Baked not-ziti

March 19, 2023 10:09 PM

I really like making baked ziti. It's kind of time consuming, but it's so relaxing, and it's such good comfort food. But the problem I run into with baked ziti is that it makes so much food, and it would take me at least ten meals to get through all of it by myself. And I don't want to cut the recipe in half either, because then I'd just be left over with a bunch of baked ziti ingredients.

Last time I mentioned baked ziti, I said it would be good to cook for my family. So I figured that it would be the perfect dish for me to make for Christmas! Every year, my family likes to do something special for Christmas. One year it was "dip-mas", where everyone had to bring a dip. This past year was "app-mas", and everyone had to bring an appetizer that starts with the first letter of their name.

Well, my name doesn't start with a B or a Z, but I still wanted to make baked ziti! I decided to look up various pasta shapes to see if any started with an M or a K. Macaroni didn't quite feel right. But I found something that would work!

Mostaccioli. It's penne with no ridges.

My cousin even made a silly tiktok video, and I was very awkward in it.

And it turned out great! Mostaccioli is a great substitute for ziti. But I learned that not all pasta shapes work quite that well. A few weeks ago, we had a friend over, and I decided to make baked ziti again. This time I did halve the recipe (because it's still plenty for three people), and I didn't want to buy a box of ziti just to have half of it left over. I decided to use what was already in the pantry, which happened to be half a box of radiatore.

This definitely felt different. The dish wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as the baked ziti I normally make. Something about the extra surface area and lack of tubular-ness.

And somehow, I still haven't gotten sick of variations on baked ziti, so this past weekend, I decided to make baked ravioli.

I actually was going to suggest baked ziti, but I switched it up, and used ravioli instead so I wouldn't have to buy ricotta cheese. This probably resembles lasagna more than ziti, but lasagna is just ziti with lasagna noodles anyway.

This was even easier to make than baked ziti, and it was really tasty too! My friend really enjoyed it.

That salad was also delicious. The chopped caesar salad kit from Aldi is 👌

Clearing out my kitchen pantry

March 4, 2023 4:47 PM

Still on my quest to clear out everything in my kitchen! I'm making progress!

I have finally used up all of the two curry packets that my aunt gave me several months ago. I think I used 1/3 of a single packet each time I cooked some curry, and one dish would last me four meals. Kenji's kare raisu recipe has been my go-to way of preparing curry, even when my curry powder is Malaysian and not Japanese.

When I made spring rolls a couple of months ago, I had some leftover vermicelli (because I always have leftover noodles), so I made some Singapore noodles with them. I sort of referenced this recipe on Budget Bytes, but I didn't measure anything, so I'm sure I used more curry powder and soy sauce than what it called for. Noodles were a little soggier than I'd like, but that was to be expected, and it was still delicious.

Something else that I had leftover from the spring rolls was toasted rice. I was looking up other ways to use toasted rice, and I saw that it's used in larb! I've never made larb before, but my aunt makes it (and hers is delicious), so I wanted to give it a try. The Woks of Life recipe said that you can serve it with some sticky rice, and I just happened to have a bag of in my pantry. This was tasty, but not nearly as good as my aunt's.

Finally, I had a little bit of cornmeal still sitting in my pantry, so I decided to use it all up and make some cornbread. I just followed the recipe that was listed on the container, and I had exactly the amount of cornmeal that it called for! I also figured this was a good reason to use my square muffin pan. The cornbread was easy to make, but it did have some weird volcano-like action going on while it was baking, and each piece had a little point at the top which was not what I expected.

Oh, I impulsively bought some "Mediterranean spiced salmon" from Aldi because it was half off, even though I'm pretty sure I've had more than one person tell me that the pre-marinated pieces of fish at grocery stores are terrible. Well, I had never tried one myself, but uh, I have to agree. It was really bad. It would have tasted better if I had just baked a piece of plain salmon.

I also had spinach leftover from that sad chicken alfredo pasta, so I decided to go full-on Boston Market and make some creamed spinach. This was pretty bad. I should have just made a salad and eaten the spinach raw.

But look at the bright side. I'm getting closer to having empty kitchen cabinets 🤩

A third attempt at pizza

February 28, 2023 10:15 PM

Hey! I did it! I made pizza and it didn't stick! In fact I had waaaay too much flour on the bottom. I also made this pizza on "Cook a Sweet Potato Day" (Feb 22) so I threw some sweet potatoes on it. I think sweet potato on pizza can be very good, but I don't think it really added much this time.

Anyway, I'm all pizza'ed out now.

Carnitas tacos

February 26, 2023 3:10 PM

It's been a series of cooking fail after cooking flail, so I had to take a break from trying to clear out everything in my pantry to make something that I knew would turn out well: CARNITAS.

And oh my god, was it delicious and exactly what I needed. This recipe from Cafe Delites is my absolute favorite carnitas recipe. The only thing I do differently is that I omit the jalapeno and poblano peppers.

I usually just throw everything in the slow cooker, let it cook on Low for 8 hours, then I transfer the meat into a bowl, and I shred it all up. The recipe states that you should broil or pan fry it for better texture, but the meat is already so good as-is. This time I did broil it though, and it was absolutely worth the extra five minutes of cooking. The crisp edges were 👌

I served this on some mini corn tortillas that I lightly fried on the pan with a little bit of water and oil. I topped the tacos with some cilantro lime rice, sweet onions, cilantro, and freshly squeezed lime.

SO GOOD. And SO BEAUTIFUL. So beautiful, that I had to take a whole bunch of pictures and post them here.

I even went back for a fifth taco!

Overcooked chicken strips

February 25, 2023 8:31 PM

Take a look at these chicken tenders. Don't they look great?

Well, they didn't taste great. I guess the first night I made them, they tasted OK, but eating them as leftovers was...not fun. But let me back up a bit.

I decided to make chicken strips because I was looking for ways to use up the rest of my breadcrumbs that have been sitting in my cabinet for who-knows-how-long. These Sriracha Chicken Strips looked like a good choice because I already had everything that the recipe called for, minus the chicken. This recipe also called for baking the strips instead of deep frying them, which sounded great! I didn't have to use up a bunch of oil and I wouldn't have to stare at it while it was cooking.

I know breading things can be kind of tedious and take a while (especially for me), but I figured, it's Friday night! I've got time! So I went for a run after work, and then I took a shower, and then I started prepping at about 8pm. I read the first step of the recipe which said to marinate the chicken in sriracha for at least an hour. I should have done this earlier! Oh well, this wouldn't be ready until at least 9...30, but that's okay.

Once the chicken was ready for breading, I set up my breading station, and one at a time, I put flour, eggs, and breadcrumbs on every piece. This was actually kind of nice, albeit it made my fingers a bit gross after a while. I actually ended up running out of breadcrumbs before I was done with all the chicken, so I decided to use cornmeal instead, and that was extra gross.

Once I was ready to cook the chicken, I made sure to spray the baking pans because I was NOT about to have another thing stick to the pan.

And they didn't stick! Unfortunately, I cooked them for way too long, and I don't know how I did that because usually I'm so paranoid about overcooking things. I really should not have bothered broiling them at all. Why do I need to broil chicken tenders?

Even though these were marinated in sriracha, I felt like that really only made them spicy, without actually adding much flavor. I ended up dipping them in ketchup. I also ended up accidentally squirting ketchup all over my hand, so it's a good thing I took the photos before I took out the ketchup.

Overcooked chicken ends up being even more overcooked when you heat it up for leftovers, so I tried to pair it with other things that tasted better.

Well, this pasta didn't taste that much better. I used store-bought jarred alfredo sauce in this and honestly, that was a bad idea. I should have made my own. Or maybe used vodka sauce instead. Or just bought better quality sauce. I also ended up oversalting the pasta water, which I've never done before. (Hey, I was just trying to make it taste salty like the sea!)

But I'm done complaining, and I'm gonna end this post on a high note.

These sweet potato fries were so good. And I have leftover peanut sauce, so I might make more soon.