she cooks: huevos flamencos and cibo's penne al telefono

I wanted to try to make a famous dish from a restaurant so the first few things that popped into my mind were Bamba's Huevos, Omakase's Spicy Tuna Salad, and Cibo's Telefono. The salad didn't fit in much so I decided to go for the other two. 

Huevos Flamencos

It wasn't Bamba, but it was good. I was so tempted to add cheese to it (it was really calling out to me) but I decided not to because it was my first time to make it and I didn't want to screw it up by adding things outside the recipe.

The recipe I followed: this and this

What I could've done better: chop all the ingredients smaller

What I'm happy about: it was good altogether, and I'm happy my egg didn't break! The recipe says to bake it in the oven until the egg's ready to go, but the only oven friendly container I had was so ugly and I didn't want to serve the Huevos in them so I baked the egg separately and place it on top of the Huevos after. Ideally, it would be best to have the egg baked on top with the egg white all over the Huevos, but since I baked it separately I lost a lot of the egg white. Good thing the yolk didn't break during the transfer. It broke beautifully on top of the dish when it was eaten.

This one would've been near perfect if only I made enough sauce! I thought I had enough since the pan was about halfway full, but once I put in the pasta, I realized that I should've only put in half the bag of penne. Gah.

The recipe I followed: this

What I could've done better: add in just the right amount of pasta

What I'm happy about: the flavor. And that I didn't cook it all the way in the beginning so that it wouldn't end up overcooked after mixing it in with the sauce.



My sister's Herbed Chicken

We didn't plan for the two dishes to go well together, but once we had a bite of my sister's chicken then the pasta, the combination of the two was unexpectedly good. The strong flavors from the chicken sort of made up for the lack of sauce of my pasta, so when biting into the Telefono, the flavor of the sauce came out more.

I'm pretty happy with the outcome of tonight's dishes (considering I really am a kitchen newbie), but there's always something to improve on for the next kitchen experiment:

1. Read more than one recipe.
2. Allot more time for preps.
3. Organize. Especially if you're cooking with a lot of ingredients.
4. Make a better estimate of the different ingredients needed.
5. Bring out all the needed kitchenware beforehand.

Man I sound like a mess. But I swear the family enjoyed it!

she cooks: wings and things

Cooked some buffalo wings and made some mash on the side for dinner tonight, while my sister took care of the Agliolio pasta. That's Bleu cheese for the wings (but I didn't make that because the help made it before she found out I was playing cook for the night).

It's been a while since I cooked anything outside of egg, hotdog and bacon which is odd considering I love to eat and watch food shows. I've always wanted to cook but laziness would take over before starting and before I knew it I'd end up being on the other (eating) end. This time though I'm pretty glad I gave into it and decided to cook something as basic as buffalo wings.

I think the turnout wasn't bad for someone who doesn't cook regularly. I accidentally let the tongs slip through my hands leading to some really hot oil sprinkling by my eye, and I probably over-spiced the chicken a bit too much (I love spice!), but in the end it still came out as a good meal.