Homemade Chinese!!

Hey gang,

Sorry for the HUUUUUUGE delay between posts, this whole life thing is busy busy. We certainly have cooked some delicious meals since the last post but unfortunately we don't have any documentation for said meals.

Today we were once again wondering what in the world we were going to rustle up and I had a hankering for some red meat as men sometimes do :P. Understanding that Nicole isn't a huge fan of plain old red meat on a plate beside some potatoes, I was looking for something she might like. At this point it should be mentioned that last night we were also stuck for something to cook and I ended up making us some chicken fried rice. As such, Chinese wasn't necessarily on the tip of my tongue but as I was iterating through the possible red meat meals, I thought ginger beef could be fun to make.

Passing this idea past Nicole I received much fanfare and so I started looking up recipes. My idea hit a bit of a brick wall upon seeing the ingredients lists for most ginger beef recipes, they were MASSIVE. More searching ended up revealing a recipe that we had most of the ingredients for and that I couldn't screw up too badly. We needed something to go on the side of the ginger beef and so I landed on beef and greens as that is my favorite Chinese dish. I got some odds and ends that we were missing from our handy dandy Safeway and went to work.

In the end it turned into the most friggin amazing Chinese food we have ever consumed. So, after tasting this marvelous creation, I decided to share it with you.

This is the ginger beef recipe: link.
We didn't change anything other than not using orange zest because, let's face it, F that.

For the beef and greens, I basically just made it up. Some broccoli, onion, celery and carrot, along with some of the extra beef I cut made a good mixture. The pièce de résistance was some of this magic mix: link.

Maple Salmon & Mushroom Rice

While Nicole was out with a friend this afternoon, I figured I'd prep a meal for us. I took a look in the deep freeze for some kind of protein and found some salmon that's been staring at me for some time now. I took it out to thaw and brought out the ipad once again. After finding several recipes that required marinating overnight, I found one for maple salmon that only took half an hour of marinating. After prepping the marinade and pouring it on the salmon in a loaf pan, I looked for a side dish to make. My first thought was rice to go with the salmon so I perused the ipad once more. A recipe for mushroom rice shot out at me and it seemed perfect.

When Nicole got home we preheated the oven and started working on the rice. We made everything fairly close to the recipes and things turned out perfectly. Because we used basmati rice, we had to add some more water (about a cup) to the rice and we also left out the garlic salt in the salmon in favour of an extra clove of garlic.

Recipe 1  Recipe 2

Herbed Goat Cheese and Proscuitto Shrimp

Tonight we wanted wine and a french loaf with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. So, we decided something light and either Italian or French would go best. We looked on the normal iPad app but there was a disappointingly small selection. We ended up finding a recipe called "Herbed Goat Cheese and Proscuitto Shrimp" on some random website for Italian tapas (an italian appetizer dealie). It was pretty good, other than the goat cheese was verrryyy rich and a little overpowering. If we were going to make it again, it would probably be with provolone or mozzerella or something of the like. We also did not use any white truffle oil (if you decide to take a look at the recipe). Other than that, pretty cheap and quick to make. It was exactly what we were looking for as an addition to our loaf and wine.

Recipe

Spinach Ricotta Stuffed Chicken Breasts

As the first post of this blog, a little introductions seem fitting. My name is Andrew and my live-in girlfriend's name is Nicole. We will be making this blog together so don't be surprised if the writing style changes between posts. We are a couple of post-secondary students in Edmonton who really enjoy to cook. We decided to write this blog to show off some of the food we make and to have a little fun.

Tonight, Nicole and I decided to have chicken. We had just picked some up a couple days ago and were craving them. Since last night we did the traditional meat and potatoes cooked on the barbeque, we wanted to experiment a little. We found this recipe on my handy-dandy AllRecipes iPad app and made a few changes. Firstly, we halved the recipe as we usually change all recipes to be for two people. Then, we pounded the breasts instead of slicing them, and then put them in a loaf pan with the stuffing between them and the sauce on top. Needless to say, it was delicious. We had Basmati rice and corn on the cob on the side, but considering it's pretty Italian it would be great on any pasta.

Recipe