Do the Kitchen Dance!

Guest star Sommer Stewart, who just inherited several cookbooks from my parents! 

Nobody says the kitchen can't be fun!!!

We're back in the kitchen!

The chefs in the kitchen! Notice the beautiful artwork my mother made in the background. 

Alright, after a brief hiatus *cough* Okay, okay, after an EXTENDED break from the blog, I would like to inform our many followers (aka probably only family members and close friends) that while the head chef and I have been lazy about our documentation, we have indeed still been cooking! Though I wish we lived in the same place and could cook together more often, I am so incredibly grateful for all of the lovely meals we enjoy together when we are together!

So, now to jump back into this blog and share one of the amazing meals that dad and I cooked together over the holidays!

Okay, after several flights from the east coast, ending with a cancelled flight home, my travels rerouted me to Salt Lake City where I reunited with one of my best friends from college, Kelly--and she drove my ass home and stayed for a few nights (such a treat to see her and eat with her). How does my dad greet us after our long drive to Moab? With a menu to die for:

Squid-ink Tagliolini with prawns and sea scallops in a garlic-wine-butter-red pepper reduction sauce. (What a mouthful! Say that ten times fast)

I don't really remember the details about how to cook it...but I took some pictures of the process that might help you guess! I do however remember how to eat it...and it was just sinfully delicious.

LOTS and LOTS of garlic. Yummmmm. 

Just 3 scallops, one for Kelly, one for me and one for Dad. Mom doesn't like 'em! We like to cater to our eaters.

Add some ORGANIC diced tomatoes! SO YUMMY

White wine is also in there with the tomatoes and garlic...OR DID I CHUG IT ALL?!

So hungry just looking at this bad boy. 

You'll notice the head chef has a NEW LOOK. That's right! Ear pierced, long hair, beard. Yep, you guessed it, He's RETIRED! Woot Woot! Even more time to cook yummy thangs. 

The final product. Mouth watering...

So there you have it. I'll bet my dad could fill you in on the details of the process if anyone wants to know, but at least the photos prove that despite our two year disappearance, we still know how to work together in the kitchen.

The leftover pasta became Old Greg's seaweed hair....A bit of a downstairs mix up?

Hailey Hendo Hummus Recipe

Okay foodies, as the crazy hippie I truly am, I of course love love love me some hummus. But until now I have always found it very difficult to make smooth, creamy, homemade hummus. My mom has always been the hummus queen, but when I have attempted her recipe my product is chunky and flavorless. But alas, I am dating an Arab now, and he has taught me his ways. 

Hummus Recipe:

16 ounce can of rinsed/washed garbanzo beans

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup tahini

one fresh lemon squeezed

1 clove of garlic 

1 teaspoon cumin (or more if you are me and love this spice....!)

salt and pepper to taste

Add all of these yummy things into the food processor in this order, and then add up to a half of a cup of water until the mixture is smooth enough for your liking! 

Serve with fresh veggie or warm pita bread and ENJOY!

Cucumber Guacamole. SUMMER TREAT!

Hello fellow foodies! While I know that it has been forever since I have posted, I hope that this recipe finds its way to your garden/kitchen because it is too yummy to pass up!

This CUCUMBER GUACAMOLE recipe was inspired when my housemates generously gave me a HUGE organic Armenian cucumber from their garden. So I thought...hmmm...what could be better than some summery guacamole on a hot summer's day? The combo is perfect. The cucumbers with lemon juice add a little bit of crunch/tart and freshness to the already perfection of guac.

Ingredients:
1 small yellow onion
1 clove of garlic
2 avocados
half of one HUGE cucumber
FRESH squeezed lemon juice from one full lemon
lemon pepper
salt

I have recently been re-inspired by how important it is to EAT ORGANIC, unprocessed, NON GMO, VEGAN food. So give this recipe a try :)

I would put directions...but let's be honest, it is pretty freaking simple. Just chop the things very small, add everything into a bowl, mix it all up, and ENJOY. I am going to put mine on a fresh baked olive baguette from trader joes, but during the sampling process I tried it on corn chips and carrots, both were a hit! Spread this summery spread on a sandwich! Yummmm! Happy eating!

Chicken Parmesan

Today we shall tackle an age-old problem - no, not how to make Congress function - maybe that's for tomorrow. Who doesn't like Chicken Parmesan? Actually lots of people don't because there are three common problems - and more than once I've managed to end up with all three; soggy crust, dry chicken, and rubbery cheese. Today we shall tackle how to make Chicken Parmesan that is crispy, moist and where the cheese has that wonderful flavor but still remains creamy. All of these issues are addressed with aplomb in the current issue of Cook's Illustrated. What a great job it must be to work as a chef in the test kitchen at Cook's Illustrated, you are equally praised for your flops as you are for your successes as you try the same thing 30-40 times to hit upon the very best combination of ingredients and technique. I know without a doubt that I could shine in the flop category - but not with this recipe - it was perfect.

First we shall start by making the sauce. Oh sure, you could use any old pasta sauce but this is a simple and tasty homemade version that is ready in minutes.

Your basic pallet here is a 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes, garlic (of course), some fresh basil, a bit of dried oregano and a pinch of dried red pepper flakes. I was making a double batch (the recipe serves four, I was cooking for seven) so I doubled up on everything. I couldn't decide between regular or fire-roasted crushed tomatoes so I opted for one of each. The one can method will make ample sauce to top the cutlets as well as four servings of pasta. Here's the ingredient list:

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves minced garlic
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
a pinch of red pepper flakes
1 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes
1/4 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons of coursely chopped fresh basil

How I hate having to buy these tiny packages of fresh basil in the winter - the stuff grows like a weed here in the summer, but alas - when it's winter in Moab (especially this one!) - you just don't have many choices and basil is one of those herbs that substituting dried for fresh just doesn't work out as well.

Heat one tablespoon of the oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat just until it shimmers. Add the garlic, salt, oregano, and pepper flakes, cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in the tomatoes and sugar, increase heat to high and bring it to a simmer. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until thickened, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in basil and remaining 1 tablespoon oil, season lightly with salt and pepper to taste. Cover and keep warm.

On to the chicken - and yes, once again it's the free-range all organic, peaceful life boneless and skinless breasts. The ones where they play classical music as they march them to the slaughter house.

 

Now most recipes for Chicken Parmesan will have you pound the chicken breasts thin.The problem with this approach is that it makes it too easy to overcook the chicken and dry it out in the process. The solution is to slice the breasts in half horizontally and then pound only the thick ends of the breast to end up with an even thickness. Freezing the breasts for 15-20 minutes makes the horizontal slicing much easier. Once you have them sliced, lightly sprinkle both sides with kosher salt and let them stand at room temperature for 20 minutes.

So here's the ingredient list for the rest of this adventure:

2 (6-8 ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breasts, trimmed and halved horizontally
1/2 cup shredded whole-mile mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup shredded fontina cheese
1 large egg
1 tablespoon flour
3/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup torn fresh basil

Cheese - lovely cheese - how can a recipe with three different kinds of cheese be bad? It can't is my opinion, okay, maybe it can - but not this recipe!

Grate all of your cheeses - the fontina and mozzarella can be combined in a small dish and reserved for later. The parmesan will go into the panko bread crumbs along with the garlic powder, oregano and pepper, mixed together and put in a shallow dish or pie pan.

Now usually when you are breading something you'll have the whisked eggs in one dish, the flour in another and the bread crumb mixture in a third dish. Here's a neat trick - whisking the flour in with the egg works just as well and serves the same purpose.

Cheeses are ready - egg mixture ready - panko breading ready - let's get these bad boys ready for the skillet.

Pat the chicken dry with paper towels and one cutlet at a time dredge in the egg and flour mixture, allowing the excess to drip off. Then coat all sides in the panko-parmesan mixture, pressing the cutlet into the bread crumbs so that they stick. Transfer to a large plate while you repeat the process with all of the other cutlets.

Heat the vegetable oil in a 10-inch non-stick skillet until it shimmers. Carefully place two cutlets into the heated oil and cook without moving them until the bottom is crispy and a deep golden brown, about two minutes. Using tongs carefully turn cutlets and cook on the second side for another two minutes or so. Transfer to a paper-towel lined plate while you cook the remaining cutlets.

You'll want your oven rack about 4 inches from the broiler element. Place the cutlets on a foil-lined rimmed baking sheet and cover with the fontina-mozzarella mixture, covering as much of the surface area as possible. The fontina is the key to not having the cheese turn to rubber. You've got to have mozzarella for the flavor but by itself mozzarella can become tough under the broiler. The fontina is a more "tender" cheese and will keep the cheese layer creamy. Broil until the cheese is melted and beginning to turn brown, about 2-4 minutes.

Cover each cutlet with two tablespoons of the sauce, sprinkle with the torn basil, and serve immediately with a side of pasta and a tossed green salad.

This one's a keeper. The chicken was moist and juicy, the crust was crispy, and the cheese shined through in every bite. It's a clean and bright tomato sauce and by melting the cheese on the cutlets before adding the sauce it makes a sort of raincoat that protects the cutlet and prevents the sogginess that plaques so many Chicken Parmesan recipes. Judging from the clean plates left behind by all seven of us I do believe that everyone enjoyed it.

Chicken and Black Bean Empanadas

Today's adventure is making empanadas - those tasty meat-filled pockets of love that come to us from South America. Now to really do justice to a savory empanada takes quite a bit of time and the filling is more often than not beef-based with raisins, chopped green olives and hard-boiled eggs infused with plenty of yummy spices. I've made "authentic" empanadas before, but it was pretty much an all day affair. Mrs. Hendo tires of beef easily (unimaginable in my universe) and I was being lazy today so I opted for a chicken based filling and simplified lots of other stuff too. This recipe is based on one from Dave Lieberman, host of Good Deal with Dave Lieberman on the Food Network.

Of course there are two basic parts to this recipe - the filling and the dough. We'll start with the filling which is really quite easy and it turned out incredibly tasty. Before you begin, you'll need about a cup and a half of cooked, shredded chicken. I poached a chicken breast how I always poach chicken - toss the breast in the bottom of a saucepan large enough that it's in a single layer. Cover with fat-free, low sodium chicken stock so that the stock covers the breast by at least a half-inch. Toss in a bay leaf and bring it to a boil. Reduce heat to a very low simmer and partially cover. Simmer for 10 minutes. Cover the pan, remove from heat, and let it stand for another 15 minutes. You'll have perfectly moist cooked chicken which can be used in all kinds of recipes.

Now you'll need one medium to large onion, diced fine, and at least four cloves of garlic also diced fine. The basic spice mixture is a teaspoon of ground cumin, a teaspoon and a half of dried oregano, a teaspoon of ground coriander seed, and about a half teaspoon of cayenne pepper.

Bring one-quarter cup of oil (I used grapeseed oil but olive oil works just as well) to heat in a saute pan and add the onion and garlic. Saute for about 5 minutes, stirring often.

Once the onions are mostly tender, add the spice mixture and saute for a few minutes longer.

Now we're ready to add the shredded chicken and the black beans. Use one can of black beans, drained but not rinsed. Add to the pan and heat through. For good measure I also tossed in about a teaspoon of dried red pepper flakes - they can never hurt!

Now comes the tedious part - making the dough. Now maybe you're lucky enough to have a good Latin market where you can buy pre-made empanada dough - no such luck in Moab. There are a zillion good recipes for empanada dough on the web but remember I said I was being lazy today. Hailey will likely be mortified at my solution - she lived in Buenos Aries for six moths last year so she knows real empanada dough from fake empanada dough. So what was my solution?  Ta da........

Something as simple as frozen puff pastry sheets. Hey don't laugh - instead of all that mixing and rising and kneading and rising and rolling and shaping.... all I did was pull the dough out of the freezer about an hour before I needed it and let it thaw on the kitchen counter.

You'll need to flour your work surface as we do need to roll out the pastry sheet. Out of the box they are a square about 10" by 10" - we want to turn that into a square of roughly 16" by 16".

Now we want to cut that into four-inch strips both ways, so that we end up with 16 4" by 4" squares.

Scoop a blob (that's a technical term) of filling into the center of each square.

Now the recipe didn't call for it, but I added some grated sharp cheddar cheese to each - cheese is your friend!

With a small finger-bowl of warm water, dampen two sides of the pastry along the edge to seal the pastry when you fold it to make a triangle. Which two sides you wonder? Just remember that you always want to be sealing "wet-to-dry".  Press the sealed edge with the times of a fork to ensure the seal and to give them that cool look. You'll end up with 16 little lovelies all ready to pop into the oven..

Now there are two sheets of puff pastry to the box and for the second sheet my laziness has really kicked in so I'm making only four big empanadas from the second sheet. Obviously these get more filling that the appetizer size ones in the batch of 16.

So we have two parchment-lined baking sheets ready to go. All we need now is to brush the empanadas with an egg wash which will give them a wonderful golden color as they bake.

Now since it's just Mrs. Hendo and I for dinner I'm only going to bake the four large ones. I'll cover the sheet of small ones with a piece of plastic wrap and place the whole thing into the freezer. Tomorrow I'll put the frozen ones into a zip-lock freezer bag and stow them back in the freezer to be baked at a later date.  Baking either the large ones or the small frozen ones is basically the same - 15-18 minutes at 400 degrees, until golden brown.

Glorious! Tasty, flaky, and perfect! Serve with a good salsa (we had a habanero-mango) and some sour cream! Delightful!

Big Cluster Maple Granola

Well, this whole eating meat thing has been fun…But it’s time I start acting like the granola I really am, so what better way to return to my veg head than with a warm batch of homemade granola?

 

For Christmas, Mamma Hendo gave both Dad and I our own copies of The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman. The recipes come from Perelman’s small kitchen in Manhatten. It is a truly wonderful cookbook, filled with detailed recipes, anecdotal, witty directions and tantalizing photographs of each and every recipe. 

 

So I went to the kitchen to gather the ingredients, and I was so excited that there were actually oats, olive oil, an egg and cinnamon in the house that I got a little carried away and thought I could just improvise with the other several ingredients. You see, in my kitchen in college we rarely have any ingredients found in any sort of edible recipe, forcing us to invent makeshift dinners of whatever’s around in the kitchen. Thankfully, my dad reminded me of the importance of a recipe. Disgusted with how far I was about to stray from the recipe, he told me to get dressed so that we could go buy the missing ingredients. “Never experiment with a recipe until you have followed it.” 

 Then the fun really started! I started measuring and combining ingredients! Yay!

Combine all ingredients except for the dried fruit and the egg white. Tossing to coat evenly. Whisk the egg white in a small bowl until frothy. Stir in the granola mixture. 

I needed my dad to teach me how to separate the yolk from the white.

Next, spread it in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

While I was carefully distributing the granola with my spatula my dad stepped in saying "God made hands for a reason"

Bake at 300 degrees for 25 minutes and then use a large spatula to turn over sections of the granola. 

Bake for about 25 more minutes. 50 minutes in total. When the granola is evenly browned and feels dry to the touch, transfer the granola from the oven to the cooling rack. Cool completely. Once it is completely cool, sprinkle in the dried fruit. 

The granola keeps at room temperature in an airtight container for 2 weeks. It keeps even longer in the freezer, if you're the stockpiling type.

YUMMMMMMMYYYYY!!!!!! I will definitely be repeating this recipe. Next time I will press the "batter" more on the parchment paper so that the granola clumps together better. Mom and Dad both love it and I already want to make more tomorrow so that I can bulk up before returning to my makeshift college kitchen.