Zucchini Bread

So my neighbors had some really big zucchini, so I had to do my thing with them. Zucchini bread, would be good, so I thought, so I decided to use the big zucchini for that.

Ingredients
3 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
3 tsp ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 1/4 cup white sugar
3 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups grated zucchini

Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Sift flour, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture and beat well. Stir in zucchini until well combined. Pour batter into pans.
Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool for twenty minutes and serve.

This was a delicious recipe. You can't really taste the zucchini, but it does make it healthier which is aways good. Based on the amount I've eaten of the bread in the past few hours, I don't need to eat veggies for a long time.

Grilled Pork Chops with Cherry Tomatoes and Garlic Butter

Pigs are the ultimate, magical animal. They come in so many shapes, sizes and tastes. You can have pork, bacon, and pork chops. For this post there was a recipe in one of my moms magazines. So I decided to try my hand at grilling once again.

4 tbs butter at room temperature
1 clove garlic. finely chopped
1 tsp fresh thyme
4 1 inch thick bone-in pork chops
kosher salt and black pepper
2 pounds cherry tomatoes

Heat grill to medium-high. In a small bowl, combine the butter, garlic and thym; set aside.

Season the pork with 1/2 tsp each salt and pepper and grilll until cooked though, 6 to 7 minutes per side

Meanwhile, divide the tomatoes among 2 pieces of heavy duty foil and season with 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper. Close to form 2 pouches. Grill the pouches alongside the pork, gently shaking occasionally, for 8 minutes.

Top the pork chops and tomatoes with the garlic butter just before serving.

This was a good recipe, even though I did not eat the tomatoes, because I really dislike them. I may have overcooked the pork a bit, but it was still very good.

Pinkberry Frozen Yogurt

A popular frozen yogurt chain is pinkberry. My sister and I were first introduced to it a few months ago, and ever since our trip to California, my sister has been "obsessed" with it. Its good, and you'll eat the sweetish frozen yogurt with anything from mangoes and raspberries to Fruity Pebbles. So I decided to try and make it using a recipe I found a recipe found from the food network magazine.

2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt
2 cups plain nonfat or reduced-fat Greek Yogurt
1/2 cup superfine sugar
3 tbs light corn syrup
fresh fruit or other toppings for garnish

1. Whisk both yogurts, the sugar and corn syrup in a bowl until combined. Pour into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.
2. For a soft consistency, serve right out of the ice cream maker. For a firmer texture, transfer the yogurt to a covered container and freeze for up to 2 hours. Serve with toppings.

This was actually a pretty good recreation of the pinkberry yogurt. It wasn't perfect the actual stuff was better than what I made, but it was still very good.

Pumpkin Pie

So for this post I delved deep into my moms recipe box to find a good recipe for pumpkin pie. I found one from the oregonian, from the obituary section (if its there, it has to be good. Right?). So I made that pie for my dad. who loves it, and here is the recipe.

Special Seasoning
4 tablespoons ground cinnamon
2 tbs ground allspice
2 tbs black pepper
2 tbs salt
1 tbs ground nutmeg
1 tbs cloves
1 tbs allspice
Mix everything together, and store in an airtight container

PUMPKIN PIE
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups canned pumpkin
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 1/2 tsp special seasoning
1 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup half and half
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 9 inch unbaked pie shell

Mix together the eggs, vanilla, pumpkin, sugar and seasoning mix. In a saucepan, mic the evaporated milk, half and half and sugar; cook over low heat until the sugar dissolves. Add to the pumpkin mixture. Pour into pie shell and bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes; lower heat to 350 degrees and cook for 25 minutes. Store in the refigirator.

This recipe turned out really good, and I still love a good pumpkin pie ( and I don't have to buy one at costco or anything). You should try this recipe or at least let me make you one.

Blackberry pie

So my mom bought a ton of blackberries. And what are you supposed to do with them other than make a pie. So I found an easy recipe online for them from allrecipes.com . Here is the link and the recipe itself. http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Blackberry-Pie-I/Detail.aspx
INGREDIENTS

* 4 cups fresh blackberries
* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
* 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie
* 2 tablespoons milk
* 1/4 cup white sugar
DIRECTIONS

1. Combine 3 1/2 cups berries with the sugar and flour. Spoon the mixture into an unbaked pie shell. Spread the remaining 1/2 cup berries on top of the sweetened berries, and cover with the top crust. Seal and crimp the edges. Brush the top crust with milk, and sprinkle with 1/4 cup sugar.
2. Bake at 425 degree F (220 degrees C) for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature of the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C), and bake for an additional 20 to 25 minutes.

Cooking Class 5

So for the last day of our cooking class, our focus today was deserts. We made a lot of delicious dishes. Our non desert dish was a Cobb salad, made with lettuce, egg, turkey, bacon, and some sauce. So now for our desert dishes, we made crepes first. The crepes were easy and good, I definitely want to make them at home, with a bit of nutella, or a bit of lemon juice and sugar. Then we made beignets, which are french donuts and are famous at the cafe del monde at New Orleans. We also made chocolate cookies and when I brought some home, I quote "These are some of the best cookies I have ever had. Period." Thanks Mom! Another desert was an apple tart with a hazelnut crust. It was very good, although it was probably the least favorite of my deserts.

Cooking Class 4

On the fourth day of our cooking class, our teaching today was pasta making. So we made the pasta, just with some flour and eggs. We used a food processor because it takes too long to do it by hand. Then we used a pasta making machine to flatten it, and then cut it, angel hair style. We also made a few sauces as well, a bolognese sauce, that was good, although I think I added a bit too much wine to it. Other sauces were pesto and a sun dried tomato cream.
Besides those things we also made a tomato bread crumb salad, and the desert which was like a parfait.

Cooking Class 3

The theme of this day was grilling. Previously I thought that you could only grill things like steak, chicken, burgers, but my cooking mind has broadened from this class. The different things we tried to grill were pizza, chicken in a root beer sauce, grilled corn and roasted red pepper salad, and grilled pineapple and plums. We also made a few other salads, a creamy coleslaw and a lemon and herb potato salad.

All of the items were really good, although I was not a huge fan of all the salads, the other foods were good.

Cooking Class 2

The second day of the cooking class, we concentrated on sauteing. For the saute we made chicken, in a couple of different sauces. The sauce that I made was a lemon garlic sauce, that was pretty good. The other sauces were a Moroccan sauce made with Saffron, and a apricot sauce. In addition to that we made a terriyaki sauce used with some tilapia. Other non-saute things that we made was a molten chocolate cake, just cake with a bit of ganache in the middle. The one thing that we made that I didn't like was a salad we made, with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil, and some dressing.

Later that day I try and recreate my saute skills by trying to do the tilapia and apricot chicken recipes for my family. Here are the recipes for the tilapia and chicken.

Ginger Teriyaki Chicken with Snow Peas
1 tsp minced fresh ginger
1 tsp minced fresh garlic
1/2 cup mirin (rice wine) and chicken stock
3 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs rice wine vinegar
1 tbs honey
1 cup snow peas
Fish
Flour, Salt and Pepper
Combine flour salt and pepper, and then dunk fish in.
Lightly brown fish in oily hot pan, and then remove
Saute ginger and garlic until fragnant
Combine mirin, stock, soy and rice vinegar
Deglaze pan with sauce mixture
Bring to a simmer and add honey
Return fish to pan and finish cooking
Add snow peas and cook until bright green

Sweet-tart Apricot Chicken
1 cup stock
6 dried apricot halves, sliced
1/3 cup apricot preserves
1 tbs chili sauce and Dijon Mustard
Chicken
Flour, Salt and Pepper
Combine flour salt and pepper, and then dunk chicken in.
Lightly brown chicken in oily hot pan, and then remove
Deglaze pan with stock
Add apricots and cook to soften
Add preserves, chili sauce and mustard
REturn chicken to pan to finish cooking and thicken sauce.

Cooking Class

So I am taking a cooking class at a kitchen in Lake Oswego. On the first day of it we practiced knife skills, and it improved dramatically. Many of the things that we made then used those skills. The menu on the first day was

Salsa Fresca and Guacamole with Homemade Tortillas

Thai Veggie Spring Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce and Lime Soy Sauce

Grandma’s Vegetable Soup

Strawberry Shortcake with Buttermilk Biscuits

All of those dishes were really good and they definitely challenged me. I'm not a very big fan of tomatoes, but I still ate the salsa, and it was really good. Unfortunately we couldn't make the guacamole in time and we will do that on Wednesday. The spring rolls were good as well, they were simple to make, and they are good as well, I'll try and make them at home some time. The soup was good. Unfortunately I wasn't involved in all of the steps in it, we all diced veggies and then made one big batch, but it was still good. The strawberry shortcake... FANTASTIC. The biscuits were a lot better than my attempt at them, and we mashed up the strawberries to release some of their juices and added some sugar.

I am really looking forward to doing more classes, and I'll post about the rest of my adventures as the week winds by. There is a link to the class below.

http://www.cookingschoolsofamerica.com/ingoodtaste/index.php?flag_menu_index=basicskillseries_php#649