Homemade Chicken and Veggie Stir-Fry

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I love stir-fries! They're quick and easy to make- even homemade! Use whatever veggies you want/have on hand.

I also made this last night without meat and it was so good. My daughter and I got seconds! LOL. I have more left so I am going to make Japanese style battered chicken with it for Thursday night dinner :-) Tonight is pancake night. #teamtired

This recipe is inspired by Ellie Krieger's Teriyaki marinade which is basically the same as stir-fry sauce! Serve with rice or noodles or with nothing else.

Chicken and Veggie Stir Fry

• 2/3 cups soy sauce
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup mirin/sake/or rice wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon ginger, minced
• 1-2 tablespoons garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup red pepper flakes
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch/potato starch
• 1 tablespoon oil of your choice (veg/canola), divided
• 1 tablespoon sesame seed oil, divided
• 3-4 chicken breasts sliced thinly or diced 
• 1 green pepper (I used about five japanese green peppers)
• 1-2 heads of broccoli, cut into florets
• 1 cup carrots, sliced thinly
• 1 half head cabbage (optional) sliced thinly
• 1 onion (size depending on your taste) sliced thinly
• 4 cloves of garlic sliced thinly

Directions
Combine the first 7 ingredients in a small bowl and stir until evenly combined. Pour half of the marinade over the chicken, and mix until evenly coated. Marinate for 15 minutes or overnight.

Heat the 1/2 tablespoon of the oil of your choice along with 1/2 tablespoon of sesame seed oil in a non stick pan or wok over medium heat. First cook broccoli and carrots for about a minute and then add the rest of the vegetables. Stir often. Cook about 5 minutes then remove from pan and set aside. With the empty pan still on medium high heat,  add the remaining 1/2 tablespoon of oil and sesame seed oil. Cook chicken until nearly cooked through about five minutes, add the veggies back to the pan and remaining stir fry sauce. Stir until mixed thoroughly.  Lower heat and allow to cook about 2 minutes or until chicken is cooked through. If the sauce looks too thick add about 1/4 cup water.


Hope you all enjoy!

How to Make English Muffins

Egg McMuffin. Pizza McMuffin. Eggs Benedict…McMuffin…?



I love English Muffins, though I prefer English Muffins slightly toasted, with bacon or sausage with good ol' American cheese and a little grape jelly. Mmm Mmm.  How do you like your English Muffins?



Once you make homemade, you'll never buy store bought again. I had every ingredient on hand, which was good as I decided to make this pretty last minute. I wanted to keep my promise that I will share a recipe post once a week.



Even though I have loads of homework to do. That's OK though! I love you guys. You guys have stuck by me for 4 YEARS. Well a lot of you have. That's crazy. So let's celebrate with MUFFINS!

Please check out the tips at the end of the recipe instructions!

This recipe is from the lovely Laura Vitale of www.laurainthekitchen.com. She has a video and instructions on her website if you love videos!

Laura Vitale's recipe for English Muffins

Makes 18 muffins
Ingredients:
2 cups of Whole Milk, scalded (i used 2% as it was all I had)

5 cups of Bread Flour
1 Egg
2 Tbsp of Unsalted Butter, melted
2 Tbsp of Vegetable Shortening, melted
2 ½ Tbsp of sugar
1 ½ tsp of Salt
1 tsp of Baking Soda
1 Envelope of Active Dry Yeast, (2 ¼ tsp) plus 1 tsp of sugar
Cornmeal

1) In a large bowl or in the bowl of a stand mixer, sprinkle the yeast and 1 tsp of sugar over the milk and allow it to sit and foam for a few minutes. Add the shortening, butter and egg to the yeast mixture and whisk together to combine. I used 4 tablespoons of butter. However you don't need to use butter or shortening, I forgot both the first time I made this and they turned out very well and less fat!

2) In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with a dough hook, add the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and milk mixture. If you do not own a stand mixer just add the flour mixture to the milk mixture.

3) Mix the dough on low until the flour is incorporated, turn the speed up to medium and knead for 3 to 4 minutes or until the dough is smooth but still sticky.

4) Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, place it in a warm place and allow it to rise for about 2 hours.

5) Dump the dough on a floured surface, knead it together and cut it into 18 equal pieces (if you like smaller English muffins, cut them into 22 equal pieces). Roll each piece into a ball, press them down with your hand to form a patty and place them on a parchment paper lined baking sheet that has been sprinkled with cornmeal. Sprinkle the top of your patties with a little more cornmeal, cover them with a kitchen towel or  spray the boules with cooking spray (to prevent sticking) and put plastic wrap over boules, and let them rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

6) Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

7) Preheat a griddle pan or a skillet to medium heat, gently lift each round with a spatula, place it on the hot griddle and let them cook for about 2 minutes on each side or until golden brown on both sides (do them in batches). Place them back on the baking sheet, then place them in the oven for 10 minutes.

Allow them to cool a bit before serving. Then using a fork, Laura suggests to prick muffins opened with a fork to get extra nook and crannies. 

Some tips!
In my opinion, the key to a kick ass muffin is the size (besides taste of course). If you have a kitchen scale, make sure each boule (ball) of dough is about 2.5-3.0 ounces. If you do not own a kitchen scale, please make sure the ball fits in the palm of your hand at least. If this helps I made 18. So make 18 equal boules. Also, I was hoping this would be vegan for my non meat-dairy friends, but freaking forgot this recipe calls for milk. I think this recipe will work if you substitute a cup of warm water and a cup of soy milk a room temperature for milk. And the first time I made this recipe I used neither butter or vegetable shortening (rarely have that on hand anyway) and it still worked! And lastly these muffins keeps well in the freezer!!!! So the night before just thaw as many as you want to use for the next day and you have muffins for your family. I like to cook a lot of sausage patties to make it a bit more rounded.

ENJOY!

Noodle Ramblings

My first pasta machine I had to give it away because I could not hook it up to anything after we bought a new dining room table...I made some pretty great pasta/noodles with this baby.




How I've had to dry pasta noodles lol

I love love love love looooooove to make handmade pasta. I remember the first time I saw a homemade pasta recipe in my Taste of Home magazine and just took off and tried the recipe immediately. I watched a few videos about how to make pasta and went to work. No machine, no fancy attachment, just my hands. I used the recipe for a simple pesto recipe and it tasted ok. It had a doughy flavor that I didn't care much for but I was certainly proud of the effort.



Later on the next couple tries I've made pasta, it still tasted a bit doughy, but less and less. I never gave up on it I was obsessed with making my pasta taste perfect. From all my attempts, I learned something and each time it tasted better. I made homemade ravioli and it made sure I rolled the dough almost paper thin. Whilst the dough definitely didn't taste doughy, some raviolis nearly disintegrated once they hit the boiling pot.

Brown Butter Hokkaido Squash Ravioli

 I finally figured it out- don't make the dough too thin or too thick- which I will explain in a later post. I also was on a quest to find double zero flour, though all-purpose flour is fine, double zero is what the nonnas use and I am a grandma in a young woman's body :-) . I also found a few staple recipes from Thomas Keller, Emeril Lagasse, and Michael Ruhlman and even recipes I've concoted from experience. In fact I think I made a pretty darn amazing Whole Wheat Noodles recipe tonight which I am excited to share hopefully in the near future. I used the noodles for the BEST chicken soup recipe ever, Fine Cooking Magazine's Lemon-Ginger Chicken Soup (I added noodles as the original recipe in the magazine has noodles in the recipe)

Recipe here: http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/asian-style-ginger-chicken-soup.aspx

Making Pasta/Noodles is such a fun relaxing activity for me. My kids love to join in my daughter loves working with dough and my son loves to eat raw dough


Baby boy cranking out pasta sheets



Mt Tagliatelle


For Christmas, my husband bought me a pasta attachment for my mixer and it really brought a great light into me. I hadn't made handmade pasta in over a year. I kind of stopped eating noodles as much since then, because homemade is always the best to me. Though again, it's not necessary. If you don't want to go through the trouble don't. But if you're like me and is obsessed with perfecting your "craft" then go on. Tell me about it in the comments below if you'd like. If we ever get a sunny day in Germany I will definitely share some recipes I've tried because I've been cooking like crazy, but I don't have any fancy lighting equipment so my food looks really good. But shoot if I have to, I will use my camera phone for the photography for my blog, no blog critics care about my blog and I don't care if they do. So let me know if you'd like to see a recipe in the future. I'd love to give a shout out to Linda Nicholson of Salty Seattle (www.saltyseattle.com)  for helping light my pasta/noodle fire. I bought Thomas Keller's book because of her. She buys the best ingredients, cooks everything from scratch, beautifully, artistically, and scrumptiously. So cool to have her and many other bloggers in the food blogging world to inspire me!