Oven-Roasted Herbed Chicken with Leek, Tomato and Zucchini Salad
This is what’s for lunch today. The salad is ridiculously delicious!
pigging out with homemade nachos!
Wash leeks, cut the green part and half them. Wrap each half in bacon and broil for about 25 minutes, or until the bacon is golden brown.
Mix equal parts of dijon mustard and olive oil, and season with salt and pepper.
Pour the dressing over the bacon-wrapped cooked leeks and grate some Parmesan cheese on top.
French Toast with Blood Oranges
This weekend, as I’ve already told you, I decided to go shopping for food. Since I had my friend Joey’s car for the day, I decided to go to a bajillion places, one of them being Clear Flour Bakery. They make the most fantastic bread I have ever had, and this time around I went for the pain de mie, which is very similar to sandwich bread. But of course, I ended up getting so much bread that it went stale before I had a chance to eat all of it, and was therefore rendered perfect for making French toast.
If you’re a French toast veteran, you’ll know that it is best made with stale bread. Fresh (or very soft) bread will get mushy and lose its shape when you dip it in the batter, but stale bread will absorb just the right amount of batter to make it curstardy and delicious.
The blood oranges come as a result of me getting them at Haymarket and having no clue what to do with them. I decided to make a sauce to pour on top of the toast along with the maple syrup to give them a nice citrusy flavor. It ended up going really well with the French toast! And of course, I fried some bacon, because French toast without bacon is a sin.
French Toast with Blood Orange
For the toast:
2 half-inch to an inch wide slices of stale pain de mie
2 eggs
1/4 c. whole milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 c. sugar
cinnamon and nutmeg, for dusting
butter, for frying
For the blood orange sauce:
the zest of a blood orange
the pulp of half a blood orange
1 tbsp. of butter
1/4 c. honey
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
a couple of drops of vanilla extract
Directions:
For the toast:
Heat a skillet to medium-high heat.
Mix the eggs, milk, vanilla, and sugar to make the batter. Soak the bread slices for about 30 seconds on each side, and then lightly dust each side with cinnamon and nutmeg. Butter the pan lightly and cook for until golden brown on each side, about 1-2 minutes per side.
For the sauce:
Over low heat, melt the butter and cook the orange zest for about a minute, making sure the butter doesn’t start to turn brown. (If at any point this happens, turn the heat down.) Add the honey, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla, mix and cook for about another minute or until everything seems to have come together. Then add the orange pulp, and break it up in the sauce. Cook for another minute, then remove from heat.
To serve:
Pour some maple syrup over the toast, then pour the orange sauce on top. Dust with confectioner’s sugar and serve.
Hey guys!
I know some of you have been emailing me to not-so-subtlely ask me when the hell I’m going to post something here. Well, the truth is that MIT has been taking over my life and I rarely cook now because I choose to have dinner at PhiSig, where I study every night. But this weekend I decided to spend some money on food so that I’d be forced to cook more often, and so far it’s worked.
So, there will be some updates this week when I get the chance to post the photos. Stay tuned!
-milena
I have morning classes this term, so I’ve been having to eat breakfast. Today I was looking for something I could make in less than 20 minutes from start to finish and that would be filling enough that I could go through 2 hours of class and 4 hours of lab without starving, so I whipped this up. It’s my (somewhat americanized) interpretation of Mexican Huevos Rancheros. They’re very easy to make, very tasty, very filling, and not your typical breakfast food.
You will need:
2 eggs
2 corn tortillas
some Monterrey Jack cheese
Salt and pepper
1 small tomato
1/2 of a small onion
some tomato sauce
a splash of vinegar
some hot sauce (optional)
enough vegetable oil to coat the bottom of a pan
Instructions:
Heat the oil in the pan until it is hot.
Sandwich the cheese between the tortillas, season with salt and pepper, and fry until golden brown on each side.
Fry two eggs.
For the salsa: Dice the tomato and the onion, mix with the tomato sauce and the vinegar, and season with salt and pepper. (optional: Add hot sauce.)
Now to assemble it: Put the tortillas on the bottom, then slide the two eggs over them, and top with LOTS of salsa.
Optional: This works really well with some refried beans on the side, but I didn’t have any :-(
Enjoy!
My friend Marty makes this for me every once in a while, and I had a really bad craving for it today, so I made up the recipe and it turned out DELICIOUS!!!
Ingredients:
1 chicken breast, very thinly sliced
1 can of Goya black beans
1 small onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 packet of powdered chicken bouillon (or one cube)
2 cups of water
3/4 cups of ground/crushed canned tomatoes
1 heaping tablespoon of tomato paste
1/2 packet of taco seasoning (I used Old El Paso)
1/2-3/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
3 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper (or adobo, if you have it)
For the toppings:
4 corn tortillas (or as many as you’d like, really), cut into thin strips
chopped scallions
shredded monterey jack cheese
sour cream (I used greek yogurt because it’s slightly healthier)
Directions:
Season the chicken strips with salt + pepper (or adobo).
In a medium-sized pot, cook the olive oil, garlic, onions and chicken at medium heat, until the chicken is cooked through. Then add the beans, the water, the taco seasoning, the chicken bouillon, the tomatoes, the tomato paste, and the red pepper flakes. Stir to combine, and simmer uncovered for about 20 minutes.
For the toppings:
Pour enough oil in a frying pan to cover the bottom. Fry the tortilla strips for about 30 seconds, or until golden brown. Season with a bit of salt.
Putting it all together:
Serve some soup in a bowl, then top with the cheese, scallions, sour cream and tortilla strips. Enjoy!
Mac and cheese, cornish hen, cornbread, and green beans and carrots.
Chicken Parm!
Cheese tortellini with mushroom cream sauce, and chicken breast.
