My 2 Year Adventure, week 88: Spicy shrimp nodle bowl with cucumber salad

Week 88:
  OK, so let me get something straight, I'm not a writer, I'm a cook. Blogging is definitely not my forte, but I have been cooking every week since my last post. I really need to be more consistent. Alright week 88 of 104... Today I made a Spicy shrimp noodle bowl with a cucumber salad. The noodle bowl consisted of rice stick noodles, shrimp, sauteed vegetables, all severed in a fish broth that I made. The fish broth wasn't completely "from scratch" but I didn't just buy a fish stock. I started of with chicken broth, added water and clam juice then topped it all off with the shells from the shrimp and some slices of ginger. I boiled it down and it made a really yummy broth. Then I sauteed some garlic, onion, and bell pepper, added the broth, snap peas, some chili flakes, the shrimp and the noodles, cooked it all down to deliciousness and TAH-DAH!!!! A really yummy soup type dish. I served it with some lime wedges as well as some salad consisting of cucumber, radishes, green onion, and a light dressing. My family really enjoyed it (9/10) and it only to me about 30 minutes to make. 

 

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :) 

My 2 Year Adventure, week 57: Salmon burgers

Week 57:
  Today I made Salmon burgers. What started off as a nice piece of salmon soon got mangled and dismembered in the food processor. 1/4 pound got mixed with Dijon and grapefruit rind (originally intended to be lemon) and got turned into paste. The other 3/4 pound got coarsely chopped with tarragon, shallots, salt, and pepper. The 2 salmon mixes combines and created 4 beautiful patties. Those hopped on the grill and the burgers were topped off with honey and arugula. There were meant to be onions as well but my dad decided to pickle the remainder of the onion so there was none for me to use. This dish was really simple and easy and my family gave it a 8.5/10. 

  

 See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :) 

My 2 Year Adventure, week 55: Spicy chipotle shrimp salad with an avacado, mango, and pinapple salad/ lattice-topped blackberry cobbler

Week 55:
  Today I made 2 kinds of salad. Firstly, I made a shrimp salad and then to top it off, I made a fruit salad (well, made with fruit). The shrimp salad was the main component though and it tasted pretty good. The only problem was that my local grocery store doesn't sell canned chiles, so I just used chile powder instead of an actual chipotle chile. The problem was mainly with the complementary salad. I think I've mentioned this before, but I genuinely believe I have a talent for picking the greenest fruit possible and then convincing myself that it's super ripe. The mango was soooooooo sour, I was actually kind of tough to eat. Despite my fruit issues my parents gave the dish a 7.5/10. 
 

 

  Secondly, I made a cobbler. Blackberries aren't exactly in season so they were a little on the expensive side. However, when blackberries start coming in by the truckload, this will be a very common dessert at home. This dish gave me the opportunity to test out my new mini food possessor, which was recently given to me as a gift. I ground up some almonds for the dough and it turned out pretty well. The dessert was great. I hadn't done a lattice top in a while so I kind of cheaped out. Instead on doing the traditional, over, under, over, under, I just did the vertical strips first and then placed the horizontal ones on top. It was very good and the only thing lacking was some ice cream. My parents gave it a 9/10 and I have to say, I agree. 

 

See you nest time internet! Love, Alexa :)

My 2 year adventure, week 38: Crab cakes with spicy remoulade/ Chicken and okra stew

Week 38:
Finallyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! A new entry! I haven't blogged on here since September 2 2013. It's been 4 months! But, I have been cooking and that brings us to week 38. So my dad and I decided to cook together today. Normally I cook alone but we thought, hey, it would be fun to bond over a common interest. We started off with the crab cakes. The crab cakes were super easy to make other than actually cooking them. You just mix a bunch of stuff together, make some patties, and fry. Frying is difficult though because the cakes have a tendency to fall apart... We were successful and we made 7 beautiful cakes. They were sooooooo good but no where even near the remoulade sauce. O...M...G! I don't like mayo at all but somehow with lemon, capers, cayenne, and some other ingredients, the mayo sauce was AMAZING!
For the stew, it was really time consuming. There was a lot of prep and the stew took about an hour to cook but it was so worth it! The flavor was so good and the chicken and okra were cooked perfectly. These were actually some of my favorite dishes so far and my family gave both of them 9/10. But as a wrap-up, I'm back and expect many more entries!

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)
 

My 2 year adventure, Week 22: Caramel apple oatmeal cookies/ Apricot ginger bellinis/ Halibut with caper salsa verde and asiago roasted fennel

Week 22:
Instead of doing this entry recipe entry by entry, I'm going to do it in the order I did the dishes. So I started with the caper salsa verde. It was a very simple salsa. Mostly basil with other elements such as the capers and some mustard. Once I finished that I moved on to the cookies. I didn't follow the recipe and I didn't put parchment paper on my pan I greased it instead and when the cookies came out of the oven the caramel had exploded all over the baking sheet and hardened. So I started scrubbing the pan to try and get the caramel off and there was this chunk of caramel that wouldn't come off so I did the stupidest thing imaginable. I took the sharpest knife in the kitchen and tried cutting the caramel off. Of course, the knife slipped and I cut myself. I ended spending two hours in the hospital so that I could get stitches in my finger. Yeah... I'm just glad our sharpest knife if very dull and that I cut my left hand instead of my right. When I got home of course I couldn't cook so I got to boss my dad around and I got him to finish the dishes for me. except I did get to do the bellinis because there wasn't any chopping involved. I didn't get to taste the bellinis but I tasted the apricot syrup before we added wine to it. The halibut dish ended up being a red snapper dish because there was no good halibut available and there wasn't any asiago cheese so I used Gruyere. The bellinis got a 9.5/10, the cookies got 7/10, and the halibut and fennel dish got an 8/10.

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)

My 2 year adventure, week 18: Salmon croquettes/ Spanish-style tuna and potato salad

Week 18:
My croquettes went well but once again I bought and un-pin boned fish but to add to that it had the skin on the filet as well. I combined all the ingredients for the croquettes and the dough almost had the texture of ground meat. I made a big mistake though... The recipe says that one of the ingredients in 1/4 cup of mayo, divided. I didn't notice the "divided" part and I put 1/4 of a cup of mayo in instead of 2 tbsp. But that wasn't the mistake. I was able to take the the extra 2 tbsp of mayo out but... I was about to put it in the sauce when my great-aunt said "Hold it! That touched raw fish!!!" I was so lucky that she was there to catch that cause that might not have been the best decision... The croquettes turned out really well though and my family gave them a 9. I think... :) The salad was okay, I guess. I don't know something about the flavor was too much. Maybe the red wine vinegar. My great-aunt was a giant help today with prep. I'm pretty sure my family gave the dish an 8. 

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)    

My 2 year adventure, week 15: Creamy garlic and seafood soup

Week 15:
To give you guys an idea on how behind I am today is July 24th and I made this on father's day. This was my first time making my own broth completely from scratch.  It had shrimp shells (fished out at the end of course), onion, 18 cloves of garlic, jalapeno peppers, white wine, and water. I think wine smells and tastes as bitter as it gets so once I added in the wine the kitchen just filled with this overwhelming bitter smell which, personally, wasn't pleasant to cook in. Maybe when I'm older I'll appreciate wine more... The seafood was snapper and the shrimp. and I was cutting up the snapper filets and I realized that there were sharp bits in some of them and I realized that I didn't pin bone the fish. So I had to go through every piece of fish to check it. The soup ended up pretty good but... improvable. My family gave it a 8. Happy extremely belated father's day!

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)     

My 2 year adventure, week 14: Pan grilled halibut with chimichurri and charred vegetable rice

Week 14:
Let's start off by saying when I told my parents that I was making charred vegetable rice my mom said "Hopefully this won't end up more charred than you expected". I made the chimichurri and it was really runny... I don't know why but it kind of flooded the fish... The rice was really good but not even close to enough of it and..... I DIDN"T BURN THE VEGETABLES TO A CRISP!!!!!!!!!!!!! They actually turned out slightly charred. But this was a really good dish and my family gave it an 8/10. It was my first time trying to intentionally burn something and it worked!

See you next time internet! Love Alexa :)

My 2 year adventure, week 11: Jerk salmon with a papaya salad

Week 11:
This week was really off, so off in fact, that I forgot to blog about it... oops! So I made jerk salmon, the original recipe called for mackerel but the store didn't have any and the internet says that salmon is a good substitute. What the jerk in jerk salmon is, is a type of paste with a distinct flavor that you rub on the fish. I was kind of upset because  the recipe called for scotch bonnet peppers but I couldn't find any... I just used serrano peppers, but twice as much as the recipe called for. The papaya salad consists of: papaya, bell pepper, jicama, lime juice, and cilantro. I was supposed to julienne the veggies but a butchered them :( They were like french fries. My papaya completely fell apart. The salmon was really good but it didn't go with the salad. On top of everything I cut myself while cutting an onion. The paste was really good. I would smear it on anything. The salad got a 7 1/2 and the fish got 8 1/2. I forgot to mention, my week was so off that I didn't notice that I had two recipes for this week, so I moved it to week 73. We're gonna have to wait a while...

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :) 

My 2 year adventure, week 10: Cheese and shrimp stuffed poblanos

Week 10:
I can't believe that this has been going on for 10 weeks!!!!! To celebrate 10 weeks I made stuffed poblano peppers. The recipe called for chihuahua cheese. NO, not the dog. I couldn't find chihuahua cheese so I just used cheddar. Worked perfectly fine. The way the did the recipe is actually a really cool idea. You make a cheese sauce, mix thing and you take some of it and add chopped shrimp, grilled bell peppers, and a bunch of other good stuff into it. The remaining cheese mix gets turned into a sauce. You need to broil the poblanos and bell peppers but i don't have a broiler so my dad grilled them for me. The weather was overcast when we started, then it started raining... :( We were still able to use the b-b-q despite the rain. It was a really good dish but I didn't really like the poblanos taste and ended up scraping out he filling and just eating the filling on its own. We serve the peppers with rice which was a awesome idea from my dad because those two peppers were not enough for an entire meal. My family gave it an 8. It's a decent score. I'm really exited for double digit weeks!

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :) 

 

My 2 year adventure, week 8: halibut fish tacos with mango salsa

Week 8:
Deep frying. Something that occurs in fast-food restaurants and makes your food greasy... I never thought that I would be deep frying food at home. Today I did though. I deep fried halibut... one of the most delicate and expensive fishes. We got such nice filets it was almost a shame to fry them. I was lucky, I was entering the store today and the was this giant sign that said SALE ON HALIBUT. Perfect day to buy halibut filets. I had a dilemma at the store because after my 2 banana disasters, I was skeptical on picking out fresh fruit. I picked out four mangoes and I showed them to my dad and he took them back and switched them out for better ones. *sigh*. I made the mango salsa and it was amazing! It was a little spicy, but good. The batter was super simple. Flour, beer, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. We actually had recently got a instant thermometer as a gift and we decided to test it out. It seemed to work so we tried to mess with it. We stuck it the oil then ran it under cold water then back into the hot oil and saw how long it would take for the thermometer to get to the proper heat ;) We fried the fish and it was soooooo good! There was not much excess grease and it was slightly crispy and when it was eaten in corn tortillas with the salsa it was amazing. My family gave it a 8.6. That's how my deep frying experience went. Now how do I get rid of the oil...?

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)

  

My 2 Year Adventure, Week 1: Corn and Crab Fritters with Guacamole/Sauteed Snapper with Orange-Fennel Salad

Week 1:
       Today my dad and I made Corn and Crab Fritters with Guacamole. I had no clue what to expect. I had never eaten a fritter before today. I was in a bit of a frenzy at the store because I haven't ever had to look for canned crab before so I wasn't sure if the store would have it. They did, and they had many varieties of it. I spent a full 5 minutes deciding what kind to buy. It was an easy recipe and making them was a lot like making pancakes... except that you you fry them in a ton of oil to make them crispy. Because of the amazing amount of oil and the heat my dad and I had to be careful to not get burned by flying oil. The guacamole really shocked my dad and I. It called for 2 teaspoons of minced onion. Yeah. Only 2. After we added all the ingredients it ended up being the perfect amount of guacamole. They ended up being really tasty even though the crab was pretty hidden. 
 

                    (Crab Fritters and Guacamole)  

       The crab fritters were tasty, but not quite a full meal. My dad an I used them as an appetizer. While my mom, brother, and great-aunt were eating the fritters and guacamole, my dad and I were in the kitchen frying some snapper (a.k.a. rockfish) and an orange-fennel salad. Fennel, if any of you are wondering, tastes like licorice (which I found out today). We went to the store and bought $20 worth of fish, only to come home and find out we bought twice as much as we needed... The finished product was delicious and definitely worth the money and time.

                 (Sauteed Snapper with Orange-Fennel Salad)

      Overall my family gave the fritters 7/10 and the fish 7.33/10. They would have given it more, but they didn't want to set the bar too high for the other dishes. LOL. 

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)