Michael Symon's Roasted Chicken with Salsa Verde

I saw this recipe on a commercial one day. Iron Chef Michael Symon was showing this recipe. When I make salsa verde, I always think about Skirt Stake and that is what I always did so seeing him poruing salsa verde over the roasted chicken was quite a revelation to me.

Michael Symon is one of the Iron Chef on the food network show in the U.S. I always liked him but I got to meet him in person and take a photo with him last year. He was really nice and friendly so I like him even more now.

Even though I liked him,  this was actually my first time trying his recipe. It was pretty straight forward and came out really good.

The whole chicken was on sale this week so I decided to try this recipe.

Here is the link for his recipe on The Cooking Channel website. Click Here. 

The chicken came out juicy and flavorful from the lemon and herb. His recipe didn't call for the other stuff around the chicken but I tossed some potato and onion in it.

My son and my husband loved it also. What makes this chicken special is the salsa verde. My son helped me to make it and he was tasting it while we made. It is quite strong taste but he liked it.

This salsa verde has anchovies in it. I didn't tell this to my husband since he is not a big fan of fish. But he loved this sauce so I was very happy. (He might change his opinion if I tell him that there is anchovies in it though..)

The air is getting cooler and time to use oven again. Roasted Chicken is a perfect family meal which makes everyone happy. (Plus, you can make chicken broth with the leftover bones!)


By the way, my 2 year old son is definitely being 2 years old lately. He has a strong will sometimes and if he doesn't like something, he really doesn't like it even when it is a small thing.

Also, he is such an artist so he draw something and even when I think it looks great, if he doesn't like it somehow, he gets upset and cross it out. I think he is very good at drawing and I am so curious how his drawing develop over time.

He is also very much a daddy's boy. He is so attached to him and if my husband is home, he want to do everything with his daddy. Sometimes when I come over to them, he tells me to go somewhere else. I am happy that he loves his daddy but at the same time it makes me so sad that he doesn't want me around. He is not like that when he is alone with me but when his daddy is home, I am a third wheel.

Normally, I am OK with it but when he cry and screams for his daddy when I am right in front of him, I feel useless and sad.

I was talking about this to my mother the other day and my mom told me that he is like me when I was little. I was not that extreme but I was definitely daddy's girl and I didn't like it when my mom was close to my dad. She told me don't worry and don't feel bad about it. She assured me that my son loves me. So I guess my son got this from me. This kind of made me laugh.

I am glad that I talked to my mom. She always makes me feel good and make me feel like everything is going to be fine :-) She knows exactly what I need to hear. I hope I can be like my mom to my son. I want to make him feel good and happy and safe :-)

Ludi's Chicken from Tessa Kiros

I made this chicken before (click here for 2011 June post) and I think this is one of the best roasted chicken I made. When I made this last time, I said I am making this again for sure but for some reason I didn't make roasted chicken for more than a year. Mainly because I can but pretty good roasted chicken for $4.99 from Costco and also we had pretty good Peruvian restaurant which sells delicious roasted chicken with reasonable price.

Anyways, enough of my excuses. The other day, I went to a Korean supermarket called "H Mart". Close to the are we moved in, there is this one area where there are so many Korean and Chinese stores/restaurants. So I decided to go to this Korean supermarket and found lots of ingredients which I use for Japanese cooking. Also, vegetables are much cheaper than normal supermarket. And I found this whole chicken for $4.99. I decided to make this roasted chicken again.

I found this recipe in a book called "Falling Cloudberries" by Tessa Kiros. I have one of her other book which my mother in-law gave me but I borrowed this "Falling Cloudberries" from a library in 2011. Since I don't have the book anymore, I searched in on the internet and I found the recipe.

This roast chicken use lots of lemon, grainy mustard and some white wine. I love the combination of those flavors.

I baked for two hours.

 I love making roast chicken because it is cheap, looks great and you can make chicken stock after we eat chicken. (Click here for how I make my chicken stock at home)

The chicken was great and the sauce is lemony and perfect. I started to think again that maybe I should buy this book.

I remember I also made this fabulous Finnish meatball from this book in 2011. (Click here for the post about Danish meatball dish)

I remember that I made these meatballs while I was pregnant and I was feeling morning sickness. After I made these meatballs for the party, I couldn't even think about meatballs anymore. Just hearing a word "meatball" made me feel sick. But now I have a wonderful healthy boy (thank god) and I don't feel sick anymore when I think about meatballs so maybe it is time to make these delicious Finnish meatballs again!!! Those meatballs are perfect for pot luck party.

Anyways, my son is almost 2. It is amazing how he grow and how much he learns everyday. I am very thankful that I have him and he came to me. When I think about those meatballs I get nostalgic since that was when I had my baby in my belly and I was so anxious to meet him. Well, maybe it is time for him to ear those meatballs. I will tell him this story when he eat this meatballs :-)

Ellie Krieger's Sesame Chicken & Mini Cheese Cake

Using this book again, I made Sesame Chicken and Mini Cheese Cake! Sesame Chicken is my husbands' favorite dish when we order in Chinese food. Normally, it is battered and fried and coated with sweet and sour sauce with lots of sesame. This Ellie Krieger's version is not deep fried but more like stir fried which makes this dish little bit healthier and lighter.

I cooked broccoli too long so the color of broccoli is not great but this sesame chicken was great. It is not exactly like the sesame chicken we order from Chinese restaurant but this one is good substitute when you make it at home. You don't have to deep fry your chicken and it was quite tasty. The sauce has quite strong taste so I end up eating lots of rice....

I like it with lots of sesame and lots of green onions. 

 Also, I tried making this mini cheese cake. It is cupcake size and perfect for little dessert. 

However, when I dissolved gelatine powder, I guess I didn't dissolve it well so when we ate the cheesecake, there were chunks of gelatine in it. It was not pleasant texture and we couldn't eat it. 

It tasted pretty good so if you follow the recipe well and if you dissolve gelatine well, the result must have been much much better. Oh well, I will be more careful next time.....

Even though it did not come out well I think it is a great idea to have such a small cupcake size mini cheese cakes. It looked really cute. I think I should try this again.....

Ellie Krieger's Broiled Buffalo Wings & Broccoli Cheddar Soup

I borrowed another cookbook from the library and made these two dishes from the book I borrowed.

The book is called "Comfort Food Fix" by Ellie Krieger

She used to have a show on Food Network. She always cook something healthy and good for you. I think she is a nutritionist and have a few cook book published. 

I normally don't look at cook books which are focused on healthy food but this one is called Comfort Food Fix and she tried to recreate all the comfort food in a healthier way. I was interested so I borrowed it and I found quite a few things which I wanted to try out. 

One of them was Broiled Buffalo Wings. I love Buffalo chicken flavor but I don't normally make Buffalo wings at home since I don't want to fry them. But this is broiled and you don't have to fry them. I was a bit skeptical but wanted to give it a try. 

First, she ask you to boil the chicken. I liked this idea. Actually, one of my friend did this for BBQ and I really liked the idea of boiling chicken (especially skin on and bone in ) before broiling them. It will take some of the excess fat and also you don't have to worry about the chicken being undercooked inside. 

Anyway, then broil the chicken in broiler until crisp and brown. 

I liked this and my husband also liked this. It is not greasy since it is just broiled and still very tasty. I also made Blue Cheese Dip from the book. I need Blue Cheese Dip when I eat Buffalo Chicken! 

Since I wanted to eat some vegetables also. I made Broccoli Cheddar Soup from the book. 

This was also great. In the recipe, it asked to use low-fat milk but I didn't have low-fat milk at home so I just used regular milk. Also I didn't have enough Cheddar Cheese so I used a lot less Cheddar Cheese than the recipe required but it came out great! 

I pour this Broccoli Cheddar Soup over rice and gave it to my son and he loved it also. I think he eats a lot more Broccoli this way. 

If you are interested in cooking healthier but still want to eat those comfort foods, this is a book to go. I was quite impressed how she made them very tasty yet more healthy. I am planning to try her Sesame Chicken recipe tonight. I will let you guys know how it turned out! 

Perfect for Summer Time "Lemon Chicken"

This is something I made before I go on a trip but it was really delicious so I wanted to post it before I forget.

I used a recipe from one of the blog which I love. The blog is called "Simply Recipes" and this blog has so many amazing recipes and photos. I tried some of the recipe from this blog and everything tasted wonderful. If you are interested in the blog and this lemon chicken recipe, click here to go to "Simply Recipes". 

This is oven baked lemon chicken recipe. It was very juicy and tasty. This recipe uses skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs. I like using chicken thigh for my cooking because it is much cheaper than chicken breast and it normally comes out very juicy.

My husband loves lemon or lime so I tend to look for lemony recipe especially in summer. This was perfect chicken dish for summer. Using oven was a challenge for me (since it was very hot that day and I normally try not to have AC on) but it was worth.

My husband and my son loved it. This is something I would love to make over and over.

It was nice and sunny that day so we ate outside. I love eating outside. In summer if the weather is nice, we normally eat dinner outside.

However there is one problem. This summer there were so many mosquito around and I always got bitten at least 5 times during dinner. One time, I was outside for 5mins and I got 8 mosquito bites. I always get lots of mosquito bite but this summer was just out of control. I had mosquito repellent band on my both wrist and both ankles but those didn't work.

Maybe it is my blood type which attract mosquito but my husband doesn't get mosquito bite like I do.

My son get them sometimes but a few days ago, he got mosquito bite right on his eye lid and it got swollen so badly it made him look like a beaten up boxer. I felt so bad but it seemed like it was not bothering him too much. Thankfully, it went away after one day but it did not look good.

I would love for my son to play outside and I don't want to spray mosquito repellent on him but at the same time, I don't want him to get too many mosquito bite.... Oh well, let's hope it is not going to be bad next year.

Meanwhile, if you know any natural way to repel mosquito, let me know!

Tyler Florence's Chicken Francese

It had been really hot here in NY for the past few days and it had been quite difficult to motivate myself to cook in this heat. It is nice and cool today so I think my motivation for cooking is back.

Anyway, so I had been trying to cook something which require less cooking time on stove or oven. I made this chicken francese which doesn't require standing in front of the stove for a long time.

This is quite an easy yet delicious dish using chicken breast. You just dredge chicken in flour and egg and fry them. Then, cook lemon with wine and put the chicken back to the lemon sauce. I added mushroom since I had mushroom at home but the recipe did not require mushroom.

Lately, I get lots of cooking ideas from Pinterest. I love looking at food pictures on pinterest. Pinterest is something like a online scrapbook which you can pin your favorite pics and organize them by categories. If you haven't try it and are interested in, click here to go to pinterest site.

Anyways, this is one of the dish I found in pinterest. I went to the original site of the pic and found out that the recipe was originally from Tyler Florence who is my favorite! So here, I link to Food Network site for his Chicken Fracese recipe. Click here for the recipe. 

I also found out that there are some people out there who pinned some pictures from my site to their pinterest board because they liked it! I was so happy to find out that there are some people who like it enough to pin my photos to their board. So, if any of you who like any of my picture on my site, you are more than welcomed to pin it to the pinterest board!!! Thank you for those who did already :-)

Well, back to Chicken Francese. The recipe asks you to pound the chicken to make it thinner. This resulted in the huge Chicken Francese as you can see in my pic.

I think you can easily feed three people with two chicken breast. Anyway, my husband loved this dish since he loves anything lemon. This is a great summer dish because of the fresh lemon sauce!

If you like lemon, it is worth trying this dish! Enjoy :-)

Chicken with Apple, Onion and Cider Sauce AND Quinoa

I made this chicken dish using the book which I got for my birthday from one of my friend.
This is the book I used.

From this book, I made a dish called "Chicken with Apple, Onion and Cider Sauce". I had chicken and red onion and apple at home so this was the perfect dish to make. Here is the recipe on Food Network site. Click here if you would like to check out the recipe. 

This is the end result.

It uses apple cider vinegar and butter for the sauce. This vinegar is not too strong so I think it will be good even for someone who doesn't love vinegar. As for me, I love tangy flavor so this was great.

From another angle.

My husband liked it but he didn't love it. Maybe he doesn't like vinegar too much. Anyway, for me, this was great combination with the sweetness from apple and onion with tanginess from vinegar.

For side dish, I made quinoa. This is something I had never made but I tried at my friend's place and I loved it. Plus, it is quite healthy, I think.

I used this recipe from Food Network. Click here to jump to the recipe. 

It has raisin, garlic, pine nuts, parsley and stuff. It is very tasty. I also fed this to my son. He didn't like it on the first day but he liked it on second day. Sometimes, he is like this and you never know what he likes today and what he doesn't like tomorrow. So I have to try to again and again.

My husband didn't love it but I am going to make this again. I think you can just have this as salad.
When you are tired of same side dish, this might be a new side dish which you might want to give it a try!

Easy and Delicious! Japanese Chicken and Egg Bowl (Oyakodon)

This is very typical Japanese dish called "Oyakodon" It means parent and child bowl since ingredients are chicken and egg (parent and child :-)

This is very easy dish to make and I like it but for some reason I forget to make this. So overall, I would say I make this dish 2~3 times a year. I think I should make this more often.

My husband also likes this dish and similar dish called "Katsudon". "Katsudon" is pork cutlet bowl. Instead of chicken, you add pork cutlet. I don't make this at home because if I make pork cutlet, I will just eat it as is. I don't want to add egg and sauce and stuff. So my husband sometime eat this dish in a food court of Japanese supermarket.

Here is how you make "Oyakodon"

Oyakodon

Chicken Breast  1/2lb
Onion    2 small
Egg       3
Scallion    3
Sake        3 tablespoons
Tempura dipping sauce   3 tablespoons
Sugar      1 tablespoons
Water      2 tablespoons

1. Cut the chicken into bite size pieces and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of sake. Marinade for 1 hour or so in the fridge.

2. Slice onions and add in a frying pan with rest of sake, tempura dipping sauce, sugar and water and cook until soft.

3. When onion is soft, add chicken pieces into the pan and cook.

4. Meanwhile, mix eggs in a small bowl.

5. When chicken is cooked, add eggs into the pan, bring to boil and add chopped scallions.

6. Serve it over hot rice and enjoy!

This is very easy Japanese dish which you can try with simple ingredients. Enjoy!

Ina Garten's Chicken with Shallot sauce

 I made this a while ago but I didn't post this so now I am posting this. This is a recipe from Ina Garten from Food Network. I like her recipes. It is clean and fresh and tasty. This is chicken breast with lemony cream sauce with shallots. If you like lemon, I think you will like this recipe.

If you click here, it will jump to the recipe of this dish. 

For side dish, I sauteed some mushroom. I love mushrooms. I can eat bowl full of mushroom like this. My husband is not a big fan of mushroom but since I love it and I use it all the time, now he eats them without saying anything :-)

This chicken looks really good and taste very fresh and sophisticated. I think many people would like this dish. In recipe, it called for skin on boneless chicken breast. Since I couldn't find such a thing at a supermarket, I just used skinless boneless chicken breast but it came out good.

I hope you will try this recipe since it is so easy and simple!

Roasted Lemon Chicken

So, I wrote about Chicken Tortilla Soup the other day. I also told you that one of the reason I made that chicken tortilla soup was because I made roasted lemon chicken the night before and it came out pretty tough and was trying find a way to reuse this tough chicken.

Well, even though it was a failure, I wanted to upload and show it to you guys.

I made this following recipe in a book which I borrowed from a library but I think I might left the chicken in the oven too long.

I bought a whole chicken which was already cut up and made this.

This is before roasting. Got lemon, butter and thyme.

This is how it came out.

It looks pretty good but it was actually pretty tough and blunt. Even my husband said that he doesn't like this at all :-) (Normally, he is very good at complimenting my dish so this one must had been quite bad)

I also made roasted potatoes. This was really good. I added lots of herbs and spices which I have at home.

This is the breast part of the chicken. It is humongous so the plate looks small and the balance is kind of off.

For the side dish, I also made fennel. This is something I learned from my mother-in-law. It is super simple, easy but yummy! I just need to cut some fennel and add lemon and olive oil, salt pepper and microwave it for a few minutets and have a wonderful side dish in a minutes!  Before I try this side dish, I didn't like fennel too much and also didn't know how to use it. But now, I love it in this way and I make this all the time. Also, Fennel is suppose to help your digestion! It is a win win dish!

Well, so this was the roasted lemon chicken which was not great but because of this dish, we were able to enjoy wonderful Chicken Tortilla Soup!

Peruvian Food with my sister

While my sister was visiting us, we ate many things together but one of them was Peruvian food. I like Peruvian food so I took her to a Peruvian restaurant near by. She never had Peruvian food before but seems like she liked it also.

I think the most famous Peruvian food is roasted chicken. I like their roasted chicken but I also like what they call "Jalea" which is fried seafood with tangy salsa on top.

This is the roasted chicken we ordered.

And this is Jalea.

Shrimp, White fish, Calamari and mussels are fried and tangy onion and tomato salsa is on top. Normally, it is not easy to eat lots of fried food but with this tangy salsa, you can not stop eating it.
If you like fried seafood, I am sure you will like this.

Also, we went to have Buffalo wings on other day. We ordered mild but it was quite spicy. Blue cheese dressing is the best part of these wings! It also came with cornbread. I like cornbread!

We also made strawberry sponge cake since my sister's birthday was near. I will post is next time.

Chicken Salad & Chicken Picatta from Trisha Yearwood cookbook

As I mentioned in the last post, I borrowed some cookbook from the library. Well, I do this quite often. I love looking or reading cook books. It is one of my hobby, I would say.

Anyway, I made two dishes from one of the book I borrowed. The book I used fro these dishes is Trisha Yearwood's cook book.


I didn't quite know about Trisha Yearwood but found out that she is a country singer.  I normally don't listen to country music so I didn't know her but I got to know her by finding this cook book.

This cook book has lots of family recipes which she acquired growing up.

I like the idea of gathering all your favorite recipes from your family and friends and make a book out of it.

I think food is very important part of your memory and eating something reminds you of the time you spent when you had that dish or people you were with.


Anyway, I made two dishes from her cook book. One is Chicken Salad.

This chicken salad has grapes, poppy seeds, dill, almonds and so on. For me, this is very American chicken salad. I love the sweetness of grapes and crunchy of almonds. This was a great chicken salad and my husband absolutely loved it.

We made chicken salad sandwich with pita bread for dinner.

Light yet very satisfying meal!

The other dish I tried was "Chicken Picatta". Actually, I had never made chicken picatta so this was first time for me making this dish.

This particular chicken picatta has capers, butter, lemon and stuff.

This was absolutely amazing! I think caper here is doing a great job. Plus, it has lots of butter in it so of course it taste good! Everything taste better with butter, right?

My husband also loved this dish. This is a great looking and wonderful tasting dish. I would love to make this sometimes when we have guest. This is really impressive. I loved it.

There are some more dishes which I would like to try from this cook book. I will show them to you when I try.

By the way, my son is now 6 months old! Time flies. He is growing up too fast. He is rolling around and almost sitting on his own. He needs lots of attention and he is getting very active and alert.

I feel so lucky that I can stay home with him and enjoy every little thing he does. It is wonderful to discover what he does differently today from yesterday. I really don't want to miss anything. It is amazing how much and how fast he grows. I cherish every moment with him. I am so blessed to have him. It is wonderful time right now to watch him grow.

Well, he is cranky and crying right now so I have to stop now and go talk to him!

Rachel Ray's Orange Balsamic Glazed Chicken

This is a recipe from Rachel Ray which I saw on Food Network the other day. It looks so easy that I had to try it. It is sauteed chicken thigh with orange marmalade and balsamic vinegar glaze.

For Rachel Ray's "Orange Balsamic Glazed Chicken" recipe, please click here to go to Food Network website. 


First, season the chicken and saute in a pan.

Flip them and cook more.

Meanwhile, mix orange marmalade (Since I didn't have orange marmalade in my fridge, I used apricot marmalade instead), balsamic vinegar (I used white balsamic vinegar instead of regular balsamic) and chicken stock in a bowl.

When chicken is cooked through, add the marmalade mixture and cook until the sauce thicken.

At the end, add chopped scallions.

That's it! I served with rice and salad.

It was so easy but very tasty. I like the sweet and tangy taste. I will definitely make this again. Maybe I will use orange marmalade next time. But apricot was good also!

For the detailed recipe, please visit Food Network's website, Rachel Ray's Orange Balsamic Glazed Chicken recipe. Click here to go to the recipe. 

Rachel Ray is famous for 30 minuets meal which you can make under 30 minuets. I have not tried many of her recipe but I think all of her recipes are great especially when you work all day and can't spend time to cook but you want to have a good meal at home. I would like to try her other recipes also :-)

Roasted Chicken Thigh with Mushroom Cream Sauce

I was checking one of my favorite Japanese blog and I saw this chicken with mushroom sauce. It looked really good and all the ingredients were easy to obtain here in the U.S. so I decided to give it a try. I came out pretty good!

First, seasons chicken and brown in the pan.

Make a bed of parsley in the oven sheet.

Add chicken on top of parsley and bake in the oven.

Take out from the oven

Make mushroom cream sauce.

Add cream sauce on top of chicken and serve. We had egg noodle and salad on the side. This was really good meal!

My husband loved this mushroom cream sauce and he wanted more. Maybe I will make more sauce next time. Also, I used bone-in chicken thigh but maybe I will use boneless because that will be easier to eat.

I loved this rich creamy mushroom sauce. I think this is a perfect dish in a cold winter night.

Green Beans Casserole, Chicken and books

When I think about winter food, I think about casserole. I think many people make casserole for Thanksgiving and Christmas when you have people over for dinner or lunch. When I think about casserole, I think about warm family gathering with laughter. It is a happy dish for me.

Many people use Campbell's cream of mushroom soup to make green bean casserole. I think it is a great idea but this time I tried to make my own. It was not as difficult as I thought. I just used a recipe on Food Network. Click here for the green bean casserole recipe from Food Network website. 

Well, the recipe asked to make your own fried onion but I cheated on this one and bought canned fried onion from Trader Joe's.

I sauteed mushroom and onion and add flour and milk then pour them over the frozen green beans.

Then, sprinkle with fried green onion and put them in the oven, That's It!

I also made chicken with a simple marinade and baked in the oven. Easy dinner with lots of flavors.

We had them with some rice. (Well, I am Japanese. I need rice)

This kind of food are very comforting. We eat these hot casserole with smiles on our faces. I felt so happy to have wonderful dinner with my husband in a warm safe house. We are so lucky.



I went to the library again to borrow some books. One of them is the cookie book from Martha Stewart.
I think everybody feels like baking cookies when it get closer to Christmas. It is a great project to do with my husband. I love making Christmas cookies with my husband. He is also excited about it.
Anyway, this book has so many variety of cookies with wonderful photos. All of them looks great and you just want to bake all of them. I think this is a great book to have especially when you love cookies.











The next book is Indian/Pakistani cooking book. Ever since I had Pakistani food at the restaurant few week ago and also homemade Indian food at my friend's place. I have been wanting to make Pakistani or Indian dish at home. Many of dishes from this book seems easy enough for me to make so I would love to give it a try one of these days.










This book is not a cook book but I was interesting in so I borrowed it. It is about a woman who died from cancer in 1950's and her cell was removed and used for research. Since then, her cells helped to find cures for so many diseases. This book is about the woman and her family and their struggle. I didn't know anything about this story and it is very interesting story.







It is nice and warm today in NY. It makes me happy to feel nice warm air. I hope the Thanksgiving day will be nice like this also! Speaking of thanksgiving, I think I should start preparing for Thanksgiving. I am so excited about it!