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The Making of a Chef

Tag Archives: Baking

Chicken Parmesan Melts

13 Tuesday Nov 2012

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

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Baking, Chef Things, Chicken, Chicken Parmesan, Confessions, Cooking, Dinner, Food, Food Photography, Grilled Cheese, Homecooking, How To's, How To's in Pictures, Lunch, Melt, Prep Work, Stovetop Cooking

At the beginning of the season, I mentioned how autumn is the perfect time of the year to bake things. Since then, I have incorporated baking into my cooking repertoire more than usual. A little while back, I made the perfect bisquick chicken. It was perfectly baked and crisp on the outside and still juicy, yet cooked through on the inside. The parmesan chicken melts were the same way. While baking was only one of the steps, I didn’t hesitate to use the oven like I so often do in the summer. In fact, I cranked the heat up and enjoyed the warmth it brought to the house.  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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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 →

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 →

A Sunday Cooking Tale, Part 2

10 Monday Sep 2012

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

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Baking, Cakes, Confections, Cupcakes, Dessert, Food, Food Photography, How To's, Ice Cream, Pictures

When we last left off, I had just finished making dinner for Josh and I. While I had enjoyed making dinner, I knew that if it had ended up being a bust, we would still have a divine dessert to look forward to. Seriously, making dessert was a piece of cake.  Continue reading →

A Sunday Cooking Tale, Part 1

07 Friday Sep 2012

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

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Baking, Beef, Cooking, Food, Food Photography, How To's, Pictures, Potato Recipe, Steak, Steaks, Twice Baked Potatoes

Last Sunday, I did a bit of cooking. Josh and I went to the grocer to pick up some things. At first it was looking like we’d be having pan seared duck breast and goat cheese polenta… and then we found out that the grocer’s butcher doesn’t carry duck. They do, but they’re rather extremist about it; either you buy a whole duck, or you get an already teriyaki marinaded petite breast. I was unimpressed by this and decided that instead we’d do steak and twice baked potatoes instead. Why twice baked potatoes? They were something new and I’d had really good ones Saturday while I was in Rhode Island.

Continue reading →

The Pizza Crust Mishap

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

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

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Baking, Buffalo Chicken Pizza, Chicken, Cooking, Food, Food Photography, Garlic, No Rise Dough, Not My Recipe, Personal Posts, Pictures, Pizza Dough

Recently, I had the idea to make a buffalo chicken pizza. I already had chicken in the fridge marinating in the Louisiana Rub from Stonewall Kitchen, I just didn’t know what to do with it. With a little bit of poking around on the internet, I soon figured out that I wanted to make a pizza. With that, why not be a little creative, go for broke and make my own pizza crust? Again, I looked over the internet, looking for a dough recipe that didn’t call for yeast. It didn’t take long before I found it and it sure looked simple enough.  Continue reading →

Chicken Margherita Pizza

27 Monday Aug 2012

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

≈ 1 Comment

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Baking, Chef Things, Chicken, Chicken Margharita Pizza, Confessions, Cooking, Diced Tomatoes, Dinner, Food, Food Photography, Homecooking, How To's, Lunch, Pizza, Pizza Dough, Prep Work, recipes

It started out with a grocery trip. Then again, it always starts out with a grocery trip. Josh was hungry and I didn’t know what to cook. I hadn’t made a calzone in a while, so I would do that. Except, by the time theory came into practice, it had changed.  Continue reading →

An Unsuccessful Escapade Into Baking

14 Tuesday Aug 2012

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

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Baking, cookies, Food, Not My Recipe, recipe, Sugar Cookies

I’m not a baker and this fact should be evident. Baking, to me, is far too precise. You can’t deviate from the recipe in the slightest way without something going awry. That’s part of the allure of cooking for me. While baking is more of a science, cooking is an art. You can throw a little of this here, add a dash of that there. Yet, you also have to know when it’s enough. Every artist faces this dilemma, of knowing when to stop and say it’s enough.

That aside, My sister Sydney and I tried our hand baking together. While I dabble in cooking, she dabbles in baking. She’s made some of the best cookies (aside from Mum’s) that I’ve ever eaten. Her monkey-butt muffins are delicious and she makes a to kill for coffee cake. We were sitting around bored when I decided to show her the cookie cutters that I bought for my birthday. They’re from the game Portal by Valve and I absolutely adore them. She has a macabre sense of humour and thought that the portal men cookie cutters looked like chalk outlines of murder victims, or better yet ninjas. I’d never seen her so thrilled by something and I suggested we go bake cookies.  Continue reading →

Buffalo Chicken Taquitos

08 Wednesday Aug 2012

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Baking, Bleu Cheese, Buffalo Chicken, Cooking, Dinner, Food, Homecooking, Hot Sauce, How To's, Lunch, Prep Work, Ranch Dressing, recipes, Stovetop Cooking, Taquitos

Remember that post I made pre-sabbatical? It was the one talking about Mum’s and My ultimate appetizer idea that I wasn’t allowed to post the recipe to. For some reason that night, we tried to take an already perfect appetizer and then make it even better, by adding the pastry from another appetizer that we like so much (tomato bacon cups… yum!). Well, I found another variation for the recipe. This one, I’m allowed to post because it’s my own doing.  Continue reading →

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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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