately that presentation is not my thing? It’s not. Besides, if I started fussing with the way the food LOOKED on the plate, I would never hear the end of it. The RT prefers to eat, not admire. Oh, and I’ll give you three guesses as to what’s on our wedding registry…yes, yes. Wine glasses. Lol!

And the recipes! Both came from cooks.com, and include my changes. I made temperature and time adjustments on each, so that I could bake them in the oven at the same time. If you do these seperately, you can do the chicken at 400 degrees, and the potatoes at 450!

Lemon Baked Chicken

1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
3-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 cup dry white wine
1/2 tsp thyme
4 tbsp lemon juice (I like my lemon! Let’s be honest, I probably used more than 4 tbsp!)

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees F. In a frying pan, heat the butter and oil over moderately high heat and let it foam. Add the chicken when the foam subsides, and saute it, turning repeatedly until golden. Transfer to baking dish.

2. Add the wine and thyme to the pan and bring to boil. Scrape up any brown bits and pour over the chicken. Season with salt and pepper, sprinkle with lemon juice. Bake for 30-35 minutes.

Garlic-Roasted Potatoes

3/4 lb. red and yellow potatoes
1-2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper
6 garlic cloves, or to taste
1 tsp rosemary

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Cut potatoes into halves or quarters, keeping the cuts about the same size.
2. Toss potatoes, garlic, oil and rosemary in a baking dish. Season with salt and pepper. Roast until potatoes are tender and crusty, stirring often, for about 45 minutes.

Vent

What a hassle. First, I got a new camera awhile ago – a Canon Rebel XSi. I love it more than any other camera I’ve ever used, and that’s saying something! It’s just that good. But – apparently, Photoshop CS3 doesn’t support it’s RAW files? WHAT?! Maybe there’s a workaround but I haven’t been able to find it. So, instead of editing photos and writing posts this week, I’ve been trying to get Photoshop to work with the files – then I tried to get Canon’s supplied software to work with them – then I had to update all those programs (which was a hassle, Canon seriously needs an automatic updater) and THEN finally I got to a point where I could view and export the RAW files as JPEGs. And of course, the export was a pretty slow process.

Normally I would just work in iPhoto, which is why I haven’t had a problem with RAW files yet – but I like how quickly I can get multiple photos done in Photoshop, which is good for the blog…but I didn’t see this coming! Oh well. I think I’ve got it all sorted out now.

What’s For Dinner?

Here’s something new I’m planning for the blog…each weekend I’m going to post “the menu”. I’ll be listing all the dinners and baking I plan to do during the week, and if the recipes are online (most of them are), I’ll link to them. So if you’re stuck for something to make, you can check my list for ideas! And if you make it, post a comment You can also expect to see most of these recipes as upcoming blog posts. Unless I make Hamburger Helper…and I might do that this week, haha (it was on sale, okay?!).

Up this week:

Lemon Baked Chicken Breasts with Oven Roasted Garlic Potatoes

Slow Cooker Beef Stew

Fresh Tomato, Spinach, & Feta Pasta (From Company’s Coming Perfect Pasta and Sauce)

And as previously seen here at The Oven, Minestrone Soup For Dinner. I have the day off tomorrow, so while that stew is in the slow cooker, I can get the soup done (it’s a marathon job!).

…and some baking

Bacon and Cheddar Scones

Chewy Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies (these will make up for the epic fail-cookies I baked last week…)

Ugh

I broke my cast iron skillet (think it’s not possible? Oh, it is. I found a way). This new oven hates me a lot. I haven’t been cooking as much. I just baked some cookies last night which were a total failure. Even the Royal Taster won’t eat them.

I have been so uninspired lately. I have ground beef defrosting for tonight. I have no idea what to do with it. The most versatile ingredient ever…and I’m just going to throw it in a pot with some rice and sauteed onion & peppers. Then I’m going to put soy sauce on it and call it dinner.

Time to really get back to cooking. Time to seriously quit crashing on the couch after work and eating takeout. I was there last year, and I hated it, so I started this blog and really enjoyed cooking. Well, I just had to renew my domain…I paid for another year. Time to start using it for food posts, not just random posts sent out like a beacon…”I’m still here!”. No, now it’s time to go back to what I enjoy doing and start showing off the new kitchen, even if the oven does hate me.

The New Oven Has Arrived

More like, life took a huge turn but things have finally settled! What’s been going on with the old oven lately? I don’t know, but I hope the new people are treating it as well as I did (or perhaps, better – as in cleaning it more often). Yep…life just got a little crazy and probably the biggest part was moving (back home!). Jobs lost, jobs found, jobs changing. Packing, more packing, unpacking, organizing. Looking to buy a house, not buying a house. Too many hours worked, not enough hours worked. It’s been all over the place. All the craziness finally settled and the RT and I took a Hawaiian vacation. I want to go again! It was amazing. And we came back engaged! It was perfect.

So now, as the wildest, weirdest, fastest, craziest spring/summer ever is coming to a close (can it pleeeaaaaase be fall yet?) I’ve been able to catch my breath, relax a bit, and get back to cooking and baking more regularly. And let me tell YOU, wait until you see my new fancy oven! I don’t think it hates me, but I think that’s because it’s smarter than me. It does everything but talk. Instead of the jarring “BRRZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT” of my last oven, this one goes “ting tong ting tong ting tong ” when my cookies are done. It also knows how to clean itself. It’s properly vented (through the microwave!), it has a glass cooktop, and 44 buttons, most of which I haven’t used. It’s also brand new and still (mostly) shiny.

What I’m trying to get at here, is that we moved into a brand new condo and all the appliances are state of the art and I don’t understand half of what they do. However, I have much more (granite!!) counter space, so cooking is a little nicer in the new place.

I’ve tried a few new things – some of which were good, some were pretty much failures (yes, I failed at buttercream frosting. I thought that was a relatively simple thing to make?!). My latest project is a new cast iron skillet that I bought to replace my old frying pan, once I found bits of Teflon peeling off into my stir fry. Anyway, this skillet weighs probably about 15 pounds and is pretty intimidating. I think I’ve screwed up with it a couple times so now I’m off to “season it” again, whatever that means. How did people survive before Google?

Much more to come. It’s good to be back!

Chocolate Snickerdoodles

Well this is embarrassing. I was so sure I knew where I put the recipe for these cookies! No dice. I can’t find it!! I know it’s around here somewhere, so I’ll keep looking and edit the post later once I find it.

Snickerdoodles are one of my favourite cookies, and these ones turned out great. They’re extremely light, very fluffy and just a bit crumbly. The chocolate is nice too – it’s not overpowering. The cookies still taste like a familiar snickerdoodle, but with a hint of cocoa. Besides, I’ll take chocolate in anything!

start with butter and sugar

I doubled (or maybe even tripled, can’t remember) this recipe when I made it, so just keep that in mind for pictures. Beat together the butter and sugar…

add eggs & vanilla

Beat that together, and then you can start mixing your dry ingredients.

mix the dry

Am I the only one who sometimes mixes dry things with a whisk? Haha…I probably am. Sometimes I think it works better, sometimes I just haven’t done the dishes and the whisk is all I have left!

add the dry to wet

Add the two together and start mixing! It’s times like these I wish I had a standing mixer. I know, I know…just wait until I try bread…I know!

mmm...

I could just eat it now, thanks.

sugar and cinnamon, goes well on anything!

Better to bake it though! Throw some cinnamon and sugar together to roll the cookies in. Let me just say I love cinnamon and sugar (especially on crepes with butter!).

the first one (in the corner) never looks good!

After what seems like forever (I’m starting to think I must have tripled the recipe!), we’ve finally rolled our first batch. And in typical form, I’ve crowded the cookies too close together.

that's a lot of cookies

See what I mean? Luckily none of them suffered any serious damage.

and we're done!

(I promise, I’ll look for the recipe tonight and post it as soon as I find it!)

Chicken Pot Pie “Soup” – Must Try!

I love pot pies (beef or chicken), but I’m really not a fan of heavy pastry with dinner. Whenever we have pot pies I usually scoop out the insides and leave the crust…talk about wasteful! So this recipe over at The Crepes Of Wrath has my name written all over it. It’s a chicken pot pie without the pie! I had a ton of frozen chicken pieces in the freezer waiting to be used up, so it was the perfect opportunity to give this one a try.

all systems go!

It’s not often that I cook using all four elements at once. This recipe will keep you busy

plenty of chicken

I had a lot of chicken to use up, so I just went for it and cooked it all – it turned out fine, lots of chicken in each serving!

a lot of shredding to be done

It might take awhile, but it’s definitely worth it. Plus you’ll get a ton out of this recipe, so there’s plenty to share (I passed a few bowls to my grandparents) or use for workday lunches (I had enough to do this too!).

looks a little weird at first!

It all looks good after the milk is added though! Make sure you have plenty on hand – you’ll be using 4 cups or so for this. I used 1%, it worked well.

just about done

Then just add the vegetables and chicken. Told you it made a lot! I should mention – the recipe calls for peas, which I forgot to grab at the store, so I increased the corn and carrots a little (and I already had extra chicken anyway). Next time though, I’ll definitely add peas – it did seem like it was missing something. I also think it could have used some extra seasoning…not sure what, but I’ll play around with it when I make this again.

finished!

I baked some quick rolls for the side, they were pretty good. You could do a salad or something as well, but there’s a good amount of vegetables in it already.

Check the link at the top for the recipe!

Orange Beef Stir Fry

I love making stir fries. They’re usually easy and are good way to eat up lots of vegetables (since they never turn out mushy and tasteless!). This one with orange and broccoli looks good and tastes better – not to mention it’s done in less than 30 minutes!

mmm mandarin orange

Check out how good those oranges look! I made this back when mandarin oranges were still available, and they were so sweet – perfect in the ginger sauce. I’m always sad when they disappear from the grocery store

making sauce

The sauce is easy, mix up some orange juice, soy sauce, honey, cornstarch, garlic, ginger, and orange zest!

frying beef

Get the meat going after you’ve made the sauce.

now for some broccoli

Set the meat aside and start on the broccoli and onion. Like I said, this meal comes together very quickly!

adding the orange

Throw the meat back in and add the oranges – one more step and it’s done!

heat and stir for a couple minutes

Heat the sauce to boiling and let it thicken a bit, and that’s it!

served with egg noodle

I like to make this with my favourite egg noodles on the side, but it would go well with rice too.

Here’s the recipe!

1/4 cup orange juice
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp liquid honey
2 tsp cornstarch
1-2 garlic cloves, minced (or 1/4-1/2 tsp garlic powder)
1 tsp finely grated orange zest
1 tsp finely grated peeled gingerroot (or 1/4 tsp ground ginger)
3 tsp cooking oil
1 lb or 450g beef top sirloin steak, cut into thin strips
1 1/2 cups broccoli pieces
6 green onions, cut into 1 inch pieces
2 medium oranges, peeled, segmented and chopped

Rice or noodles for the side

1. Combine the orange juice, soy sauce, honey, cornstarc, garlic, orange zest and ginger in a small bowl. Set aside. If you’re making rice, start it cooking now (about 20 minutes to being done)

2. Heat a frying pan on medium-high, then add 2 tsp of cooking oil. Add beef and stir fry until desired doneness. Transfer beef aside to a plate and keep warm and covered. If you’re making noodles, start it cooking now (about 10-15 minutes to being done)

3. Heat 1 tsp of cooking oil in the same pan. Add broccoli and onion and stir fry until broccoli turns bright green.

4. Return beef to pan and add orange. Stir the sauce, and add to pan. Heat and stir until sauce is boiling and thickened.

(PS – this recipe comes from Company’s Coming – 30 Minute Meals. I’m getting some great dinners out of this book!)

Quick Bacon Feta Carbonara

This pasta is ultra-rich and so so good…not to mention super fast and easy. Throw a green salad on the side and you’re done.

start with bacon - it will always turn out tasty

Start the bacon frying and if you like, you can get the spaghettini boiling at the same time. For some reason it takes me a long time to cook bacon…I might be doing it wrong, haha.

cream and egg yolk - don't worry, you can just skip dessert

In the meantime, start the sauce…

starting to look good

Before you drain the noodles, reserve 1/2 cup of the water. Add some spices to the bacon, then the noodles – and it’s almost done already.

toss a few times and it's done!

You should get about six servings of this…spaghettini goes a long way. It’s good if you’re having friends over, but I think it’s even better if you get leftovers for lunch the next day

done and done!

Want the recipe? You definitely want to try this!

12 cups water
1 1/2 tsp salt
12 oz/340 g spaghettini
1/2 cup whipping cream
2 large egg yolks
1 tsp olive oil
4-6 bacon slices, diced (or you could substitute with your favourite meat or sausage easily)
1 garlic clove, minced
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp pepper
3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

1. Boil water and salt in a large pot. Add pasta and boil uncovered, stirring occasionally until desired tenderness (about 9 minutes). Drain, reserving 1/2 cup cooking water. Return pasta to pot and keep warm.

2. While pasta is boiling, heat oil in large frying pan on medium. Add bacon and cook, stirring occasionally, until crisp. Meanwhile, whisk cream and egg yolks in a small bowl until combined. Set that aside.

3. Add garlic, ground nutmeg, and pepper to bacon. Heat and stir for 1 minute. Reduce heat to medium-low. Add pasta, toss to coat. Add reserved cooking water to cream mixture. Stir, then add to frying pan. Toss to coat.

4. Add feta and parmesan, toss, and serve immediately. Goes well with a little extra pepper on top!