Multipurpose Tex-Mex Marinade

This marinade is the foundation for many of my favorite dishes.  I love to use it for for grilled chicken, which is great on its own or as the filling for delicious enchiladas.  I've also used this marinade for  wonderful, roasted pork tenderloin.  It's also great on grilled shrimp, and while I haven't tried it on steak I'm sure it would be a delicious application.  The versatility doesn't stop there - the dry ingredient list can also be used as the basis for your own homemade taco seasoning!

For the marinade chop up two or three chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (depending on how spicy you like it, I usually use three).  Add the lime juice, crushed garlic (Do you have a garlic press? You really need a garlic press, for this and for life.), dry seasoning, fresh cilantro, and olive oil, and mix to combine.  It will have the consistency of a loose paste.  Add your meat, making sure it is covered in the sauce place covered in the refrigerator.  I'm using a mixture of chicken breasts and thighs here because I like the combination of light and dark meat in enchiladas.  Refrigeration times vary depending on the meat (take a look in the instructions for specific times).

If you want to convert the dry ingredients into taco seasoning, add 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, 1/2 teaspoon of onion powder, 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder to the salt, chili power, cumin, and paprika. Add this dry mixture to cooked ground beef or turkey with a 1/4 cup of water, and let simmer until the sauce has thickened. If you don't plan to use it immediately, store the taco seasoning in an airtight container.

Multipurpose Tex-Mex Marinade

Ingredients

• 2-3 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
• 1 lime
• 3 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. chili powder
• 1 tsp. cumin
• 1/2 tsp. paprika
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp. fresh cilantro
• 3 tbsp. olive oil

Instructions

1. Roughly chop 3-4 chipotle peppers and add them to a large mixing bowl
2. Add the lime juice, crushed garlic, dried seasoning, fresh herbs, and olive oil.
3. Stir to combine
4. Add meat, cover and refrigerate.  (Marinade chicken for no more than 6 hours, seafood for no more than 2 hours, pork and steak for no more than 12 hours)

Outside the Brown Bag: Lunch Ideas

Sometimes figuring out what to being to work for lunch can be a trial.  Buying lunch on campus can be incredibly expensive, not to mention a less healthy option.  In the student center where I work the average cost per lunch is about $7, so if you're buying lunch every day for a year that could be $1,715 or more!  I have a couple of ideas for lunches that can be made easily in advance.  Each is more of a formula than a recipe; you can use the ideas as building blocks to suit your own taste.

Salads are a great lunch option when you're able to do your prep work on Sunday, and make your morning routine easier.  This recipe is from my roommate, Christine, who is a veritable queen of salad construction.  This one has spinach, strawberries, red onion, edamame, roasted acorn squash, and feta cheese with a balsamic vinaigrette.  Christine will roast the squash and chop the onions on Sunday an assemble the salad in the morning.  Remember to put the dressing on the side until you're ready to eat to keep the salad from getting too soggy.  Try to stick to dark, leafy greens like spinach, arugala, kale, or some blend of those.  Generally, vegetables that are dark in color are nutrient rich.  Dark greens are a particularly good source of iron.

The second lunch idea I'm variation of an English ploughman's lunch, which is typically a combination of meat, cheese, bread, fruit, vegetables and condiments like mustard or chutney.  The picture above is smoked gouda cheese, summer sausage (a purchase made when I was feeling nostalgic for the Midwest), and a sliced apple (my favorite variety, Pink Lady).  A good formula for this lunch is fruit/vegetable + protein + dairy.  Here are some ideas for each category that you can mix and match:

• Fruits: apples, pears, grapes, pineapple, strawberries
• Vegetables: cucumbers, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower
• Protein: summer sausage, salami, prosciutto, thick-sliced ham
• Dairy: Cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese

You can also add bread or crackers, and a condiment like chutney or a whole grain mustard.

These are a couple of new lunch ideas - I'd love to hear from other #SApros about they types of lunches you bring to work!  Share those in the comments! 

Quick Dinner: Stir Fry

Stir fry is a great application for a quick dinner, it took me about 30 minutes to prepare.  You're able to get a bunch of vegetables into one meal, and often can use up vegetables you have leftover from other recipes.  Most of the time you invest in making a stir fry is in preparing those vegetables so doing that in advance (like on the weekend) is a great way to make this a truly quick dinner when you get home late from work.

The key to making a stir fry come together quickly and without stress is having everything you need prepared before you start cooking.  The French phrase mise en place means putting in place, and thats is the technique we'll utilize here.  As you prepare each ingredient place it in a little pile on your cutting board or in a bowl so it will be ready when you start cooking.  First combine the soy sauce, sriracha, and brown sugar in a bowl, stirring occasionally throughout the cooking process to make sure the sugar dissolves   Chop the bok choy, slice the mushrooms, grate the carrot, ginger, and garlic.  Slice the green onions and reserve some of the dark green pieces for later on in the preparation.  

Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet or wok on medium-high heat.  Once the oil is hot, add the garlic, ginger, and green onions and sauté them for a minute to create your flavor base.  After a minute add the mushrooms and carrots to the pan and sauté until the mushrooms are cooked through, about seven minutes.  The mushrooms will take the longest to cook through, once they have add the chopped bok choy and allow it to wilt.

After the bok choy has wilted, add the sauce udon noodles to the pan.  Typically these come fully cooked, I like to heat them in the microwave before adding them to the pan so they don't stick together.  Let the sauce and noodle cook with the vegetables together for three or four minutes until the sauce thickens.  Before serving add the reserved dark green onions.

Feel free to add any vegetables you like.  I didn't grow up in a meat and potatoes type of family, so I don't mind this vegetarian dinner.  If you do want to add chicken, pork, or steak (which I think would be particularly good with this sauce and vegetable combination) cook it in the beginning of the preparation and remove it from the pan until the end so it doesn't overcook.

Stir Fry

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup of soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons of brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons of sriracha 
• 3 baby bok choy
• 1 lb. white button mushrooms
• 1 medium carrot
• 4 green onions, some dark green reserved
• 1 inch of fresh ginger, grated
• 2 large cloves of garlic
• 1 14 oz. package of udon noodles

Instructions

1. Combine soy sauce, brown sugar, and sriracha in a small bowl, stirring occasionally to ensure the sugar is dissolved
2. Chop bok choy and green onions, slice mushrooms, grate carrots, ginger, and garlic. 
3. Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat
4. Sauté garlic, ginger, and green onions for one minute
5. Add mushroom and carrots, cook for seven minutes, or until mushrooms are cooked through
6. Add bok choy and cook until wilted
7. Next add the sauce and udon noodles, cook for 3-4 minutes until the sauce has thickened.
8. Add reserved green onion tops and serve

Self Care: Rigatoni with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

Let's talk about self care, y'all.  It's important.  Many of you have probably read Ken Schneck's Huffington Post article about the alarming lack of self care in our field.  We need to do a better job taking care of our emotional and physical health, and for me nothing says emotional health like a big, creamy bowl of pasta.  This pasta dish is one of my favorites.  It's creamy, tangy, and has the most beautiful orange color.  

One of the great things about this dish is that the food processor does most of the work.    You don't have to work too hard to chop up the vegetables, which you'll see reflected in the photos. Roughly chop your peppers, tomato, onion, and garlic and add them to a saucepan over medium-high with 1/4 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes.  

Let's talk about the tomato in there for a minute.  I developed this recipe after reading a lot of similar recipes that only had red peppers in them, and that's what I did the first time I made it.  I found the pepper taste to be a bit too tangy, so after playing around with the proportions I added one medium sized tomato to round the flavor out.  Tomatoes have a lot of water in them so make sure you seed the tomato before you add it to the pan to eliminate some of the liquid in the final sauce.

Once the vegetables are cooked through add them to the bowl of a food processor to make the base for the sauce.  The pepper mixture should be a gorgeous bright orange color.

Add the red pepper mixture back to the pan and pour in the heavy cream. Yeah baby, heavy cream - this is a self care meal after all.  Don't forget to season your cream salt and black pepper.  I love black pepper and cream, so I was pretty generous with it.

Stir the cream and red pepper mixture together and bring to a simmer.

Add the cooked rigatoni to the pot with the sauce and the basil and mix together.

I usually serve this with an arugula salad dressed with lemon juice, oil oil, and parmesan cheese.  Or you can just forget the salad and grab a glass of wine, and plop down in front of the TV, this meal is for you after all!

Rigatoni with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

Ingredients 

• 1 lb. rigatoni
• 1 8oz. jar of roasted red peppers
• 1 medium tomato, seeded
• Half of a large yellow onion (or 1 small-medium onion)
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1/4 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes
• Half pint of heavy cream
• 1/4 cup of fresh basil, cut in chiffonade

Instructions

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil and cook pasta to al dente (about ten minutes)
2. Drain the jar of red peppers
3. Coat the bottom of a large saucepan with olive oil and put on medium-high
4. Roughly chop the peppers, tomato, onion, and garlic and add to pan with crushed red pepper flakes.  Season with salt and pepper
5. Sauté the peppers onions, and garlic for about five minutes or until the onions are translucent and transfer them into the bowl of a food processor
6. Blend vegetables to the consistency of a thick sauce
7. Add the blended pepper mixture back into the saucepan and add the heavy cream.  Season the heavy cream with salt and black pepper
8. Bring the pepper mixture and cream to a simmer while pasta cooks, stirring occasionally
9. Drain the pasta and add to the sauce.  Add the fresh basil and serve with grated parmesan or romano cheese

Quick Dinner: Brown Butter Sage Chicken, Cous Cous, and Turnip Greens

I work with the student programming board right now; if you've ever worked in programming you'll know that it's a lot of fun and involves a lot of time outside of the traditional workday.  This means time is precious and sometimes you need to get dinner on the table quickly.  If you're looking for something really quick after getting home from a late meeting or event this meal is for you.  I was able to get all of this on the table a mere twenty minutes after I took everything out of the refrigerator.  

Cous cous and dark leafy greens are two of my favorite ingredients for quick cooking.  Cous cous is added to boiling chicken broth (or water, or beef broth, or veggie broth - you do you) and is taken off the heat and covered for five minutes.  It's also the perfect bed for the juicy chicken and brown butter.  I like to use this whole wheat cous cous from Trader Joe's:

Dark leafy greens quickly wilt when sautéed with olive oil and garlic.  I used turnip greens here, but spinach, kale, arugala, or even baby bok choy would also work.  Simply coat a pan with olive oil and let the crushed garlic begin to cook on medium heat.  Before the garlic begins to turn golden add the chopped greens, salt, and pepper, and allow the greens to wilt, stirring occasionally.

With your sides complete you can move on to the main dish, brown butter and sage chicken.  This chicken has a big flavor coming from a deceptively simple list of ingredients: chicken, butter, and sage.  Melt two tablespoons of butter over medium-high in a non-stick skillet and allow it to become brown, and fragrant.  Meanwhile cut chicken breasts into 1 inch cubes - cutting the chicken into small and uniformly sized pieces will ensure it cooks quickly and evenly.  Season the chicken with salt and pepper before adding to the pan in one, even layer.  Add the chiffonade of sage on top of the chicken and let it cook undisturbed for 3.5-4 minutes.  Letting the chicken cook without stirring it is really important to create a beautifully crispy exterior and to let all of the wonderful brown butter flavor the meat.

After 3.5-4 minutes give the chicken and sage a stir so it can finish cooking. Spoon the chicken and remaining brown butter sauce over your cous cous and serve with your greens.  I hope you enjoy this quick recipe on a night when you need something good to eat fast!

Brown Butter Sage Chicken

(Adapted from Kevin & Amanda)

Ingredients 

• 1 pound chicken breasts
• 5-10 sage leaves
• 2 tablespoons of butter

Instructions

1. Melt butter in a non-stick saucepan over medium-high heat, and allow to turn brown and fragrant
2. Cut chicken into 1 inch cubes and season with salt and pepper
3. Stack sage leaves on top of each other and roll like a cigar. Cut the cigar into strips to create a chiffonade 
4. Add chicken to browned butter in a single layer and put the sage leaves on top of the chicken
5. Allow chicken to cook for 3.5-4 minutes undisturbed.
6. After 3.5-4 minutes stir chicken and sage and allow chicken to finish cooking, about 2 minutes.

Welcome!

I'm creating this blog as part of a technology project for my campus ecology class.  I've wanted to do a cooking blog for a while, so this was really a great impetus to make it happen.  My intent is to gear this blog towards the cooking needs of other Student Affairs Professionals.  Our lives are incredibly busy, but this doesn't mean delicious food has to be out of our reach.