Pad Thai

 I have a confession to make. I've only ever eaten Pad Thai once, and that was at Thai Express. I don't often consider fast food restaurants to be a really good indicator of what a food should authentically be like so...yeah.

I decided today, when at the grocery store trying to figure out what to make for supper, to try my hand at Pad Thai.

I think I did a pretty good job. So does Alex. He wanted to eat the entire pan, but he was good and stopped himself. He told me to make it again whenever I wanted to. I'd say that's a win.

Here's the crazy thing. The jar of VH Pad Thai sauce I bought didn't have an actual recipe. It just gave a list of ingredients. So...I had to wing it. I added one ingredient (some green onion) and omitted two (the coriander leaves and the lime wedges).

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast, diced

1 large white onion, chopped

1 cup bean sprouts

1/2 red onion, thinly sliced

1/2 package (8 oz) rice noodles, cooked and drained

1 jar VH Pad Thai stir-fry sauce

1/4 cup fresh coriander leaves, chopped

1/3 cup chopped peanuts

4 lime wedges

Heat vegetable oil in a wok or large frying pan. Saute chicken until white on all sides and almost all cooked. Remove from pan and place on a plate.

Add the white onion, red onion (and half the green onion if you use any) and the bean sprouts to the pan and fry for about 5 minutes or until tender. Add the rice noodles (and for the love of god cut them or break them apart before you cook them because it's darned near impossible to do it once they're cooked) and mix, cooking for 2-3 minutes. Add the VH sauce, and the chicken and mix well. Continue to cook for about another 5-10 minutes, until chicken is fully cooked.

Garnish with the remainder of the green onion and some chopped peanuts. Serve immediately. Makes 4 servings. 

Alex's Bread Rolls

I'm not going to say much about this, because it's not my recipe, it is Alex's. He wrote it out and I'm going to copy and paste and put it here, with his humor and all. But this is a fantastic recipe for rolls/bread and I know a lot of you want it, so here we go!

OK, disclosure, I have pop-eye forearms and no mixer so I actually hand kneaded this. I’m going to try and optimize for a Kitchen-Aid Mixer with a dough hook.

You will need!

1 cup of 85 Fahrenheit water.

2 ½ teaspoons of quick rising yeast

2 and ½ cups of flour. All purpose or bread if you can find it.

¼ cup of milk powder. Whey works. Muscle powder also works if you have unflavored or maybe vanilla however I did not try this, it “should” work.

1 tsp salt

¼ cup of sugar, you can omit if you want to cut down on it.

¼ cup of shortening or lard. I love grease and fat and look it, you can cut this in half if you want to limit. Three to five tablespoons of vegetable oil can work also.

As you can see, these are all basics we should have.

Mix your water, yeast and sugar together and set aside.

In your mixing bowl, put your shortening, flour and milk powder. You can sift it if you want to, I don’t.

OK your yeast mix should have a beery smell by now, pour that in and mix on low for about ten minutes.

Keep an eye on it, add flour if it’s sticking to the sides, but let it go for a couple of minutes first. Add warm water if it’s too stiff.

What you are going for is slightly softer than play dough. However if it’s stiff that’s OK too, as long as it’s uniformly mixed. It will just take longer to proof.

For those without a mixer, mix by hand and knead for ten to eight minutes.

Right, now for your primary fermentation.

Take the ball of dough out of the mixer, clean and lightly oil the bowl. Put the ball of dough back in and cover with plastic wrap. What I like to do is boil a liter of water, pour that into a separate bowl and put the dough in with it into a TURNED OFF oven. This is a makeshift proofer. Or just cover in plastic and put it somewhere warm.

Wait about an hour or until the dough is doubled and a bit in size. This takes longer the colder it is.

Now for forming and secondary fermentation. This makes one dozen rolls.

I flatten the dough out and divide it into twelve equal pieces with a knife on a lightly floured counter.  Sorry I don’t have the weights.

Hand roll them and put them on a parchment papered or lightly greased cookie sheet with about an inch or so between them. Myself, I actually like it when they rise into each other.

Cover with plastic or put them into your makeshift proofer oven for about another hour.

TAKE OUT OF OVEN. PUT RACKS INTO MIDDLE. Not yelling, this is just for emphasis.

Preheat oven to 350 Farenheit.

Bake in oven for about 18-20 minutes. If you have a good kitchen thermometer, check for 195 Fahrenheit on a sacrificial roll. Make sure it’s in the middle. Old schoolers will thump or check to see if anything sticks to the probe.

Brush the tops with butter or margarine.

Cool on a wire rack.

You can omit the lard and milk powder then add five tablespoons of Olive Oil. You’ve got yourself my favorite pizza dough! Just do the primary fermentation and it should be good to go.  Makes about an 18” pizza or Twoish 12”.

Salsa

Salsa is a big deal in my house. We eat tacos, nachos, chicken fajitas and salsa chicken with a lot of regularity, so having salsa on hand is really important.

I usually just buy jars of salsa. But last summer when I had a huge abundance of green peppers and cherry tomatoes from our garden, I decided to try making some. I found a fantastic recipe online and it was awesome.

But I didn't write it down.

Fast forward to last week when I had a bunch of tomatoes and wanted to make salsa. And no recipe. But luckily, it's not a hard recipe so I was able to recreate it. Although now, I'm writing it down for other people to use too! :)

2 cups tomatoes (I use cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes)
1 onion
1 green pepper
1 1/2 jalapeno pepper (use more if you like it spicier)
3 garlic cloves
2 tbsp lime juice
Salt and pepper

I literally throw everything in my Tupperware Power Chef and dice it until it's the consistency I want. Use a food processor if you don't have a Power Chef. Store in the refrigerator for a few days. It might last longer if you store it in an airtight jar but it doesn't usually last that long in this house so I don't know. Haha.

Teriyaki Beef Stir-fry

Alex loves teriyaki. I've never had it outside of the teriyaki sauce they have at Subway, which I didn't like. So I was always hesitant to try it. But, we had some steak that needed to be used up, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and give it a shot. I went on google and found a recipe that looked decent enough, and decided to give it a shot. I wasn't disappointed. The website I found the recipe on is tasteofhome.com and I literally only did two things differently (besides marinating the beef for like 5 hours instead of 1). I omitted the mushrooms and broccoli because we didn't have any, and I used ground ginger instead of ginger root. Otherwise, I followed the recipe exactly.

1/2 cup water
1/3 cup reduced-sodium soy sauce
1/4 cup honey
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger root
1 beef flank steak (3/4 pound) cut into thin strips
2 teaspoons canola oil
2 cups broccoli florets
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup coarsely chopped green pepper
1/2 cup coarsely chopped sweet red pepper
1 cup sliced fresh mushrooms
1 teaspoon cornstarch

1. In a small bowl, combine the first five ingredients. Pour 1/2 cup into a resealable bag; add beef. Seal bag and turn to coat. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Cover and refrigerate remaining marinade.

2. Drain and discard marinade. In a large nonstick skillet or wok, stir-fry beef in batches in oil for 2-3 minutes or until no longer pink. Remove and keep warm.

3. Add broccoli, onion and peppers to the pan; stir-fry for 4 minutes. Add mushrooms; stir-fry 1-2 minutes longer or until vegetables are tender. Return beef to pan. Combine cornstarch and reserved marinade until smooth; stir into beef mixture. Bring to a boil; cook and stir until thickened.

Serve over rice or noodles if desired.

Blueberry Cream Muffins

Last week, Charlie and my parents went and got a bunch of blueberries. I wasn't expecting it, but Charlie came home with a big basket of them (one pint? two? I'm honestly not sure, there was a LOT). I'm not a fan of blueberries unless they're in a muffin, so I went looking for an awesome blueberry muffin recipe.

And I found it. It's on allrecipes.com and it's insane, but it is literally THE best blueberry muffin I've ever had in my entire life. It made 24 good sized muffins and was a hit in my family. I'm glad I've got more blueberries, so I can make more!

4 eggs
2 cups white sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups sour cream
2 cups blueberries

Preheat oven to 400F. Grease 24 muffin cups or line with paper muffin liners.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs, gradually add sugar while beating. Continue beating while slowly pouring in the oil. Stir in vanilla.

In a separate bowl, stir together flour, salt and baking soda.

Stir dry ingredients into egg mixture alternately with sour cream. Gently fold in blueberries.

Scoop batter into prepared muffin cups. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes.

**As usual I didn't use the required amount of salt. But I never do, you should all be used to that by now. I always use less than it calls for. They turned out absolutely amazing. Everyone in my family loved them and so did my coworkers.

Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

We planted a garden for the first time this year and the first thing that was ready (no surprise) was zucchini. I'm not a fan of it, so I have to mix it with other stuff in order to eat it. Today I made chocolate zucchini cake (recipe earlier in the blog) and this evening, I tried my hand at chocolate zucchini muffins. I used a recipe I found on http://mybakingaddiction.com and we are super happy with it.

1 1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 cups finely grated zucchini, slightly drained
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F. Spray muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray or line with paper liners.

In  large bowl, beat together the sugars, oil, eggs and vanilla until thoroughly combined.

In medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking soda and cinnamon.

Gradually add the dry ingredients into the sugar mixture and mix until just combined.

Fold in zucchini until it is evenly distributed into the batter, then stir in the chocolate chips.

Pour into prepared muffin tin and bake in preheated oven for 18-22 minutes.

NOTES: As always I didn't use the full amount of salt. And if you're wondering, one decent sized zucchini was enough for the two cups the recipe called for. Also, because I sell Tupperware, rather than grating the zucchini, I used my Power Chef to cut it. Worked perfectly. :)

Berry Smash Muffins

The last thing I made with the berries were strawberry muffins, which just came out of the oven. Alex just tried one and said they're really good.

1 2/3 cups fresh strawberries
2/3 cups sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 425F

Grease just the bottoms of 12 muffins tins (or put paper baking cups in them)

Slightly smash berries with a fork in a large bowl (I used my Tupperware Power Chef and almost pureed them)

Stir in sugar, oil and eggs until mixed

Stir in other ingredients just until moistened

Spoon batter into muffin cups

Bake 15-18 minutes or until light golden brown or toothpick inserted in center comes out clean (it took 18 minutes for my oven)

Cool 5 minutes

|Remove from pan to continue cooling on a cooling rack

This recipe is actually from The Rainbow Bakery Children's Cookbook by Gold Medal. I found it on www.food.com