0 Food Adventures and Slapsgiving

The past few days I've been eating leftover soup (from the Mortobello and Rice Soup that I made), so I haven't made any new recipes. However, not only did I make some Key Lime Pie again:

but I also traveled to one of my favorite restaurants in Northern Virginia, Maple Ave Restaurant! For anyone who lives in Northern Virginia, or visits the area, I highly recommend visiting the restaurant in Vienna. As you can see below, my friends and I thoroughly enjoyed our dinner.

We finished the day with watching some episodes of How I Met Your Mother, namely the episode "Slapsgiving," which is a phenomenal representation of the show. Happy Mid-week!

0 Culinary Challenge: Portobello Soup with Brown Rice

Earlier this week, I posted about the new Culinary Challenge feature at my blog, where readers give me challenges to create whatever recipe they desire. This week I am doing Rachel's challenge; I have come up with a soup recipe that's easy to make without an oven, and that contains a large amount of vegetables. I recommend making this soup for a cold day, as it'll warm your insides and it is easy to make (the entire recipe can be done in a single pot). Please rate this recipe or comment at the bottom of the post, and decide whether I succeeded or not!

Servings: 8 bowls of soup
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Active Cook Time: 8 minutes
Inactive Cook Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients
-3 tablespoons olive oil
-1 tablespoon butter
-4 tablespoons minced garlic
-1 medium yellow onion
-32 oz chicken stock (use vegetable stock if you wish to have a completely vegetarian soup)
-2 tablespoons fresh diced parsley
-1/4 cup snow peas
-1 red bell pepper
-3 large Portobello mushroom caps
-1/4 cup Pre-sliced carrots
-Green onions (scallions)
-2 tablespoons oregano
-1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
-Pinch of Sea Salt and Freshly Ground pepper
-juice of one half lemon
-1 tablespoon honey
-1 cup brown rice


Steps

1. Preheat a pot to medium heat on the stove top. Prepare your mise en place of vegetables: dice the onions, cut the snow peas in half, dice the bell pepper, and slice the mushroom caps. Mise en place is a French technique that means "everything in place", where you prepare your ingredients before cooking. Doing a mise en place for this recipe makes it easier to maintain a clean kitchen, and allows you to focus on the onions and garlic while they sautee, minimizing the risk of burning.

2. In the pot, add the olive oil and butter. To this, add the onions and garlic. Keep the onions and garlic moving, and sautee until the onions are translucent.

3. To this add the stock, peas, bell pepper, honey, parsley, oregano, seasoning, and Portobello. Slice about 3 tablespoons of the green onions, and add to the soup. Stir, cover, and reduce heat to medium. Cook for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. While the soup is cooking, cook the rice in either a rice cooker (follow your rice cooker's directions on how to cook), or cook using instant brown rice (follow the directions on the instant rice).
5. After 20 minutes, add the lemon juice and the carrots. Cook for another 10, until all vegetables are tender. At the end of the 10 minutes, add some salt and pepper to taste.

6. Once the soup and rice are ready, spoon some rice into the bottom of a bowl, and then add the soup to the bowl for whatever serving amount you desire. Top the soup with some fresh carrots, sliced green onion, and parsley for garnish.

I hope you enjoy, and please rate/comment on the recipe to decide whether I met the challenge!

0 Reese's Truffles (Gluten Free)

At one of the Christmas parties I attended this past season, there were these fun little peanut butter balls present as the dessert. However, they had one small issues: graham crackers were one of the ingredients. So, once again I set out to create my own variation that those desiring gluten-free could eat. They're pretty easy to make, and don't take long at all.

Ingredients
-10 oz bag of Reese's peanut butter chips
-1 tbsp butter
-1/4 cup gluten free graham cracker crumbs
-1 tsp vanilla
-1/4 bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips
-1 tablespoon corn syrup

Steps
1. In a double boiler or microwave, melt the chips and butter. If using a double boiler, be careful of steam and the bowl becoming hot. If using a microwave, melt at 50% heat to prevent burning.
2. Stir in the vanilla and crumbs, and mix until well combined.
3. Scoop with either a spoon or small ice cream scoop into balls on parchment paper. Place in the freezer for about 5 minutes
4. Once firm, remove from the freezer and melt the chocolate in a similar process to step 1.
5. Dip the balls into the chocolate, and sprinkle or roll in the crumbs.

Enjoy!

3 End of 2010 Giveaway Winners!

Hi everyone!

The End of 2010 Giveaway has come to an end! Before announcing winners, thank you to everyone who entered and participated.

So the winners of the two giveaways are:

Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii - Cheryl
Gluten Free Cookbooks - Clara

Congrats to the winners! I've attempted contacting you through the Google Friend Follower, but if you haven't gotten any contact from me, please use the Contact Us page to give me the contact information you would like me to use.

Thank you again to everyone who participated, and sorry to those who didn't win this giveaway. There was such a wonderful turnout, and I look forward to having another Giveaway in the future! If you guys have any awesome ideas for giveaways, please let me know.

12 Culinary Challenge

As an engineer, I love solving problems and coming up with creative solutions for problems in front of me. That's why I love whenever people give me food challenges. For instance, the Dark Chocolate Lemon Truffles are a recipe that came out of a challenge posed from one of my roommates. One day he challenged me to come up with a lemon pie covered in chocolate; therefore, I gave him a crunchy chocolate dessert infused with citrus flavors.

The reason I tell this story is that another of my friends who currently lives in France (hi Rachel!) has given me a challenge to come up with a cheap stove-top or microwave recipe that uses ingredients readily available to her. From this I came up with an idea.

Dear Readers,
Give me conditions such as:

• dietary restrictions, 
• tool restrictions, 
• inexperience with cooking, 
• flavors you love,
• food budget,

and I will accept your culinary challenge. I will create a recipe you'll love that meet the restrictions you give me. Now, I'm sure you're asking "What happens if he fails?". My response to you is that if I do, by some crazy circumstance, fail then I will present you with a surprise that will be sure to satisfy and make up for my defeat.

So please, challenge me (in the form of a comment in this post), and I will gladly accept it.