Anne Can Cook

I know that grilled cheese is not a big deal to make, and it seems like a weird thing to feature on a food blog. The reason I'm including this at all is to comment on my own cooking style.
I am very much a "toss stuff together and see what happens" sort of cook. I often don't post things that I make because they're either A) tried and true recipes that have already appeared here or B) something I have just thrown together. For example, this past Thursday I made spaghetti with spicy cheese sauce, because I had about an once and a half of New Zealand cheddar and an old serrano chile I needed to use. It was really tasty, but I didn't measure anything past the basic roux formula.
Is something I can't necessarily replicate worth putting on the blog? Those sorts of things don't seem like a big deal to me, since they're just me futzing around in the kitchen.
Then I start to feel guilty because I haven't updated in two or more weeks and I really need to stay on top of this because it is a project I care about. How do more legit and serious food blogs do it?

So here we are.

If you haven't gathered this already, I really like dishes that provide a base for various embellishments. Things like pasta and chicken are great because you can season them in a million different ways.

Grilled cheese is like this, too. You can make it with whatever cheese you want. You can add seasonings or not. You can add veggies or meat, or not. The bread is up to you. It's basically a blank canvas.

Here's what I did last night.
Andrew and I went on a country adventure yesterday in which we visited an apple orchard and Minnesota's Largest Candy store. The latter was the significantly more exciting and interesting, and, in addition to all the candy, I picked up some applewood smoked mozzarella and a locally made jalapeno-garlic hot sauce (which is the green stuff at the bottom of the picture).

Since I had this incredibly tasty cheese, grilled cheese seemed like a good, easy option for our late dinner. The bread is Italian sandwich loaf, and there's bacon and the aforementioned mozz AND a sprinkle of Fox Point seasoning. Grill together on a Foreman grill (tip: these are AWESOME for grilled cheese and melts), dip in new jalapeno sauce, eat, be happy.

I also wanted to comment/ask about personal food trends. Do you ever notice that you get really into certain foods? I'm talking about food phases. Lately, I've really been into:
Green Chiles, especially jalapenos and serranos. Poblanos sometimes, too.
Beer, because Minnesota actually has a pretty rad craft beer scene. Plus, my friend Kim's beer blog is inspiring me to understand and appreciate beer even more than I previously did.
Jams and Fruit Butters, which is really weird for me because I'm not a fruit person. This all started back in August when some friends of my got married and handed out homemade preserves as wedding favors. In addition to their apple butter and vanilla-berry preserves, I've also picked up lingonberry jam from IKEA and pumpkin butter. Plus, I have some rhubarb jam from this summer I haven't opened yet. What is the deal?

What are your current food trends? How often do you go through food phases? Is this even a thing?

My lovely friend Melinda, of Bowmans In Bavaria, asked for folks to test out her Taco Lasagna recipe. I jumped on the opportunity, and boy am I glad I did. It's basically anything you'd want from taco night in one place-cheesy, meaty, tortilla-y, you know. The whole nine yards. Here we go:
"Taco Lasagna Casserole - by Melinda Bowman
1 pound ground meat (like hamburger, turkey or mix of pork and hamburger)
3 tomatoes, chopped*
1 onion, chopped
1 jalapeño, diced (or feel free to use more or spicier chilis if you like)
Juice of 1 lime
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small bell pepper, chopped*
4 Tbsp taco seasoning (I like Penzeys)
(optional: 1/4 tsp ancho chili powder, 1/4 tsp chipotle powder, if you like more chili flavor)
2 Tbsp tomato paste
1/2 cup hot water*
1 cup sour cream (can substitute plain yogurt)
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup shredded Colby Jack or Mozarella cheese (no Colby Jack in Germany, sniff sniff)
1 cup shredded Cheddar Cheese

Corn or Flour Tortillas for two layers in a 9 x 13 dish (about 10 small tortillas, maybe 6-8 larger ones?) --It only took me 4 eight inch tortillas! Plenty left over for quesadillas and wraps.

*I omitted the tomatoes and bell peppers and, instead, used about 1/2 cup of salsa. If you do this, make sure you up the water to 1 cup so that you get a good, saucy consistency.

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius, 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Grease a 9x13 baking dish.
3. In a skillet, brown the meat. Add tomatoes, onion, jalapeño, bell pepper, lime juice and garlic. Cook over medium heat until vegetables are soft, stirring to keep from sticking. Add the water, spices and tomato paste. Stir well, bring to a simmer, then set aside.
4. In a separate bowl, mix together the sour cream and eggs. Then add 1 and 3/4 cup of the cheeses (set aside 1/4 cup of the cheese). Stir well.
5. Spread a very thin layer of meat sauce on the bottom of the 9x13 pan. Cover the sauce with a layer of tortillas. Then spread with cheese, then meat sauce. Put on another layer of tortillas, cover with cheese and meat sauce. Then sprinkle the remaining cheese on top.
6. Bake for 20 minutes until bubbly.


I used ground turkey and light sour cream, so really this is a relatively healthy dish. Well, healthy by my standards at least. It also yields quite a bit, so you might consider halving it and using an 8 x 8 baking dish instead if you're only feeding yourself. As it is, I have enough taco lasagna to last me the rest of this week! Which works out, because it is much too hot here to heat up the oven.

I have to thank Melinda for sharing her recipe with me. I've already sent it on to my parents, and filed it away to use when I move in with my boyfriend later this year. It's very versatile, very tasty dish. I think the next time I make it, I'll throw in some cayenne pepper to up the heat. It would also be great with some pepperjack instead of colby jack.

I have spicy on the brain, can you tell?

Thank you again, Melinda!

This week, I did something I've never done before: I mapped out my dinner menu for each night. It went really well for the first few nights. I stuck to the plan, I shopped for the plan when I went grocery shopping. I had my spaghetti and my mom's enchiladas. Tonight, I was going to make those knishes from Broke-Ass Gourmet, when I remembered that I didn't pick up potatoes because my grocery store doesn't sell red potatoes individually. Then I came home from work and discovered that the outlets on one side of my kitchen had stopped working, and, of course, the fridge was without power. So after I fixed that (hello, extension cord), I didn't feel like making knish dough or going to get potatoes or doing much of anything. That's when I remembered I had some all purpose Pillsbury dough in the refrigerator. Assembly to cook time took me all of 20 minutes, and then I had these little puffs of delight:
Cream Cheese Bacon Cups
1 roll of multi-purpose dough, cut into 12 squares
5 pieces of bacon, cooked and crumbled
Onion powder
Shredded cheese
Cream cheese (I used whipped, because I like it)
Penzeys Fox Point seasoning (or whatever you like, but really, get some Fox Point)

Preheat your oven to 375F and grease a muffin tin! Place one square in each muffin indentation and form a little cup. Divide the bacon crumbles evenly amongst the twelve dough cups, sprinkling some in the bottom of each. Add a dash of onion powder to each cup. Add a pinch of shredded cheese (about a Tablespoon) to each cup. Place a dollop of cream cheese on top of each cup. Finally, add a dash of Fox Point on top of the cream cheese.
Bake for about 15 minutes. Remove from the muffin tin to cool.

These would be really great little appetizers, or you can do what I did and eat them for dinner. I have no shame.

Sounds and looks simple, doesn't it? It is, really. I wasn't looking for complicated last night when I was thinking about dinner. I just got back from my service trip, and there is very little for food in my house. I was really excited when StumbleUpon pulled up this Smitten Kitchen recipe.
The only changes I made were halving(ish) the recipe and using some Dubliner aged cheddar instead of Pecorino Romano.

I successfully used the last of my spaghetti. It's very strange to think that I have no spaghetti in my house right now.

The pasta was good. Peppery. Cheesy, Creamy. Simple. I love dishes like this, dishes that are borderline fancy because of their simplicity.

Sup, Broccolis? It has been some week. I've had essentially two blog posts ready to go, but since I've been running full throttle without time to blog, we'll do a twofer. Before we get going, let me spill some of my personal beans.
AmeriCorps VISTA positions are contracted for one full year. When I first applied, I thought I would just do a year and then go to grad school. Well, once I got started and life kept happening, I decided another year or two in AmeriCorps would be a good thing for me. I applied for Teach for America, an AmeriCorps program that places volunteers in low income schools as teachers for two year increments. I do not have enough good things to say about the program, and would encourage anyone with a love of teaching to check it out and apply.
Due to my VISTA contract and TFA's time line, I opted to apply in the very last application tier. Applications were due February 19th, and decisions regarding progression in the application process were made public on March 2nd.
Unfortunately for me, I did not progress in the application process and, in essence, went back to the drawing board. I'm still planning to do another year of service somewhere, and am currently working on another AmeriCorps application.
Now, I can't say that not making TFA didn't bum me out. Of course it did. Luckily for my coworkers, my celebration methods are not dissimilar to my mourning methods. I made a cake. A blackberry swirl almond sour cream cake with my grandma's secret frosting recipe and shaved chocolate on top. Yes ma'am. Here is the cake, unfrosted:

Pretty, right? I should mention here that my favorite kind of cake is yellow and chocolate marble cake, and I would be lying if I said the aesthetics didn't play a part in that.
The recipe is from Tasty Kitchen user melja56. The only thing I did differently was use three whole eggs instead of four egg whites, since I had three eggs and not four. The blackberries were my own addition as well. I ran about 1/4 cup of them through the Magic Bullet with about a Tbsp. of sugar. Then I plopped spoonfuls of the rough puree into the cake better and swirled it with a spoon.
I mentioned my grandma's secret frosting recipe. Maybe someday I'll tell you what that is, but for now I'm guarding it with my life. Suffice to say that it is something like an almond vanilla butter cream, but better.
My coworkers loved the cake, and I was pretty happy with how it turned out, too. It was definitely not the worst eat-your-feelings cake I'd ever had.

On Thursday, my Taste of Home order arrived on my doorstep! Taste of Home had a $5 cookbook sale a couple weeks ago (apologies that I didn't share this with you at the time), and I picked up four books since shipping was automatically free at $20. One of the books I picked up was Ultimate Chicken Recipes, and I am so glad I did. There is a ton of good-looking food in that book, and it was solo cooking AND crock pot sections. I have an ingrained love of Taste of Home cookbooks, due to my mom and my grandma's long term devotion to the brand. I mean, when I found out Taste of Home was having a sale, I immediately called my mom who, in turn, placed her own intense order. That's how much we like their cookbooks.
Anyway, I didn't even get five pages into the chicken cookbook before a found a recipe I had to try: Hot Chicken Swirls

Doesn't look very much like a swirl, does it? It's not, exactly. Hot Chicken Swirls call for crescent rolls, which I did not have on hand. I did, however, have Phyllo dough in the freezer. So, using the filling from the Hot Chicken Swirls recipe as inspiration, I made something that was more like a Hot Chicken Bundle. Here is what I did:
1/2 c. cooked chicken
1 oz cream cheese
2 Tbsp. prepared ranch dressing
1/8 c. shredded colby jack cheese
1/2 Tbsp. Penzeys Fox Point Seasoning
1 Tbsp. Frank's Hot Sauce
A few sheets of Phyllo dough.

Mix everything in a bowl except the Phyllo dough, then plop the filling on the dough and form a roll/bundle/whatever you can get the dough to form into. Bake at 375F for 10 minutes.

This recipe only mildly resembles the original, but it was still pretty good. It would have been better as crescent swirls, though.

Phyllo dough is a real hassle to work with, by the way. I'm going to have to play around with it until I figure it out.

I have grand cooking plans for tonight, so I hope I'll have a post for you all tonight/tomorrow.

Last week was a lazy week for cooking. I honestly don't even remember what I had for dinner last week. I think it's because I was so geared up for my hoity toity dinner with my boyfriend in Minneapolis.
Andrew and I didn't see each other on Valentine's Day, and his birthday was on the 19th, so we decided to do this past weekend instead. He booked us a reservation at Porter and Frye's, which is a small fancy place in the Hotel Ivy.
I won't bore you with our dinner details, but I will say that everything was excellent and it was really fun to go somewhere like that when we normally wouldn't. I mean, the dessert was plated like something from Iron Chef. You just don't see that at the local burger joint.

Anyway, it was time to head back to the kitchen. Tuesday at work I was wracking my brain, trying to come up with something to eat that wasn't spaghetti. Then it dawned on me: Chicken Enchiladas. Chicken Enchiladas are high on my list of favorite foods. In fact, my mom makes me enchiladas pretty frequently when I visit because I love them so much. Mom's enchiladas are the best, of course. I hope she doesn't get too offended that this isn't her recipe. Someday I'll make Mom's enchiladas, but it's just never the same, you know?
Apologies that this picture isn't better. I'm experimenting with my food photography.
Here is what went down:

4 tortillas
4 oz cream cheese (or lite cream cheese)
1/4 c. salsa
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 c. cooked chicken, chopped
1 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp. chili powder
1/4 tsp. cumin
1/4 c. shredded colby jack cheese

Grease a baking dish and preheat the oven to 350F. In a small sauce pan, melt the cream cheese and salsa together. Once the mixture is more or less homogeneous, toss in the garlic, chicken, and spices. Stir together and heat through.
Spread about a fourth of the mixture on a tortilla. Roll up the tortilla and filling, then place in the baking dish, seam side down. Repeat with the rest of the tortillas.
Sprinkle the enchiladas with cheese. Bake for about 20 minutes.

Mom does get credit for this recipe, as it was her homemade salsa I put in my enchiladas. Mmmm.
These enchiladas, while not as good as Mom's, were still pretty good and very easy. I got a little over enthusiastic with the filling and ended up with only three enchiladas instead of four. One of these days I'll post Mom's recipe, but for now these will do.

I feel the same way about pizza as I do about soup. Just as you can make soup out of anything, you can make anything into a pizza.

Gauging from that, you can bet I'm not at all a traditionalist when it comes to pizza. I'm always mixing it up. I use different sauces and whatever toppings I have lying around, and the results are usually tasty because I have complete control over them (mwahaha).

Last week, though I didn't post about it, I made an Indian-Inspired Pizza from Booking and Cooking. The pizza was very, very tasty, and was an excellent example of taking foods you love (in this case, Indian curry) and making them into pizza.

My hot wing pizza recipe came about when I was a junior in college, and therefore is not the world's healthiest thing by any means. I was surfing the Internet one night and trying to decide what to have for dinner. One of the cooking sites was featuring a buffalo chicken pizza, but the ingredients or the process didn't look that great to me. I decided I could do it better, fasted, and tastier with just the ingredients in my fridge. And so I did.

1 personal sized pizza crust
1 Tbsp. ranch dressing (I make my own, but use whatever you like. You can also use blue cheese dressing, if that's your thing).
2 chicken strips, cooked and cut into pieces
2 tsp. Frank's Red Hot Sauce (you can use a different hot sauce if you really want to, but I recommend Frank's).
CHEESE

Cook the chicken strips and cut them into chunks. Toss with the hot sauce.
Spread the ranch all over the pizza crust. I usually do a thin layer of cheese, then the chicken, then more cheese, but feel free to top the pizza however you like.

Tonight, for cheese, I uses Gruyere, Fontina, and mild cheddar. Happy Pre-Valentine's to me!

You can easily expand this pizza to full sized. I would just adjust the ingredient amounts accordingly.

Happy 2010! Sure enough, I kick off the new year (after my pontificating about my fear of chicken) by royally screwing up a relatively simple chicken dish.

I had one of those grocery shopping trips where I bought a lot of stuff preemptively. What if I need corn starch? Better grab it. Pretty sure I’m going to need Fillo dough eventually. Toss it in the basket. After that sort of insane trip to the local grocery store, I decided I wanted to cook something new and easy.

I slightly modified a recipe from the cookbook I got over winter break. The original calls for taco seasoning and pepper jack cheese. Well, I don’t really care for tacos and I didn’t have any pepper jack on hand. What I did have was something my boyfriend and I found called Buffalo Wing Cheese. I used chili powder instead of taco seasoning. The picture looks better than it tasted.

Spicy Chicken Roll Up

1 boneless skinless chicken breast
1 oz (approximately) of spicy cheese
1 Tbsp. chili powder (or whatever seasoning you think would sound good)
1 Tbsp. veggie oil.

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Pound the chicken breast until it’s about ¼” thick. Slice the cheese, and line it up in the middle of the chicken breast. Fold the breast around the cheese and secure with a toothpick. Rub the outside with seasoning.

Heat up the oil in a skillet. Brown the chicken on all sides, and then toss into a greased baking dish. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

It sounds so great, right? It seems relatively easy and doesn’t seem to take much time. Well. It probably is. Leave it to me to mess something like that up.

Right off the bat I had an issue. I do not have toothpicks. I wracked my brain for some kind of replacement, and the only thing that came to mind was (man I can’t believe I’m confessing this) bobby pins. Yes. The ones for your hair.

I did use new ones for the sake of hygiene, but it was still pretty bizarre. They only sort of worked, and most of the cheese melted out.

The bigger issue was cook time. My chicken looked cooked all the way through, but it had that certain quality that made me think, “Hm, could use more time in the oven.”

Genius here tried to microwave it instead.

All in all a total loss. With toothpicks and longer cooking time, it would have been quite good I’m certain. My first shot, however, was a loss. Luckily I have plenty of hummus in my house, so I did not go hungry.

Well, things have been pretty crazy here in Podunkville...or rather, Slightly Less Podunkville. I moved rather abruptly last weekend and am resided with my coworker on campus. Luckily, she also likes to cook and has a decent sized kitchen.
Last night we made Mock Alfredo, a recipe we adapted from Going Solo in the Kitchen. Here is what we did:
A little olive oil for cooking
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 small onion, chopped
1 cup of fresh spinach (approximately)
Several ounces of thin spaghetti (enough for the two of us plus a little leftover)
2 ounces of cream cheese
6 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese
Pepper to taste
Grated Fontina to taste
A little milk for texture

In a small pan, sweat down the onions and garlic in a little olive oil. Meanwhile, bring water to boil for the pasta. Boil pasta until done to your liking and drain. Return to heat and stir in the cream cheese. Add milk if it gets too thick. Stir in the Parmesan, one tbsp. at a time.
Add the spinach to the onions and garlic and wilt them down. Once everything is cooked to your liking, add the onions, garlic, and spinach to the pasta. Stir until incorporated. Pepper to your liking. Grate some Fontina on top (if you want).

Serve and enjoy! It is filling and surprisingly flavorful. It's also sooo easy to make, and easy to adapt. The original recipe doesn't include the garlic, onions, and spinach. We just like those things a lot.

My favorite food in the entire universe is mashed potatoes. I love them even more if they are garlic-y, and I love them most when I make them from scratch. The problem with mashed potatoes is that they are time consuming to make, so I cheat a lot and buy instant. Not a terrible substitute in my estimation, but they really do not compare to the ones I make from scratch.

I had poached chicken again this week (with lemon thyme, rosemary, and lots of smashed garlic), and I did some quick instant mashed potatoes to go with it. Those packets of instant mashed, though, provide enough potato to feed a small army (aka a family of four). I always end up with leftovers that I'm never entirely sure what to do with, as they get sort of stale tasting when I leave them in the fridge.

I am of the opinion that you can make soup out of anything. All you need is some liquid (stock of some kind is preferably, but in a pinch you can season some water or do a bouillon cube), and some other stuff. Voila! Soup! It's also been getting colder here, and so soup weather is upon us.

I had never thought about mashed potato soup until one Thanksgiving, when my grandma said something about turning the leftover mashed potatoes into mashed potato soup (although I find it incredulous now to even think there were leftover potatoes). It seemed like this really brilliant idea, and I kept it filed away in the back of my brain until this week.

This is a really informal recipe. As I said, you can make soup out of anything and you can make it in any proportion. I made enough soup for two bowls full, which was perfect for hungry me. Here are the rough estimations:

1 cup (or more) organic chicken stock
1/2 cup frozen broccoli
5 or 6 roughly chopped cloves of garlic
A dash of soy sauce
A dash or two of hot sauce
1 cup (or more) leftover instant mashed potatoes
Cheese
Pepper to taste
Paprika for garnish

Boiling the chicken stock. Toss in the broccoli and garlic, until they're cooked through. Season with soy sauce. Add the potatoes and stir until incorporated. I found this took a little while, since my potatoes were stored in the fridge. Let the soup bubble and thicken. Season with hot sauce and pepper. Grate on a little cheese (I used a marbled jack). Garnish with paprika--do other families do this? At holidays, my family always garnishes potato anything with paprika.

Turn burner down to low, ladle your soup in a bowl, and enjoy. I think I made some garlic toast to dip in the soup as well.

It turned out souper (haha) well. It was flavorful and potato-y and seemed to obliterate that stale flavor instant mashed taters get when left in the fridge.

I love mashed potatoes. I love soup season. I love the marriage of the two.