Garlic Potatoes and Chicken

Today. One o'clock in the afternoon. Time for lunch. Minimal options in the cabinet. Chicken in the refrigerator that must be eaten before it goes bad. No fresh vegetables. Things were looking bleak. It was obvious that I had to use up the chicken, and Megan had a bunch of fresh garlic in the fridge from a farmer's market she worked at the other day. When I went to the upstairs fridge to get the chicken, I noticed on the countertop a box of canned whole potatoes. I had my vegetable.

Too impatient to wait for everything to bake, the decision was made to utilize the stove top, cooking both the chicken and the potatoes together in a skillet in olive oil. I used two pieces of raw chicken, one can of potatoes, one clove of garlic, and olive oil.

The chicken was already extremely thin, so it didn't require much cutting. I just cut both larger pieces into bite-size pieces. Because it was being cooked in a skillet, the smaller pieces would cook much quicker. I cut each potato into quarters -- there were about five potatoes in the can, so the potato:chicken ration was 1:1. The garlic was chopped into teeny tiny pieces, the smallest I could manage.

In the skillet, I put a few capfuls of olive oil and all of my garlic. When it started to simmer, I poured in the potatoes and chicken. It took roughly seven minutes for everything to get cooked. You need to be sure to move everything around in order to cook all of the chicken. The center of the skillet is the hottest, so you want everything -- especially the chicken -- to sit there for a bit to get cooked.

Problems I ran into

No real problems, just a few things I'd do differently the next time around and a few things I was hoping would turn out otherwise. For one, I thought that the potatoes would be a little crispier. Next time, I will probably bake the potatoes with olive oil and salt, getting them crispier and more flavorful. I also added another capful of olive oil to everything while it was cooking, not noticing that the oil in the pan had not boiled away at all. It wound up being a little too much. It didn't change the flavor of the final product, but it did make it a little greasier.

Sure, it looks a little monochromatic. But it tasted pretty damn good.

Mini Tortilla Pizzas

There were a ton of mini tortillas left over after making soft tacos, which begs for more tortilla recipes. Waking up this morning, the Travel Channel was playing a show about pizzas. The craving was implanted. The need for pizza was born.

Making pizzas is so simple, there's really no need to have a list or a photo of ingredients. For my breakfast I just made a standard cheese pizza, but you can literally do whatever you want with it.

But what is it that qualifies the dish as "pizza?" What if you choose to forgo the use of sauce and cheese altogether? I found a ton of different definitions of the word, from various online dictionaries and Wikipedia, and each one had just one thing in common: it's a baked dish in which all of your toppings are stuck on a round piece of bread. Some definitions included that the differences between types of pizzas are culturally based. So if you don't feel like going with the grain and making a "typical" pizza, don't. Pizza is freedom.

For my cheese pizza, I used a few of the cheap mini tortillas I used to make soft tacos the other night, some Ragu pasta sauce, and some cheddar cheese (in the cheese selection, I just stuck with the first thing I could pull out of the refrigerator).

Since my pizzas were smaller, I didn't need to bake them for long; ten minutes at 350 got the job done.

Problems I ran into
I didn't really have any problems, but there were a few things that I wish I had done differently. Because I just made these pizzas on a whim and without any real desire to make them completely phenomenal, I just tried to make them as quickly as possible. I thought the use of pasta sauce instead of a designated pizza sauce would present an issue when it came time to eat the pizza, but it didn't. It did, however, make the tortilla a little soggy as it sat on my plate. To remedy this, I would not change the sauce; I would bake the tortillas alone in the oven for a few minutes to harden them a bit. This will probably also make the pizza easier to cut when it comes out of the oven.



The only other thing I would have done differently: experimentation. Looking through the refrigerator, there were plenty of potentially awesome pizza toppings I could have tried, but like a fool, I didn't.

You're entitled to your freedom. You're entitled to pizza. Experiment and create your own.

Taco Night: The Best of All The Nights

Yes, it's true: the best night of the week in this house is taco night. While it doesn't occur on the same night every week, it does happen at least once in every seven days. After spending all day at work thinking about the soft tacos at On The Border in West Springfield, it only seemed appropriate to make tonight taco night.

Tacos are easy to make, and there are a lot of variations of them. Tonight, we made our "usual" tacos, consisting only of refried beans and cheese baked in a taco shell. I also tried my hand at making soft tacos, which ended on a slightly less successful note than the hard tacos.


(Not pictured: a bag of Mexican cheese blend. I would also like to point out that those tortillas cost $5 for three packages. Score.)

All you have to do is open up a can of refried beans, spoon some into the taco shell (or onto a soft taco or tortilla), sprinkle some cheese on top, and bake at 350 degrees for ten minutes or until everything is heated to your liking.








The final product:


Problems I ran into
With the hard tacos, none. They're pretty hard to screw up. However, with the soft tacos, I was pretty much just winging it the entire time. I kept them in the oven just as long as the hard tacos, which made the tortillas crunchy, thus ruining the "soft" effect I was going for. They were still delicious, and they had a much lower fat content than the hard tacos, but they lacked the texture I was going for.

And another thing...
Since I had an entire package of tortillas, I decided to experiment with some dessert as well. I spread Nutella on one tortilla and sprinkled a few chocolate chips on them. Then, per the suggestion of my boyfriend, I rolled it up into a sort of chocolate enchilada. I thought it was pretty good.




(Photo by Sam <3)

Homemade Sweet Potato Fries

A few days ago, I downloaded an episode from the Hungry Nation podcast of the show "Stupidly Simple Snacks," which features easy recipes from the website amyblogschow.com. The recipe was for sweet potato fries. When I saw the words "sweet potato" in the title, I knew that I'd have to try it -- I love sweet potatoes, and I've always wanted to make sweet potato fries, but assumed they'd involve deep-frying and a lot of artery-clogging grossness.

But after watching the video, it seemed much too easy a dish to not make. The only ingredients I was missing were the few sweet potatoes, which were only $0.99 per pound at Stop & Shop. Everything else was already waiting in the cupboard. All you need, aside from the sweet potatoes, is a few tablespoons of olive oil, a little salt and pepper, and whatever other spices you'd like. (Amy uses cumin and paprika in hers. I used a little paprika as well, and it tasted phenomenal. But more on that later.)



Making these sweet potato fries is exactly as simple as the video makes it out to be (unlike a lot of cooking videos, you know, the ones where the chef seems to have made the food a million times and never makes any mistakes, and doesn't point out any of the problems you may run into). This recipe is virtually foolproof. That is, unless you were to interpret "a pinch of salt" as "a fistful of salt" or "two tablespoons of olive oil" as "a bucket of olive oil."

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. While it's heating up, wash and peel however many potatoes you intend to use. I only used one because, although my boyfriend was making the fries with me, he isn't a sweet potato fan and wouldn't be eating any. However, because I have a huge love of sweet potatoes, I used a really big one. You cut your peeled potato(es) into fry-sized pieces and throw them into a bowl. Add two tablespoons of olive oil, a pinch of salt, a little pepper (use your own discretion here -- I'm not big on pepper, so I didn't use much), and whatever other spices you want to use. My boyfriend added a small amount of paprika too. Mix it all together so you don't just have a clump of spices on the top of your sliced potato pieces, and add some more olive oil. We used an additional tablespoon.



In Amy's video, she spreads her potato pieces over a sheet of parchment paper on a cookie sheet. We didn't have any parchment paper, so we just used tin foil. It works the same. You don't need to spray it with Pam or anything because there's already olive oil on the potatoes. Spread them out evenly and put the whole thing in the oven for 15 minutes. Pull it out, flip them over, and put them back in the oven for 10 more minutes. We cut our potatoes into small pieces because I wanted them to be a bit more crispy. The only thing I would modify about the way we made these fries would be to bake them for a few minutes longer to add some more crispiness.

These fries were completely perfect. They came out of the oven, I piled them on a plate, and about halfway through an episode of "The X-Files," they were gone. Aside from the crisp level (they were pretty crispy already, but I could have gone for a little more), I would not have changed anything. No dip or additional spice would have added to them. For me, that is. Try it yourself and taste the amazement.



Problems I ran into

None. Seriously. Well, I did blow a fuse (twice), but that's just because the fuse box gets angry when I have the air conditioner and the oven on at the same time.