Chicken Enchiladas

These enchiladas have incredible flavor, guaranteed to please! This is the first time I made homemade enchilada sauce. I always liked the canned sauce and thought it wasn't worth the time to make your own. Until I actually made my own and realized it is definitely worth the limited extra effort!

Now, I really do like easy recipes. But as I mentioned before, I have a pretty expansive spice rack which makes it easier for me to mix a big 'mexican spice' blend from my pantry and save it for multiple recipes like tacos and enchiladas. In fact the only reason I used the spice blend in this recipe is that I had some leftover from tacos I had made the week before. I just needed to justify to long list of ingredients for the spice blend, but once you taste it you won't complain because it gives great depth and warmth to your meal, super tasty with a PUNCH of flavor! And if you don't have any of the spices listed, you should, so buy them once and they'll do you well for a while.

Chicken Enchiladas

• 4 large boneless skinless chicken breasts (use left over roast chicken meat, shredded, if you have it)
• Wheat tortillas
• About 1-1.5 cups shredded cheese (cheddar or any mild shredded blend, though I wouldn't recommend mozzarella)
• 2 cans of diced tomatoes (stewed, diced, with onion and celery, whatever you have)
• 1 large onion
• 4-5 cloves of garlic
• 1 bunch cilantro
• Greek yogurt or sour cream (recommended topping)
• Spring onions (recommended topping)

Mexican Spice Blend

• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano or Italian spice blend (funny, I know, but I ran out of oregano and the Italian blend was perfect)

Cook the chicken breasts. I heated a tiny bit of olive oil in a pan on the stove top and flipped the chicken once without touching in between which made it nice and golden. Be sure to cook it through so it is no longer pink. Set chicken aside and cover with a teaspoon or two of the spice blend. Once it's cooled you can shred the chicken with your fingers.

Dice the onion and mince the garlic (it's a lot and it's delicious). Heat some olive oil in a large pan and saute the onions until translucent, add the garlic and 2 tablespoons of the spice blend for about 30 seconds. Add in the two cans of tomatoes and let simmer for a couple of minutes. If you have tomato sauce instead you can use that.

My immersion blender is one of my best friends, I hope you have one too. It makes blending soups a snap, and is perfect for this recipe too. If you don't have one use a blender and blend the sauce (you're not going to get this perfectly smooth and it's good with texture). Taste the sauce and add in more of the spice as needed (I ended up using a lot). Add a splash of V8 or tomato sauce and blend again IF you have it. If you have leftover spice mix it's great for chicken or vegetarian beef tacos! Reserve about 1.5 cups of the sauce and set aside. Put the shredded chicken in the pan with the rest of the sauce and toss in a large hand full of chopped cilantro to give it a bright flavor and stir in 1/2 cup shredded cheese.

Pour a little sauce in the bottom of a glass baking pan so your enchiladas won't stick. Take your tortillas and fill with a large scoop of the chicken/sauce blend, roll up and put in the pan, seam down. Mine fit 6 perfectly, extra full, with all of the filling! Top with the reserved sauce, try to cover the ends of each enchilada, then sprinkle the remaining shredded cheese evenly over the top. Pretty guilt free since these enchildadas aren't nearly as cheese-ridden as typical recipes! And trust me you're not missing out on flavor. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until melted and golden.

Serve with a LARGE dollop of plain Greek yogurt (TJ and I piled it on and loved it!) or a small dollop of sour cream, a generous amount of thinly sliced spring onions and a healthy sprinkle of cilantro. You don't want to miss the toppings on this, and I promise you'll be looking forward to the leftovers!

Miracle Roast Chicken

After getting spoiled on Valentine's day this year I wanted to make an extra special dinner for TJ the next day. So, I decided to make a roast chicken. Having been a vegetarian for the past 15 years, you can believe it was a daunting task heading in! To my shock, two hours later an amazing, golden, crispy, juicy chicken emerged from the oven smelling like heaven and it might have been the easiest thing I ever cooked.

This was the moment I decided to have my first piece of meat after going over a decade without! I paid $23 for that 3lb chicken because I bought a hormone-free, vegetarian fed, free-range chicken. Fortunately I have since found that Costco will sell two 4lb chickens that were raised in the same humane manner for just $20- a real deal! I like to think it's worth the extra cash to get properly raised meat, and I imagine it impacts the taste, too.

I'm telling you, if you eat meat you should probably be roasting a chicken at least once a week: it's a minimal prep time, flexible recipe and is pretty much guaranteed to be delicious. Once you throw it in the oven you have over an hour to hang out while the chicken makes your home smell incredible, and then you take it out and have a really impressive meal! Plus you'll have leftovers to make easy meals the next day or two. 

To make it you'll have to have the chicken, it's best if you have fresh herbs, and the rest is up to you. Don't take recipes like this too seriously. I have some suggestions below.

Perfect Roast Chicken

• 1 whole chicken, 3-4lbs
• 1 or more fresh herbs such as: rosemary, thyme, sage
• 1/2 - 1 Lemon
• Garlic, smashed and peeled, 2-5 cloves
• Onion
• Celery (optional)
• Carrot (optional)
• Butter and olive oil
• Salt and fresh ground pepper

Now, I've made a perfect roast chicken with just 1 spring onion, half a lemon that had been zested and half juiced and was sitting in the fridge a couple days, a sprig of sage and a bunch of smashed cloves of garlic. It doesn't take much to get crazy flavor. Just have garlic and lemon? Go for it. Just herbs and onion? I bet it'll be amazing. Although you can always part with the fresh herbs, they really do make a difference. Especially on the skin.

Rinse the chicken inside and out and then place on a foil-lined pan. Cover the top, sides, bottom and inside the cavity with a generous amount of salt and fresh cracked pepper. I usually crack a bunch of pepper ahead of time in a bowl to make it easy, I'm super paranoid about cross-contamination with raw chicken.  Melt a 1/2 tablespoon of butter in 1 tablespoon of olive oil (just pop in the microwave for a few seconds) and then mix in a tablespoon or so of finely chopped herbs. Using a brush, cover the entire chicken thoroughly with the mixture, top to bottom. Then stuff the cavity with whatever sounds good! I've had great results with lemon, a couple springs of herbs, smashed garlic cloves and half an onion. If you have celery and carrots throw those in there, too (it doesn't take much, 1/2 a stick of each). Tie the legs together with twine (I never have twine so I roll up a small piece of tinfoil and use this) to keep all the goodies inside. If you have extra onions and veggies you can make a bed and lay the chicken on top of it.

Now, depending on how much time you have there are a couple of options for cooking. For slower but better results I like to cook it for an hour and 15 minutes at 350 degrees, then raise the temperature to 375 and cook for 30 more minutes. If you're in a crunch you can cook at 400 for 1-1.5 hours depending on the size of the chicken. Just be sure the chicken temperature reaches about 165 degrees, and you want to have a nice golden crisp skin. The juices will run clear (and it will be JUICY!) and the leg should be loose as though you can pull it off. Just be sure to let it rest 10-15 minutes before serving so you don't lose all the juices.

TJ and I always take off the skin when we actually eat it which makes it a bit healthier, and you still get great flavor. YOU'RE WELCOME and ENJOY!

Tofu Stir Fry

Of all things, I impulse bought a package of extra-firm tofu a few weeks ago because it was less than $3 in the grocery store and it seemed too cheap to pass up! Since I haven't bought fresh veggies in a couple days I figured it was good timing to stock up and make a stir fry. Plus I haven't made this recipe in a couple of years and I had to make sure it still tastes good while TJ is out of town (I'd hate to give him a bad first impression of my tofu cooking capabilities).

My sister passed along the sauce recipe to me and it does require 2-3 ingredients you may not typically have in your pantry, but they're good to have. Plus, I say there is no such thing as having too many spices and vinegars and sauces on hand (unless we're talking about the crazy people on Doomsday Preppers) because it means that a unique and delicious meal is always right at your fingertips.

Stir Fry

• 1-2 packages extra firm tofu
• Bok choy or baby bok choy (a good amount since it wilts down quite a bit)
• 1 large onion sliced thin
• 1 green bell pepper sliced thin
• 1 red bell pepper sliced thin
• 3-4 cloves of garlic minced, depending on your garlic-comfort level

Sauce

• 6 tablespoons cooking sherry
• 3 tablespoons water or broth
• 3 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon honey or sugar
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• A few dashes of cayenne pepper if you like spice like me!

First drain the tofu, it comes packaged in water. It will be an unappealing colorless brick that you'll need to cut into 1/4 inch slices. Put two paper towels over a clean kitchen towel and lay the slices of the tofu on top, side by side, and cover with a couple more paper towels. Press down firmly on the tofu to get out the extra liquid, this will help it reach a nice texture when you cook it.





Heat a little olive oil in a large pan  (it doesn't take much, we're not deep frying here!) and put in half the tofu so that they're all laying flat on the pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. After a couple minutes, once they're nice and golden, flip each over and let cook until golden on both sides. Cook in batches until you're done and then set aside on a paper towel lined plate. These crispy little beauties are delicious as is, they're hard to stop snacking on so try to resist or you won't have any left for the final product!

Once you've washed and sliced the veggies start by cooking the onion first for a couple minutes until it begins to get translucent, then add the garlic for a few seconds. Then add the rest of the veggies and saute for just a couple extra minutes. Keep in mind you can use whatever veggies you have on hand- long slices of spring onions instead of onion, broccoli, thin slices of carrot, etc.


Stir together the sauce ingredients and pour over the stir fry. Next time I might try simmering the sauce in a separate pan to let it thicken before adding to the veggies (I don't like the veggies to get too over cooked). Serve over a little rice (Jasmine is my favorite, cooks perfectly every time) and enjoy!

Easter Picnic in Central Park

Well, being May 1st I figured if I'm going to post about my Easter meal I better do it now! The sandwiches I made were too good not to share.


We were lucky to have beautiful weather on Easter weekend, and so we packed a delicious picnic to enjoy in Central Park! I made yummy deviled eggs (just a smidge of mayonnaise and several heaping spoonfuls of Greek yogurt, among other things, to make it healthier), roasted asparagus and homemade carrot cake. But the centerpiece was smoked salmon sandwiches and they were fantastic.


Smoked Salmon Sandwiches

• Bread (yummy hearty sandwich bread, or whatever you have that isn't too soft)
• Smoked Salmon
• Tomato (I used heirloom because they looked the best at the store)
• Avocado
• Arugula
• Homemade dill & goats milk cheese spread (recipe below)

Dill & goats milk cheese spread

• 3 tablespoons goats milk cheese
• 2 tablespoons plain Greek yogurt
• 1 generous tablespoon minced fresh dill
• LOTS of fresh cracked pepper and salt
• Zest from 1 lemon

**Disclaimer: I didn't actually measure the ingredients, but it's hard to go wrong with this spread! Just keep tweaking until the flavor is right. Since I used it as a sandwich spread it was good to flavor it aggressively with lots of dill. Alter the cheese to yogurt ratio so that it's spreadable. Greek yogurt is much thicker than regular yogurt and it's also not sweet at all so it works great in all kinds of recipes.


Just mix together, spread generously on each slice of bread and put a single layer of smoked salmon, tomato and avocado on top. Heap with lots of arugula and you've got a tasty and portable sandwich! I Packed the lemon that we zested to squeeze on the sandwich before eating and it was PERFECT. Pack some champagne with whatever combinations of fresh fruit juices you may have in your fridge and you've got yourself a picnic.


As a side note, this spread would be great on homemade crostini, too! And I always get a big container of arugula because it's such a flexible ingredient, it's good wilted, blended in soups, fresh with lemon and olive oil, the options are endless! Alternatively a lot of grocery stores nearby sell it 'loose leaf' so you can get just enough for a sandwich that way for super cheap.

An Introduction..

I grew up in Washington, D.C., spent my first few post-college years in Charleston, SC, and I have now planted myself in NYC. With that trio of cities there was no chance of tempering my love for all things food related! D.C. sparked my love for Indian and Thai and food. There wasn't a single Ethiopian restaurant in Charleston, but that city knows how to cook some country-delicious seafood. In Charleston I fell for oysters, bottomless mimosa brunches (a true great love in my life), and steamed crab legs served with buckets of beer and shared with great friends.

Now, living in NYC does has it's caveats. It means that we moved into an apartment with exactly 1 square foot of counter space, limited cabinets and no pantry. The stove blocks the cabinet under the sink. The miniterature microwave balances on top of the fridge blocking additional cabinet space. So, after an extended trip to Ikea, we optimized our space and turned our quirky corner into an actual kitchen. And for such a tiny kitchen, the city is willing and able to fill it to the brim with an abundance of fresh produce and humanely rasied meats.  But let's be honest about one thing: I'm pretty sure 97% of my discretionary income is allocated towards grocery shopping and restaurants!

Considering I don't always skimp on price when it comes to certain grocery store purchases (good cheese and olive oil, cage-free eggs, organic milk, fresh herbs), I also do NOT like to waste. To avoid waste I am a strong believer in flexible cooking; substitute spinach for arugula, add greek yogurt (my miracle ingredient) instead of sour cream, quinoa for cous cous. Use what you have in your fridge, don't waste left over ingredients and make healthy decisions when you can!