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The Making of a Chef

~ The Many Musings of a Budding Chef

The Making of a Chef

Monthly Archives: October 2012

An Interesting Sandwich

25 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by A Budding Chef in Anecdotes, Food Critiques, Lunch, Meals, Pictures, Recipe Thoughts

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Chicken, Chili Peppers, Cooking, Experiments, Food, Food Photography, Garlic, Sandwich, Thoughts, Tomatoes

I think about cooking almost constantly. I’m always thinking of ways to better my cooking, of new things to try. Right now, I’m sitting on the idea of cooking some sort of white fish en papillote. En papillote, for those who don’t know, translates to “in parchment.” It’s, as my mate loves to refer to it, “pouch cooking.” You take a protein, fish or chicken is commonly used here, and wrap it up in a parchment paper pouch to let the steam cook it through. The dilemma that I’m facing is that I don’t want to do this with chicken, but instead I’d rather do it with fish. I’ve never cooked fish before and rarely eat it. This alone causes a couple of problems: I don’t know how it’s “supposed” to taste, nor do I know what to pair the fish with. Everything I’ve seen has pointed me towards summer vegetables: squash, mushrooms (which I’m not particularly fond of), et cetera. When something finally catches my eye, I’ll make it; until then, I’ll continue to brood.  Continue reading →

Comfort Food: Chicken and Rice Casserole

23 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by A Budding Chef in Anecdotes, Dessert, Food Critiques, Meals, Pictures, Recipe Thoughts, Recipes

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Baking, Chef Things, Chicken, Cooking, Dinner, Food, Food Photography, Homecooking, How To's, Musings, Personal Posts, Prep Work, Rice

For me, cold weather and comfort food go hand in hand. Autumn and Winter are the best seasons to enjoy more heavy and warming dishes. One of our favourites all year round is mum’s spaghetti and meatballs; it’s worth suffering through the heat to make in the summer, but absolutely enjoyable to come home to in the winter. The same can be said of my grandmother’s bisquick chicken. It’s an absolute favourite. In the summer, the kitchen turns into an oven, a place to avoid if you know what’s good for you. But in the winter, when you’re seeking warmth, the aroma of chicken baking lures you in and the warmth keeps you there. Not to mention there’s the promise of getting to try other cooking foods. But that’s another story. Then there are some dishes that were just made for autumn. To me, any meal that requires a long slow cooking process is perfect for the shorter colder days of fall and winter. Think of a pot roast for instance. While it simmers all day without heating up the kitchen, pairing it with stewed carrots and fluffy mashed potatoes with gravy makes it entirely too heavy of a meal to eat during the summer. The same could be said of casseroles. Casseroles are great and I’m partial to the holiday months because there are two casseroles that mum makes that I look forward to all year round. For years, I (like any other child who didn’t know what tasted good) wouldn’t go within a mile of mum’s green bean casserole at Thanksgiving. Why would I want to? Even though it smelled delicious, I would still wrinkle my nose at it. It was green and looked gross. What was that she put on top of it? Were the green beans held together by some kind of whitish sauce? A couple years ago, I took the dive and tried it. I couldn’t believe I had been missing that all these years and now I go back for seconds not for the turkey, but for the casserole. At Christmas mum makes this thing with sweet yams. Again, for years I wouldn’t go near the stuff. It smelled sweet like candy but they looked orange and were covered in a glaze. I finally got brave last year and asked mum to pass the sweet potatoes. They’re super delicious and now there’s one less box in the fridge for Christmas leftovers. Before Sunday, I hadn’t actually made a casserole myself and I’m happy I did. Though chicken and rice casserole is one of the more basic casseroles out there, it was slightly beyond my comfort zone in cooking and it sounded really good when I was reading through my behemoth cookbook at some ungodly hour of the morning.

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Vlog 7: Chicken and Rice Dinner

22 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by A Budding Chef in Vlogging

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chicken and rice casserole, Cooking, Food, Personal, recipe, Recipe discussion, Vlogging

In which I discuss the hearty chicken and rice casserole recipe that I made for dinner even though I’ll be writing about it later on.

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The Good Burger

20 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by A Budding Chef in Anecdotes, Food Critiques, Meals, Pictures

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1 am, Beef, Best midnight meal ever, Cheeseburger, Colby Jack Cheese, Cooking, Cooking in the middle of the night, Food, Hamburger, Pictures, pictures of food

I stumbled through my front door at 1 am this morning. Josh and I had hung out later than we thought would happen and by the time he was going to drop me off at my house, it was already too late to grab something to nosh on from places like Taco Bell or Burger King. On the counter, there was a baking pan with little chocolate cookies, each filled with either Stonewall Kitchen’s Coffee Caramel or Peanut Butter Chocolate sauces. They were tempting, but I needed something of sustenance. I had eaten only the lightest of lunches several hours earlier and we didn’t think to do dinner. It honestly didn’t occur to us. So therein was the age old problem: what does one eat at one in the morning? Continue reading →

Comfort Food: Bisquick Chicken

16 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by A Budding Chef in Anecdotes, Dinner, Food Critiques, Meals, Pictures, Recipe Thoughts, Recipes

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Baking, Bisquick Chicken, Chicken, Chicken Recipe, Comfort Food, Comfort Food Recipe, Cooking, Food, Food Photography, Homecooking, How To's, Personal Posts, Photography, Potatoes, Prep Work, recipe

During the vlog this week, I mentioned nostalgia brought on by tasting food. The movie I was referencing was Ratatouille. For those of you who don’t know what the premise of the movie is, it’s that anybody can cook, even if you are a mouse. It follows the narrator, Remy through his journey from the Parisian countryside to ending up in the heart of Paris at the restaurant Gusteau. The scene I was referencing comes toward the end, where this critic Anton Ego is coming to the restaurant and they bring him out a plate of ratatouille. He studies it almost sceptically and then takes a bite. The next thing that happens is that we are taken to a glimpse of his childhood. He’s standing in the kitchen looking like he’s just been beaten up. The scene cuts to the young Ego sitting at the table, his mum handing him a bowl of what looks like ratatouille and he tucking in, a smile forming on his lips before we’re taken back to present day. Continue reading →

Vlog 6: Hot Chocolate, Bisquick Chicken and Dumplings

14 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by A Budding Chef in Meals, Vlogging

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A Recap of the Week, Cooking, Food, Meals, Personal Posts, Vlogging

In which I discuss the great meals I was able to nosh this week while mum was out of town, making hot chocolate because the mornings were so dreary, my grandmother’s awesome bisquick chicken and getting dumplings for dinner Saturday night.

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Another Living Room Picnic

11 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by A Budding Chef in Anecdotes, Dinner, Food Critiques, Lunch, Meals, Pictures, Recipe Thoughts, Recipes

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chicken tacos, Cooking, Dinner Recipes, Food, Lime, Lime Chicken, Lunch Recipes, recipes, Stovetop Cooking, tacos, Tortillas

A while ago, I learned about this wonderful game on the android market called “Alchemy”. The premise of the game was to start with the very basic elements (earth, air, fire, water) and to combine them to create things. For instance, water plus air gives you a rain cloud. And a rain cloud plus earth gives you a plant. Earth plus earth gives you PSI. When you combine the plant plus PSI you come up with coal. It goes on like that, so on and so forth until you’ve created all of the “elements”.  Continue reading →

Steaks

10 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by A Budding Chef in Uncategorized

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Beef, Cooking, Dinner, Food, Grilling, Homecooking, Personal Posts, Pictures, ServSafe, Steak

At the beginning of the season, I wrote a post about how much I loathe cooking steaks under the broiler in the oven. I’ll say it again: there’s nothing like the ability to cook steak on a grill. You simply cannot get the same delicious flavour and gorgeous look by throwing your steak in the oven under the broiler (or at 400 degrees for an hour), it just doesn’t happen. Continue reading →

Revisiting Chicken Alfredo Pizza

08 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by A Budding Chef in Anecdotes, Dinner, Food Critiques, Meals, Pictures, Recipe Thoughts, Recipes

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Alfredo, Baking, Cheese, Chef Things, Chicken, Cooking, Dinner, Food, Food Photography, Garlic, Homecooking, How To's, Italian, Linguine, Musings, Pasta, Pictures, Pizza, recipes, Stovetop Cooking

I’ve never actually “visited” chicken alfredo pizza on the blog before. I’ve covered alfredo a few times; from in pictures, to the recipe, to twisting the recipe to use Gruyère cheese even. But I’ve never actually touched the pizza on here before. I think I meant to last year because I have a picture of it in the “my creations” folder in my pictures library, but I never got around to it.  Continue reading →

Vlog 5: Cold Weather, Gnocchi and Alfredo Pizza

07 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by A Budding Chef in Meals, Vlogging

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A Recap of the Week, Chicken Alfredo Pizza, Cooking, Food, Gnocchi, Personal Posts, Vlogging

This weekend’s Vlog, in which I talk about the cold weather, making gnocchi for dinner and revisiting chicken alfredo pizza. Not my best adventure, that was…

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Who Am I?


Steffanni Daddario. Aspiring, budding chef. Some people are born to go into mathematics, science, interior design. Whatever. I was born to cook.

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October 2012
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