The New Chef's Journal

In my last entry, brazilian shrimp soup, I said that I was very concerned about how my dish was going to turn out. When first I saw this recipe, chocolate peanut butter middle cookies, I knew that it would take a phenomenal mistake on my part for them to not taste delicious. I found this recipe on Jane Maynard's blog This Week for Dinner . Thepioneerwoman.com and bunsinmyoven.com offer their own takes on the recipe. In addition to being a better chef than I am, Jane is also a better photographer. If you want to see some photos of how truly amazing these cookies can look, check out that link. Mine didn't turn out quite as pretty as her's, but they still tasted great. I have to warn those of you interested in trying this recipe that it is very labor-intensive. This took me longer to prepare than any other cookie recipe I've made. That being said, the final product is well worth the effort. Below are the original ingredients and directions recommended on other site...

Brazilian shrimp soup is something I've never made before or even tried in a restaurant. This recipe is something that I stumbled across by accident while searching for something new to make and thought it sounded delicious. This is the description included when the recipe was originally published in Food & Wine magazine:            " Coconut milk's rich flavor will keep you coming back for more of this  substantial soup. A true Brazilian version would include slices of okra,  but ours is already so satisfyingly thick that we left it out." For those interested, this is the wine recommendation: "The sweet elements here call for a somewhat assertive sweetness in the wine as well. A Vouvray demi-sec, from France's Loire Valley, ought to strike just the right balance." The recipe I'm using is a combination of the original Food & Wine version and versions from the Annie's Eats food blog and Group Recipes . My version includes a bit m...

For Valentine's Day I decided to make one of my girlfriend's favorite dishes - shrimp fra diavolo. This shrimp dish has a little bit of a kick thanks to the crushed red pepper. I've done this dish over both pasta and creamy polenta. My preference is to mix it with thin spaghetti, which is what I did this time. The recipe I'm using for this comes from the Food Network's Giada DiLaurentiis. Of all the chef's on the food network I've had the most success using Giada's recipes, though Tyler Florence, Rachel Ray, Ina Garten, Emeril and the Neeley's have some great stuff too. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/shrimp-fra-diavolo-recipe/index.html The original recipe calls for fresh herbs, which because of time constraints I didn't have available. This recipe still works well with dried herbs. The rule for converting from fresh to dried is that 1 tablespoon fresh herbs = 1 teaspoon dried herbs. Or in this case 3 tablespoons fres...

Mee goreng is one of my absolute favorite dishes to get at Thai restaurants, but I've never made it myself before.  There are tons of varieties of this recipe floating around on the internet. I'm going to combine a couple of them and also wing it a little bit. This recipe can be cooked with just about any protein, so feel free to substitute whatever you want. I'm going with shrimp and chicken, mostly because I happen to have them at my apartment already. The first recipe I'm basing my version off of comes from Cooking Light magazine by way of MyRecipes.com, which is a really good resource for food ideas:  http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=10000001924714 The second recipe comes from myasiankitchenny.com, which I discovered purely through the magic of google, but it looks tasty. They have plenty of other recipes which I may have to explore later.  http://www.myasiankitchenny.com/2009/04/mee-goreng-mamak-pedas-fried-s...