Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

Saying I like chocolate would be an understatement. I love chocolate. It’s just perfect in every way: rich, smooth, and decadent. And most of all, it’s delicious (If you don’t believe me take a look at that picture above one more time).

This week has been pretty rough for me, so I needed something to lift my spirits. It’s the week before finals, also known as “dead week,” which has been anything but dead for me. Between 3 term papers and a project, it will be a miracle if I survive this week. Not only am I stressed with projects, I’m stressed emotionally, too. I graduated from and became an alumnae of my sorority on Monday. I’m having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that those few (and some of the best) years of my life flew by so quickly, because it was such a huge part of my life. With all this stress and crazy emotions, I needed something to make me feel better. So I thought to myself what food always makes me feel better?

Answer? Chocolate (duh).

The inspiration for this recipe comes from my mother. She used to make something incredibly similar when I still lived at home in Chicago. However, her recipe used white chocolate chips instead of regular chocolate chips, so they were more of a reversed chocolate chip cookie. Seeing as I am more of the chocoholic type, I augmented her recipe a little and opted for the all chocolate option, because as we all know there is no such thing as too much chocolate.

In addition to being chocolatey, these cookies are also super chewy: a quality all good chocolate chip cookies should have. I’m not a big fan of hard crunchy cookies (unless it is a biscotti), and in my opinion chocolate chip cookies should never be hard.

Not only are these cookies delicious, but they’re extremely cheap (and easy!) to make. Most of the ingredients required for this recipe should already be in your pantry and refrigerator. The only things I had to buy the cocoa powder and the chocolate chips, which ran me about $5. That $5 made me about 40 large cookies. Yes, 40 tasty (homemade) cookies for only FIVE dollars. Take that Chips Ahoy.

So here we go.

Ingredients

2 & 1/4 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 sticks butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

2 large eggs, beaten

1 tablespoon vanilla

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

1 bag of chocolate chips (I told you I like chocolate)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Mix flour, salt, and baking soda together in a bowl.

3. In a separate large bowl, mix brown sugar, granulated sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla, and cocoa together. It is important that this bowl is large, because the flour mixture will be added to it, and you need enough bowl space so that the mixture does not fly everywhere. Less clean-up is always a plus.

4. Grab the flour mixture and gradually add it to the other bowl holding the butter mixture. Mix until combine.

5. Pour in chocolate chips, and mix around with a large spoon until evenly distributed throughout the batter.

6. Grease a baking sheet with cooking spray or something of that nature. Roll dough into tablespoon size balls (approximately) and drop onto baking sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes and repeat as many times as necessary for all of the dough.

Now go enjoy your delectable cookies.

Tags: chocolate, chocolate chips, cookie, dessert

Fish Tacos

So I figure since it’s nearly Cinco de Mayo, I’d feature a recipe that reflects the Mexican tradition: fish tacos. They’re deceivingly simple to make and exceedingly delicious. I’d say that’s a pretty good combination. I really like this recipe, because it reminds me of one of my favorite restaurants ever. This restaurant is a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place about a block from the ocean in Manhattan Beach, CA. It only accepts cash, the menu is primarily in Spanish, and the employees speak little to no english, but the food is amazing; especially, the fish tacos. Clearly, my fish tacos are not nearly up to caliber with their fish tacos, but they are pretty darn good. I found this recipe on one of my favorite cooking websites: Big Girls Small Kitchen. I augmented it a little to keep the price down, but it’s still really good.

I did however have a little mishap the first time I attempted to cook these. Since the fish is fried, it requires heated oil in some sort of skillet, which must be very clean. You’d think I would have learned the first time I encountered this issue with my steak recipe, but no. I was in a hurry and didn’t make sure that everything was in order, which was a terrible mistake. Make sure your stove top and skillet or whatever you are using is free of any other oil remnants. If it is not, it will start to smoke, and eventually your entire kitchen will be smoky. Additionally, you will reek of oil smoke for the next 12 hours. Trust me, it makes for a terrible perfume. So to avoid this problem, throughly and properly scrub down your stove top and skillet in advance as to not waste any time or smell like a chimney.

On a lighter note, this recipe is very affordable. It requires many ingredients that should already be in your panty and refrigerator. The only things I would anticipate having to be bought are the panko bread crumbs, salsa, and maybe the fish if you don’t have any on hand. It ran me a little $10 to make all of this and it yields a pretty large quantity, so you’re getting some bang for your buck.

Enough of my rambling, let’s get started.

ingredients

1 lb of a white fish (tilapia, cod, mahi mahi, or some other kind of white fish) cut into strips

1 cup panko bread crumbs

1 egg, beaten

1 cup flour

vegetable oil

salt

1 lime or lime juice

flour tortillas

salsa

sour cream

hot sauce (optional)

Directions

1. Fill a deep skillet with about an inch to an inch and a half of vegetable oil, and heat over high heat. Also, preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

2. Grab 3 bowls. In one bowl, whisk the egg together with a few tablespoons of water. Place the flour in second bowl and the panko bread crumbs in the third bowl.

3. One at a time, take a strip of fish and roll it in the flour, coating the entire strip. Shake off any excess flour. Then, dip the floured strips into the egg mixture, and then roll in the panko bread crumbs until completely covered. Repeat with all strips.

4. Place the fish strips in the hot oil until they are a dark golden brown color. Make sure not to overcook them, or they will turn black. Remove the strips from the oil and place on a paper towel to drain and soak up excess oil.

5. When the oven reaches 300 degrees, place the tortillas wrapped in aluminum foil in the oven for about 5 minutes.

6. Remove tortillas from the oven and assemble tacos with salsa, sour cream, and other ingredients of your choice.

Now grab a margarita and enjoy!

Tags: cheese, fish, fried, lime, sour cream, tacos

Blondies

This week I decided to do something a little different. Until now, I have featured dinner items and meals mostly, so I wanted to feature something else. While I was sitting on the couch watching Dazed and Confused yesterday, I realized that I had a craving for something sweet. I love dessert. I especially like making my own desserts (and my roommates love when I make them, too).  Cookies, brownies, cake you name it. I love them all.

Of course, the dilemma I had yesterday was that I didn’t want to go to the store to buy anything. This was partially because I was feeling lazy, but mostly because I’m pretty broke at the moment. Since it’s the end of the month, I’m running pretty low on money, so I needed something I could make with ingredients I already owned. I grabbed my cookbook and started flipping through it, and that’s when I found this recipe: blondies.

What are blondies you ask? They’re basically brownies that use brown sugar instead of chocolate, which gives them a light color and butterscotch flavor, hence, the name “blondies.”

So let’s get started.

Ingredients

2 cups packed brown sugar

2/3 cups butter

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Optional: 1 & 1/2 cups chopped almonds/pecans/cashews (I hate nuts with dessert so I left this out)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Line  a 13x9x2-inch baking pan with aluminum foil (It makes for easy removal of the blondie bars and easy clean up. Woo hoo!). The foil should be molded to the inside of the pan and extend over the edge of the pan about an inch for easy gripping and lifting. If you don’t have that specific size pan you can use whatever. For example, I used two 9-inch cake pans. Grease the foil in the pan with cooking spray or butter and set aside.

3. Heat and stir brown sugar and butter together in a medium saucepan until the butter melts and the mixture is smooth.

4. Allow the mixture to cool slightly by removing it from the heat. Then stir in eggs one at a time. Next, stir in the vanilla. Finally, stir in the flour, baking powder, and baking soda.

5. Grab the baking dish(es) and in the batter. If you choose to use the nuts, sprinkle them on top of the batter now (If not, just ignore that step).

6. Place baking dishes in the oven and allow them to bake for about 25 to 30 minutes, or until a wooden toothpick inserted near the center of the blondies comes out clean.

7. When done, allow the blondies to cool slightly. Cut into bars while still warm, serve, and enjoy.

Yum.

Tags: brown sugar, butter, dessert

Teriyaki Chicken Sandwiches.

Sandwiches: so simple yet so delicious. Sandwiches are so versatile, which is one of the things I love about them. This recipe happens to be a particular favorite of mine. My father used to make something like this back home, and I remember being ecstatic anytime I learned that it was teriyaki chicken sandwich night. I have a thing for the sweet and salty combination, and this recipe fits into that category perfectly. The salty and savory flavor of the teriyaki chicken compliments the sweetness of the pineapple oh so well. Plus, there’s melted cheese, and as I’ve said before: I love cheese.

There’s a little bit of prep involved in this recipe, but don’t freak out. It’s easy and requires basically no effort. The chicken needs to marinate before it is cooked. I suggest letting the chicken marinate for at least an hour beforehand. The longer you can let it marinate, the better. It will have much more flavor. For example, I let my chicken marinate while I went to class today. I defrosted a chicken breast, placed the breast in a plastic bag, covered the breast with marinade, mixed it around to cover the entire breast, and placed the bag in the refrigerator while I went to class. All of that entire only took me about 5 minutes to do. Leading the busy life that I do (especially this week), I’m all about multi-tasking. So take my advice, and marinate before hand.

Another note on this recipe is that it requires a grill of some sort. I used my George Forman grill (a staple college kitchen item, but that’s another story), because it’s simple and quick to use. You could always use an actual outside grill, but it was raining today and I didn’t have the time to wait around for my charcoal grill to heat up.

As always, this recipe is fairly cheap to make. I only had to buy the pineapple rings and the sandwich rolls, which amounted to about $7 in total. You can always use regular sliced sandwich bread, bagels, or whatever kind of bread you have lying around to keep the cost down even more.

Since I’m in a bit of a time crunch, let’s get started.

Ingredients

1 chicken breast

1/4 cup teriyaki sauce

1 slice pineapple (ring form)

1 slice of cheese (I used swiss)

bread of your choice

mayonnaise to spread on bread

Directions

Marinade directions:

1. Grab a chicken breast and place it in a plastic bag.

2. Pour the teriyaki sauce into the bag and mix around to coat the entire breast.

3. Seal the bag and place in the refrigerator for at least an hour.

Actual cooking directions:

1. Pre-heat the grill. If you’re using the George Forman, or something like it, plug it in and wait for the light to turn off.

2. Remove the chicken from the refrigerator. When the grill is heated, take the chicken out of the bag and place on the grill. Allow the chicken to cook fully (about 5 minutes or so) until the center is no longer pink.

3. In the meantime, toast the bread. When it’s done, remove it from the toaster and spread as much mayonnaise as desired on the pieces of bread.

3. Before removing the chicken from the grill, place the slice of cheese on the chicken and allow to melt. Remove the chicken breast from the grill and place on the bread.

4. Place the pineapple slice on the grill and allow to cook for a bit until grill marks appear on it. Remove the pineapple slice and place on top of the chicken breast.

5. Place the top piece of bread on the rest of the sandwich and enjoy.

All pictures in this post were taken by me.

Tags: cheese, chicken, pineapple, sandwich, teriyaki

Sweet and Sour Tofu with Spinach

Tofu: I’ll be honest here and admit that initially the word freaked me out. Being a meat lover, I was vehemently against the idea of tofu at first. However, after making this dish, my opinion of tofu has changed. Tofu has this great ability of absorbing flavor, and if cooked properly emulates the texture of meat. For example, this dish is supposed to imitate sweet and sour chicken. I must say it does a pretty good job. My boyfriend, a die-hard meat-eater, thought it was chicken (and loved it) until I started laughing and told him that he just ate tofu.

This recipe is super cheap (and vegetarian!). I already had a majority of the incidents in my refrigerator and pantry. The only thing I actually had to buy was the tofu itself, which cost $2. Not bad huh? It’s also incredibly easy and not too time consuming, which is always a plus.

So let’s get started.

ingredients

1 block firm tofu

1/4 cup flour

1-2 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup honey, maple syrup, or brown sugar

1/4 cup soy sauce

1 tablespoon grated garlic

1/2 cup spinach

Directions

For the tofu:

1. Cut tofu into about 1 inch strips. Put the strips of tofu in between paper towels and press to remove water. Cut the strips into 1 inch square cubes. Grab a plastic bag or a large bowl and toss the tofu with the flour until the tofu is coated with a thin layer of flour.

2. Mix the lemon juice, soy sauce, whatever you chose to be the sweetener (I used a mixture of both maple syrup and brown sugar, because that is what i had on hand), and the garlic in a small bowl.

3. Heat a frying pan over medium low to medium heat, and add the oil. When the oil is hot, add the tofu and let it brown.

4. When the tofu is browned, add the sauce and allow to cook for 5-10 minutes, or until the tofu is thickly coated with the sauce.

For the spinach:

1. Heat a frying pan over medium low heat and add oil to the pan. Add in the spinach and allow to wilt. The spinach should look flimsy and a dark shade of green.

Yum.

 

All photos in this post were taken by me.

Tags: garlic, sour, soy sauce, spinach, sweet, tofu

BBQ Chicken Pizza

If there is one kind of food I love, it’s pizza. Bread and melted cheese. Yum. Being born and raised in Chicago, I have been exposed to some of the best pizzas in the world, and have grown to enjoy various different styles of pizza in the process. This recipe is based on one of my favorite pizzas: the barbecue chicken pizza at California Pizza Kitchen. I love that place.

Of course, I augmented the recipe a little to suit my taste better. For example, I like a thicker crust (I grew up with deep dish and New York style pizza) than the California Pizza Kitchen makes, so I didn’t spread the dough out as much. I also used a chipotle barbecue sauce, because I like spicy foods and that was the barbecue sauce I had on hand in the refrigerator. Again, I’m all about saving money.

Speaking of money, this recipe is extremely cheap and yields a large amount of food. The only things I actually had to buy were the yeast ($1) and the red onion ($1). TWO dollars for two HUGE pizzas. That’s so much cheaper than carry out, delivery, or even frozen pizza at the grocery store. Even you have to buy barbecue sauce, that only costs about $3, which puts you at a totally of $5 for this entire meal. I’d say that’s a pretty good deal.

Also, this recipe can be pretty time-consuming if you do it all at once. I recommend making the pizza dough ahead of time, because it needs to be chilled. Making the dough really only takes about 5 minutes and then it can be placed in the refrigerator to chill for a day to a few hours. Trust me, making the dough ahead of time will save you a lot of time and stress.

My mouth is watering just thinking about this pizza, so let’s get started.

Ingredients

For the pizza crust:

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/3 cups olive oil

1 & 1/2 cups warm water (it needs to be warm this is important)

1 teaspoon instant or active dry yeast

For the actual pizza:

Pizza dough as listed above (it will make two large pizzas)

2 whole boneless skinless chicken breasts

1/2 cup barbecue sauce

16 oz of shredded cheese (I used an italian blend, because it was already in my refrigerator to save money. Plus, it’s delicious.)

1/2 of a whole red onion, sliced into thin strips.

Olive oil for drizzling

Kosher salt to taste

Directions

For the pizza crust:

As mentioned earlier, it’s best to make the crust ahead of time, because it needs to sit in the refrigerator for at least an hour. If you can make the crust a few hours prior to, or even a day before you’ll save yourself a lot of time.

1. Sprinkle yeast over warm, not lukewarm, water. Let it sit for a few minutes.

2. Combine flour and salt in a bowl. Drizzle in olive oil and mix with a mixer on low until combined.

3. Pour the water and yeast mixture into the bowl with the flour, salt, and olive oil. Mix until it’s a sticky mass.

4. Grab a different mixing bowl, and drizzle some olive oil into it. Place the dough in this bowl and toss it around to cover it in olive oil. Cover and place in the refrigerator until needed. It should look like this:

Now let’s move on to the actual pizza itself:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. Grab a baking dish and place both chicken breasts inside it. Salt both sides of the chicken breasts. Pour the barbecue sauce over the breasts and flip them over to coat both sides. Place the dish in oven and bake for 20-25 minutes.

3. In the meantime, slice the red onion in half from root to tip, and pull out the core. Next, lay the onion down so the flat middle side is touching the cutting board. Slice the onion to achieve crescent looking slices. When finished the slices should look like this:

4. When the chicken is done, take it out of the oven, and dice it into small cubes. Increase the oven temerature to 500 degrees.

5. Grab a baking sheet, pour a little olive oil on it (so the pizza won’t stick), and spread the oil around.

6. Remove the pizza dough from the refrigerator. Separate the dough into two equal halves. Grab one half and start to pull and stretch it. When the desired thickness of the crust is reached, drizzle some olive oil on the crust and spread it around with your fingers. Then add a light sprinkling of salt to the crust.

6. Spoon some extra barbecue sauce onto the crust to act as pizza sauce and spread it around. Next, sprinkle half of (or more if you choose) the cheese onto the pizza. Then place half of the chicken and as many red onions as you choose on the pizza. Sprinkle the pizza with a pinch of salt. It should look like this:

7. Place the pizza in the oven for 12-15 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the cheese is bubbling. Serve immediately.

8. Repeat with the other half of the dough.

Done and done.

All photos in this post were taken by me.

Tags: bbq, cheese, chicken, mozzarella, onions, pizza

Baked Macaroni and Cheese

It’s the week before spring break, and I’m about to jet off to Las Vegas –the Disney World for adults– so this week I decided to feature a recipe that mirrors that concept. So I thought to myself, what dish can I make that is commonly associated with children into a meal that is marketed more towards adults? The answer was simple: macaroni and cheese. I like most children, loved macaroni and cheese; and let’s not kid ourselves I still love it. Just like Vegas is the grown-up version of Disney World, this recipe is the adult version of macaroni and cheese.

Thankfully, this week was not nearly as hectic as last week for me, so I could devote more time to cooking. This recipe is pretty time-consuming. It takes about an hour in total, but the majority of that time the macaroni and cheese is in the oven baking, which allows you to attend to other business matters. And as always, this recipe is incredibly cheap to make. Most of the ingredients are staple kitchen items, such as milk and eggs, so it keeps the cost down. Actually, I did not spend any money when making this recipe. Yes, that’s right I spent nothing.  However, I can anticipate that the only thing you might actually have to spend money on is the bread crumbs, which are cheap. Lucky for me, my roommate has a giant container of Italian bread crumbs, so I just used some of that.

So here we go:

Ingredients

• 2 & 1/2 cups of elbow macaroni (I just grabbed boxes out of my cupboard so I didn’t have to go to the store and spend money)
• 1 egg
• 2 cups milk
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 2 & 1/2 cups shredded cheese of your preference (I used whatever I had on hand at the time which happened to be an Italian blend)
• 1/4 cup bread crumbs
• salt to taste

Directions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Grab a baking dish and spray lightly with a cooking spray.

3. Bring salted water to a boil in a large pot like this one:

4. While you are waiting for the water to come to a boil, whisk the egg and milk together in a large bowl. Add the melted butter and the cheese to the egg and milk mixture. Stir well.

5. When the water comes to a boil, add the macaroni. Let the macaroni cook for about 5 minutes. It should not be fully cooked and still firm. Then strain the macaroni and place it in the greased baking dish.

6. Pour the egg, milk, butter, and cheese mixture over the macaroni and sprinkle with salt. Stir well. Sprinkle the bread crumbs over the macaroni.

7. Bake uncovered for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the top is brown.

Take it out of the oven and enjoy!

All photos in this post were taken by me.

Tags: baked, bread crumbs, cheese, macaroni