Tag Archives: #foodie

Forking Pickled Kale Stems

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I didn’t forking know that people pickle kale stems until I watched Celebrity Chef Richard Blais at the Chipotle Cultivate Festival in Scottsdale AZ. He mentioned that Chefs do things like pickle kale stems.

Chef Richard Blais in Scottsdale AZ Chipotle Cultivate Festival

Chef Richard Blais in Scottsdale AZ Chipotle Cultivate Festival

Richard Blais specializes in innovative American Cuisine. He made a forking oyster po boy sandwich with not real oysters but used chicken oysters and he also made boudin sausage but not with regular casing he used a forking squid and stuffed that. So while he was forking chatting about Star Wars he gave a helpful hint and suggested to use the stems from kale and make pickles out of them so I thought I’d give it a try. I got this forking wild idea that ginger lemon mint pickles would taste good. Honestly it did taste good on the carrot sticks. But that’s about it so I’m not pushing pickling kale stems. I did boil them a couple minutes as Chef Blais suggested before pickling but I don’t think they are worth it because the kale stems came out just like celery. After boiling the stems they still had that stringy thing like celery. You can peal celery but you can’t peal a kale stem so I forking prefer celery to kale stems. I only liked the way the carrots came out. I sure Chef Blais did kale stems FORKING better or just had forking better kale stems.

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I’m not going to forking pickle kale stems again.

Forking Good!

Forking Truth

 

Pickled Beets and Blue Cheese EZ Stuffed Wrappers

Stuffed Pickled Beets and Blue Cheese Wrappers

Stuffed Pickled Beets and Blue Cheese Wrappers

These are not ravioli but like ravioli – that are stuffed wrappers that are forking EZ and forking quick to prepare. I made some very basic pickled beets I just roasted beets in a little apple cider vinegar, sugar, little salt,  little bit of water till soft and pealed them. But you can just use your favorite pickled beets. With the blue cheese in the wrappers they came out delicious and and sort of seem forking fancy.

Then I used these fun and easy to use wrappers.

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And I put a little blue cheese in the middle of them.

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Then I topped the cheese with a piece of beet.

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Then I wet the edges of wrapper with water and topped each one with another wrapper.

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I pinched the edges up.

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They get gently boiled now only a minute or two in salted water.

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Now remove from water.

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Top with a small amount of extra virgin olive oil and fresh ground sea salt and black pepper.

Stuffed Pickled Beets and Blue Cheese Wrappers

Stuffed Pickled Beets and Blue Cheese Wrappers

Forking Good!

Forking Good!

Forking Delicious Rosemary Chicken Meatloaf Recipe

Forking Delicious Rosemary Chicken Meatloaf

Forking Delicious Rosemary Chicken MeatloafThis is a full flavored moist dark meat chicken meatloaf. It’s easy to prepare but you have to hand chop the dark meat. By using dark meat you will have a tastier moister meatloaf. It’s easy to hand chop and takes less time than you think. Just pound the chicken real good on both sides and then cut the meat in small pieces like you do onions. I also used a few secret ingredients for flavor and moisture that make this meatloaf really special and FORKING delicious. It comes out with really moist flavorful chicken, (even after reheating) sort of like chicken dumpling and sort of like chicken with forking delicious stuffing kind of taste seasoned to perfection.

Ingredients makes around 12 servings

Around 3 lbs. boneless skinless chicken thighs (I used 3.28 lbs. to be exact) Pound the chicken well on both sides and cut up like the way you do onions.

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1 large carrot shredded

12 oz. fresh rosemary sourdough bread cut up into small pieces

3 eggs beaten

1/2 cup chicken stock

1 lb. silken tofu blended (a *secret ingredient)

3 oz. those crispy onions that come in a bag (french fried onions) (a *secret ingredient)

3 cloves garlic minced

a small bunch of scallions chopped

1 Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

2 sprigs fresh rosemary (I had small ones)

1 Tablespoon dry rosemary

1 Tablespoon basil

1 Tablespoon oregano

1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper

Directions Set oven to 350 degrees and have a large pan that is slightly oiled.

In a smaller bowl add your bread, eggs and stock and stir till mixed. In a large bowl add everything else.

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Then add your small bowl mixture to your large bowl mixture.

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Now mix.

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Place mixture in your baking pan and cover with foil.

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Your meatloaf should be done in an hour.

You might want to broil it a couple minutes before serving to brown it.

Forking Delicious Rosemary Chicken Meatloaf

Forking Delicious Rosemary Chicken Meatloaf

The meatloaf comes out super moist and very flavorful. I don’t think a sauce is necessary since it’s so moist and juicy.

Forking Good!

Forking Good!

 

 

Cupcakes Forking Suck to Me Now

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Over the past few years I got suckered into trying a few of the Food Network Cupcake War’s Winner’s Cupcakes in various places I’ve been. When I come across one I can’t help it I just want to know what a winning cupcake is like.

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Oddly none of them looked or tasted like what I was expecting. Instead of something sweet, natural tasting with a normal cake-like texture, I got almost a forking wet and spongy texture with a artificial like flavor…just like from a forking boxed mix.

I don’t eat cupcakes too often but I did eat quite a few during my childhood. Back then you ate many of them from classmates birthdays and also every neighborhood had a bakery with cupcakes and if you were lucky you got to eat a few. The cupcakes also usually had fun little ornaments on top of them. Like a fun cat head, heart, football, turkey or a little flag. Usually they were always vanilla flavored but always tasted like a moist birthday cake to me. I don’t mind other flavors and I can get by without the cupcake ornament. I just can’t stand that fake texture spongy wet sponge texture that sucks out all the joy in my mouth and pollutes my childhood memory. These days the cupcakes are extra large too with a mountain of frosting. I just wished these cupcakes tasted better. This last one I tasted was unnatural tasting and made my heart sink and also makes me wonder how the fork could I have chewed this mass of yuck up.  I can’t help to wonder how the fork this can this be a winning cupcake?. The icing wasn’t even sweet and just seem like forking whipped fat with a disappointing amount of chocolate in it to me.

That doesn’t mean all the forking cupcakes in the world suck. Just the ones I tried over the past few years.

Cupcakes really Forking Suck to me now.

Forking Truth

Forking Truth

 

Refreshing Jicama Apple Orange Salad Recipe

Jicama Apple Orange Slaw

Refreshing Jicama Apple Orange Salad

Ingredients

1 medium jicama pealed and sliced thin

1 cored apple sliced thin

1 LARGE orange supreme (Slice out the segments*large oranges are much easier to supreme) and cut them into bite size portions.

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1/2 large sweet onion sliced very thin

1/4 cup chopped scallions

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

1-2 small Thai Chilies sliced very thin

1/4 cup fresh lime juice

1 Tablespoon kosher salt

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 Tablespoon turbino sugar

Just forking mix and your done.

Forking Good!

Forking Good!

Your Leftovers Can be Forking Delicious in Wonton Wrappers

Duchess Sweet Potatoes with Fried Sage

Duchess Sweet Potatoes with Fried Sage

Chestnuts Brown Sugar and Cinnamon

Chestnuts Brown Sugar and Cinnamon

I had one forking portion of leftover duchess style sweet potatoes left over in my freezer.

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So I thought it might be forking tasty in fried wonton wrappers.

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I just put a little dab off the middle.

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Wet the edges with a little water.

Folded.

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Folded the edges.

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Then fried them on medium heat in butter.

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Added some fresh sage to the butter.

Added fresh ground sea salt and fresh ground black pepper.

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Latter I decided to use up some cooked chestnuts I had.

I rolled the chestnuts in brown sugar and cinnamon.

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I filled the wontons the same way as the sweet potatoes.

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They got sprinkled with powdered sugar and more cinnamon.

Chestnut stuffed wontons

Chestnut stuffed wontons

Forking Good!

Forking Good!

Piri Piri Style Chicken Recipe

Piri Piri Style Chicken

Piri Piri Style Chicken

“REAL” Piri Piri is made with Piri Piri Peppers that are also called African Bird’s Eye Chilli(s). Most piri piri is red in color and I noticed some people actually add red food coloring to their recipes. I’ve never noticed real piri piri peppers being sold anywhere I shop and that’s why any recipe you find uses other various red peppers.

Many variations of Piri Piri are made but they all should have some sort of ground chili, lemon, oil and red bell pepper. Piri Piri is usually chicken that’s marinated in the spicy red pepper sauce with citrus.

Ingredients This will feed about 11 people If you use dark meat any leftovers will reheat very moist.

About 8 Lbs. Of Chicken (I used about 4 lbs. that were 3 whole legs and about another 4lbs. that were 8 boneless thighs) Thought I pulled out white meat but forking screwed up.

12 roasted Red Peppers seeds, skin and stem removed and then roughly chopped and the liquid released from the red peppers

7 cloves of garlic chopped

4 red Thai Chilli(s) depending on how strong they are and your spice tolerance. The 4 in mine were spicy but not too spicy I might do 5 next time.

1 Meyer Lemon – The juice and grate about 1/4 of the rhine

1/4 large sweet onion chopped

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

About an inch Fresh Ginger grated

1/2 teaspoon aleppo ground red pepper (pinch of cayenne if you don’t have aleppo, the aleppo is milder and fruitier in taste and I like it very much with red peppers)

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon Kosher Salt

1 teaspoon Paprika

1 Tablespoon Basil

1 Tablespoon Oregano

4 Bay Leaves

Directions

Split up your chicken into two 1 gallon zip lock bags and place two whole bay leaves in each bag.

Blend up all the ingredients except the lemon rhine. After smooth add the lemon peel.

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Pour one cup of sauce/marinade into each bag. Close up bag and let sit in refrigerator over night. You will have around 24 oz. of sauce/marinade to use over the chicken dinners.

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Set oven at 350 degrees to roast. For the whole legs I lined two lightly oiled baking pans and sat some thick onions on them. Then I pulled out the chicken legs and sat them on the pan.

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The legs absorbed almost all the sauce but I did wind up with maybe a 1/4 cup and basted them in the oven a few times with the leftover marinade. These took about two hours at 350 and came out like this.

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To the boneless thighs I shook off whatever sauce stuck to them and rolled them in mung bean flour but really most of your flours would work for this. I like mung bean flour, it’s healthy and doesn’t add any weird taste or raw flour taste to what you cook. You can find mung bean flour at any Indian Market and at most Asian Markets.

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I put the boneless thighs in a medium high fry pan that was sprayed with oil and cooked them 6 minutes on the first side and 5 minutes on the second side. If yours are smaller they will need maybe a minute less.

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Put the boneless piri piri chicken together like this.

Piri Piri Style Chicken

Piri Piri Style Chicken

They came out nicely flavored and super forking  juicy.  The added sauce mellowed a little the next day but was still delicious. 2nd day you might want to adjust seasonings to the sauce slightly. The Whole legs came out super tender and ultra moist too.

Forking Good!

Forking Good!

 

Rocket Burger Phoenix AZ It’s A Forking Blast!

Rocket Burger and Subs Phoenix AZ

Rocket Burger and Subs Phoenix AZ

I’ve been here before but not in a forking while. I was reminded of Rocket Burger while watching the PBS TV Show about local eateries called Check Please Arizona. This is an extremely casual eatery where you order at the counter and seat your forking self. This place isn’t fancy so don’t forking expect to see any forking linen napkins.

Rocket burger is well known for burgers, sandwiches, beef hot dogs, sub sandwiches, soft serve ice cream and a forking wall of assorted bottled sodas. They had so many sodas I don’t know what I forking saw. The Portions are forking HUGH and the prices aren’t much more than fast food but the food your receive is FORKING much better than fast food.

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So I forking made it back to Rocket Burger and ordered my first burger and ordered the Popular New York Burger platter.

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This was forking much larger and better tasting than I was expecting. The rolls were carefully toasted and the 100% Angus Burgers were cooked a perfect medium to my liking. The pastrami on top of my burger was much tastier than most pastrami you get anywhere and was actually grilled nice and tasty. The house made coleslaw with rocket sauce was delicious. Even the fries were very good. They tasted like real potatoes!

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After a few bites I was almost forking full. At this point I lose the bun and go and get a fork. Bag up half the burger left for my dogs and pick at the rest of the filling.

My husband had a double bacon cheese burger platter. Each platter  we ordered was a double patty sandwich with a side of fries or onion rings and a bottled soda.

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He said his burger was great and we should forking come here more often.

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He got all these corn meal crusted onion rings with his burger! I would like to try the soft serve ice cream but I doubt I’ll ever have the forking room in my stomach after eating here.

We had a BLAST! at Rocket Burger!

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Forking Truth

Worth a Fork          Forking Truth

 

Forking Dinner Idea Piri Piri Chicken

Piri Piri Style Chicken

Piri Piri Style Chicken

I put this forking photo up on twitter and it got retweeted to 44,370 people. It came out forking great!  Piri Piri is basically a spicy red pepper sauce that you also use as a marinade and let sit overnight and then cook the chicken.  I served mine with my new favorite grain freekah and roasted vegetables. I’ll post the forking  recipe this week.

Forking Good!

Forking Truth

 

More Food that Wasn’t Worth a FORK in San Diego California

Sabortooth Grill San Diego Zoo

Sabortooth Grill San Diego Zoo

I didn’t plan my day well and was on this end of the zoo at lunch time. We waited in the forking long line for quite a while for sandwiches that forking took me back to the days of disco, polyester and days of eating processed food. Yum yum what to get? Do I want leftover fried, now cold, chicken in a big wrap with forking mystery sauce or a boxed very uninteresting salad. For some odd reason the grilled chicken sandwich with some guacamole sounded good to me so that’s what I ordered. Sadly the chicken sandwich didn’t live up to my only average dreams. This chicken sandwich tasted like an On Cor frozen processed chicken patty but worst. It  seemed like a large dump truck forking unloaded a pile of salt on it. I thought I was forking going to get sick. The onion rings were very crispy and reminded me of Burger King. The slime like guacamole reminded me of pond scum and actually might have been forking pond scum. I thought the house made pear ketchup sounded good but sadly it just tasted like watered down generic ketchup. Nothing on my plate was worth a fork.

My husband just had a mediocre cheese burger. He said it was cheap cheese on dry chewy burgers but it was what he expected.

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Not Worth a Fork

Not Worth a Fork

In Old Town San Diego were all the tourist shops are many mostly Mexican Restaurants.

Grilled Salmon Tacos from Barra Barra Saloon San Diego

Grilled Salmon Tacos from Barra Barra Saloon San Diego

This one restaurant had a nicer menu than most of the others and looked more inviting so we stopped there. I read that they forking make all their own tortillas. That sounds good right! We had some service issues here and would up waiting for our order for an hour at lunch time making us feel like prisoners in jail. We recieved several forking apologies from our waiter. My tacos really weren’t forking terrible, they really were just ok. The waiter told me they usually use forking pre-cooked salmon and ran out and had to cook some for me so the tacos were ok.  However  the corn salad and beans were forking gross. The corn in my corn salad were soggy with the forking centers of the corn missing. I don’t know if that is from being overcooked or old? All I know is that they were forking not fit for prisoners. I don’t know how they flavored the vegetarian beans but they tasted like dirt maybe it was forking dirt?

My husband thought his plate of food wasn’t worth a fork either. He had some sort of combo plate. He said, the sausage was burnt, the chicken was dry and the pork was flavorless. He did say the beef was good. Well at least something was good.

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Not Worth a Fork

Not Worth a Fork

I heard about the most anticipated new restaurant opening and it was a Seafood House so we forking went there. It was a beautiful restaurant that was new but looked very old fashioned. The help seemed very polished. We decided to share an appetizer of butternut squash tortellini.

Water Grill San Diego California

Butternut Squash Tortellini Water Grill San Diego California

The waiter warns us about the forking hot plate. We each take a tortellini. We bite into them and we forking look at each other for a moment. We both have forking ice cold, I mean really cold tortellini in our mouths. WTFork! Did the cook just pull out cold tortellini from the refrigerator? Who the fork does that?

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This is Forked Up!

This is Forked Up!

Our dinner had some issues and I wanted to forget about this dinner that should have been our best in San Diego so we forking ordered dessert.

Water Grill San Diego CA

Water Grill San Diego CA

I didn’t think the dessert looked bad but it forking tasted burnt!

BURNT!

BURNT!

FORKING BURNT!

We only tasted BURNT!

Not Worth a Fork

Not Worth a Fork

These were the plates that weren’t worth a FORK in San Diego.

Forking Truth

Forking Truth