Herb Roasted Chicken, Stuffed Mushrooms, and Asparagus Fettuccine

Wow! It's been awhile since I've made something and posted it on here. But let me tell you what, my friend Alicia and I decided to make a homemade dinner for Memorial Day and we came up with some yummy stuff!!

Herb-Roasted Chicken Thighs
Ingredients

• 4 chicken thighs, deboned and chopped into bite-size pieces (or equivalent of any cut of chicken)
• Olive oil
• Fresh herbs (the more the merrier!)
• We used basil, lemon balm, thyme, parsley, and rosemary
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• Salt and pepper
• Panko breadcrumbs

Preheat your oven to 400°F.
Toss the chicken in about 3 tablespoons olive oil (if you cook with a less-fatty cut of chicken, you probably want to add more oil) and then lay it in a small, glass baking pan. Then sprinkle all the herbs over top of the chicken and toss again.  Then sprinkle the garlic over the chicken.
To make a breadcrumb topping, mix Panko and olive oil until lightly moist. Then, sprinkle the Panko topping over the chicken.
Place chicken in the middle of the oven and cook for about 40 minutes. The topping should be dark-golden brown.

Stuffed Mushrooms
Ingredients

• 2 packs of mushrooms, stems removed
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• Basil and parsley
• Salt and pepper
• Italian bread crumbs
• Asiago, Parmesan, and Romano cheese
• Olive oil

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Finely chop the mushroom stems, putting the caps in a baking pan.
In small bowl, mix chopped stems, garlic, herbs, salt, pepper, and about 1 tablespoon of italian breadcrumbs. Once even mixed, cook in olive oil over medium heat for about 3-4 minutes, until the mixture is warmed. Then put the mixture back in a bowl and mix in about 2 more tablespoons of breadcrumbs and about a tablespoon of the mixed cheese until incorporated into the mixture. Then fill the mushroom caps and top with more cheese. Pop in the oven, on a lower level, for about 15 minutes. Or until the mushrooms are cooked thoroughly.

Kickin' Asparagus Fettuccine

Ingredients

• Fettuccine, half of a box
• 1 bunch of asparagus, julienned
• Soy bean oil
• Olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Cajun salt
• Pepper
• Habanero sauce

Start to brown the garlic in 1 tablespoon of soy bean oil and once it begins to brown, add asparagus and toss. Cook asparagus for about 2-3 minutes before starting to cook the pasta. Toss in cajun salt and pepper in the asparagus.  You can continue cooking until the pasta is finished, or take off the heat once the asparagus reaches the desired consistency.
When the pasta is finished, drain it and toss it in the pan with the asparagus.  Add salt, olive oil, and habanero sauce to taste, continually tossing until it is incorporated into the pasta.

Pretty proud of this meal! It wasn't inspired by any recipe - it was totally off the top of our heads!! Yummy!!!

:)

Pork and Carrot Stir-Fry

I haven't cooked anything good (or bad) in awhile - I've been surviving on basic cooking and Moe's.  So today at work I decided I was going to come home and cook something with pork. I didn't have any soy sauce, cabbage, sprouts, or any vegetable other than carrots.. so this is what I came up with. And it turned out pretty dang good!
I served it with a premade three cheese tortellini, but it could be served with any side.

Ingredients:

• Thinly cut pork chops, cut into bite-sized pieces
• Carrots, sliced diagonally (or cut in circles)
• Salt, pepper
• Fresh thyme
• 3 cloves of garlic
• Olive Oil
• Chicken broth
• Honey

Cook the garlic in about 3 tbsp of olive oil on medium-high heat and as soon as the garlic begins to color, throw in the pork and toss. Add in salt to taste, grind in some fresh pepper, and toss with fresh thyme.  Cook until pork is no longer pink. Place pork on a plate and drizzle with about 1 tbsp of honey (you don't have to use honey, I just found that it tied the pork and the carrots together). Place in a warm oven.

In the same pan, with the same oil, throw in your sliced carrots, thyme, salt, and pepper and cook on a medium-high heat. I browned the carrots for about a minute and then added in about 1/4 cup of chicken broth and brought down the heat to about a medium. Let the carrots cook, tossing them gently every few minutes. When the chicken broth is reduced, add in the pork and toss the mixture.

Yummy :)

Spade (Fish) with Rice

My friend brought over some fish that her dad caught last summer and told me I had to cook it.  She did the same thing to me a couple of weeks ago and so I tried to reproduce the amazing recipe I made (and did, fantastically I might say!).

This will work with any lighter, white fish (preferably not too light of a fish, but it would work).

Ingredients

• 2 cups of rice
• 2 filets of fish
• Lots of olive oil :)
• Herbes de Provence
• Salt and pepper
• Garlic powder
• Onion powder
• Cajun seasoning (I use Slap Ya Mama)
• Some sort of seafood rub

I cooked the rice before hand because fish only takes a couple of minutes.  But cook the rice just a little before it's soft and then put cooked rice into a large sauté pan and cook it on a high heat.  Drizzle about 3 tablespoons of olive oil over the rice and stir it in and then add the herbes, salt, and pepper to your taste.  You can allow it to brown a little if you'd like, or just allow the flavors to mend.

After you've cut your fish to your preferred size, on each side of the filet cover in a light coat of garlic and onion powder. I like to do both sides of the fish, but you could just do one; I think it is much better with both sides seasoned.

In a medium sauté pan, heat olive oil (about 2 tablespoons) on medium-high heat.  When the oil gets hot, add the fish and cook on each side for about a minute.  After each side has turned color, cover in a light coat of your cajun seasoning and seafood rub on both sides of the fish and allow the fish to cook thoroughly.

Serve the fish over the rice.

Garnish if you'd like :)

Asparagus, Shrimp, and Campanelle with Basil Pesto

I found this recipe on an amazing food blog, Gimme Some Oven, and I edited it due to my Kroger's lack of gnocchis.

By the way, this recipe only takes like 15 minutes! It's so simple, you might just die. Seriously :)

Oh, and PS, campanelle is a kind of noodle-yeah, I know-and it is fantastic.  Any larger and rounder noodle will do if you don't have gnocchis, but I'm sure it's about 100% better WITH gnocchis. But then again, I love gnocchis but am too lazy and poor to make them. Anyways.

Ingredients

• Campanelle (or gnocchis, as the recipe calls for)
• Raw shrimp (I used larger prawns and cut them up, but any size will do)
• Basil pesto
• Asparagus
• Salt and pepper
• Paprika
• Olive oil

While cooking your noodles, heat olive oil in a large sauté pan on medium-high heat and add your asparagus, cooking them for a couple of minutes (about 3-5, depending on how you soft you like your veggies) and then add in the shrimp
Once shrimp are added, sprinkle in a happy amount of salt, grind in some fresh pepper, and add in some paprika and stir them in
Allow the shrimp to turn pink, and occasionally stir in the process (or do some awesome pan flipping like me :])
Put the cooked noodles and asparagus/shrimp mixture into a separate bowl and toss
Then add the pesto, however much you'd like, and then toss it in
You can add some fresh parmesan on top, maybe a little fresh pepper :) have some fun!

Suggestions:
According to my friend, I could have added in lemon. And I totally agree. Lemon or lime would have been fantastic.  And definitely more heat.  So cajun salt, or some chipotle Tabasco sauce would definitely be a good choice next time I made this recipe.