Because this video was so impromptu, the lighting is completely off. Sorry about that one. We didn’t have a tri-pod, which was a disadvantage in some aspects, but really made the whole thing that much funnier… and don’t ask me how we came up with the idea for the recipe because I haven’t a clue. I only know that quite suddenly, and quite late at night, it became very important to me to show David how to boil an egg, and that the hummus that I didn’t like… that I gave to him because I didn’t like it… was going to be incorporated into the best egg salad sandwich I have ever had.

The hummus that we used was Trader Joe’s brand, White Bean and Basil.

I think I want that hummus back.

Without boring anyone with a horrible, and horribly long story, I just want to say… I’m BAAAACK.

I don’t know how often I will post… it may be a gradual come back… but I am determined to get more Cookbyists on this website than just the ones looking for Pho’ Soup directions… It’s a problem only a blogger could understand… No worries.

Also, there will be more dinner parties, and videos of those. I have had many in these last few months and almost forgot how much I love them. I have never shared them and I want to include more of that in my life, and in my work here. I want people to understand the value of friends combined with food. I want to share more of why I cook. Food brings people together, creating events and memories, and I want you to feel comfortable and confident in giving a dinner party for 2 or 22. Life revolves around food; thank god food does not revolve around my life.

I want to share the people I share my food with… The people who share my love of food… and the people that inspire me to cook a great meal.

I want to teach someone to cook, and I found the guy… a man who, until last night, had never hard boiled an egg on his own. A daunting task, I know… but everyone needs a daunting task in their life.

I am single after 9+ years, part of the reason for the 9 month hiatus, and I want you to know how cooking has given me peace of mind, and strength, and continuity. It has brought me joy, and laughter, and new friends.

I want to share the social aspect of cooking, rather than just show you the recipes. I want you to laugh while you learn… and I don’t care if it’s with me or at me.

I am not a chef. I cook for a hobby and sometimes feel like an artist. I am a cookbyist in the truest sense of a non-word, and want to share that world with you.

I am making spare ribs tonight and downloading a video showing my friend how to Dr. It Up! an egg salad sandwhich. I haven’t seen the video. You may get both, or you may only get the recipe. Either way… the sandwich was delightful.

Talk to you Sooner than later!

I will be posting more recipes in the days to come, more posts, and more funny stories (I hope)… and I wanted to thank you for being patient. It was a long week!

Tune in tomorrow, or the next day and comment on the new posts… or go comment on the old posts… or tell me something is great or something sucks, but don’t just passively read… this is a give and take!

I have watched ‘Iron Chef’ since the very beginning… when it was only Asian Iron Chef Chefs. And, y’know what? The game has definitely changed. I remember when there was, perhaps, one assistant, who could chop like a freaking mad man, and blend like a really bad ass bartender, but that was about all they were allowed to do… Now, it seems, there is a team of culinary graduates on either side, backing up each chef. They can all flambe’, and they all know what Quenelles are. Not only do they know what they are, but they can make an assortment of them in the sidelines while the “Iron Chef” is being interviewed by Alton Brown while busily food processing something. (Did they have food processors in the very beginning of the show?)

I usually spend Sundays lazily making things that I think I will want for lunches throughout the week. Roasted Chicken for sandwiches, a soup, or some kind of potato or macaroni salad… y’know, things I can grab on the run after I have ’snoozed’ myself into a lunatic morning mad dash.

I wanted to film each one, but it would have been hours of me lazily meandering through my kitchen, taking breaks, dissappearing off camera for 15 minutes or so at a time … and all of that would have meant an immense amount of work in the ‘post show’, the editing, to make it even remotely interesting.

So in an effort to save myself a lot of work, or you a lot of boredom, I came up with my own Iron Chef Challenge. A self challenge if you will. I decided to take all of the things that I would want next week and make as much as I possibly could in the length of one, 1 hour digital tape.

Here was the menu:

Broiled Chicken Breast meat for sandwhiches
Salsa (Dr’d up from a base)
Red Beans and Rice (from a box)
Potato Salad (from scratch)
Deviled Eggs
Oatmeal Cookies
And get the ingredients into the Breadmaker. (It takes hours to bake).

None of these recipes has anything to do with a Microwave. None of the ingredients were pre-chopped, or even out on the counter.

It will take me a couple of days to do the editing and get the video uploaded… so how do you think I did? Did I complete it all? What do you think I completed?

What do you think you could complete from that list… c’mon… if you really tried, how much could you do in just one hour to set yourself up for the week?

Please post a comment!

I am not sure if I am really going to do this, but I feel like doing it.

I am thinking of Banning all Kraft Products from my home. Thinking about it… Not sure if I could really do it. Just thinking about it.

Let me explain…

About a month ago, I learned about a Kraft Video Recipe Contest whereby you were to videotape yourself cooking one of their recipes. There were 10 choices and I chose their ‘Chicken Parmesan Bundles’. Now, prior to that I had the idea that I would never show my face in one of my videos… shooting them after work, worrying about hair, makeup, lighting… clothes… God, what a pain! But the Kraft Video Challenge, and my greed (you could win $1,000), changed my mind, almost immediately.

I spent hours… I mean hours, upon hours, filming myself cooking their damned bundles. I cooked the meal three times in three days! First time, I sucked. Second time, I realized the lighting sucked. I went and bought flood lights from Home Depot. Third time, I knew the recipe by heart, and the lighting was better, so I took 35 minutes of film and over the course of days… Days… Days… slowly, and painstakingly, edited it all down to less than 3 minutes. I went with a faster speed to include everything important, and eliminated almost all of my talking… I added music. In the end I had to skip out on some really funny parts, and whileI was happy with the entry… I cheated everyone out of an incredible cooking technique that I have wanted to share since I learned it from my ‘Night Cooking with Carlos Manriquez’, and my true personality… which you can see slowly change from the beginning of the following video… to the end. So you have to watch the whole thing to see who I really am…

Why would I ban all Kraft products from my home? Because I didn’t win, of course! Not only did I not win, but the guy who won, also won in another recipe category, so he got $2,000!.. I must say, it’s not the money that I begrudge, but the judges for their choice.

The video that won was… um, how do I say this and still be politically correct? The video that won was… just… stupid. The guy was weird. He did this weird ‘Mew’… not a Meow, but a ‘Mew’ sound that totally creeped me out about half way through his video. Let’s just say it this way. I don’t know him, and he might be the nicest guy in the world, but if that video was a resume, I would never let him marry my daughter, or babysit my children.

There. I said it. Without saying it. But I said it. Very proud. Very Politically Correct. I would never let that man take care of my child in my absence.

OK… I am getting off-point.

So the cooking technique that Carlos taught me, that I used in that video, is the most fascinating, the most fantastic cooking technique I have run in to in years.

You actually Boil the chicken, and while that brings up images of bland, dry, flavorless meat, this technique defies all of that.

This chicken is tender, and full of flavor, and not only presentable for guests, but something I would pay for again and again in a restaurant if I didn’t know how to cook it myself.

I do want to include here that Chicken is the most industrious meat of all the meats that we cook in America. It can be Baked, Sauteed, Fried, Poached, Steamed, Beaten, Pounded, and Shredded into our submission. It is pairable with Shrimp, Crab, Salami, Bacon, Scallops, and even hamburger. It can substitute for most other meats and can be seasoned with everything from dijon mustard and white wine, to BBQ Sauce, not to mention all of the herbs that can compliment it. By the way, there is even Chicken Fried Steak, which isn’t Chicken OR Steak by any means of my assessment, but a popular dish at Denny’s.

It is used in almost EVERY country, and every quisine, and each one of those makes a different dish with a completely different flavor. If chicken is not cooked in every country, it’s only because they don’t have chickens.

In many ways, chicken is even included, not only as a staple in our quest to lose weight, but also considered a healthy alternative to other meats.

I know… I know… Steak, ‘Good’ Steak, can be pairable to all of those ingredients as well, but it can’t be poached or steamed, and is not low in fat, and is not recommended as a healthy alternative to anything.

Long live Chicken!

With all of that being said, I have started the video without including the original ingredients. While the Kraft ingredients were OK… they were ametuer. So, I started the video AFTER the ingredients that you roll the chicken around. I have done this, because almost anything could be added as the filler of this technique.

The staple to this recipe is cream cheese, and any kind of grated or crumbled cheese that you want. The grated cheese just adds some ‘glue’ to the mix.

The other night I took 2 ‘very pounded’ (read: 1/4″) chicken breasts, and lined them with Hard Salami Deli Slices from Safeway’s Deli (much better than Kraft), and added a mixture of 4oz Cream Cheese (1/2 brick), about 3/4 cup Grated Italian Cheese Blend, 1/2 can Drained Canned Spinach, Sun Dried Tomatoes, Garlic, Basil, and about 2 tblspn’s of a store bought Tapenade with Feta Cheese.

I mixed the filling ingreients up well, put about an inch thick log of it down the center of very pounded chicken breast and wrapped it up in it’s nice little ’self cooking roll’ and boiled it for 25 minutes.

I sliced the rolls (one whole breast, 2 halves… = 2 rolls) into 1/4 to 1/2 inch slices and served them over pasta and a red sauce.

First of all, if you don’t have a particularly HUGE appetite, then one chicken breast half can feed two people for a good sized dinner portion. I had another whole roll left over, which was eaten in increments of 4 meals. Two Chicken Breast made 4 to 5 meals, with a little pasta, and a good Red Sauce.

The following video will show you definitively how to accomplish this technique in your own kitchen, and then I follow with a pleathora of ingredients that you could roll up into this little ‘Wrap of Joy’.

The base for this recipe is a filling that has 2 parts cream cheese to one part grated cheese. After that you could add almost anything, and serve over, or with, any side dish… be it pasta, potatoes, or rice.

You could add:

Any kind of Cheese
Artichoke Hearts
Canadian Bacon
Procuitto
Peas
Beans
Corn
Garlic
Fresh herbs of any kind
Dried Herbs of any kind
A plethora of vegetables from Asparagus, to spinach, to cauliflower
A multitude of tapenade flavors
olives of any sort
Shrimp
Crab
Lobster
Oysters
Mussels
White Fish…

Please see This Post to see what Carlos Manriquez did with this technique… his had Shrimp, and Coconut Milk, and Cilantro and… God it was good!

You can come up with your own…! Just let me know what you did with this!
I want to hear the results!

I adressed gluttony in my “7 Deadly Sins” post on crab. What I didn’t say in that post is that there is a cure. A wipe out. A do over if you will.

You see, if you are really, really sorry for having committed one of the deadly sins, and you admit to it, then you are forgiven. Pretty convenient, I must admit, while I apologize profusely in between bites.

I even apologize upfront for the leftovers I will eat for lunches next week!

These White Chicken Enchiladas came from Carolee’s sister, Clarice. I have, of course, Doctored them up a bit.

What you need:

1 can Diced Green Chiles, 4 oz *
2 Cups Chicken, Cooked and Shredded *
1 can Salsa Verde, 7 oz *
1 bunch Green Onions *
8 oz Sour Cream *
2 Chicken Bullion cubes
2 cups Heavy Whipping Cream
12 Corn Tortillas
2 cups Grated Mexi Cheese
Oil for frying

These items are optional but what I added to Doctor It Up!

1/4 cup Cilantro
1 Jalapeno, seeded and minced
1 can Sliced Olives, 2.25 oz

What you do:

Mix together the first 5 (*) ingredients, as well as any (or all) of the Doctor it Up! ingredients in a large bowl.

Add the Dr. It Up! Ingredients of your choice:

Mix it well, so all of the ingredients are evenly distributed.

The original recipe does not require cheese in the mixture, rather it puts it all on top. I think about 1/2 cup cheese in the mix helps keep it all together…

Now it’s time to heat up the Heavy Whipping Cream. You want to really watch the heat on this because it will burn very easily. So set your burner to medium low.

It’s a good time to preheat your oven to 350 as well.

Add two chicken bullion cubes to the Whipping cream. Stir often to keep from burning and to break down the bullion.

Set yourself up a production line situation. First, a small saute pan with about one cup of oil. It does NOT need to be smoking hot. It just needs to be warm enough to soften the tortillas. Next the Cream, and right next to that, your casserole dish. By the way, I hate doing dishes. I sprayed the casserole dish with some cooking spray.

My production line:

Those tongs are a necessity.

Take one corn tortilla, and dip it into the hot oil.

Flip it to coat the other side. It should only be in for about 6 seconds max… again, you are just softening it… not crisping it!

Next, with the tongs, take it out of the oil and drop it in the whipping cream.

You are not soaking it in the whipping cream, just dipping to coat.

Put the tortilla right in the casserole dish that you will be using to bake. This way you don’t have to lift your tortilla once it’s rolled.

Place about 1/3 of a cup of the Enchilada Filling and plop it down the center of the tortilla. Roll it up, and slide into position in pan.

Now, I had already done a few before I thought to take a photo.

Once you get all twelve rolled up you should be pretty done with the mix. If not, you can always evenly distribute what you have left over the top of the tortillas.

Take the remaining Heavey cream mixture and pour it over the top of your enchiladas.

Then, cover with the remaining cheese. I like a lot of cheese… What the hell? Gluttony cannot be done in a half-ass manner.

Pop the whole thing, uncovered, into your oven (at 350) for 25 minutes. Should come out looking something like this.

Serve it up, and enjoy!

God can see through me. My mouff iv fu an I going do hell.

It was 72 degrees by 1pm. It’s a beautiful way to start the New Year, except… Spud has to take something to an account.

But wait… The account is the Biltmore Hotel… One of the absolute Premier Resorts in all of the land! Really.

On Expedia.com they have the following description:

“Once accessible by invitation only, this Phoenix resort is set on 39 acres of manicured gardens and tiled pools, a half-mile from Wrigley Mansion and less than 4 miles from Camelback Mountain.”

OK. I just have to say this. Where I come from, mountains are in ranges… and some of them explode violently. This is not a mountain. Camelback Dirt Clod maybe… but Mountain? I think not.

There. I have said it.

I feel better.

Back to the Biltmore.

On Wikipedia they say that the following people have stayed there… Meaning I stepped on the same ground as they did, which would not even be close to going over to Jerusalem, or Egypt, but still, pretty frikkin cool.

Here’s the list:

Fred Astaire (pretty cool), Mike Francesa (uh, who?), Joan Bennett (pretty cool), Irving Berlin (cool), Samantha Brown - this hotel was featured on her Travel Channel show Great Hotels (very cool, I really like her, but she is paid to say good things about a place…), Laura Bush (not cool), James Cagney (really, really cool), Hollywood studio executive Harry Cohn, who died here (ick… that’s like my brother staying in the hotel room where Sid Killed Nancy… which he did!) Walter Cronkite (shrug), Bing Crosby (pretty cool) Michael J. Fox (suddenly I want to donate money) Vicente Fox (Who?), Ava Gardner (cool), Barry Goldwater (shrug), Art Griggs (shrug), Tony Hawk (Sorta cool, but only because he made money skateboarding!), Paul Hamilton (who?), Evander Holyfield (before or after the ear incedent?), Bob Hope (really cool), John McCain (I need a shower), Reba McEntire (cool), The New York Mets baseball team (can you say ‘Pool Party’), Marilyn Monroe (Incredibly Cool) Martha Raye (who?), Nancy Reagan (where was Ronnie?), Edward G. Robinson (cool) Sarah Palin (who cares?), and Spencer Tracy (Very cool, but cooler if Lauren Bacall were with him).

We decide to take full advantage of this interruption in our day off to ‘Do Lunch’, so we pack up the truck and head out.

Spud delivers the goods, and we decide to ‘Do Lunch” poolside, by the swim-up bar, and the 92 foot water slide. The grounds are beautiful. There are putting greens everywhere, and even a life-sized chess game in the grass.

The Resort’s own website describes the restaurant as follows:

Cabana Club, a poolside restaurant and swim-up bar, offers a variety of light salads, seafood, specialty sandwiches and exotic bar concoctions. Located next to our 92 foot waterslide, this is a great place to bring the children for lunch. Our kids’ menu carries child-friendly portions of Macaroni & Cheese, Sandwiches, Hot Dogs and array of desserts. The Cabana Club Restaurant is open daily. Cocktails are also available.

Specialty Sandwiches (Spud)? Seafood (Me)? Rock on!

We were able to choose our own table, and I sat in as much of the sun as possible. They had really nice linen napkins, and heavy silverware… always indicators of a good meal.

I ordered the Tacos de Mojarra: Crispy fried cod fillet, wrapped in a soft flour tortilla, with spicy cabbage slaw, chile remoulade sauce… $14.00… I love Fish Tacos!

Spud ordered the speacialty sandwich of the day, Tuna, with seasonal fruit.

Can I just say this? This Biltmore experience is one of the reasons that compelled me to learn how to cook. I can not stand to go to a restaurant and overpay for crappy food.

Did I say Crappy?

Yes! Resoundingly Crappy. We paid $40.00+ for a meal I could have cooked at home for $5.00… Seriously.

First: I can understand that a pool restaurant wants to avoid glass. Glass around a pool is a nightmare. Our sodas were served in clear plastic cups, but our meal was served on ceramic plates (?).

My fish tacos were a lump of deep fried fish where the tell tale signs of old fry oil were too apparrent. Very dark, and very oily. The ’spicy cabbage slaw’ was not slaw. It was dry coleslaw out of a bag with a little bit of Pico de Gallo thrown in. The salsa came in a plastic ‘to go’ sauce container, as did the remoloude.

An aside: There are some very nice plastic ramekins, or side sauce containers that don’t look like ‘to go containers’.

I didn’t pay attention to the menu description, but remoulade is a mayonaisse based dish. Fish tacos should have some sour cream in them… 1/2 sour cream (or more) and maybe 1/2 with mayo if you like it a little sweeter. It should also have a heavy cilantro taste, a light lime taste, as well as some heat. The sauce they served is sort of like a Mexi-tarter sauce. Way too sweet.

The salsa (also served in a plastic to go container), is the same salsa that I have had in a hundred Mexican Restaurants… so nothing unexected, or 4-5 star there…

OK. When you are a 4-5 Star resort, you should surprise my pallete.

Spud got the ‘Specialty Sandwich of The Day… There were no questions about what kind of bread it should be served on… so it was simply a tuna sandwich on white bread.

Really? It came out on simple white bread but it was about 1 and a half inches thick of some sort of tuna mixture. Tuna out of the can mixed with mayo, and sweet (ick) relish, and god knows what. This would be the Dagwood of poor taste Tuna Sandwiches… With a side of fruit served in a larger plastic ‘to go’ container.

For $40.00 bucks I would expect Fish Tacos with fish, sauteed in some kind of green enchilada sauce, with a sourcream/mayo based cilantro slaw, and a Mango pico de gallo, with a touch of gaucomole, and a side of chips and a homemade salsa.

The ‘Specialty Tuna Sandwich’ should have been seared tuna crumbled and mixed lightly with Mayo, capers, salt and pepper, and perhaps some dill…. or Cilantro… or basil… Just give me something!

Yes, that is my cry for the night. When I go out to eat… When I pay for a meal… When I pay more that I would at Burger King…. please, at least, try.

Enjoy!

I apologize, but I have to go to bed.

Shannon

As I edit the film I think about how funny he is… all 18 and 3/4’s of him… and how he has changed very little from the time he was just a baby.

He has always enjoyed making people feel good, and laugh, and even though he is an 18 year old male, he is willing to go to embarrassing lengths to achieve this… which you will see in the video.

It will be up by tomorrow night at around 9pm Mountain time, so stay tuned as I fine tune the final edit.

By the way, the cookies turned out awesome!