Chimichurri chicken and fish
April 2, 2021 8:02 PM
Two weeks ago, I made Chimichurri Chicken Kebabs (except not in kebab form) and I also cooked some tilapia.
I first had chimichurri when I was at a restaurant called Gaucho. It's a super popular place in the area and they used to not take reservations, so if you went at noon on a Saturday you'd have to wait in line for like an hour. Was it worth it? Only if you went at 11am when they opened and could beat the rush.
What I liked best about this place was their sauces. I basically think of chimichurri as cilantro sauce. And you know I love cilantro. I buy cilantro almost every week, but sometimes I'm not able to use up all of it. So what do I do when I have sad looking herbs? Blend them up.
Chimichurri is delicious.
An attempt to satisfy my burger craving
April 3, 2021 7:27 PM
I first learned what the word crave meant some time in elementary school. I distinctly remember this because once I learned what it meant, I used the word all the time. "I'm craving bananas." "I'm craving quail meat." "I'm craving some baby chicken eggs."
(You might think, those are weird things for a 10 year old to want to eat. You're probably right.)
I think my mom told me it was weird that I kept saying that because it made me sound like I was pregnant, so I stopped.
But I think about food all the time, and when I don't get to eat something that I even have a small desire for, it just grows and grows until I finally have some. I had a craving for pizza from Thanksgiving all the way until last month. The thing is, I actually ate pizza several times between Thanksgiving and last month, but none of it was hitting the spot. I was finally satisfied when I got a supreme pizza and a cheesy bread twist late one night after helping my friend move a bunch of stuff to her new house.
Two days after that, she sent me a photo of a burger that she got from the restaurant next door, and I thought, "Man, I want a burger." So, I bought a burger from a nearby restaurant. It wasn't great. I bought another burger from the same place she got her burger. It wasn't bad. I made myself some smash burgers.
It was fine, but it was literally just smashed ground beef, and I like burgers to have a little more flavor than that.
So, yeah, I still haven't satisfied that burger craving.
Stir fry
April 4, 2021 10:12 AM
Before I knew how to cook, my go-to meal was stir fry. My mom makes stir fry all the time, so that's what she sort of attempted to teach me in high school. I remember trying to cook for myself back when I was trying to get more fit and lose my freshman 40. I used Nerd Fitness and referenced their chicken stir fry blog post. I think people have this notion that stir fry is super easy. Whenever I look at stir fry recipes online, they give me cook and prep times of 15 minutes. What a fast meal!
...lies. They're all lies. Stir fry takes forever. I have to cut vegetables and meat. If you're new to cooking, you're probably new to chopping. You also should be stir frying food at high heat. High heat is not good for beginners. Also, what beginner cook has a giant wok available? If you use your standard 10 or 12 inch pan, your veggies are going to fly everywhere and hot things are going to smack you in the face.
But I guess I'm past being a beginner. I'm okay with using high heat again. I am still kind of slow at prep work though. I made this Chicken and Thai Basil Stir Fry about a week ago. I don't remember when I started prepping (maybe 8?), but it was 9:30pm when I finally had my meal ready. I know, I was just being slow.
It was good though! I always enjoy a good stir fry meal.
Salmon and asparagus
April 6, 2021 6:16 PM
On my grocery shopping trip a week and a half ago, I impulsively bought some asparagus because it was only $0.99/lb! I figured this would go well with some salmon I impulsively bought last month.
Salmon is one of the easiest things to cook, but it is a little pricey, which is why I feel the need to impulsively buy it a lot. I love salmon, but I never order it from restaurants. I find that they never cook it right. It's always overcooked and dry and lacking flavor. But when I make it myself, it's always delicious.
My quick, go-to salmon dish is this Salmon with Dill. I first made it for a guy I was dating several years ago, and I remember it absolutely blew his mind at how good it tasted. I don't know. I didn't even measure anything. I did, however, cut the cooking time down to 10 minutes. 20-25 minutes for salmon is way way way too long. My other trick to cooking salmon is that if I don't want the skin, I just cook it in a crappy baking pan and I let the skin stick to the bottom of it.
I was going to also include potatoes, but then I forgot to buy some. I still needed a starch, so I made more hummus. It worked.
