Chef Lane, Food

Chef Lane: Imitation of Sea Life Fried Rice and Teriyaki Mahi Mahi


It’s been a while since I’ve posted a recipe, but my various versions of fried rice have been well received lately, so here is the latest recipe.

You will need:

  • 1 packet of imitation crab
  • 1 individual serving packet of frozen peas
  • 1 large shallot
  • 1 tsp minced garlic
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tbs sesame oil (or thereabouts)
  • 1 cup of uncooked rice (and cook to instructions)
  • 1 tbs sesame seeds
  • Pepper to taste
  • 1 packet of frozen mahi mahi (3 fillets or so)
  • Teriyaki sauce
  • Soy Sauce

Saute your garlic and finely chopped shallot in the sesame oil until the shallots are transparent, then scramble in your egg, add the peas and crab, and heat it all up.

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While that is cooking, toss your mahi in the teriyaki sauce, and throw it in the oven.  Bake at 400 for about 18 minutes or so.  Then, add your rice into the skillet, pepper it, add the sesame seeds, and put in soy sauce to taste.  Let that cook over a medium-high heat, stirring now and then.  I like my rice kind of crispy.

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That’s it.  How easy is that?!

Serve up your rice and fish on your finest paper plates and enjoy:

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Chef Lane, Food, recipe

Chef Lane: Hakuna Frittata


It is super easy to make this savory dish, which will serve you all week for breakfast.  Better yet, it is easy to substitute for flavors.  Don’t like ham?  Have sausage.  Don’t like meat at all?  Add potatoes.  Too posh for cheddar?  Add something French and runny.  Hate cilantro?  Toss in some celery.  Throw in some dill.  Add a dash of garlic powder.  Squirt in some Sriracha.  Make it your own worry free dish.

For my favorite way, you will need:

  • 1.5 cups of Egg Beaters
  • 1/2 cup of chopped ham (I just minced up some lunch meat)
  • 1/4 cup of shredded  cheese (I used cheddar)
  • 2 Tbs of cilantro
  • 2 Tbs of parsley
  • 1 small onion, finely chopped
  • Salt & Pepper to taste
  • Cooking Spray

Turn on your broiler. 

Spray an oven safe skillet with cooking spray, then warm it on the stove.  In a separate bowl, combine all ingredients except for the cheese.  Hold on to your cheese!  When the skillet is hot, pour in your mixture and turn your heat down to medium.  Let the mixture cook until it is starting to set around the edges, then sprinkle half your cheese over the top.

When the mixture is starting to set throughout (and this takes between 10 and 15 minutes, depending), take it off the stove and put it in the broiler for 5 minutes.  Remove after 5 minutes (it will have puffed up like souffle–let it fall), sprinkle your remaining cheese on top, then broil for another few minutes, until the top is golden with gloriously toasted cheese.

Remove from broiler and let sit until cool.  Slice into 8 pieces.  Works out to about 2.5 WWPPV per slice, and you’ll be surprised how filling this is.

 

A Day in the Life, Chef Lane, Diet, Family, Food

4 Way Chicken


Start with your crock pot.  On the bottom, layer half a large onion and 2 minced cloves of garlic.  Cover those with salt, pepper, cilantro, and parsley, and whatever else you like.  Nestle 3 large chicken breasts (skin on, bone in) on top.  Layer the other half of the onion and about 1/2 lb of carrots on top.  Season again.  Turn it on high for an hour or two, then turn it down to low and go to bed.

Get up a little early and turn off your crock pot.  Remove the carrots and set aside to cool.  Remove the chicken and set aside to cool.  Pour the broth through a strainer to catch all the grody bits, and set broth aside to cool.  Go put on your makeup, fix your hair, and wake up your kid.  While he is looking for his socks (they are in the bottom drawer, where they are every day) dish your cooled carrots, chicken, and broth into separate containers and refrigerate.  Tell your child if he can’t find his socks, he can never play Wii again.  He will find them instantly.

Take the boy to school, go to work, go to the grocery store and pick up 2 squash, 2 zucchini, more onions, red grapes, pecan halves, chicken broth (15 oz or so), 2 cans of white kidney beans, 1 can of corn, 1 can of diced tomatoes, some light sour cream, and some Peeps for the boy’s Easter basket.  And a giant, stuffed duck that you thought was a chicken.  You will realize your mistake when you sit down to write a blog entry.

Go home, unload and put away groceries, and help the boy with his homework, do laundry.  Fold the boy’s clothes and put them away (remember that you left your own clothes in the dryer when you are partway through a blog entry. Curse having thought you were finished for the night.)  Accidentally rewash husband’s clean clothes because they are sitting on top of the washer and you are feeling helpful.  When your mother says, “You look tired,” do not snarl.  Send mother home with hugs and kisses (no snarling), then move living room, dining room, and patio furniture around to be able to drag old sofa to the curb (with aid of husband) to accommodate new, improved sofa which will be delivered tomorrow.  Discover that the time the boy barfed on the sofa Christmas day, the reason you thought the volume seemed light compared to the sounds he was making is because all of it had run down the side crack of the leather seat, to congeal in a disgusting disc on the carpet beneath is.  Run the sweeper.

Return to kitchen and wash hands, find cutting board and proceed to slicing a large onion.  Use the finger guard on the mandolin slicer so that you don’t slice through your thumb and bleed into the onion.  Or, ignore that advice, and find band-aids.  Utilize.  Return to slicing.

In a large stock pot, warm 1 Tbs of olive oil.  Toss in your diced onions and 2 cloves of minced garlic.  While that gets going, open all your cans.  This will be difficult to do while bleeding profusely, but you will manage.  Once onion is translucent, pour in your drained cans of beans (both cans) and corn, and your whole can of tomatoes.  Add your chicken broth and simmer.  Salt and pepper to taste, then dump in about 1Tbs of chili powder.  Accidentally.  Or serendipitously.  Depends on how spicy you like your chili.

Remove cold chicken, carrots and stock from the refrigerator and grab a grocery bag.  Debone a breast of chicken, tossing grody bits into bag.  Remove skin and any remotely inedible yarf and discard into bag.  Dice chicken and shred, then add to pot.  Bring to a boil.  Taste broth and season as needed.  Decide to toss in some cinnamon–about 1tsp.  Mmm!  This will yield you about 5, 2-cup containers of chili, worth about 6 WWPPV each.  Serve or freeze for lunches.

While that is going–simmering about 20 minutes after the boil, add another stock pot to your stovetop and empty out the refrigerated chicken broth.  Use your mandolin slicer (properly this time, you learned) to slice the squash and zucchini directly into the pot.  Add the carrots, then prep another chicken breast, this time only dicing it.  Drop all that into the pot, add 2 chicken bouillon cubes, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer 15 minutes.  This will yield you about 4, 2-cup containers of soup, worth about 2 WWPPV each.  Serve or freeze for lunches.

Finally, prep your last chicken breast and halve the meat.  Chop up about 1/2 a cup of red grapes, crush up about 1/4 cup of pecan halves, add 1TBS each of mayo, dijon mustard, and light sour cream, then stir half the chicken meat into that.  Season to taste.  Refrigerate and serve on top of greens as a salad, or in pita bread as a sandwich.  Yield is 2 large servings a 6 WWPPV each, or 4 small servings at around 3 points each–you could make it lower with low fat mayo, but that stuff is more disgusting than the 4 month old vomit you found under the sofa, so why bother?

With the last half of the meat, make chicken quesadillas with diced jalapenos, about 1/4 cup of cheese (your choice, I like Jack) each, and some Bacon Bits if you’re fancy.  Serve those for dinner.  Screw the WWPPV–you’ve worked them all off already.

Put boy to bed.  Put boy back to bed.  Put boy back to bed a final time.  Let dog out.  Let dog back in.  Wonder vaguely where husband got off to almost 2 hours prior.

Sit down and enjoy a bowl of soup.  Write a blog entry as a means of avoiding the dishes still needing to be done.

Get up.  Get your laundry.  Put it away.  Take a bath.  Go to bed, secure in the knowledge that at least you don’t have to cook tomorrow.

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Chef Lane, recipe

Chef Lane: Fauxsghetti and Chicken Soup


Fauxsghetti.  That’s an awful title, isn’t it?  But it was a great dish, so I am sharing.

The boys like Italian sausage for dinner, but I can’t stand the stuff, so while I was cooking for them, I whipped up a little something different for me.  For them, I made sweet Italian sausage with angel hair pasta and marinara sauce.  For me, I cooked up some turkey bacon (3 strips), extra crispy, scrambled 1/4 cup of egg beaters with salt, pepper, and a TBS of shredded cheese, crumbled my bacon into my eggs and mixed that into 1 cup of the angel hair and marinara.  It was tasty!  And rather filling.  And bacon.  (And, if you’re counting–like P, who asked for it–this is 10 PPV.  There you go, P!)

I like to use the Buitoni pasta, found in the dairy section of the grocery store.  It’s got a better taste than the dried, box pasta.  I use the Buitoni marinara sauce, too.

 

Also, I think I’ve finally got my chicken soup recipe down to perfection.  I made a huge pot over the weekend, and I impressed myself!  It was velvety and luscious, and I’ve been enjoying it for lunch every day since.  It’s light, but full of good-for-you stuff, and full of flavor.

You will need:

3 chicken breasts on the bone, with skin

3 yellow squash, small to medium (cut into 1/4 inch bits)

3 zucchini, small to medium (cut into 1/4 inch bits)

2 cups of carrots (chopped, baby, shredded, however you like them)

2 TBS garlic paste

1 TBS basil paste (or fresh basil to taste)

2 TBS chicken consomme (I use Telma)

1 beef bouillon cube

6 cups water

1 TBS olive oil

Salt & Pepper to taste

In a heavy stew pot, warm the olive oil, garlic and basil.  When the pot bottom is hot, place your chicken breast in, meaty side down, and brown the skin for about two minutes.  Then, add enough water to cover the chicken.  Bring to a boil for 20 minutes and add the consomme and bouillon cube, then cook on a medium heat for about an hour, hour and a half (depending on how you like the chicken–I like it falling off the bone).

Remove the chicken from the stock and skim out any skin.  Add all the veg to the stock, add the rest of your water, and bring to a boil, then reduce to medium heat.

Strip two of the breasts and shred the meat, then return it to the stock and cook with the vegetables until those are tender.  Remove from heat and let cool.

Shred up your remaining chicken breast and make some chicken salad to serve on greens or in a sandwich as a side to the soup.  Nom Nom Nom.

A two cup serving of the soup is 3PPV

 

Chef Lane, recipe

Chef Lane: Super Easy Shrimp


My Valentines, all three of them (B, Thor, and my mom), brought me flowers and candy today.  So, I answered back with cards (B’s card played Barry White) and a super easy, but quite tasty shrimp dish for dinner.  Thor ate two bowls of it, so it has his seal of approval.

You will need

  • about 24 large shrimp, peeled and deveined, with the tails off
  • 3.5 TBS of butter
  • 1 TBS of garlic paste
  • 2 tsp lemon juice
  • about 2 tsp italian herb blend
  • kosher salt to taste
  • 1 package of fresh fettucine (or whatever)

Melt your butter over a low heat and add the garlic paste when it is about halfway melted.  Stir in the paste, then add the lemon juice and seasoning.  Heat until butter is fully melted.

Put your shrimp on a grill (I use my Griddler that Dad and Barbara gave me–like I do every other night that I cook because that thing is amazing), and brush some of the butter blend over the top.  Grill until desired doneness.  I like my shrimp slightly overcooked, but I try to get it right for B and Thor.

While your shrimp is cooking, boil your fettucine.  Drain it, and drop it in the pot with the rest of the butter blend.  Toss it and plate it up.  By then, your shrimp should be ready.  Put those on top of your pasta and serve!  MMMM

Then, kiss your Valentine with your garlic breath.