Archive for October, 2009
So you got an urge for some mexican food but realized that you are out of packets! Don’t worry, we’ve all been in this same position and here is an easy solution for you. Most of the ingredients are pretty standard in your spice collection, if not just pick them up next time when you hit up the store.
I’ve tried this on everything from chicken to tofu and it’s amazing how much more flavor you get out of this compared to the packets! Just mix this up and add it right when you start cooking and the outcome will be delicious, i promise!
INGREDIENTS:
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
- 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes ( or cayenne pepper)
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
METHOD:
Combine seasoning ingredients into a small bowl or container.
My mom used to make these for me as a kid, but I found myself constantly just eating the filling! Well over the years I grew to love the whole pepper with stuffing and had to share my recipe with everyone! It can seem intimidating to make these guys but trust me when I say it goes by very easy. See for yourself!
INGREDIENTS:
- 4 green or red bell peppers
- 1 pound of ground beef
- 1 medium onion
- 1 1/2 cup cooked rice
- 1 cup chopped tomatoes
- 1/4 cup marinara
- 1 clove garlic
- 4 tablespoons of olive oil
- 1 teaspoon salt
- dash of ground pepper
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 1 tablespoon fresh basil
METHOD:
Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat. Add several pinches of salt to boiling water, then add peppers and boil, using something to keep peppers completely submerged, until green (or red if red peppers) and they become soft, about 3 minutes. Drain, set aside to cool.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Heat 4 tbsp of the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onions and garlic, and cook, stirring often, until soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add meat, rice, tomatoes, and oregano, basil, salt, and pepper. Mix well and cook for another 5 minutes. Remove from heat and cool for 5 minutes.
Drizzle remaining 1 tbsp. Oil inside peppers, arrange cut side up in a baking dish, then stuff peppers with filling. Spoon marinara sauce over filling. Add 1/4 cup of water to the baking dish. Place in oven and bake for 40-50 minutes.
Like most people out there, I love me some cornbread! I love it so much I took the venture down the road less traveled and decided to make it without a mix. I’ve baked bread and other things before, it can’t be that hard can it? Really it’s not, but apparently i had to learn a few important life and cooking lessons in the process.
I was having a downer of a day this past week and decided it was time to lift my spirits and make something new. While looking for the one ingredient to build off of, I noticed I had a bunch of corn meal for when I make my own pizza. So I figured, it’s cornbread time! I add a bunch of ingredients, look at a few cornbread recipes out there to get my bearings and validate my assumptions, mix it all together, and throw it in the oven. 25 minutes later I return to the sound of the buzzer and pull out my soon to be devoured cornbread. Whoa, what happened? the thing didn’t rise at all! I first blamed the recipes I read for not telling me to put in baking powder. How could they leave that out? I knew it needed it and realized I didn’t put it in right when I saw my now flat loaf of cornbread. None the less, it still tasted good.
Attempt two came two days later. Still sore and beat down from my failed attempt, I decided to right the wrong and make it the proper way. I gathered the ingredients, whipped up some batter, poured it in the pan with parchment paper (trying to avoid cleaning), set it for 25 minutes and walked away. Buzzer goes off, I open the lid and ta da… the corn bread was like risen cornbread now! I knew I was right about the baking powder. Turns out the recipes were too, I just completely skipped that ingredient… Feeling great at my success and righting my wrong from a few days ago, I put it on the stove to cool. Unfortunately this would be my fatal flaw.
See I was also cooking dinner for my wife who was working late and I needed to rehydrate some noodles. To do this, I have to use somewhat boiling water. I turn on the stove and move over to the sink where i realize i can just use the facet as it gets really hot. I begin the fill the bowl with water when a familiar smell enters my nose, a familiar burning smell. I turn around and my cornbread parchment paper is burnt to ash almost but luckily no fires just a nasty smoke. My success just turned into a failure…
So today, right this instant I’m on attempt three and I made sure to concentrate on the cornbread. This was my problem with the earlier attempts, I didn’t focus on what I was doing. I didn’t give respect to the cornbread! Instead I used it for personal gain and to try to be right and so I was punished by the cornbread. In the end I suggest just by focusing on what you are doing and giving respect to the ingredients and process, you won’t run into so many troubles. Unfortunately I had to learn that the hard way with at least one pan of corn bread in the trash and a smell in the house that reminds me of it 
P.S. try three turned out great as you can see by the picture!
Such a simple yet delicious dish which can be served at all hours of the day. This tasty yellow bread is sure to make your mouth, stomach, and head happy as can be with it’s fluffy texture and sweet taste.
It took a few tries, but those tries just made this better and better. It’s a good moist and a bit flaky. This one was made with egg and milk replacer so that’s why there’s little black specks in it. Be sure to enjoy it warmed up with some butter drizzled on top.
INGREDIENTS:
- 1 1/4 cups all purpose white flour
- 3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1 cup milk
- 1 egg, beaten
METHOD:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Combine the cornmeal, flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder. Mix until blended then pour in the vegetable oil, milk, and beaten egg. Mix until a thick batter is formed.
Grease a 8″ or 9″ baking dish with vegetable oil, pour batter into pan, and bake for 25 minutes. Remove from oven, Let cool for 30 minutes, and Serve.
SERVINGS: 8
This dish is somewhat of a stable in our household. Switching between rice and noodles helps keep things lively but in the end, I love me some noodles! This is a standard stir fry with just soy sauce. The vegetables are delicious as shown, but feel free to change our add whatever you are in the mood for. Try some nice hot green tea with this meal and break out those chopsticks!
Asian Noodles with Chicken and Vegetables
INGREDIENTS:
- 1 box/bag of egg or rice noodles
- 12 ounces chicken meat
- 1 bell pepper
- 1 cup of green beans
- 1 carrot
- 3 garlic cloves
- 1 tablespoon of mince ginger root
- 1/2 cup onions
- dash salt
- dash pepper
- 3 tablespoons soy sauce
METHOD:
In a mixing bowl, pour boiling water over the noodles.
Cook/Brown the chicken in a little bit of oil on the stove. Once cooked, add onions, garlic, and ginger cooking until the onions are translucent. Add the bell pepper, green beans, carrot, salt, pepper, and soy sauce. When vegetables are soft, drain the noodles and add to the pan. Mix well and let cook for a 5 or 10 minutes.
Dish and serve!
Beans, barley, and tomatoes is something new to me at least. I’ve never heard of barley prior to my quest for dried beans and I think I’m hooked! This dish is easy to prep, cook, and clean (trust me I do that too!) and it’ll make a great packed lunch for the next day, saving that money for more important things.
Serve with some steamed broccoli and cauliflower and you got yourself a dinner worth sitting down for. This dish is a great replacement for standard rice and or pasta. If you are looking for something new to try that is cheap and healthy, this is it.
INGREDIENTS:
- 1 cup dried barley pearls
- 2 tomatoes
- 1 cup black beans
- 1/2 cup green onion
- 1/2 cup onion
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/4 cup garlic
- 3 cups vegetable broth
METHOD:
In a deep skillet or sauce pot add oil, garlic, and garlic. After about 5 minutes add the black beans, tomatoes, barley, and the vegetable broth then bring to boil. Once boiling, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 40 minutes. Stir occasionally.
After 40 minutes, add the green onions, salt, and pepper then continue simmering for 5 more minutes. Remove from heat and serve.
SERVINGS: 4
Here at MadZak my goal is to deliver you a preview of what you could make with no spins or fancy card tricks, it’s just straight up cooking. With this goal in mind, I find myself giving recipes a new outlook on life. A lot of my ideas for items come from you and from something that looked good some place I visited. I’ve seen that in my off-show cooking, I tend to just combine things and adjust with taste. This mindset is not as hard as one would think, and this view could easily be shifted by just looking a little deeper into our cooking sources.
We surround ourselves with cookbooks and recipes constantly. You find them in newspapers, magazines, this site, and every other place you could think of. Over the years, I think recipes have shifted slightly out of their original focus and have become the defacto cooking standard. Don’t get me wrong here, I love recipes and I feel they are very important to cooking, I just don’t think they should be the standard. Recipes are nothing more than an idea and a journal of success.
My biggest gripe of recipes is that when you follow them, the result is not always positive. If it doesn’t turn out as well as you would have liked you are upset and will probably not try it again. This is where they have shifted. Looking at this situation from an idea mindset versus a instructional one, failure isn’t as well defined. You can also get another positive feeling out of it which maybe the sense of solving a problem, challenging yourself, or being creative.
I feel most of the authors of recipes are folks who took the later approach. They have most probably finely tuned and tweaked the recipe over and over again until they found a forumla that works. This forumla is a great baseline, but it’s only a measure of success for that person. You have different equipment, atmosphere, and quality ingredients than the original author which greatly destroys that sound forumla.
Cooking is an art, but it’s a very tangible, tasty, and simple art to play with. My challenge to you is next time you view a recipe, take the idea and the combination of things and play with it. Chances are you, and your loved ones, will find that eating just got much better!
You ask and I deliver Jason, here you go! Lasagna… With the weather cooling it’s time to break out that oven and put a nice smell in the house. This meal is good for 6-8 servings, if you do 6 I won’t tell, so be sure open up your stomachs and enjoy this mash of tomato sauce, pasta, and three cheeses. Be sure to leave your requests and any tips or tricks are always welcomed in the comments.
Lasagna
INGREDIENTS:
- 1 box of no boil lasagna noodles (16 pieces)
- 1 pound ground beef
- 2 jars of tomato sauce (48 ounces)
- 1 15 ounce ricotta cheese
- 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
- 1/2 cup grated parmesan
- 2 eggs
- 1 table parsley
- 1/2 salt
- 1/2 pepper
- 1 dash nutmeg
METHOD:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Brown the ground beef on a skillet and drain the juice. In a mixing bowl, combine the ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, eggs, parsley, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Mix until blended.
In a 9 x 13 glass baking pan, pour 1 cup of tomato sauce and cover the bottom. Lay 4 pasta noodles down and make sure they overlap a little bit. Put 1/3 cheese mixture and 1/3 meat in a nice layer. Repeat starting with another layer of tomato sauce and continue until you are out of pasta. The top layer should just be tomato sauce and pasta. Add some additional parmesan cheese on top.
Cover with a sheet of foil (shiny side down) and bake for 60 minutes, remove the foil for the final 10 minutes. Remove from oven, let cool for 15 minutes and serve.
Wednesday we had some friends over for a nice homemade dinner. Regardless of the wonderful time we all had eating and chatting with each other, we came on to a topic that really hit home. We were commenting on how our lasagna and apple pie didn’t look like the kind you would buy in the grocery store and I’m sure we’ve all had that same realization. Naturally we keep tweaking and moving measurements to try to get the perfect copy of the store or restaurant bought version.
I watched a documentary once on Netflix about a chef at a buddhist colony in California, and he said something that rings true for this topic. He described how he was learning how to bake, and wanted to make biscuits. He tried it once and they didn’t look right, so he kept trying time after time until he realized that maybe what he was making actually was the right look. He understood that he did not have access to all the chemical discoveries and perfect formulas that the big companies do, but that’s okay… You don’t need to! The jist is, there is no singular perfect look, there are many looks.
Not sure what other folks agree with, but I certainly consider cooking to be an art given it’s appeal to all of the senses. So why have we all fallen into the trap of “perfect looks”? Let me know what you think below, but I think it’s just the product of society and it’s unfortunate to see people getting upset because they cannot replicate the look of what they were trying to make. I can’t tell you how many times I saw something that looked interesting, tried it, and was I glad I tried it. Looks just don’t give food justice and that’s the same for art. It won’t always be pretty but it still speaks to you… and it speaks to everyone in a different way.
What can I say, I just simply love the oven! Brace yourself plant eaters, I got a great tasting zucchini bread here for you to make! You can now join in with the meat eaters in their love of zucchini bread. Meat eaters, you can also just use real eggs in this instead of the flax seed and you will get the same effect. I made two loafs and in the end, decided that I would eat them both this week rather than give away because they were so tasty!
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Vegan Zucchini Bread
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 90 minutes
INGREDIENTS:
- 2 cups grated zucchini, about 2 medium zucchini
- 3 tablespoons milled flax seed + 9 tablespoons water (3 eggs)
- 1 cup oil
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 3 cups flour
- 1 tbsp baking soda
- 1 tbsp cinnamon
- 2 tsp nutmeg
- 1 tsp baking powder
METHOD:
Preheat oven to 350, combine grated zucchini, sugar, oil, vanilla, flax seed/water and stir until blended. Add flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and baking powder then mix until a thick batter is formed. Grease two bread pans and pour the batter evenly into each. Place in the oven to cook for 60 minutes then remove and cool for about 30. Serve warm and enjoy!