Adios Cadbury Eggs

I like candy. Quite a bit, actually. Which means that my calendar could be construed to rotate around the four "prime candy" holidays. As Easter passes, so do the Cadbury Eggs, leaving me in candy drought until October.

Fourth of July lollipops anyone?

In case you're wondering, the "big four" are:

Valentine's Day
Perfect time of year for chocolate. You should try to grab a candy conversation heart or two. And there's always appropriately colored Reese's cups and Hershey's kisses.

Easter
Here I have options. Chocolate or not. We have to start with the Cadbury Egg (pictured) and its gooey center. But there's also jellybeans (of which Starburst or Jelly Belly are the best, and the Laffy Taffy and Sweet Tart are just awful). But expand the jellybean search to include Brach's Spiced Jelly Bird Eggs (only get one bag of those, please). And grab some Peeps. And a chocolate bunny. And a few more jellybeans. And Cadbury solid chocolate with candy coating - forget what they are called.

Halloween
Thank goodness when Halloween arrives. First off, it ends the candy drought. Second off, it is a holiday where non-chocolate candy can exist in droves. Candy corn, sweet tarts, smarties, mini-packages of everything from Runts to Sour Patch Kids, and more.

Christmas
Gotta get some chocolate covered cherries. Maybe a chocolate orange. Gum drops. And something to fill the candy dish (likely Rolo, Reese's, and Hershey Kisses in dedicated packaging).

Anyway, now that you are in the loop, I will chow on that egg. Oh wait, I already did.

And so begins the drought.

Meat Cupcake Delishus

OK, as you know, I have a tendency to share foods that I have consumed here (wait - isn't that what they said Twitter is for?).

So, this weekend, I managed to squeeze into the menu this concoction at right -> the bacon-wrapped meatloaf cupcake (topped with mashed potato "icing").

We saw this in some magazine (Food Network Magazine, perhaps?) and ended up making a version from the internet, and it turned out great.  Even my meatloaf-disliking-spouse said she'd eat these again, and I felt it necessary to share just because of the deliciousness (and sheer absurdity) of a meatloaf cupcake.

I thought they were great myself - the only downside being how to extract this bacon-wrapped-potato-topped-meatball from the muffin tins without utterly destroying them, and the excessive muffin tin cleaning required afterwards.

Kudos to whichever magazine got us to make these, and to the recipe, which we got here:

Bacon Wrapped Meatloaf Cupcakes

Enjoy!

September Cooking Experiment: Jamaican Jerk Chicken

Tried cooking some jerk chicken and festival last night, reviving our "cuisines of the world" experiments from last year.  The chicken turned out pretty good - definitely tangy - though our experiment with festival (a Jamaican fried bread) was less than successful, mostly, I think due to frying in a little oil instead of deep frying, and frying too hot.  Our result was a little bit too hard and somewhat burned on the outside.  Served that up with a salad, and it was pretty good.

But the best part of the meal?  Well, that was our dessert.

Pineapple upside-down cake.  It really ended up pretty good.

All of the recipes came from this Jamaican Travel website, and are listed below.

Jerk Chicken - we did this pretty faithfully, but had to use 3 jalapenos instead of the 6 scotch bonnet peppers, and used 4 chicken thighs and 2 breasts instead of a whole chicken.  Could have used more peppers, I think, but was pretty good.

Festival - Again, deep fried over lower heat, this might have been edible.  Could use more vanilla AND sugar if you want to sweeten it up - otherwise it was kind of like a naan ball.

Upside-Down Cake - This turned out just fine - if anything at all, we could have used a slightly smaller pan (note the overlapping pineapples in theirs, and the side-by-side in ours) and gotten a thicker cake, but it was still good.

Enjoy!

September Cooking Experiment: Lebanese Mezza

So our Cooking Experiment this month was a little Lebanese food, including:

Chicken Shwarma
Hummus
Stuffed Grape Leaves (we bought these - cheaters)
Pita (bought this too)
Olives (different kinds)
Tzatziki - no idea what recipe we used

Overall it was delicious.  The shwarma recipe is great.

August cooking experiment: Chicken Vindaloo

This time we tried some Chicken Vindaloo recipe to knock out an Indian cuisine.  The recipe we used can be found here:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/chicken-vindaloo/detail.aspx

Though honestly, I was less than impressed.

This was really disappointing because I LOVE Chicken Vindaloo when we order it from our local restaurant.  Maybe we can find a better recipe (there are only 1000 out there) and try again.

Paella

So we have decided to try our hand at some variety in cooking, and are looking to the various cuisines of the world to help with that.  As such, this month we decided to try some paella, from the Andalusian region of Spain.  It's basically a chicken, sausage, seafood mishmash in rice.  We started with Tyler Florence's recipe from the Food Network, but made a couple of modifications, noticeably removing the clams (couldn't find any) and swapping the entire chicken for a couple of boneless, skinless chicken breasts.  Also, Tyler says this makes 4-6 servings.  I would call it 8-12.  You can EASILY halve this recipe.

Ingredients
1 tablespoon paprika
2 teaspoons oregano
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut in large chunks
Salt and pepper
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 chorizos, cut in large chunks
1 Vidalia onion or 1016, diced
4 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped
1 bunch flat (italian) parsley, chopped
1 can of whole peeled tomatoes, drained
4 cups medium grain rice
6 cups water
big pinch of saffron (this stuff is way expensive, fyi)
1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 lobster tails (we had to peel ours to get them to cook right)
1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed

Steps

1. Rub paprika and oregano all over the chicken breast pieces.  Salt/pepper the pieces as well.  Set in a bowl in the refrigerator for an hour.
2. Cook chorizo in oil until browned over medium-high heat in a large pan.  It will separate into what appears to be ground pork.  Set aside.  You can start this after chicken has been in the fridge 45 minutes or so.
3. Cook chicken pieces in the same pan until browned, cooked.  Set aside.
4. Reduce heat to medium.  Cook garlic, onion, and parsley in the same pan 2-3 minutes, turning frequently.
5. Crush tomatoes by hand into the mixture, stir, and cook another 4-5 minutes.
6. Add rice, and stir into onion mixture.  Add water, and simmer for 10 minutes - don't worry about bringing to a boil, that may cook too much liquid off (what we did).
7. Add chorizo and chicken back, and pinch of saffron.  Add shrimp, and cook for 8 minutes, turning occasionally.
8. Shake the pan heavily, cook for about 5-10 minutes.
9. Add lobster, cook another 5-10 minutes until cooked through.
10. Turn up heat to high for 1 minute.  Remove from heat and let sit for 10 minutes or so.  Sprinkle in the peas and serve.

That's it - hope you enjoy it.We had it with some Crianza from the Rioja region of Spain.  I presume it would go well with white wine as well.