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Stuffed Chicken with cheddar and mustard sauce

So with this recipe your going to need the following for one plate

2 4oz portions of boned and skinned dark meat chicken, 2 oz cheddar, 3 slices of bacon, olive oil for pan frying. For the sauce add a tablespoon and a half of dijon mustard, a tsp of honey, and a quarter cup of heavy cream.

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So start out with your pan on medium heat and begin to cook your chicken after both sides have been flipped and cooked through. Stuff them with cheddar and let it sit for a moment while the bacon cooks. Drain the pan of your fry oil before dropping your bacon in to the pan. Cook your bacon through while making sure that it does not turn to glass. This will be the layer between your sauce and the chicken.

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While this recipe is very rich the sauce should have a very refreshing bite. Either from the horse radish and acidity in the mustard or from additional seasoning. Other ways you can roll it is using addition of chives or cayenne pepper for additional color. The light heat of the seasoning or the fresh aroma of the chopped chives adds anew dimension to this. When you make the sauce all you have to do is put it all in a clean pan let it simmer after whisking together until the volume decreases by a third to a half.

Layer your bacon on top of your chicken and pour the sauce on top of the bacon gently then enjoy. So hope you enjoy and hopefully after eating this you get one step closer.

 

 

 

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Progress Report 3/1/13

Hello, all and here is what got done.

The team is practicing for the magic grand prix, but not letting that stop us we decided to down our sodas and raise our game with new videos. Hate mail Magic Turn Phases 106 and Shooters and Grinders 2 with Senore Rage Face. We have more videos coming so if your bored give us a view, we appreciate it. League of Legends has begun to make it in to the training schedule, as it stands we are still far out from our goal, but updates will be given when needed.

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAhAm0XR8eWUBkselQoowfw

So next time for recipes we will have a two for one with sweets.

One is the classic souffle this time paired with a fruit sauce with the other being a surprise cupcake that  my roommate and I had made for a convention before.

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Eggs Magda: Start by gathering the following ingredients. 2 Jumbo Eggs, 1/4 cup Green Onions, 1/4 cup grated Gruyere cheese, and 1 tablespoon Dijon Mustard. At the end of this recipe you should have a very smooth cheesy set of scrambled eggs that is very nice on a slice of toasted wheat bread.

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Start by cracking your eggs in a pan over medium low heat and whisk in your dijon mustard.Image

You will want to break up curds with a small whisk scraping gently from the bottom of the pan as it cooksImage.

After the color has changed you want to add the cheese and turn off the heat. Whisk it all together until it melts before finishing with the green onions. Whisk together and serve.

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Simple but delicious. Serve with toast and bacon for a breakfast of champions.This recipe was for one portion. When making multiple portions though there is not much change in the process to make it.

 

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Some of the hardest people to cook for

 In a kitchen there are two major problems. One is you find out that you have a table of food critics and the other is you have a table of true cooks. Not those that announce that they have been cooks for years because often times those that do that in a restaurant are about as good in a kitchen as a critic. I am talking the old school been there thirty years and have forgotten more about food then most people know.

One can utter a word based out of stupidity and the business dies the other can tell exactly what you are doing by the plate. So you have to be on your “A” game because your little tricks will be on full display to them.

What is surprising is critics often have no culinary experience to draw from and that is the norm. You want the best food then you go ask a cook. This article may seem a bit harsh, but I do agree with the point.

http://gawker.com/5913046/food-critics-are-worthless

Food critics to be food critics are just not that good you can either go to sites where you can get a wider range of experiences or you can just ask a cook where he would go to get some good grub. If in a city a cook is impressed enough to respect the food he is given then that is the highest show of respect.

What is sad is that it is a very rare moment where a food critic that gets respected in the writing circles has actual kitchen experience. The same is true for health inspectors. Often times you do not need any experience to become one. You could see though how past experience in a kitchen would help when you need to grade it because if you know all the tricks then you know where to look.

Cooks can really be useful in a lot of different aspects if you think hard enough, but that is true in nearly any job.

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Working in a national park

For those who have never had the experience of working in a park let me tell you what it is like. You and a group of people living, working, and hanging out together. I worked at Mount Rainier as a cook for a couple seasons. If you do not have a car then you will be stuck in one spot a lot or you will get really good at organizing car pools. If you want to work one to get a try of it be aware it is seasonal work, bu often time working the full season will allow you unemployment.

There are some good things about it though. I met a lot of people there that I would have never talked to otherwise. My friends list is beginning to look like a United Nations cast. You will to as for the most part people do not want to burn bridges here. I’m not that much of a social person, but I have gone drinking with Turks, ran obstacle courses with a blond Canadian, worked on cars with the Sengalese, and partied with the Jamaicans, not including the times I had with my British, Chinese, Thai, Czech, and other American friends I made here.

I got my camera working now and here are some of the pictures I took while I was on the Mountain for the 2013 season

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If you like the view then you will like working in parks. Many times they have things you can do provided you are not working. Writing or drawing pass the time quite well. You have to bring your own entertainment, but some areas in park have wi fi for workers only.

Hope your holidays went well. Just needed to put this up and get some nice pics on here.

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Hitting the books – What I want to write

As I may have alluded to I want to do some publishing somewhere before my funeral.

One is something called 100 Ingredients: Home Edition. This book would be just talking about how different ingredients are handled and common applications over different recipes. This is going to be for people who are not the most comfortable in the kitchen. I was hoping to do more books in this line of thought with different sets of ingredients. That’s putting things too far ahead though. People who know how to cook will have something to gain from reading it. It has recipes in it, but it will be more focusing on the ingredient so you ( the readers ) can come up with your own recipes a lot easier.

The second is called Life, Love and Cooking. It is set up so you can read one page for every day of the year and it goes over dishes, experiences I have had in the kitchen, Working in the industry and some of the adventures I have gone on. Other cooks can laugh at some of the mistakes. People who want to get in the industry know some of the goings on. People who burn water will hopefully not and every one wins.

The typing is done on both and I have gotten some good returns from agents just not good enough to be contract worthy. Yet.

So tell me what you think of my book ideas? Like? Hate? Let me know because I would like to know.

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Cooking for the holidays.

So. I still have problems believing this. I got the fudge done my mint marshmallow fudge, no problems. The ganache is set and all i need is the cocoa powder for the rolled truffles. Well doing all the work with chocolate you get it on you. So I asked my friends to see if they could give me a hand just packing together the popcorn balls. Three grown adults should be able to figure this out no problem while I can go and freshen up.

I say SHOULD because not only did my black cherry popcorn balls not get made no one had any idea what to do. Pour warm syrup over popcorn pack into balls and let chill. I have gotten grade school kids to do this without any hiccups. So I get all clean and I walk out of my room in the fortress of nerditude and two of my friends have popcorn stuck to their clothes with only two balls made. Minus all the syrup they start asking how everything was supposed to happen. I take whats left of the syrup and warm it up again before making one in about a minute.

Everyone just stops right there after putting together that I had everything ready for them and was gone for a half hour. I got one done in less then a minute. My roommate looks over at the other two ( he was supervising due to his bad hand)

“Wow, who feels like an idiot?”

The others raise their hand and I face palm hard enough before having a good group laugh with everyone. We all know that stupid moments happen so we made dark chocolate and cherry flavored popcorn instead. Which tasted pretty well after melting the chocolate to drizzle the cherry popcorn as well as all the spare popcorn another friend told me one thing.

“We cannot cook at all, but we should have told you that beforehand?”

Me and my roommate laughed.

Everyone then went out to subway for dinner.

Happy holidays folks, its good to laugh every once in a while.

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Shop and project update. Random misadventure

Well I would have pictures here of my ganache for truffles except my old camera has finally went and died on me. Glad to see murphy’s law is in full effect still I almost thought chaos would rain if it ever left. Got another ten designs for the store done which you can see on the links page if i did it correctly or

zazzle.com/Spiritgamerware*

Ya that works too. So after the first few rounds of query letters sent in December I got a couple nibbles, but nothing for a publishing contract yet. So as soon as I can a new camera will be in my hot little hands and more pictures for all who read this humble little blog of mine. That food blog got pushed back because of equipment failure.

So I got back from a meeting and I saw some whatever you call it sprawled in paint in front of a max schedule kiosk. for those who are not from Oregon the max is like our subway. Seeing as I had nothing else to do for a few hours I took an eraser and began to very carefully erase the graffiti from the glass. All it takes is a random eraser when it comes to graffiti on plexiglass and glass. It takes a lot of time but does not smear or tint the glass at all. In full cook’s uniform I sat there trying to clean up the graffiti with no other reward other then I wanted to remove an eye sore and make the schedule visible again. I got stopped by four gang banger wannabes who were more like high school kids with an attitude problem a half dozen others who were so complacent that they called the cops on me because they thought I was marking it. The cops were actually quite nice though. A guy in a cook’s jacket and black slacks using a regular white eraser to get rid of graffiti on glass for free. It makes me wonder what kinds of things have we gotten so complacent with that really should change. Or it could be my lack of caffine talking. Anyway graffiti cleaned and + 2 on the counter of how many i have done.

Happy holidays

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To be a cook in portland

One of the problems cooking in Portland is how deep the competitive pool is. Just taking the culinary schools you have AI, WCI, and OCI. From there you have groups of three hundred per program times two to three for each separate program looking for a free externship close by. Just from that there is a pool of about 2500 hundred people who are asking to work for free in most cases. Add on top all the smaller schools and you can easily add another 2000 people on top of that.

So in Portland there is a minimum of four thousand people every six months looking for experience and are able to not be paid for that time versus actually hiring people. Because after those externship times are done they enter another pool constantly growing of people who can cook to order but nowhere for them to do so. True, after some externships some people will be offered work no doubt.

It’s not like I’m new in a kitchen myself. I have done a large bit and a short amount of time and nearly have a decade of experience around the pacific northwest all before my twenty-fifth birthday. It is just I love to cook. I love to make food because food is something all cultures around the world had. Everyone had to eat and through food you can learn a lot about the past as well as the future.
There just seems to be so much wrong with what I love that sometimes I ask is it worth it. It is of course ( it always is).

Long story short. In food, in portland we should either get ready to change with the times or be ready to be passed by it.

If you agree or disagree let me know. I would love to hear your opinion. If you think i need to take another cup of coffee before typing because I may be out of my mind then go ahead and message me too 🙂 Happy holidays.

 

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