Lemon Cookies!

Poor blog! So neglected... but I am back for reals this time! Work/life balance was out of wack from Nov until about mid April due to new job and lots of stress from that job. But I've cleared my head and am making the effort to get back to cooking and baking... yey! 

I've actually created my own recipe for lemon cookies.... and they are really the best thing ever. Perfect with a nice cup of tea! It's a basic sugar cookie recipe with a twist- lemon juice instead of vanilla and a whole lot of lemon zest! So behold... best ever lemon cookies:


Ingredients

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 egg
• juice from small sized lemon
• lemon zest from two lemons
• 
  

Directions

1. Sift flour, baking powder, salt and put aside.
2. Cream butter and sugar until soft. Add egg and beat until incorporated. Add in lemon juice and the zest from 1 lemon into and mix until incorporated. Add in the flour mixture and stir until the mix becomes cookie dough.
3. Shape dough into a log and wrap in wax paper. Refrigerate for at least two hours.
4. Take dough out from fridge. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
5. Slice log about 1/4 of an inch wide (or to your liking). Take the zest from the second lemon and sprinkle a bit onto each cookie and press on the zest so it's in the cookie dough. (if you just sprinkle it on, chances are the lemon zest will burn in the oven so it's important to press it into the dough.)
6. Bake for about 8 minutes each or until slightly brown on the bottom.
7. Cool and enjoy!

A plan for this blog

Dear Blog,
I've been thinking about what this blog should really be. I think me just cooking and putting pics up isn't going to cut it, which I mean to say I don't think I will be motivated enough to keep this thing up, if that is all I am going to do with it. But I really do want to expand on my cooking skills and want this blog to have a little bit of direction as well... so I have a new idea. I will start focusing on learning actual techniques and skills relating to cooking. I think this will make blogging bloggerific and will be a bit of a fun challenge.  Plus, since I really don't have any actual cooking skills, it should make for a fun experience. I am just hoping to not loose a finger in the process.
I have a few cool books that will make good guidelines and references:   Ratio and The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman, and of course, Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. On-line there are countless food blogs and Allrecipes.com and foodnetwork.com, plus endless google searches. And there is always the Food Network.  So here it goes, I am aiming for at least 1-2 new techniques/skills a week... this week I am starting with stock made from scratch. Stay tuned... it will be fascinating!
I will have to blog about my homemade pasta and maple bacon cupcakes some other time.

Blueberry Oatmeal Bread

Blueberry oatmeal bread... sounds like a pretty good breakfast to me. I was inspired by a couple of other blogs which either included some sort of breakfast-y bread or blueberry muffins. If I were a good blogger I would have saved the links. But hey, I am new to this and I didn't so I will say next time... I promise.

So inspired by these posts, I actually just did a google search for blueberry bread and got a Betty Crocker recipe. It was pretty alright, but nothing too special, I will be honest. And I also omitted the cinnamon due to my beliefs that cinnamon and blueberries don't mix. So if you're looking for an alright breakfast bread, try the recipe out.  It's not too sweet and you are getting your fruits and grains in for breakfast. In the meantime, I will be searching for a better recipe so stay tuned!!

PS- I know this is a lazy post, but perhaps it was because the bread wasn't all that great. Oh did I forget to mention that while I did grease the pan, the bread still stuck to the pan, which is always a bummer.

Pizza!

Pizza, pizza, pizza! Who doesn't like pizza? Strangely, my dad doesn't... but that is besides the point. I've been wanting to try and make pizza dough from scratch for a long time and I finally got around to trying it out. It was actually pretty easy.  Flour, yeast, olive oil and warm water. And that is it. You just have to be willing to wait that hour for the dough to rise.  Add fresh mozzerella, basil and roma tomatoes and you have the best pizza ever! Or at least a pretty darn good one. 

Because I was also making a pizza for my boyfriend Jason, who likes a more traditional pepperoni pizza, I made sauce from scratch as well and added a bit to my mostly traditional magherita pizza. This ended up being like a million times better than Papa John's pizza and way less greasy, yet still very tasty and filling. Recipe(s) as follows:

Pizza Dough Recipe is taken from Food Network :

1/2 cup warm water (105 to 110 degrees F)

2 teaspoons active dry yeast

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading

1 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for bowl

Add yeast to warm water and wait for the yeast to dissolve, about 5 minutes. Mix in flour, salt and then olive oil just until it forms into dough. On a lightly floured surface, knead dough until smooth. Grab a bowl and drizzle in a bit more olive oil. Place the dough in bowl and let sit for hour in warm place. Dough will double in size.

Pre-heat oven to 500 degrees and (here's the secret to tasty home pizza made in an oven) place a  pizza stone/baking stone in the oven to warm up. It won't burn the bottom! No matter how hard you try. You can buy one for about 20 bucks at Bed Bath and Beyond and probably more reputable places. It's really worth the investment.

Once done, roll out the dough to your desire crust type (thin, extra thin, thick, etc) and add toppings.  For the pizza above, I drizzled a bit of olive oil, a bit of pizza sauce (recipe below) and cut up fresh roma tomatoes and fresh mozzerella.  Bake for about 10 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly and slightly brown. Add freshly topped basil and enjoy!

Pizza Sauce

Small can of crushed tomatoes

a pinch of your favorite italian-like herbs ( I used oregano and basil)

Garlic salt

pepper

On a stove top, add can of crushed tomatoes to sauce pan. Stir in herbs, salt and pepper to taste. You are done... pretty easy right? Put aside until ready to use.

Day One of Cooking.... Chicken Teriyaki from Scratch

Yey, my first official post about cooking something. This may turn out to be more difficult than I thought.  I already forgot to charge my camera, so my pics are from my iphone. Oops.

 Many times during the week I do not cook because a) I am hungry when I get home and b) I have no idea what to make and because I am already hungry it makes decision making difficult. So in order to make this blog work and cook more often, I've decided  to try plan out a weekly menu and then go to the store and by exactly what I need to make what I want to cook. So, I introduce you to meal #1... chicken teriyaki... from scratch!

I am a big fan of chicken teriyaki and could probably eat it everyday. However, anytime I tried to buy those packaged marinades to make at home, it never turned out right. But thanks to Personal Trainer Cooking for the Nintendo DS, I can officially make tasty chicken teriyaki that tastes like you got it from the restaurant. Yum.

Lessons learned already: - When you discover that the ginger you bought turns out to be rotten(!!- thanks Whole Foods, I bought it yesterday!) you can use ground ginger and it works just fine.
-My rice cooker apparently has a leak in it and does not work, this is disappointing because cooking rice on the stove top also gives me various results. As a half-asian, I should know better, but I have yet to master the cooking of rice consistently.

General Recipe (adapted from My Personal Cooking Trainer)
1/2 cup mirin
1/2 cup sake
1/2 cup soy sauce
pinch of ground ginger
1 pound of chicken, cut into small pieces
1/2 onion sliced

-Add mirin, sake, soy sauce and ginger into a bowl
-Add chicken and onion to marinade.
-Cover and marinade for at least 20 minutes
-Turn heat on hight and heat skillet (w/ lid) with 1 tablespoon of oil
-Add chicken to hot skillet (leave out the marinade) and cook until brown on side (2 minutes or so)
-Turn over chicken and cover with lid to finish cooking
-Remove chicken from skillet.
-Add a tablespoon of brown sugar to marinade
-Add marinade to skillet
-Cook down until sauce reduces to half the amount and becomes thick
-Add chicken back to skillet and cook for 1 or 2 minutes
-You are done! Now eat with some rice, yum!

An Introduction

Hello and welcome to my lovely blog! As with new years come new goals and my goal this year is to learn how to properly cook and blog about my adventures in learning how to do so.  And by properly I mean "mostly from scratch" and learning proper techniques, or any techniques really. My goal is to update this thing at least 3 times a week, which means my other goal is to actually cook at least 3 times a week.  So with that  said and valuable resources such as the internet and a few cooking related books I have laying around... the adventure begins!