Take a guess…..

What am I making for dinner?

Kabobs

Is there really anything better and easier than shish kabobs?

Spicy Breakfast Potatoes w/ Chorizo and Egg

While laying in bed last night I was thinking that a huge breakfast sounded incredible.  I went to the grocery store yesterday and stocked up on a lot of my favorites, so my options were open.  Well this morning when I woke up, I woke up with Mexican themed breakfast on my mind.  When I think of Mexican themed breakfast, I turn for the chorizo.  So this recipe is called Spicy Breakfast Potatoes w/ Chorizo and Egg

Ingredients

Chorizo

Eggs

New Potatoes/Yukon Gold Potatoes

Garlic

Onion

Fresh Jalapeno

Salt Pepper

Avacado

Sour Cream/Greek Yogurt

Bring water to a boil and boil your favorite potato until it is about 3/4 done cooking.  This will vary depending on the size of the potato.  A good trick is to pre-boil some potatoes and put them in the fridge, so you will have some available at all times.  Whether you pre-boil them or boil them that day, cube the potatoes to a size of your liking.

In a skillet (cast iron if you have it), brown your favorite style of chorizo sausage.  I like spicy foods, so I go with hot chorizo.  When sausage is done cooking, strain to a bowl and set to the side.  Leave the sausage drippings in the pan, as we will be using this instead of oil to cook with.  In this skillet, add diced onion, fresh jalapeno, and garlic.  Let this simmer on medium heat until the onion starts to carmelize.  Add potatoes to the mixture and lightly toss in with the onion/garlic/jalapeno.  (These potatoes are tender, and you dont want to lose integrity of potatoes).  Once they are coated, let them cook for a while.  We want that nice crust on these potatoes.  After a good 10 minutes, check to make sure they are carmelizing, and fold over to get that crust on the other side.  Add Salt and Pepper to you liking.

In a side skillet, cook some eggs to sunny side up.  Once finished set to the side and now it is time to start assembling breakfast

Start with a bed of the potatoes, top with 2-3 sunny side up eggs, then sprinkle with the cooked chorizo, then your favorite cheese.  I have found that queso fresco or goat cheese are really good on a dish like this.  I also like to top this with a few slices of avacado, and a small dab of sour cream or greek yogurt.  I can promise you this dish packs a huge punch of flavor that will start any weekend day off great.  Enjoy

Kids Food Favorites

If I can say one thing about my cooking, I would say that it is full of flavor.  Sometimes great flavor, sometimes not so great flavor, but flavor nonetheless.  I am constantly looking for new and inventive ways to create tastes in each dish I prepare.  I like to use strong flavors like garlic, salts, peppers, ginger, dry and fresh herbs, chipotles, jalapenos, soy sauce, different oils, etc etc.  This style of cooking is great for myself and my wife, but not very good for my little boy Christopher.  Whenever I try and feed him some things that I have prepared that taste really good, he will put them in his mouth for a few seconds and decide to spit them out.  If it were up to him, he would eat nothing but turkey dogs, chicken nuggets, string cheese, and fruit.  These are wonderful foods, but I am sure he will soon be bored with these options.  I am looking for some great food ideas for my son that he will like.  Please share some suggestions that your little friends enjoy!

Tasty Tip – Spicy Condiments

For a tasty spin on normal sour cream/greek yogurt/mayo, add some of your favorite hot sauce to it and mix in well to give the sour cream/yogurt/mayo that extra tasty zing you want!

Ultimate Nachos

Well the NFL playoffs are here again and for us that means lots of fun get togethers with friends and family.  Tonight we are going to my brothers place for an Ultimate Nacho feast.  There is nothing fancy about Ultimate Nachos, but it always seems to satisfy all party-goers.  I make some slight changes to the normal Nacho Bar to amp up the flavor and make it more fun!

Ingredients

2-3 lbs Lean Ground Beef

Assorted Bell Peppers

Onion

Fresh Jalapenos

Rotel Tomatoes

Jar of Pepperoncinis

Shredded Cheese

Sour Cream

Avacado

Lime Juice/Limes

Garlic

Salsa

Tortilla Chips/Tortillas

First brown ground beef w/ diced onion in the meat.  I usually am not crazy about onions in general, but when they are cooked with ground beef, they give the beef some nice flavor.  Salt and pepper ground beef/onion mixture to taste.  After meat is done cooking, drain and put into the crock pot.  Add to this a whole jar of pepperoncinis including the juice as well as diced bell peppers, jalapenos, one packet of dry Italian dressing and one packet taco seasoning.  For the liquid, you can use beer, broth or water.  It does not really matter as the spices and peppers are going to do the seasoning.  Mix all ingredients together and turn crock pot on low.  Let this mixture come together for 4 hrs or so and it will be packed with flavor.

In a seperate bowl take the meat out of the avacados, add the juice of 1/2 of a lime, garlic, and large scoop of your favorite salsa.  You can cilantro to this, but I am personally not a big fan of cilantro, so I leave this out.  Blend this mixture well with a fork.  This makes for the perfect stirring tool because it allows chunks of avacado to remain in the guacamole.  When guacamole is to your desired consistency, put in fridge to chill.

Serve meat mixture with chips or tortillas with shredded cheese, sour cream, guacamole, tomotoes, and hot sauce.

Enjoy

With the playoffs on this weekend.  What are you making?

Fogo De Chao – Part 2

This year for Christmas I decided to give my brothers a different gift this year.  We are all of the age now that we would rather have a great experience than another sweater!  Funny how that happens as we get older.  Anyways, I decided to give them a gift card to Fogo De Chao to see if they would love it as much as I did the first time.  My brothers and I are extremely close and it was really nice to get together last night just the 3 of us like the old days. 

We started the night off with a trip to the world class salad bar.  It honestly has all my favorite things on one wonderful bar.  As you can see in the below picture, I decided on Mixed Greens, Beets, Hearts of Palm, Olives, Asparagus, Roasted Peppers, Assorted Cheeses, Sun Dried Tomatos.  All these foods are so packed with flavor and I love them all!

After nibbling on all these wonderful veggies for a little while, our team of servers brought the side dishes which are all very different and all wonderul as well.  They brought us Plantanes, Grilled Polenta Cakes, and Garlic Mashed Potatos.  (My favorite are the Polenta Cakes)

 

In the days leading up to our dinner experience, we all decided that it would be fun to rank our favorite meat choices from 1 -10.  With so many choices it would be a tough task, but we were up for the challenge.  We turned our cards to green and on came the meat!

We decided on ten different meats to rank and the following rankings were recorded:

John’s Rankings:

#1  Top Sirloin (House Special), #2  Filet Mignon, #3  Garlic Beef, #4  Prime Rib, #5  Parmesan Pork, #6 Sausage, #7  Flank Steak, #8  Lamb, #9  Ribs, #10  Chicken 

Brian’s Rankings:

#1  Garlic Beef, #2  Prime Rib, #3  Top Sirloin, #4  Filet Mignon,  #5  Parmesan Pork, #6  Flank Steak, #7  Sausage,  #8  Chicken, #9  Lamb, #10  Ribs

Kevin’s Rankings

#1  Garlic Beef, #2  Filet Mignon, #3  Top Sirloin, #4  Prime Rib, #5  Parmesan Pork, #6  Flank Steak, #7  Sausage, #8  Chicken, #9  Lamb, #10  Ribs

We all agreed as we waddled out of Fogo De Chao that it was the perfect restaurant for us and that we would be coming back as often as we could afford to enjoy great food and coversation with each other. 

Fogo De Chao

Return trip tonight to Fogo De Chao tonight (aka Meat Sticks by Sarah Buckner), with my brothers tonight.  I will post later with details of our experience.  We will post our favorite choices with pictures.

Potini’s

Who knew the greatest thing to ever come out of a martini glass would be a mashed potato bar creation tabbed a “potini!” Delicious

Chicken Adobo – Authentic Phillipines Recipe

Last night was a special night.  My Brother in Law, Paul invited us over to meet some of his best friends to have an authentic dish from the Phillipines called Chicken Adobo.  Of course being the foodie that I am, I thought this was a wonderful idea.  Paul’s best friend Hans and his girlfriend prepared the meal and I of course was the annoying guy trying to learn the secrets.  Here is what I came up with.

Ingredients:

1-2 whole chickens (cut into pieces)
1 whole garlic clove
olive oil or vegetable/corn oil
1 tsp ground black pepper
4 whole black pepper cloves
3 dried bay leaves
3 cups soy sauce
2 cups vinegar
1-2 cups 7-up/Sprite/Water (optional)

Hans informed me that this entire recipe is very easy and simple to make and after watching the preparation, I could not agree more.  To start, he said to use equal parts soy sauce and vinegar for the base of the dish.  Vinegar has a strong bite to me, so I would put 2 cups of vinegar and 3 cups of soy to serve as your marinade and your cooking sauce, so you could go either way.  Add peppercorns bay leaves, whole garlic cloves to mixture.  Add Chicken and this will help marinade your chicken as well.
An added step that could be done to create an extra layer of texture would be to sear the chicken pieces.  Heat oil and add chicken and sauté until the chicken begins to brown.  Once the browning has started, add chicken parts back to soy/vinegar mixture to finish off cooking.  Let simmer for and additional 25-35 minutes or until chicken is done.  You can turn the mixture to low to keep warm and it will stay great all day long.

Another added tip.  If the taste of the sauce is too powerful, you can add some 7-up, Sprite, or water to cut the power of the Soy/Vinegar mixture.

Serve over a bed of rice.

I want to sincerely thank Paul, Hans and his wonderful girlfriend for having us over and introducing us to this great authentic dish from the Phillipines.  Thanks.

Try this one out.  If you love food packed with flavor, this will sure to not disappoint.