Shredded Chicken Tacos and Tortilla Soup

Okay, I didn't take any pictures of this, because I didn't realize that it was going to turn out so good! I wanted to share though, because it was a pretty easy and healthy dinner, and it was something totally different for us! I wish that I would have taken some pictures, and I am sure that I will the next time. I will hopefully describe it well enough that you can try it yourself!

3 half chicken breasts with skin and bone in
1 yellow onion, sliced in chunky slices
1 shallot, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 carrot, shredded
1 fresh lime, quartered
1 box (4 cups) chicken broth
Spices: Cumin, Ground Coriander, Chili Powder, and Cayenne Powder

In your largest pot heat 1-2 teaspoons of olive oil over a medium to high flame. Wash the chicken and pat dry. Place the chicken in the pot, skin side down to brown. Brown for about 10-15 minutes adding the onion, shallot, and garlic while that is cooking. Sprinkle the backs of the chicken breasts with all of the seasonings, generously with the cumin, coriander and chili powder, but just lightly with the cayenne, it's spicy! Once the chicken is browned, flip the pieces over and sprinkle the tops with the same seasonings. Brown the other sides for about 5 minutes, then add the 1/2 of the lime juice and chicken broth and cover. Bring to a boil, then cook at a high simmer until the chicken is cooked through and the onions are soft and translucent. (About 30 minutes) Remove the chicken breasts from the mixture and pull of the meat and transfer it into a medium bowl. Discard the bones and skin. Shred the meat with two forks. Add the shredded carrot to the broth and keep simmering while you shred the chicken. Add 1/4 of the chicken back to the broth for the soup. To the remaining chicken, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and the 4 seasonings to taste. Add a little bit of the broth to moisten the meat. Skim the broth for any pieces of skin, and discard. Serve the shredded chicken for tacos or over salad. Spoon the soup into bowls and top with tortilla strips, avocado, cilantro and/or scallions. Serve with the remaining lime wedges.

There are probably those out there that are wondering why I didn't just add water instead of adding more chicken broth. I felt that the relatively short cooking time wasn't really going to allow the water to become brothy enough, and I thought it would have tasted too bland. It was a full bodied soup, so if you have more time, I would recommend trying the water route. If you finish and your soup is just too bland, here are some ideas to thicken and spice it up:

1 can of beans, rinsed and partially pureed or whole (recommended: cannelini, black, or pinto)
Tomatoes- canned or fresh, quartered or diced
Jalapenos
Corn- fresh or frozen (canned would probably work too, just watch the salt content) pureed here might work nicely too
Make a quick roux- melt 2 tablespoons of butter with 3 tablespoons of flour (whole wheat is really tasty in something like this) in a small saucepan. Let the mixture bubble for a minute or two without burning before you add it into the soup.

Let me know if you try any of these. I am looking forward to an excuse to make this again soon!

CAKE cake

We celebrated another part of our anniversary this weekend. Our cake baker, CAKE was able to make us a mini one for our anniversary. It was beautiful.
Banana cake and chocolate truffle layer. I would love the recipe for this, but I know it's so perfect as it is, I don't think that I could even try to make it at home... it would be a disappointment!
Thank you everyone for all of the wonderful birthday wishes! We had a fantastic time at Disneyland on Friday. We then had a great relaxing weekend, and can't believe that it is already Sunday evening!! Where does the time go?? Hope yours was great as well!

Summertime Lasagna

I decided the other weekend that I wanted to try to lighten up my traditional lasagna recipe for summer. These summer vegetables are so beautiful, juicy, and fragrant, I might change my recipe for good! I use Giada's recipe but I made these changes:

• Ground turkey breast instead of ground chuck
• 2% milk and whole wheat flour for the bechamel sauce
• Grilled Zucchini
• Fresh Tomato
• Spinach

I am also interested in trying her vegetarian recipe. This worked out great for us and was so tasty.
Maybe a little bit bigger pan next time!
Comfort on a plate...

Anniversary weekend

Thought you might enjoy snippets of glimpes into our anniversary weekend spent in downtown. It's funny, our hotel had a lot of blue accents, and these two blue paint colors used throughout. With a lot of white-white. I love blue and white together!

We walked through Little Italy for a while once we got downtown. I love it there, it never gets old to me. This part of town was pretty much a dump when we first moved here. All the tall buildings are new.

How cool is it that you can see the bay down the street? I love that. This is also a sidewalk cover where there is a tree planted. Such attention to detail! Makes it special.
This Little Italy sign was the only updated thing that I can remember when we first moved here. It's still pretty cool. There is some story about Little Italy and it was supposedly founded by two fishermen that named their boats the same name and ended up getting married and living right next door to one another. I can't remember the specifics, but it was something like that! Cute history, and great food down there. There are shops too, but mostly it is just fun to walk.

Our hotel had a chalkboard... so fun. And this cool blue light. I loved it. I want one for my office! This was the view from our window. The building with the curve on top was my old EY office... how random!! Look, you can see the bay and Coronado from here in the distance!

If you are reading this, chances are you were present in La Jolla 3 years ago to witness our wedding. Thank you for being involved in our lives and helping us along this path together. We have been so lucky to have such a wonderful, supportive, and loving network of friends and family. We love you all!

Red Velvet Cupcakes

I started my research for the Red Velvet Cupcakes and decided on a mix of a couple recipes. One was from Paula Deen on the foodnetwork.com that I had actually seen her making one time. The other was from smitten kitchen. They were similar, each with a few tweaks. I used the bones of Paula's recipe, but I dressed it up a bit with some ideas from Deb and some of my own preferences.

I was interested in using cake flour, since I had it on hand and I thought it would lend to a lighter cupcake. It's hard to know what the dominant flavor in this cake is. I think it should be the cocoa, although as you know, it's not a chocolate cake.

I usually bake exclusively with olive oil, but I was worried since there aren't a lot of strong flavors in this, that it might stand out. Therefore I bought a canola oil blend that was supposed to be somewhat healthy. It worked perfectly. Here is a shot of the eggs, sugar, and oil, which you blend together to start the cake. To this you add the red food coloring. Little did I realize how much food coloring that this recipe calls for. Wow!! I was really surprised. I only had one of those kits of food coloring with the 4 small vials of color. Those have about 2 teaspoons of color in each. The recipe calls for 6 teaspoons of food coloring. As a result, my cake wasn't quite as red as it probably should have been. But it seemed pretty red to me!

Once you have the vinegar, food coloring and vanilla incorporated in the egg/sugar/oil mixture, add in the dry ingredients. I sifted my cake flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder together into a bowl. Cake flour is particularly susceptible to being really dense in the package, so it's a good idea to sift it before you measure it. Scooping and leveling off the top is the safest way to make sure that you aren't adding too much flour. My batter was really thin, which concerned me. It ended up being great. I actually had more than I could fit in my muffin tins, because I only have 12. The thin batter made for these really light and moist cupcakes.

I filled the tins with about 1/3 cup of batter. This is about 1/3 of the strength of the red the recipe called for.

And after about 20-25 minutes in a 350 degree oven, they were puffed up and ready to come out and cool. On to the frosting...

I combined 8 oz. of cream cheese and one stick of butter in a large bowl. Once softened, I beat these together with an electric mixer. Then I added about 3 cups, maybe a little more of powdered sugar. Once I got the consistency of frosting that I wanted, I put the bowl back in the fridge to chill everything down just a bit before frosting. This helps to get a nice thick swath of frosting on the cupcake.

The final product, cake + frosting was really delicious. I never really thought much about red velvet cake before, but I could see these really appealing to a wide variety of people. I kicked up the cocoa content, especially becuase I still had some wonderful organic dagoba cocoa powder on hand. I used 3 tablespoons, which was 3 times the amount that Paula specified in her recipe. I am a chocolate person, so this was perfect for me, but if you want the true to form red velvet cake, you probably could go with 2 tablespoons. So finally, here is the recipe.

Red Velvet Cupcakes (yield, about 18 cupcakes)

3 cups of cake flour

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 & 1/2 cups sugar

1 & 1/2 cups canola oil

1 cup buttermilk

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

at least 2 and up to 6 teaspoons of red food coloring

Sift together the dry ingredients. In a stand mixer, or with an electric mixer, beat together the oil and sugar until fully incorporated. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the vanilla, vinegar, and food coloring and beat slowly until incorporated, taking care not to splash the red food coloring. Add about half of the buttermilk and half of the dry ingredients and mix to incorporate. Add the remaining half of each and mix until almost incoporated. Using a silicon spatula, fold the remaining dry ingredients into the wet until just incorporated. Using a 1/3 cup measure, pour batter into prepared muffin tins. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Cool on wire racks for at least 1 hour before icing.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz softened cream cheese

1 stick butter

3 cups to 1 pound of confectioners sugar

Cream softened butter and cream cheese together with an electric mixer. Add the sugar a cup at a time, until a thick icing forms. Chill for 20 minutes before using.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

The (cup)cakes have been baked. I couldn't help but tease, just a little. More to come tomorrow!

Blueberry Crumble Bars

So far good reviews all around for these guys from the work crowd today! I got the recipe from one of my favorite place, Smitten Kitchen. Another really nice, straightforward recipe. I love that. I very seriously considered adding one more layer, a cream cheese layer in between the bottom crust and the blueberries. I think it would have added a little bit of fun to these. However, they are awesome just this way too. Start with the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and lemon zest in a bowl. Cut in the butter in pieces until just crumbly. Then add the egg and cut that in until just moistened. I used a pastry blender. It's okay to have some really chunky pieces and some flour that isn't quite incorporated. Having the inconsistent sizes makes that really nice sandy texture that you are going for here.
Then measure about 4 cups of fresh blueberries, picking over for stems. I love my big 4 cup measuring cup for fruit pies and tarts. It always comes in handy.
Spread half of the flour mixture into the prepared pan (I just used parchment paper, my favorite). Press this down into a thin crust.

In a separate bowl mix the cornstarch, sugar, and lemon juice. Stir to combine. Then fold in the blueberries. Spread this mixture over the crust.
Top with the remaining flour mixture. I picked up handfuls and pressed them together before crumbling over the top. If your home is very hot, you might want to put the remaining half of the flour mix back in the fridge while you do the berries. This keeps the butter from melting into the other ingredients.
Bake until brown on top. This smells amazing while it is baking.
Easier to cut once cooled in the fridge. I used a pizza wheel to cut these.
Enjoy!! This makes a lot to share with your friends, so that is always encouraged. You could probably also use frozen blueberries if you can't find fresh. I would just leave them frozen until you incorporate them into the sugar, lemon and cornstarch mixture. They will bake just the same, I would think. I will get back to you on the cream cheese layer. It would have to be pretty spreadable- probably similar to the middle layer of the cheesecake recipe that I posted a while back.

On deck- Red Velvet Cupcakes... as per request... we'll see what I can come up with for these!! Happy Friday and Welcome Weekend! Hope yours is fantastic!