The Alfredo

Welcome back to another exciting adventure of "How Much Flour Can Alicia Get on her Shirt before Realizing that Cheree Bought Her an Apron?"

This week, I'm going to show you guys how to make my very awesome, and probably pretty fattening, Alfredo sauce.  I stumbled upon a few recipes similar to this while looking for an Olive Garden copy cat.

My Alfredo adventure began at Borders *sniffle.*  I was browsing the discounted cookbooks when I happened upon "Entertaining with the Sopranos."

Not sure why I picked it up, other than the fact that it's pretty unique.  This book introduced me to bechamel sauce (basically a white sauce, sans cheese).  After many failed attempts over a few years, I scouted the web.  Took some notes, and this is what I came up with as the "perfect" Alfredo sauce.

 
Here are your main ingredients:

• Angel hair pasta
• Cooking oil (most people will recommend olive oil, but all I had was vegetable oil)
• Grated Parmesan or Romano cheese (Romano is shown)
• Cloves of garlic--I used 4 because I LOVE garlic and am getting over a cold
• Milk
• Salt
• Pepper
• Flour (not shown)
• Parsley (not shown)
• Garlic salt (not shown)

Start by filling your pasta pot with water and setting it on high.  There's nothing I hate more than waiting for water to boil so I can drop my pasta.  Apparently at a high altitude and on a gas stove, the wait is even longer.

Meanwhile, start popping your garlic.  Yes.  Pop your garlic.  Pull the the desired number of cloves from your bulb, lay them on a flat surface, place a butcher's knife over the top and CAREFULLY smack it with the palm of your hand.  (Thank you, Nicole!)  The clove will smash and the skin will easily peel away.

Cut those cloves in half and put them through a garlic press.



This little gadget has saved me a lot of time and energy dicing fresh garlic.

In a non-stick skillet, swirl the oil once around the pan (I did twice for this recipe and it came out a little oily), and add a stick of butter.  Set the pan on the stove over medium-high heat and wait for the butter to melt a little bit before adding the garlic.



Let the garlic cook until the butter melts all the way.  Don't let it get brown!  I salt my garlic...not sure why...but it tastes good.  Stir with a rubber spatula to spread it out over the pan.

Next, sprinkle a handful of flour into the pan and quickly stir with the spatula.  We're making a garlicky version of the bechamel, also known as a Roux.




This is why my recipe is a little different from the others--you MUST use oil AND butter to prevent the flour from clumping as it cooks.  If it does start clumping, turn your heat down a little bit and we'll take care of that issue in the next step.



Add about 1/2 cup of milk.  I'm totally guessing here, as I don't measure.  I started with about 1/4 cup, then my sauce clumped, so I added a bit more.  As soon as this mixture is borderline between soupy and clumpy (hopefully more soupy than clumpy), add half the container of Parmesan.  Sprinkle the mixture with pepper, garlic salt and parsley and mix thoroughly.



Now that your sauce is done, hopefully your water is boiling or has already started boiling.  One of the reasons I love Angel Hair Pasta is the fact that it cooks in half the time of regular spaghetti.  Drop the pasta, cook as you normally would, drain it and put it back in the pot it was cooking in.  Pour the sauce over the top and mix well.

Voila!



My dinner tonight!  That I've been eating throughout this post!  This recipe will make at least 2 servings (yay leftovers for me!) and you can always increase the quantities for bigger portions.  Tom and I will eat this as a side, or as a main dish mixed with sauteed shrimp.

Thanks for reading; hopefully next week I'll remember to teach you guys how to make my sweet tea!

The Guac

I wouldn't say I'm a picky eater.  I have a list of foods that should not ever touch my plate, but for the most part I'll consume anything to maintain my voluptuous figure.  One of the foods that made my "get that away from me" list for a VERY long time was guacamole.

I was coerced into trying the dip about 10 years ago.  I made the same face that I still make over raw tomatoes...but something snapped in my brain and I fell in love with guacamole!  Since then, it has become a necessary staple for any Tex-Mex meal that I order or prepare.  It has also made me a little partial to sandwiches dubbed "California style."

Guacamole became an obsession.  If it was on the menu, I'd order it and decide if it was better than the last bowl I'd eaten.  Then the light bulb came on:  I have to make my own guacamole.  And it has to be perfect!

My recipe begins with salsa.  And I don't mean a jar of Pace Picante.  I make my salsa semi-fresh in a food processor.  In addition to guacamole, I'm also pretty smitten with Chili's salsa.  So let's begin with that.



This cookbook will give you a pretty good imitation of Chili's salsa.  "Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2" can be picked up in any major bookstore.  I found mine at Barnes & Noble.

The secret to this salsa is to use canned tomatoes instead of fresh.  It has been my experience that fresh tomatoes brown in the food processor, and for some reason this irks me.  As always, I adjust the recipe to my taste.  So here is what you'll need (and please excuse my messy countertops, it was a busy kitchen day!):

• One 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes. I tend to lean towards the tomatoes with chiles or green pepper/onion. 
• One whole onion, chopped--sweet onions are less overpowering
• One clove of garlic, sliced
• Three tablespoons jarred jalapeño slices, heaping!
• One tablespoon lime juice
• About 4 teaspoons of cumin...I don't measure things, we know this, but I'd like to point out that the Badia brand spices are SUPER cheap and taste as good as the expensive stuff!
• About 4 teaspoons of garlic salt...again, eyeball it

Throw all of that into the food processor and pulse until it's roughly together.  You don't want it too watery.
Pour the salsa into a tupperware container...in my case a wonton soup container.  Measure out about 1/4 cup of the salsa and put it BACK into the food processor and sprinkle it with cilantro flakes (fresh cilantro is SO much better, but I didn't have that available this time; if you have fresh cilantro, pulse it in with the salsa ingredients to begin with).



For the record, I accidentally added too much salsa and one of my avocados was a little darker than I had hoped...and I tried to compensate with extra sour cream.  So now, let's look at the actual guac ingredients.

• The 1/4 cup salsa still in the food processor
• 1/2 cup sour cream (I used the whole container, so it turned out pale)
• 2 avocados.  They can be Florida or Haas, doesn't really matter, but the bigger the better
• Another 1 tablespoon lime juice
• More garlic salt, love garlic salt (the cilantro flakes are shown, but we discussed that above)

Toss all of that into the food processor and pulse until it's to your desired consistency.  (Obligatory glass of sweet tea in the picture!)



Here is what you end up with...although hopefully a little greener.  This is also a double, maybe triple, batch because...I'm insatiable when it comes to guacamole.

Pour it into a pretty bowl and serve with chips!  And sweet tea!  Everyone needs sweet tea!

The Rib Rub

Hi, my name is Alicia and I'm a cookbook hoarder.

Well, it's not as serious as that.  Yet.

Maybe I'm just a recipe hoarder.  I will go to great lengths to clip and save any recipe I can get my hands on.  And I blame my Mom.  She did the same growing up and has since given a large tin of her own collection on to me.

In 2009, I happened upon the cookbook Cooking with Mickey and the Disney Chefs while shopping in Mickey's Pantry, Downtown Disney, Orlando.


I don't usually go through and make every single recipe in every single book--that would be insane.  I don't have that kind of time or the money for all the ingredients.

Three years into owning this book, I decided to throw together the Pork Rib Rub.  This is a recipe used at Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground at their Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue.

Coming from a family that still holds on to old school kitchen ethics, I don't "do" measuring.  I "eyeball" most of my recipes and taste things frequently.  I've also made some adjustments to this recipe to make it my own and to make it easier to throw together, since I don't always have all of the ingredients.

I start out with an empty Won Ton Soup container from Chinese takeout.  Other types of Redneck Tupperware may be used as well!

Fill the container halfway with plain white sugar.  Then layer the following spices based on your tastes, it really doesn't matter how much or how little so long as you can't see the white of the sugar after the first 4 ingredients:  paprika, salt, instant minced onion, marjoram.

Next, you want to sprinkle these ingredients in smaller amounts:  chili powder, black pepper, thyme, garlic powder, cumin powder and (as crazy as it sounds) pumpkin pie spice.  I use this in place of ground ginger because I usually have pumpkin pie spice and not the ginger.  It just made sense at the time...and it works!

Now these ingredients you don't want to go crazy with, for obvious reasons:  cayenne pepper, cinnamon, and celery salt.  The recipe calls for 1 1/2 teaspoons of dry mustard as well, but all I had was mustard seed...and that worked too!  And it gives the rub a little more texture.

Put the lid on the container and shake well.

I use this rub on ribs, pork chops, chicken, you  name it!  If you're going to use it in the oven, be sure to line your pan with aluminum foil because the sugar WILL caramelize and turn your pan black and sticky.  No Brillo pad will be able to cut through that mess right away; my pans usually have to soak for days :(

Truly delicious (as in, holy crap, did I make that?!) and extremely easy to throw together!

Feedback is welcomed!

And So It Begins...

I have been saving a pack of chicken thighs all week, anticipating the night when I'd be able to try out a new recipe I pinned to my "Om nom nom" board on Pinterest.  I woke up this morning, pulled the chicken out of the freezer and placed the package in the bathroom sink to defrost.

Don't judge me.  I've been sick since Christmas.  We don't have a dishwasher and Tom's idea of doing dishes is shifting the already soaking dishes from one side of the sink to the other.  But today was the day!  I took a small nap this morning, dug the dining room table out from beneath the clutter and sat down to paint for the first time in weeks (not counting the night I was trying to paint under the influence of Nyquil).

Once my painting project was complete, I sat down to review the recipe.  Simple enough:  chicken, brown sugar, Italian dressing mix packet.  I followed the instructions exactly.  The chicken baked for about an hour, sides were created and a sink or two of dishes were done in the meantime.  I plated the gorgeous chicken with some mashed potatoes and creamed corn and sat down to enjoy the meal I'd been salivating over in my mind.

And this is when the gears started turning.  Really?  This made it to my board of Om-nom-nomery?  It wasn't terrible.  I don't think Gordon Ramsey would send it back.  But it didn't pop!  It didn't send me into a fit of foodgasmic pleasure!

Tom insisted that it was terrific.  Maybe my taste buds haven't quite adjusted since my week or so of sniffles and coughs.  All I know is that the phrase "I've made better" kept repeating between mouthfuls of dinner.

So here it is.  The "better."  I realize this idea is nothing new--there are several blogs out there belonging to people who try Pinterest projects and wish to give feedback.  What I'd like to do is take these projects and make them better.

Life is not meant to be survived, it's meant to be enjoyed.  And I mean to enjoy my life with plenty of flavor!