Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Sunday Cooking - Chicken, Pancakes, and Egg Salad

I started this blog in order to make notes about recipes I try and to record other general food thoughts.  However, I find myself not wanting to post unless I have a photo and that is just silly.  Because I made things this weekend that I need to make note of, but after a week of taking A LOT of photos at a work event, I couldn’t bring myself to take any pics.  So here are my notes...

Marinated chicken breasts (based on Food Network recipe)

I make these and then freeze them and just heat them up for dinner every once in awhile.

- 2 tbsp cider vinegar
- ½ tsp each of dried oregano, herbs de provence, dried parsley, dried rosemary
- 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- 2 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- Kosher salt and white pepper
- 4 boneless, skinless chicken breast, each about 6 ounces

Mix it all together and marinate chicken for 8+ hours then grill.

Notes:
I still have trouble grilling chicken.  It seems to take much longer than the recipes suggest to cook through.  I know the pan got too hot, and I’ll adjust that next time, however then the chicken will just take longer.  I’m not sure how to fix this issue...  and I hear different things - cook until juices run clear or cook until the internal temp is 165.  Well, by the time the internal temp gets to 165, there are no juices left!  So what is correct??  Am I being too cautious?  Any tips are welcome.

The marinade however was super yummy and easy.  I would add just a little lemon or lime next time.  I may even try one of my flavored balsamics.


Melt in your mouth pancakes

I really have been craving pancakes lately.  But I want super soft, melt in your mouth pancakes and no recipe I’ve ever tried gives me that.  So, I searched again.  And again, every pancake recipe claims to be “melt in your mouth”, but they are the same ingredients and same technique that I’ve tried before with blah results.  Then I found this one from bobanahalf.com.  I found it fascinating that he used club soda and thought, I’ll give this a shot!  It seemed easy enough.

I will say, they were delicious!!  And I definitely feel I have found my go to pancake recipe.  They just sort of dissolved in your mouth and they tasted so buttery, even though there is no butter.  In fact, they are only 87 calories a pancake!!

Notes:
Next time I will make the full recipe - the recipe makes 18 pancakes and I simply did not want to stand there and make 18 pancakes, so I scaled it to 6 which was not a lot of batter.  And because of that, I made the pancakes very small because I wanted to get 6 servings out of it.  They were a bit pathetic, but still tasty.

I also think the batter needs to be a little more liquid.  I only added a splash of milk at the end and I think it needed a bit more.  It probably would’ve been easier for me to get my 6 pancakes if the batter had not been so thick.

And again, my pan got too hot.  I need to watch that, I’m pretty bad about it.

 

Egg Salad

I had some “extra” eggs and wanted to use them up so I threw together a quick egg salad.  I decided to try the baking soda trick I’ve been seeing around the internet - add a teaspoon of baking soda to the water to help with the peeling later.  It actually worked quite well.  They were pretty easy to peel.

- 5 hard boiled eggs
- 1 pickled, diced finely
- 2 tablespoons pickle juice
- 1 teaspoon mayo (I used Vegenaise)
- 2 teaspoons greek yogurt
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon fennel salt (I got this from Williams Sonoma recently... it’s delicious! I couldn’t find a link to it though)
- ½ teaspoon paprika

Boil eggs, then split them, putting the yolks in a bowl.  Mash up the yolks.  Dice the whites (finely) and mix them with the yolks.  Add the remaining ingredients, stirring after each addition.  Chill.  Serve on toasts or with crackers or fresh veggies.  It’s a bit chunky, so it would be nice in a celery rib or endive leaf.

Notes:
I like the chunkiness, but I think I would like to try dicing the whites more finely next time, or whiz everything up in food processor to make it more blended.

I would like to add celery and maybe try celery salt instead of the fennel since I think the celery flavor would be really good in here.

Add more pickles.  :)

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