Archive for April, 2010

I love a stir-fry.  Some nights I need to eat and don’t know what the hell I’m going to cook, and then I decide to call it a stir-fry night.  You go into the refrigerator and find left-overs, vegetables and sauces that sound good to mix together.  Then cook the rice, place the wok or saute pan over the heat and start cooking those vegetables, add in the leftovers the sauces and then throw that rice in and mix it all together.  Now, I’m definately not a traditional stir-fry cook, but mixing grains up with tasty ingredients is pretty sweet.  I’m also not prone to stick to rice with a stir-fry – I love all grains – brown rice, white rice (long and short grain), wild-rice, millet (what’s up millet) and quinoa (haven’t used it – try it – it’s ridiculously healthy and delicious).

Funny how you sometimes you never think of something on your own and then you watch someone do it and I big giant light bulb goes off in your head, and you feel a little funny about not having thought of it yourself.  So I was watching some random cooking show and the host was making a bread bowl out of pizza dough.  I was surprisingly excited about this new world to explore – what kind of breads can I make.

A few nights ago we were having one of my brothers over for dinner and I had decided to make a chili (I love chili).  Suddenly I remembered the pizza bread and didn’t want to just make bread, that’s boring.  I ended up taking some chicken sausages (pre-cooked) and fresh thyme, cilantro, a little butter, salt and pepper.  Cooked them all up in a saute pan and mixed it into the pizza dough ( which took way longer than i had expected.  So I formed each pizza ball on a baking sheet, wiped some melted butter over the top and sprinkled parmesan and cheddar cheese over the top (also sprayed the baking sheet so that the cheese that falls down won’t burn and smoke).  At 375 it took about 20-25 minutes (time will depend on the size of the bread bowls that your making.  I cut out the center top from the bread bowls – filled them with chili and it was de-freaking-licious.

I definitely will continue to experiment with the pizza dough bread.

I was raised by a mother who enjoyed cooking (and is an amazing cook) and consequently, I grew up watching her cook, helping her cook and eventually cooking on my own. I became good at making a few things, but ultimately there were a lot of things that I did not know how to do. I could make some pretty good grain dishes, and am pretty good at making soups. I can make some pasta dishes, a few salad dressings – but I quickly became bored with my lack of versatility.

After turning on the food channel a few times, it very quickly became my favorite station. I started out picking favorite shows to watch, such as Iron Chef America, the Next Iron Chef, Emeril, Rachel Ray, chopped… – I also watch other cooking shows on other stations, like Top Chef. I don’t always like the personalities on all of these shows, but very soon I started seeing these chefs do things that I never thought of, and then I’d try it on my own (but with my own spin on it). I finally found inspiration for trying new things.

When I cook, I have tendency to experiment a lot and I find a new spice, technique, tool…, and I obsess on it for a while and play around with it. I want to use this blog as a means of storing my experiments. If I’m lucky, then I’ll be getting feedback from other people that read my entries and have ideas of their own, or questions….

So in any event – enough of this, it’s time to get on to some interesting topics. Please let me know if you think of anything that you’d like me to write about – because I’d love the feedback and new ideas.