stromboli

Mmmm stromboli! I was really itching to try making a stromboli the other day. So I did. This recipe has two portions; 1) the crust and 2) the stromboli stuffin's. So here are the stromboli ingredients:

I should have used fresh mushrooms but I was feeling lazy

1/2 lb lean ground beef
1 cup cooked ham, diced
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 red onion, chopped
1 (14 oz) jar pizza sauce
1 (4.5 oz) can mushrooms, drained
1/4 cup butter
1 (8 oz) package sliced pepperoni
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

The first thing I did was start chopping the vegetables (onion, pepper, mushrooms)

mmmmm red onions

you can ring my bell... peppers

ready to get dumped

Next I heated a large skillet over medium heat and threw in the ground beef, cooking it until all of it was brown, no pink.

almost ready to add the fixin's

After the beef was browned, I added the pizza sauce into the skillet.

I still had leftover had slices from the cordon bleu, so I just diced those up. I'm sure cubes of ham would be much better for this. Maybe next time.

hammela, I've missed you

Time to throw in all the veggies and the ham.

 Once all was mixed in and lathered in pizza sauce, I put the burner on low so that I could prepare the crust real quick. So, here is the crust recipe (this is actually just a basic pizza crust recipe):

1 (.25 oz) package active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups flour
Cornmeal

In a large mixing bowl I dissolved the yeast into the 1 cup of warm water, then added the oil, sugar, salt and flour. I used white flour but next time I think I'll try whole wheat flour. Whole wheat flour seems crumbly when making something tedious like gingerbread (my whole wheat human centipede gingerbread was a real struggle) but I think pizza crust wouldn't be too hard.

mixin's

So I mixed them all together and threw them in my slave, I mean my mixer.. and let the mixer do magic.

dough!

 Next I floured a flat surface and turned the dough into it, getting it all flour-y. Then I covered it and let it sit there for about ten minutes.

Next I laid down a sheet of parchment paper (I always use parchment paper when baking now, it's just way easier than dealing with that hoe Pam and burned bottoms stuck to cookie sheets) on a cookie sheet/pan and rolled the dough out the length of the pan in sort of a rectangular shape (as shown below)

Now I laid out all the pepperoni slices along the dough, but not too close to the edge.

and then I poured the sauce overtop of the pepperoni slices (there is going to be at least a hand full of sauce left over). Mine wound up squeezing out of the stromboli as I rolled up the dough. I would have just as easy left it out had I known it would do that. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees NOW!

mmm

The cheese was then spread across the top of the sauce. Sprinkled, if you will.

The next part was by far the most adventurous. I had to roll the dough up like a sleeping bag with the sauce inside. Carefulllll. CAREFULLLL. The ends had to be folded in and pinched, tucked, whatever necessary.

Now that the dough was all rolled up, I poked holes in the top and rubbed the stick of butter across the top. (The recipe called for 1/4 cup of melted butter but I did not use that much and I didn't even melt it. I just rubbed the end of the butter stick on the dough like chapstick on lips). Then I sprinkled the top with some cornmeal.

covered with cornmeal and ready to go into the oven

Bake this for 30 minutes OR UNTIL GOLDEN BROWN.

somehow it came out all perfect-shaped. hmm?

 I don't like to toot my own horn, but this was, in my opinion, one of the best things I've ever made. It was even delicious reheated as left-overs for the next few days:

nom nom nom

Johanna's bananas nuts muffins

My friend Johanna asked me to make her some banana nut muffins, so here's what I did:
In the mixer's bowl I stirred together 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda and 1/8 of a teaspoon of salt. Mixah mixah mixah.

I separated two egg whites from yolks and dropped them (the whiteys) in a separate mixing bowl and beat them just a little. Then I proceeded to mix in 1 cup of mashed bananas (about 2 whole bananas), 3/4 of a cup of white cane sugar, and 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil. To the side, I grated a lemon peel to yield enough zest for 1 teaspoon, then added that to the mix as well.

1 cup mashed bananas

grated lemon zest

lemony

Next I added the banana mixture into the flour mixture in the mixer bowl.

Now go to work mixer! Trabajo!

slaving the mixer

Add 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts.

Then I preheated the oven to 350 degrees. I hate how in most recipes the first direction is to preheat the oven and it's always way way too early. I never do this too early because then the kitchen gets flaming hot and that's just BANANAS.
So once everything was blended together well, I lined a muffin pan with some baking cups and poured the batter into each cup about 2/3 full.

ready to go

Baked these for about 20, 23, or 25 minutes..

done

The muffins were pretty good, even Johanna liked them and she hates organic :p
Here is the full list of ingredients used:
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 egg whites
1 cup mashed bananas
3/4 cup white cane sugar
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

chicken cordon bleu, spicy creamed corn & asparagus

So two of our friends were coming over to play games last night and I wanted to try to improve my chicken cordon bleu recipe that I have tried only once before.
These are the ingredients I used:

2 1/2 chicken breasts
4 slices of Boar's Head maple-glazed honey ham
4 slices of swiss cheese (also Boar's Head)
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon paprika
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup dry white wine
3/4 teaspoon chicken bouillon granules
2 teaspoons cornstarch
2/3 cup heavy whipping cream
toothpicks!

FYI: These measurements were enough for the four of us with one piece of chicken left over.

The first thing I did was lay the chicken pieces out on a cutting board and sprinkle them with seasoning (because the last time I made this recipe the chicken itself tasted bland to me). The seasoning I used was chili powder and Accent Flavor Enhancer. I got out my meat tenderizer aka big food hammer and started to pound away.

smash

So I pounded the chicken breasts down until they were pretty thin, I'd say at least 1/2 an inch thick. They should be as thin as you can get them without pulverizing them into chicken shreds. I then cut them down the middle of each breast. So I wound up working with 5 half breasts.

two pounded out breasts

 Now I layered 1 piece of swiss cheese and 1 piece of ham on top of each half breast, trimming it down if I had to in order to keep it all inside the border of the breast (if that makes sense) - sort of like 'coloring inside the lines'.

swissssssssssss

hammela!

The next thing is to roll the breasts up tightly and put at least two toothpicks through each one.

Some of the breasts may be tricky so you may need to add a third toothpick going in an opposite direction to keep that thing in line. After I rolled them all up, I sprinkled them with more of my two choice seasonings. Next I mixed the 3 tbs of flour and 1 tsp of paprika in a small bowl together and one by one *carefully* coated the chicken pieces in the dusty mixture.

flour

paprika

powdered breast roll

Once they were all dusted with the powder mixture, I laid out a piece of aluminum foil and lined them up on there so I could prepare the skillet for the next step.

wait, Egg, WTF you don't belong in this blog. You don't even like ham, oh wait, you love it..

So next I got out a large skillet and heated the 1/4 cup of butter on medium-high heat. I added the chicken *carefully* and cooked each side until lightly brown. I did not let each side sit in the pan too long, for fear of pan-stickage and chicken-burning. I continuously *CAREFULLY* rotated them.

Once all sides were looking golden, I added the 1/2 cup of wine and the 3/4 tsp of crushed chicken bouillon. I made sure to pour the wine directly over all the chicken pieces at this point, that way they were sure to get their share of wine absorption - then I reduced the heat to low and covered, letting it simmer for about 20 minutes.

I preheated the oven to 350, preparing for the next step. After the 20 minutes of simmering, I used tongs to place the breasts on a pan and put them in the preheated oven for 10 minutes while the sauce in the pan continued to simmer.
While the chicken was simmering & baking, I started working on the creamed corn.
These are the ingredients I used:

2 cans (15 1/4 oz each) of Del Monte Gold & White corn
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon white cane sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup low-fat milk
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon chipotle chili pepper powder
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

In a large saucepan I dumped the two cans of drained corn, set the heat to medium and started adding the heavy cream, salt, sugar, butter and milk. I mixed them all in well and stirred for a few minutes. Then I added the chili powders and stirred it all even more until it started to thicken up. I turned the heat down slightly to help it simmer into a nice thick sauce. Once I achieved the thickness I desired, I turned the heat down to love. A few minutes before it was time to serve I added the shredded mozzarella cheese and stirred it in well. Then I added a little more chili powder; possibly a few more pinches.

How's the chicken doing?

After the ten minutes the chicken spent in the oven, I took them back out and put them back in the skillet with the sauce again and let them simmer in there on low a few more minutes until the meal was about ready to serve.

Next I started on the asparagus. Actually I barely started the asparagus but my babe is actually the one who took over and completed it :)
Ingredients:

1/4 cup butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh crushed black pepper
3 cloves garlic (minced)
1 pound fresh asparagus spears (trimmed)

So first I washed off the asparagus spears and trimmed the bottom stem part off. Put the butter in a pan and put it on medium-high. 1/4 cup of butter seemed a little excessive so I'd recommend a little less than that actually. By this time my novio took over. He threw in a dash of nutmeg and a pinch of crushed red pepper, then added the olive oil, salt, black pepper and garlic. He stirred the saucey mix around a little allow the garlic to cook. Then he threw the asparagus on top and immediately started turning the spears over and over. I did take over part of the turning process for about a minute. I think it's good to keep them constantly turning so they don't sit in the pan and get too soggy and also to achieve even cooking.

So by now the chicken was ready to come out of the skillet and make their ways to the plates. First I needed to get a small bowl and mix the 2 tsp of cornstarch with the 2/3 cup of heavy cream together.
Next I removed the chicken from the skillet and removed all the toothpicks. I then whisked the cornstarch/heavy cream mix into the wine sauce in the skillet. I turned the heat up to low-medium and stirred the sauce until it thickened up.

wine sauce

Oh yeah, I added a little more wine into the sauce at this point. Just eye-balled it and poured a little in, whatever looked right at the time.

So to wrap this dinner all up, I put the de-toothpicked chicken on the plate, poured the wine sauce over top; put the creamed corn on the plate and sprinkled a dash of chili powder on the individual serving for aesthetics. Oh yeah, and put the asparagus on the plate.

completion