Fried Pork Chops with a Chipotle Mushroom Gravy

So I used pork chops but feel free to use any sort of other meat here if you'd like.  I'm not sure fish would work too well, but chicken or steak (think country-fried) would work exceptionally well as well.  The gravy also makes for a good topping over mashed potatoes.  This kind of flavoring is what got me to liking spicy foods.  So, as promised with the picture from the previous post:

The Pork Chops

Ingredients:

pork chops (again, other meats ok, so feel free to use chicken or beef)

flour

garlic salt

lemon pepper

taco seasoning

eggs

Cooking instructions:

1.) In a large pot or wok (needs to be deep) pour oil, enough to immerse the pork chops completely and heat at a medium high to high heat (if you have a deep fryer it's actually that much easier)

2.) Mix together the flour, garlic salt, lemon pepper, and taco seasoning (use a lot of taco seasoning)

3.) In another bowl beat the eggs

4.) Coat the meat in egg and then the flour mixture (from hence I will call it fry batter)

5.) When the oil is hot, put the coated meat into oil and fry until a golden brown

The Gravy

Ingredients:

mushrooms

onions

butter

chicken stock (any kind of stock works)

left-over fry batter

chili powder

black pepper

Tobasco Smoked Chipotle sauce

1.) In a large sauce pan (or wok) grill the onions and mushrooms at a medium heat

2.) When the mushrooms and onions are cooked to desired amount (usually when the onions start releasing flavor) add butter and black pepper (I used a little Italian seasoning too, but that's optional) 

3.) After butter melts add chicken stock

4.) Add the left-over fry batter (if you don't have any left over just add flour and season)

5.) Season with black pepper, chili powder, and Tobasco sauce mix until desired consistency

So there you have it, serve the gravy over the chops and it is delicious, if I do say so myself.  I originally had wanted to try it with crushed smoked chipotle peppers, which you can buy canned at the supermarket, but I went with the Tobasco first.  I'll try the iteration with the peppers but essentially I expect it to be pretty similar.  Success!  Hope you enjoy it.

Update: I've tried it with the crushed chipotle, it gives it tons of kick, if you want to tone it down, don't use the whole can

Grilled Chicken Pesto

Another easy pasta sauce coming up for you. Pesto normally is pretty daunting to most people, but in actuality it's actually fairly simple and straightforward. The only caveat I give to you, is that you need to make sure you have like a food-processor of some sort. I'm have convinced that you can make it in a blender, and more than half convinced that it might actually be easier in a blender (the whole ice crush feature kind of thing), but I use a food processor, and I know that works. The ingredients are a little more exotic in some senses relative to the kind of run of the mill tomato sauce pastas. I think since I'm going for the more authentic mode, maybe I'll try to make a real alfredo next (not that creamy American kind). Additionally, I'm going to assume that you all know how to make pasta already, so I'm not going to tell how to cook it. If you don't, I'm sure it's buried in here somewhere.

Ingredients:

boneless, skinless chicken breast
onion
fresh basil
freshly grated parmasean
garlic
pine nuts
olive oil
salt
pepper

Cooking Instructions:

1.) Cube the chicken breast and julienne the onion (slice into slivers)

2.) Cook the chicken and onion on a pan in olive oil on a medium heat

3.) In a food processor, mix the parmesean, pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, and basil until a sauce is created (you'll have to kind of guess the amounts that you'd like to eat)

4.) Salt and pepper to taste

5.) Pour sauce over chicken and onion and mix over pan

6.) Mix with pasta

That's all there is to it, it's really quite simple. You only have the major annoyance of having to clean your food processor, if you consider that an annoyance. It's good, and it's a little lighter than the standard marinara and meat sauces (not necessarily healthier, it's a lot of oil). For the parmesean, you don't HAVE to grate it if you have a food processor that would break it down fairly easily, like a blender with an ice crush feature might do the trick nicely, the standard blades on a food processor don't really break down the parm all too well leaving you with big chunks, which you don't want. You can use flakes or slices as well, I like to get a fresh brick of parm and grate it down, you can use the pre-grated ones but that's usually lower quality. If you don't mind you could even go as far as to try the powdered stuff. To me, that might be kinda nasty.

Basalmic Bread Dip

So, I kind of picked this up from a restaurant in Seattle called Piatti, it was really good, and a it's a nice twist to the normal basalmic vinegar and olive oil dip. I think more people do this than I know of, but this is kind of an easy way to do it yourself.

Ingredients:

basalmic vinegar (as a note, the more expensive or higher quality the vinegar the less sour it is)
olive oil
crushed red peppers
Italian seasoning (basil, oregano, thyme)
black pepper

Directions:

Mix and serve with bread

So the key is that you need to have good bread to go with this. Of course, don't make it too sour, so I'd recommend a better brand than the cheapest vinegar you can find in your local supermarket. The Costco ones (I think like Basalmic Vinegar of Modena or something) are actually quite nice. I recommend a good sourdough or Italian loaf for if you make this. This is ideal for artisan breads, where I would back for maybe 5 minutes at 350 degrees or 1-2 minutes under the broiler. This makes the bread crispy on the crust, but also warm and chewing on the inside, allowing it to soak up the basalmic. I prefer this to the standard bread and butter, and actually even to garlic bread.

Oriental Vinaigrette

So, I actually picked this up from my brother a while back, and I like the flavor and all that. It's a good solid salad dressing that's easy to make, and the ingredients are pretty straightforward and easy to come by. At least they were back home at my parents' place. I'm sure you can find them anywhere though.

Ingredients:

soy sauce
rice vinegar
sugar
oil

Prep instructions:

Mix the ingredients together measuring until you get desired taste, then serve over salad.

Super easy, as salad dressings often are and ought to be. So some people like my brother prefer it a little sweeter, I like it a little on the more sour side. So according to how you like it you should adjust how much sugar and vinegar you put in. For oil, use normal cooking oil (i.e. vegetable oil, canola oil, peanut oil, etc...) because olive oil has a very distinct taste that doesn't mix well with the soy sauce. I recommend doing it in an old jar of some sort, so that if ever you want some you just shake it up.

Grilled Steak with a Red Wine Mushroom Sauce

I had to do a lot of makeshift changes with this, so I haven't "technically" tried this recipe yet. However, I basically made this a couple of times for myself and my roommate, and it's turned out fairly well. Usually, it's because I find some crazy beef deal at Safeway or something, yay for beef. As a note, the steak that you want to use should be of a flatter variety, I think I used a flank steak, but sirloin should work well as well, tri-tip I think is doable but probably a little harder to pull off. Anyways, you try out your own iterations and let me know how it turns out.

Ingredients:
steak (you pick which one)
Worchester sauce
lemon juice
Montreal steak seasoning
red wine (something fruity, of course I didn't have any so I used red wine vinegar, red cooking wine works as well)
sugar
butter
Italian seasoning
garlic salt
mushrooms
black pepper
olive oil

Cooking Instructions:

1.) In a bowl soak the steaks in Worchester sauce and lemon juice, coat with Montreal seasoning

2.) When ready, heat a pan to a medium/medium-high heat with olive oil

3.) Grill the steak on the pan, add Montreal seasoning if necessary

4.) When the steak has been cooked to order, remove onto a plate. I understand that sometimes, especially on a pan grilling, it's hard to tell if a steak is done enough, I like to apply some of the methods I use to cook fish, which is watch the sides of the meat, flip when the sides seem like their almost cooked, and then after a while, poke a hole in it and see if it bleeds, if it does leave it on for another 5 minutes. I think I cooked mine for about 15 minutes or so, of course the thickness of the steak determines the time too.

5.) Wash mushrooms and allow to soak in water. I've heard that soaking the mushrooms make them better to saute

6.) In a sauce pan, on a medium high heat, saute the mushrooms, add in butter and season with Italian seasoning and garlic salt

7.) When the mushrooms are soft add in wine (again I used red wine vinegar), and mix with sugar. When I made it the other night, I added some flour before the wine to make the mixture a little thicker. Make sure you don't add too much. Makes the butter clumpy.

8.) When the sauce has reduced to desired state, serve over steak

So, depending on the wine you use, it'll be differing amounts of sugar if any that need to be added. Since I used a wine vinegar, I added a fairly large amount of sugar as it's much more sour. The mushrooms should come out soft with a sweet and tangy touch to it, and the steaks should be slightly peppery, but mix well with the sauce. Hope this works for you! If you want the meat to be more tender, marinate in the lemon juice and Worchester sauce the night before.

Rigatoni with Chorizo Meat Sauce

So I've been asked to post pictures as well, and well, I'm getting around to it, so sorry, no pics for this one either. This is something of a recipe that I've sort of become known for, of course, it's taken its course of iterations and variations, but the essence has been the same. This specifically, I can tie to my development of an appreciation for spicier foods. It has a very nice kick and tangy flavor. Apparently it's a big enough hit that my mom always asks me to make it whenever I'm home (well, now it's the salmon). Apparently a lot of people like it, I know I do.

Ingredients:
Chorizo sausage
1 can crushed tomatoes (aka tomato puree)
1 onion
garlic
chili powder (or diced chili pepper)
white cooking wine
1 lb rigatoni pasta
black pepper
salt
olive oil
spicy Italian sausage (optional)

Cooking Instructions:

1.) Bring a pot of water to boil for the pasta, add pasta when water reaches a rolling boil (I add salt to the water, it makes the pasta cook faster because salt water needs to be hotter to boil)

2.) Slice the onions into slivers and mince the garlic, then on a pan, saute the garlic and onions in olive oil

3.) Cook the chorizo, normally it should come in a tube, and you just squeeze it out after cutting off one of the ends. Add the chorizo to the garlic and onions, additionally, you want to cook the Italian sausage as a meatball form here as well, if you have it.

4.) In a pot or saucepan, heat the crushed tomatoes on a medium heat.

5.) Season the tomatoes with chili powder (or add the pepper), black pepper, salt, and Italian seasoning, also add in the white wine (I think officially it's 1/2 cup, but I'm not positive)

6.) When the meat has been cooked, add the contents of that pan into the sauce, mix well.

7.) Serve over pasta when finished

And there you have it. I originally made it the first time with chorizo, but that's a little hard to find sometimes, so I used spicy Italian sausage the second time, afterwards, when I found both of them, I found that the chorizo creates the sauce and added with the wine and pepper gives it the kick, however, for people who like a little more substance in their pastas, the meatball-shaped sausage indeed makes it more substantial. I've yet to experience immense success using Anaheim chili peppers, so I think I'm picking the wrong ones, however, chili powder, for all extesnive purposes works quite well. Of course, you might want to take it easy on that stuff if you're cooking for people who don't really appreciate spicy foods as the sausage (if you have it) and the chorizo will already be adding a bit of its own kick to it. As a side note, the chorizo is very oily, so try not to get a lot of it on you, it's really hard to get out, trust me, I know.

Teriyaki 101

So, a common thing to make is teriyaki, it's quick, it's fairly simple, and relatively easy to make. What makes teriyaki ultimately is the sauce, and so if you know how to make teriyaki sauce, then everything else just sort of falls into place. It can be used both as a marinade and as a sauce to serve over the meal, which lends it great versatility, hopefully you enjoy this.

Ingredients:
1 cup soy sauce
1 cup sugar
1 can of pineapple juice
garlic
ginger
scallions

1.) Mince garlic, ginger, and scallions

2.) Mix ingredients

Some of you might be wondering what the pineapple juice is for, usually a little citrus gives the teriyaki a little tang, and additionally, if used as a marinade, the acid helps to tenderize the meat. If necessary, you can replace the pineapple juice with orange juice as well, lemon juice might work too, but I'm afraid it might be a little too tangy. Basically that's all there is to teriyaki sauce, now how what to do with it is kind of the other question. Of course, the most basic is chicken teriyaki. You'd probably want a piece of chicken breast and grill it in oil. An option could be to first marinate the chicken in the sauce and then grill it. Use on whatever you want, it's teriyaki, they have teriyaki everything.