Baked Chicken with Potatoes, Onions, and Garlic

I was so excited to finally cook a proper dinner that I thought I wouldn't be able to decide what to make. But, I have been craving roast chicken recently, and autumn is the perfect time of year for lovely roast dinners. There was a one pan chicken dinner in Everyday Food a few months ago would do nicely.

I had a whole chicken cut up in the freezer, so I thawed that out. Put it in a pan with one cut up red onion (in big pieces, like eighths), a quartered lemon, about a pound of halved or quartered (depending on their size) white new potatoes, six springs of thyme, and a head of garlic broken up into cloves but not peeled. Drizzle with 3/4 cup olive oil and 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (whisked together). Salt and pepper, then roast for 50 minutes.

The recipe called to roast it 450, but that was too high for my oven. I ended up around 375. I suppose it actually could have been 450 in real temperature - I suspect that my oven runs hot, but I keep forgetting to check it. Also, my roasting pan was a little too big. I needed 12x16 but only had a bit smaller and a bit larger than that. I settled on the larger one, but some stuff on the edges burned. I think it was too exposed to the heat.

Overall, this was really great. The potatoes (especially the ones that burned a little on the outside actually) were delicious - soft and creamy in the middle and crispy on the outside. The chicken was juicy, and the garlic was sooo good. I actually just ate a couple of cloves of it, but I love roasted garlic. It was good to squeeze out the cloves from the peel and spread it on some bread.

I also had made Paula Deen's marinated tomatoes, which are really easy and tasty. I make them quite a lot actually, they're really good for company because you can do them early in the day and just put them out to get to room temperature.

A Decline in Food Adventures

Recently, I decided to go back to school. So, this fall I decreased my work schedule, signed up for two classes at Santa Monica College, and started focusing on studying for the GRE and preparing the various essays, etc. that are required for the UCLA graduate admission application. All of this has lead to a sad decline in cooking here recently.

That's not to say I don't cook at all, just that I've been incredibly lazy about it. For example, tonight we had macaroni and cheese (the kraft gourmet kind) and some pre-cut and pre-seasoned fresh brussel sprouts (that were actually pretty tasty).

However, that's not to say I haven't had any food adventures at all. And hopefully, after I take the GRE this week I'll have a bit more time again. Anyway, here is a summary:

This is some ice cream Travis and I got at the new Santa Monica food truck lot. His is cake donut flavored (it tasted exactly like a cake donut, oddly enough) and mine is a Salty Scotty - it's a lightly salted butterscotch. If you've ever had a salted caramel (which is sooo good, if you haven't), it tasted like that but in ice cream form.

I really wanted to bake cookies, but without the time, I just grabbed a thing of refrigerated cookie dough. It is clear to me now that I should've used a larger pan.

Had these great shrimp and chips with remoulade sauce from the Shrimp Pimp truck a few weeks ago. So good!

Saw an enormous freaking pumpkin at the LA County Fair!

And we also shared a giant turkey leg. There are pictures of me eating too, but I look sort of demonic, like I might eat the person taking the picture next or something.

Rib-Eye Steaks with Garlic and Rosemary

I think I mentioned recently how much I love the Stinking Rose Restaurant Cookbook. This weekend I decided to try to recreate the ribeye, which Travis and I have had at the restaurant several times. It was absolutely the best steak I have ever cooked. I made it with some cauliflower that I roasted with olive oil, sea salt, and garlic, and then I took some leftover french bread and made garlic bread from it so that Travis would have something to eat besides steak, bless his veggie-phobic heart.

For the steaks, you will need:

2 large cloves garlic, halved

4 (10 ounce) rib eye steaks (I used two and halved the rosemary but not the garlic. What can I say? I like garlic!)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 springs rosemary

1/4 cup dry white wine

2 tablespoons butter

I also didn't halve the wine/butter, I just made a bit extra sauce. You also need a cast iron skillet. I guess you could use a different kind of skillet, but why would you?

1. Rub the cut edge of 1 garlic half around your skillet.

2. Set the skillet over medium heat. Lightly sprinkle the steaks with salt and pepper on both sides and add steaks to the skillet. Place all the garlic and a sprig of rosemary on one side of the skillet to add a hint of flavor. (I had to do the steaks in two batches because they wouldn't both fit in my skillet, so I used one garlic clove and one rosemary sprig in each batch).

3. Cook steaks on first side for 3-4 minutes, then turn and cook another 6-7 minutes for medium-rare (for a 1 1/2 inch steak). Once rosemary and garlic begin to brown, remove them from the pan.

4. Transfer steaks to a warmed plate. Add wine and butter to the skillet, stirring to scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. When the mixture starts to bubble, remove from the heat and drizzle over the top of the steaks. Serve immediately.

Best. Hot Dog. Ever.

Okay, so maybe I could just be thinking best hot dog ever in the heat of the moment, but it was a really good hot dog. It's Tuesday. I've been feeling sort of sick, so I was super drowsy (in spite of the insanely strong coffee that I had at breakfast). But it was food truck day! I couldn't decide what to get, but I settled on something simple: The Greasy Wiener truck. I will now list the amazing things about this hot dog:

1. it is deep fried

2. it is wrapped in bacon

3. with this enormous thing of fries, it cost $6. I could barely eat all the fries.

I've also had the Iggys from Greasy Wiener (mini burgers on Hawaiian rolls) and they're pretty great as well. So, all in all, it was a good day.

Cappuccino Muffins

I was looking for a new muffin recipe to try, since I generally make chocolate chip or lemon poppyseed, and I found these! It's a Cappuccino Chocolate Muffin - you can find the recipe here.

They're really delicious, and they're supposed to freeze well too, which is nice. The coffee flavor isn't too strong, and it's soooo good with the chocolate chips. I really can't wait to have these for breakfast at work this week. I recommend heating in the microwave for a few seconds to get the chocolate to melt some.

Trout with Garlic Lemon Butter

This was sort of an interesting meal experiment. It's based on a recipe from The Stinking Rose Restaurant's cookbook. It's possibly my favorite restaurant, and I've really gotten to love cooking out of the cookbook at home as well.

But, I say this is based on the recipe because nothing went quite according to plan. The recipe in the book is actually for Lemon Baked Salmon with Garlic Caper Butter.

However, that's not what actually ending up happening. I apparently looked at the wrong week's sale ad today for the grocery, so they didn't have the salmon that I thought would be there. But, there was some fairly nice looking trout. I'm also not in love with capers (and the jar in my fridge looked a bit off, so I tossed them. Upon retrospect, they could've actually been there for years). Finally, I decided to be bold and not really measure a lot of stuff. So this is what I did.

I tried to bring about 3/4 a stick of unsalted butter to room temperature. It sort of worked. I actually put it in the microwave for a few seconds as well. I then mixed it with the juice from half a lemon, a tablespoon of white wine, and two (albeit very large) cloves of minced garlic. I folded in some fresh parsley and then added salt and pepper.

Then I put the trout in a baking dish and added 1/2 cup of water. I put the trout in the dish and spread some of the butter mixture on each fillet (I think about a tablespoon on each) and then topped it with some slices of lemon. It baked on 325 for about 15 minutes. I wasn't sure it was done, so I bumped up the temperature to 400 and baked it another 5.

It's served on some leftover egg noodles from last night. I put another tablespoon or so of the butter mixture in a saucepan and let it cook for a few minutes (since the garlic was raw). Then I just tossed the leftover pasta around in it. The noodles did originally have some butter and parmesan cheese on them, but this butter addition definitely helped. On Friday night they were far too bland.

It was really quite tasty, but the garlic was very strong on the fish. I think it would've been nice to cook the garlic a bit first. Some roasted garlic cloves in the butter would be great as well. I liked the butter mixture so much that I saved the leftovers to do something else with later this week. Maybe just put it on fish again, who can say?

ICBC: Cardamom!

This is one of the blogger challenges that I skipped a few weeks ago. Cardamom was ridiculously expensive at the grocery, and I just couldn't quite bring myself to buy it that week. But, this week I managed to find a smaller and more reasonably priced container. I didn't feel like doing something sweet (I still have muffins to make), so I decided to try Cardamom Chicken and Rice. I found the recipe on the Food and Wine website. It was pretty easy.

The recipe actually called for chicken legs, but I couldn't find any leg/thighs still attached. So instead, I got some bone-in chicken breast halves. I rubbed the chicken with some canola oil and seasoned it with cardamom, salt, and pepper. It roasted on 375 for about 50 minutes I think.

In the meantime, I had to work on the rice. I needed 2 1/4 cups chicken broth for 1 1/2 cups of rice, but I forgot broth at the store and certainly didn't have time to make my own. I did have some chicken bouillon though, and so I made about 2 cups of that and added another 1//4 cup of water (it seemed a bit strong/salty). I sauteed some shallots in oil (the recipe called for onions, but I thought shallots would be nicer, and I was totally right).

Then, I stirred the shallots around in the oil/shallot mixture until all the rice was coated, added the broth and about a teaspoon of cardamom, and brought to a boil. Like really any rice, once it's at a boil, you cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Let it stand for 5, then fluff it and serve.

It was so good! I was very proud of having used cardamom in both dishes. Travis didn't like the rice much, but he did enjoy the chicken so it all worked out.