Chipotle Corn Salsa & Guacamole

If you are living in State College and don't like to cook, the chances are you will be eating some kind of fast food (McDonald's, Burger King, etc), Qdoba, or Chipotle for dinner. Chipotle is certainly at the top of the list on many people's preferences for lunch or dinner, and the only issue is that the restaurant usually has so many people that you have to wait awhile for your food.

Since I don't live downtown, going to Chipotle is kind of a hassle. So I thought, why not make it myself? The only difficulty was that since I don't cook Mexican food often, I was missing a lot of the ingredients. Most of the ingredients that I don't have are the peppers - The recipes call for both red and green jalapeño peppers, poblano chilies, and ancho chilies. So this was definitely a planned dinner with a trip to the grocery store the night before. Also, the steak has to be marinaded overnight, so this is definitely not something to make on the fly.

I had some flank steak in the fridge, so I looked up a carne asada recipe specifically for flank steak. Maybe it's just me, but anytime a recipe calls for vinegar, it freaks me out. I don't especially like the sour taste of vinegar, and the smell scares me. But I followed the recipe and added white vinegar in the marinade, tasted the marinade prior to putting the steak in it.... not bad! All that was left was putting some salt and pepper on the steak before putting them in a hot pan.

I guess it depends on your taste, but I absolutely love the corn salsa and the guacamole from Chipotle, so making them was a must! I could not find red jalapeños for the corn salsa, so I used green jalapeños instead. The most time consuming part of the recipe was cutting the red onions into little tiny bits for both the corn salsa and guacamole. Maybe there is some kind of technique that I am not aware of, but now I am tempted to buy those food choppers to speed up the process. Also, I also learned the hard way not to touch my eyes after chopping peppers and chilies.

I made some Chipotle rice with the dish, warmed up some tortillas, and piled everything together. One thing I do really like is that I could put as little meat as I want, or as much corn salsa and guacamole as I want, in my soft taco. I am one of those people who are too shy to be demanding in restaurants, so I always end up with too much of meat and too little of corn and guacamole. Well, it's a different story in my own kitchen!

Kung-Pao Chicken

Life is strange... Although I am Taiwanese, I often find Asian recipes the most difficult to make. Perhaps it's because I have grown fond of American and European food and therefore my palate knows the ingredients better. No matter the reason, I know my weakness, and I aim to improve.

Kung-pao chicken is something you can probably buy for pretty cheap at a take-out place, but often the quality of the chicken is not great or the spiciness level is too much or not up to par. Also, although there is enough steps and ingredients in the recipe, there is nothing too difficult or unfamiliar. Therefore, I decided to tackle this recipe as my initial steps to learn Asian cuisine. Baby steps, baby steps!

I do love how I could control how much hot red peppers I put in this dish, because I like food SPICY! I also like how I have the option to omit water chestnut, because I always pick them out when I order take-out. It just happens that I have some leftover baby lettuce in the fridge that shaped like cups, so I put the kung-pao chicken in them to add some fun to dinner!

Pepperoni Stuffed Mushrooms

I love, love, LOVE mushrooms! If it's up to me, I would include mushroom in every meal... and most of the time, I do! But this time, I decided to go the distance and get some gigantic portobello mushroom caps. The seafood stuffed mushrooms from Costco is absolutely delicious, so I wanted make something to that effect. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough ingredients to make a seafood stuffed one, but I found some pepperoni slices leftover from the last time I made pizza and decided to use pepperoni to stuff the mushroom instead. I also didn't have the Ritz crackers the recipe called for, so I substituted with panko bread crumbs. Every time I substitute an ingredient I get very nervous that the food wouldn't turn out well, but it worked this time! The recipe is for stuffed smaller button mushrooms, but I think it works perfectly well with whatever size mushroom caps you decide to stuff.

Blue Cheese Burger

Have you ever had ingredient leftover in your fridge that just seems to stare at you every time you open the fridge, but you can never find a way to use it? That happened to me for a couple of weeks with my 1/2 pound of ground beef. It was in the freezer for a week after I used up the first 1/2 for another recipe, but then I just couldn't find a recipe that I wanted to try with ground beef in it. However, I hate having things just sit in the freezer, so for awhile now, I have been having nightmares about this ground beef.


Then the other day, I found blue cheese that I didn't know I had at the back to the fridge! Thankfully, the cheese was still good, so I started trying to find recipes that could use both the ground beef and the blue cheese together.... and voilà! Blue cheese burgers!


I never made burger patties before, so I was nervous going into this that my patties wouldn't stay in the round shape and would just fall apart. Also, I mixed in a lot more blue cheese than recommended because I prefer my food with more taste. Therefore, I was so happy when the patties actually stayed together!  I smothered the burger with some mushrooms, topped it with lettuce, placed everything in between buns, and dinner was served.

Whole Roasted Garlic

I remember tasting this delicious roasted garlic in a fancy Italian restaurant back home, but I have always thought that it's some fancy recipe with expensive ingredients. However, when I came across this recipe while browsing the web, I couldn't believe how easy it is! For those of you who have never tried this way of eating garlic, I definitely recommend it. Plus, I think it looks pretty cool as a side.

First, you just cut off the top of the garlic bulb. Then after you sprinkle some olive oil, salt, and pepper on it, just simply wrap it in aluminum foil so it resembles a Hersey's Kiss.

After making sure the foil is nice and tight, throw it in the oven. Oh! It does take about an hour for the garlic to be ready, so plan ahead! The garlic cloves should come out of its pockets fairly easily once its done.

David Lebovitz's Chocolate Chip Cookies

As I browse different recipe websites, I kept coming across good reviews about David Lebovitz's Chocolate Chip Cookies. Since I make at least two dozen cookies a week, I figured that I would try these out for myself and see if they are indeed one of the best chocolate chip cookies out there.

The ingredients are pretty standard compared to other chocolate chip cookie recipes. As usual, the butter and eggs should be room temperature before mixing. However, one "special" step to this recipe was that after mixing all the ingredients together, they are rolled into logs, covered in plastic wraps, and refrigerated for 24 hours. I have seen recommendations of refrigerating the cookie dough prior to baking, but never tried it. 

The logs are taken out the next day and sliced into pieces. The cookie dough was just firm enough to keep its shape when cut, but not too hard so that the knife has trouble slicing through.

Then after arranging the pieces on the baking sheet, into the oven they go!  They did turn out very well - Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside. I also have two more logs left so that I can make another batch in middle of the week without taking the time out to mix the cookie dough (more time for studying!). I will definitely use this recipe again with different kinds of chips.

Welcome to "À La Cuisine!"

Cooking for some is a chore, while for other is a way to relieve stress for the day. For me, it's simply fun!  So join me as I explore recipes from various cuisines. There may be sweat, there may be blood, but all I know is that in the end, my tummy will not go hungry!