with cooking. I didn’t post any recipes the last weekend or this weekend because I didn’t cook. There are a few reasons. My virtual cooking instructor hasn’t posted any new stove top or crock pot recipes, and since my oven is still dead, I don’t have any new recipe to try. I could have made something I’ve already tried before, but I haven’t had the time. I worked both Sundays. And Saturday mornings were spent on running errands, and the afternoons were spent on napping – yes, napping as in sleeping in between the time I should normally sleep. As I wrote about it in the Early Bird entry, I’m still very much sleep-deprived, and it helps to compensate with a few hours of nap on Saturday. I doubt I’d be able to cook next weekend either, since I’ll be working again on Sunday. What can I say. Gotta pay the bills and I should be grateful about it, right?
… if I had not cooked this past weekend because I didn’t make an entry about it, I did. But I didn’t want to bore you with the same exact recipe as the week before. Yes, I made jambalaya again. I already had all the ingredients except peppers and onion. I made it a little spicier putting more cayenne pepper and Red Hot sauce. It’s delicious. Heavenly. Try it.
Today is Saturday, which means that I cooked. This time I cooked something I did a few weeks ago because my virtual teacher hasn’t made any new stovetop dish – my oven is not working and I screwed it up trying to fix it too, so I can only make stovetop recipes until I get a new stove. The reason I chose this one to make again, of course, was because it’s the easiest recipe.
I also made mashed potato to eat with it. My first attempt at mashed potato was a few weeks ago, and I was so surprised that I’ve never had better tasting one than mine!!! Probably because most mashed potatoes I’ve had were instant kind. I could mash it the way I like, too – a little clumpy, not silky smooth.
I didn’t like the way the last recipe post looked with my blue comments all over, so I’m trying the blue on the actual recipe this time.
Ingredients
2 lbs of beef stew meat A package of beef stew meat contains beef cut in cube-like shape if you don’t know what it looks like – it’s a pain if you have to look at the description on every single package, you know.
1/2 cup ketchup I suspect most of you know what ketchup is.
1/2 cup chili sauce I didn’t know what chili sauce was but apparently Heinz makes this thing. I found it right next to Heinz ketchup. No, I don’t work for Heinz.
1/2 cup water Water was the only ingredient I didn’t buy when I made it the first time.
1/2 envelope of onion soup mix I didn’t know there was such thing
1/2 tsp regular yellow mustard I bought the mustard, but when I got home I found out I already had it… from 2 years ago. Is it still good after 2 years in the fridge?
1/4 cup vinegar Just normal vinegar without any color.
Instructions
In a bowl, mix all of the ingredients except the meat and set aside. The first time I made it, I mistakenly put the entire envelope instead of just half, so the teacher had me put more water while it’s cooking because it would have been too salty otherwise. She warned me that the sauce would be soupier because of added water, and it was.
Brown the meat at high heat, like a steak. Only a little bit, you don’t want to cook it all the way through.In other words, browning the meat means just cook the outside of the meat until it’s brown.
***Note: In all the crock pot recipes where you need to cook meat, except with ground meat, it is written in a lot of books that you need to brown the meat first. It helps keep the juice in, and also kind of caramelize the meat a little, like when you cook a steak.
Put the meat in the crock pot, pour the sauce on top and mix well. Cook for 4-1/2 to 5 hours at HIGH. Don’t remove the cover until the end. Whenever I cook something with a cover like this, I’m sooooo tempted to open the cover. I don’t know why but I’m always itching to open the cover and take a peek inside. Does anybody else have the same problem?
Hmmm… I’m not sure if this one looks any better than the last one. Any suggestions?
A very nice lady, who’s a member of a pet-related message board I’m also a member of, posts great recipes in Cooking forum with pictures (pictures a big help for idiots like me) for each step, and she teaches me online how to cook and does some virtual hand-holding for me. And yesterday, I cooked Chicken Cacciatore following the recipe posted by her, and oh man, I totally surprised myself. Cause it was heavenly. So without further ado, here is the Chicken Cacciatore recipe.
Ingredients (The texts in blue are added by me.)
6 chicken legs (but you can use breasts too) I used 5 legs because I didn’t think 6 will fit in the biggest pan I have, and I was right. We are debating whether Canadian chickens are smaller than American chickens (she’s a French-Canadian).
1/4 cup flour I know, I know, flour is evil.
1/2 cup of vegetable oil (canola) I used about 3 Tbsp according to the special note further down.
1 small onion, diced small Apparently, dicing is the same as chopping.
1 small green bell pepper (or red), diced I used red because I thought it would look better.
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped I love me some garlic, I’m not telling how much I used.
1/2 tsp oregano You know, the dried spice thingmajig
1/2 tsp thyme Again, the dried spice thing. Dried thyme leaves, NOT ground thyme. hehehe
1 tsp salt Usual salt, not the kind you use on the icy road.
1 tsp ground pepper You know, pepper as in salt and pepper.
1 tsp paprika It’s a red spice which fooled me into thinking it’s spicy hot. But it’s not.
2/3 of a can (28 oz) of either diced tomatoes, or whole tomatoes that you chop. I prefer the plum tomatoes, they are meatier, have less juice. I used the plum shaped whole tomatoes. I chopped them on the chopping board, and made a huge mess. I was told later that she does this in a bowl using a fork and a knife.
1 (7-1/2 oz) tomato sauce (NOT tomato paste) I’m pretty sure she added “NOT tomato paste” for my benefit.
1/2 cup red wine Hmm… wine… I usually have some wine at home, but I need to get some cheaper wine for cooking.
Instructions (Not copied verbatim)
Remove skin and fat as much as possible from the chicken. I do this very often to feed my dogs, so I didn’t need any further explanation.
Put the flour in a plastic bag, put the chicken, one piece at a time, into the bag and shake it so that the chicken gets nicely coated with the flour. I used a Ziplock. And it so happens that you’re supposed to shake the bag, not your booty.
Pour the oil in a pan, and brown the meat on all sides. To brown you have to cook at high (but not the highest temperature or they will burn) temperature. I was told that since no body parts of a chicken is shaped like a cube, “brown on all sides” will still leave some parts pink. Boy, was I relieved. I was trying everything to get rid of those pink parts. But then again, there’s a rumor that Canadian chicken legs have cube-like shapes.
Remove the chicken from the pan and set aside. You’ll need a big dish for this.
Cook the diced bell pepper, onion and garlic in the same oil in the pan, stirring occasionally until the veggies are tender and onion turns translucent, at high temperature, but not the highest (7 or 8 out of 10).
After they’re done, remove the excess oil. You can do it with a spoon, or tip the pan over the sink, but it’s a bit harder to do and it’s takes experience, or all your veggies will fall in the sink.
***NOTE: What you could also do, is instead of using 1/2 cup of oil to cook just put about 2-3 tbsp of oil, but be more careful that the chicken legs and the veggies don’t stick to the bottom of the pan and burn. As I said earlier, I chose the easy way for myself.
Put the chicken back into the pan and add all the rest of the ingredients and mix well. I couldn’t mix anything because the chicken legs were so big. I was told to take some chicken legs out and mix next time.
Simmer, for at least 1-1/2 hour, with a cover. And at about 1/2 of the cooking time, turn the chicken legs over, and scraped the bottom of the pan. To protect the bottom of a non-stick pan, use a big wooden spoon. Again, I think the wooden spoon reference was for my benefit. 
One of my latest obsessions is… Are you ready to LOL, LMAO, ROFLMFAO?
OK then, one of my latest obsessions is… Is everybody sitting down?
It’s cooking.
Yes, cooking as in making food consumable by people.
Now I’ll stop here and give you some time to take control of yourself here before I go further into this subject.
Serious Stuff. Seriously
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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