Recipe Review - French Toast Bake

My wife loves breakfast, I mean she can eat it twice a week at night in addition to what I normally do for Sunday mornings. Me, I'm not as big of a fan by any means, I mean I can do pancakes and some french toast if it isn't completely soggy. The other thing is she sometimes asks for a casserole or something for her fellow teachers when they do a potluck. This one she thought looked simple enough to make and take.

This dish is a little more  difficult to 'set up' but in the end it's a pretty good dish. Not too heavy not too light and can easily be sliced up for a crowd. The main instructions can be found right here at Julies Eats and Treats. A couple of changes, I used Italian bread and not sourdough, although sourdough is probably pretty good and could offer up some different depth of flavor. I also used actual butter instead of the substitute but whichever you have could work easily. I topped it with some strawberries and some vanilla cream.

This is a really good recipe and would be great for upcoming holidays. This is one that will stay in the arsenal.

Rating: 5/5

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Recipe Review - Shrimp Fried Rice

In the interest of trying to do something different I have been all over pinterest and one recipe I found that seemed to be kind of simple yet different for our family is Shrimp Fried Rice. I took several recipes together but the mian one that I found was here on the blog Damn Delicious. I also looked at some other recipes and decided to use regular full size shrimp instead of the smaller ones that you normally get.

The shrimp I seasoned simply, and those aren't on the recipe I linked to above, but it was some salt, pepper, ginger, flour and a tiny bit of corn starch. Take the shrimp, peel and de-vein of course and  toss in the flour and seasoning and then remove so it can set up a little bit. It only takes a few minutes to cook the shrimp in a skillet with oil really quickly.

As for the fried rice, I made some white rice a little earlier and fried it but most recipes say to try and have it done earlier so that it can cool and have a slightly more 'fried' texture. It was pretty good but having rice done before hand would have saved a lot of time and probably improved this just so slightly. Overall this is a good recipe though.

Rating: 5/5

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Recipe - Cinnamon Roll Cake

Facebook always has an abundant number of recipes and my wife sill always tag me when she's something that she likes. that's where this recipe came from as something that is a hybrid cinnamon roll/cake. The idea is to bring you that great flavor with a lot less work because you don't have to roll and do as much to make dough.

For the recipe, (since I can't take credit for it) go over to Chef in Training  to get it and print out a copy for your recipe book at home.

My Assistant Concentrating

Mix Ingredients and then add melted butter on top

Pour into a greased 9x13 pan then begin to mix your cinnamon mixture

Drop in the cinnamon and swirl with a knife

Bake and add icing made of powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk and voila.

This recipe was a cinch to make and it turns out pretty good. I do think it might need a little tweaking to get maybe a little bit more 'chew' to it and I haven't perfected the art of making a good icing using only powdered sugar, vanilla and milk because the sugar never seems to dissolve properly to me.

Rating: 3.5/5

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Recipe- Bang Bang Chicken

Pinterest is great for finding new ideas to cook and the last thing I checked out on a whim was a new way to cook up some chicken since having it so often can get extremely boring. This recipe comes from www.damndelicious.net and is pretty much a creative spin on chicken breast nuggets. These are breaded in panko and what sets them apart is the sweet chili sauce that goes with them. You can find the specific recipe right here: Bang Bang Chicken Recipe

Now the one thing I will say is that Panko breading can be a bit rough on the mouth and the recipe should have specified some minimum amount of salt and pepper to get started with. That's the only real negative and here are my pictures- under normal non-studio light.


First the buttermilk batter:

 Then we have the panko bread crumbs

 Next up we fry in batches

 Then we plate and drizzle with the sauce

Now the sauce uses some mayo, sweet chili sauce, and honey and is pretty delicious really. It would be great on a lot of items.

This was a good recipe and it doesn't take too long to make. I will probably try this again. It was fairly easy and straight forward so even a novice can attempt this and make something pretty tasty.

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Recipe - Chicken Lettuce Wraps

If you've been to PF Changs you know they are known for their Chicken lettuce wraps and my wife and I were smitten by them after going there once. Fast forward a couple of years later and looking for something different and a little 'healthy' these lettuce wraps are always a nice little option. now this isn't my own personal recipe as I got it in an issue of Food Network Magazine. You can get your own copy here.

Almost Famous Chicken Lettuce Wraps

The thing about this recipe is that you have to chop so many things up. The past few times I have made this recipe I hand cut the chicken breasts. Today I decided to use the food processor.

This was much easier than chopping by hand and it didn't get too fine like ground chicken, but it was more chunky, just like the restaurant version so I was very happy with it. Now you have to marinate the chicken in the rice wine corn starch solution so I suggest you might want to look to the right and take a peek at the Tupperware link over there and then send a message to my wife because if she has an online party going on you can get yourself a deal.

After that it's a simple process to cook up the ingredients and combine them to have a nice meal that is a little different from the norm.

This is a great recipe and one that made it into our family recipe book.

Rating: 10/10

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Recipe Review - Home Made Tortillas

After eating at Cafe Rio the other day I was inspired. I already had some of the marinated Adobo Chicken Thighs from Safeway and I needed to figure out something to do with them. Of course, some sort of Taco, or burrito, or flat taco type of vessel for the chicken. I looked up this recipe on Pinterest and had everything at home so I figured might as well make my own and go all the way fresh.

Hit that link and go on over to the Tablefortwoblog.com to get the full details. I was skeptical at first, thinking it might be a lot of work but it wasn't. Just take the ingredients, mix them together, let them sit for 15 minutes then separate and roll out into tortilla shapes before heating.

Now, I would cut back on salt to a mere pinch if that the next time I make them but for the time and effort actually expended, these were freaking excellent. You can taste the freshness. Sometimes I watch these cooking shows and you will see a chef with 20 ingredients or trying too hard to be extra innovative when something so simple can be so perfect and delicious. These I can do better, but not by much because, it's a tortilla, simple and delicious.

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Welcome to Chow With Me!

This blog is going to be about food. If there are things that I am passionate about, food would rank within the top 5. I love to cook and try new recipes and new foods. What you will get here are reviews of recipes I have made as well as some of my own, and new items that you can find in stores and try out yourselves. Hopefully you will enjoy these things as much as I do.

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