We Have Company!

Okay folks, we roped someone into cooking dinner for us. And boy do we ever need it. Taneasha is on day twenty something of eating road food, and I'm sure there's more to eat in my house than granola and yogurt, but damned if I can find it.

Thankfully we have the darling Gemma Halliday here to feed us!

Check it out!

...

Chicken Nacho Bake Experiment

First off, thanks so much to the lovely ladies here at Author’s Kitchen for hosting me today.  I’ve been salivating over their recipes for weeks.  The amount of cheese used on this blog makes my heart happy.

I’m nearing the end of my Hollywood Confessions Blog Tour, but please check out my website for the last tour stops, as I still have a few cool prizes to give away.  (Including gift cards, free books, cameo appearances, and Hollywood Headlines collectibles!)

Now, for the cookin’.  I have to admit, I’m not known as the world’s best cook.  In fact, up until recently, I had been a vegetarian for the past twenty years.  As you can imagine, when I finally switched to meat again, cooking it was way out of my comfort zone.  I’m slowly learn how not to burn it (only five kitchen fires later), but as the title of this blog states, I’m still more in the experimenting phase than the expert phase of my cooking journey.  So, here goes nothing…

Chicken Nacho Bake

What you need:

• ½ lb chicken
• 2 cups pinto beans (cooked)
• 2 avocadoes
• 2 tomatoes
• small bunch green onions
• tortilla chips
• Cheddar Cheese
• spices  (For mine, I used a good ¼ cup of mixed Mexican spices that I had on hand – chili powder, cumin, paprika, garlic powder, oregano, and onion flakes.  But you can use whatever flavors feel south of the border to you or what you might have handy, adding more or less heat depending on what you like.  I’ve even added cinnamon sometimes for an unexpected sweet note to tempt the kids.)

The first thing I did was put the chicken in a pan with just enough water to cover, and half the spices.  I’m still a meat novice, so I prefer the milder white meat, but any cut of chicken that you like works.  I popped this up on medium heat until the water started to boil, then let the chicken hang out there soaking up all the yummy spice juice.

While my chicken was enjoying its bubbly soak, I got the veggies ready.  I grabbed a bowl and mashed the avocado…

Then chopped up my green onions…

Then diced the tomato.

(By the way – Seeley isn’t kidding when she says it’s hard to remember to take pictures of the food.  Do you know how many tomatoes I chopped before I remembered to take a pic of one whole?  We’ll be having tomato soup later this week for sure.)

By this time, my chicken was looking nice and cooked and losing its icky pink center.

So, out of the pan it came.  I popped it up onto the cutting board, but left the pan on the stove with all the spice juices still bubbling.

Into the same pan I added my cooked pinto beans and the rest of the spice mixture, just to let the beans soak up a bit of the flavor before going in the oven.

(Oh, shoot!  I forgot the oven.  ‘K, go put it at 350.  Perfect.  Now back to the chicken…)

While the beans cooked, I grabbed a couple forks and started shredding the chicken.  This was probably the most boring part of the whole process.  I had no idea how long it takes to shred chicken.  It’s kinda tedious, really, trying to get just the right bite-sized pieces.  This is where I started staring off into space and daydreaming.  On the upside, I got the first two chapters of my next book mentally plotted out.  Bonus!

Okay, so now that the chicken is shredded, it’s time to start building our multilayer bake.  I grabbed a baking dish and spread a single layer of tortilla chips along the bottom.  If you’re really ambitious, you could make your own by frying fresh tortillas, but I am nowhere near that ambitious.  So, I grabbed some of my boyfriend’s stash from the cupboard.  (Anyone else think it’s slightly more than coincidental that he puts all the good chips, chocolate, and munchies on the highest shelf in the house? I had to grab a stepladder to break into it.  Not cool, dude.)

Once the chips were down, the shredded chicken went on top of those…

And the beans came off the stove and went on top of that…

And then another layer of chips went down on top of that.  I added a couple slices of cheese on top, but only on one half of the bake, since my boyfriend doesn’t eat dairy.  (He’s also gluten intolerant, which often adds another challenge to cooking.  But, I am happy to say for anyone else who might have these kind of dietary issues, this recipe is entirely gluten free!) 

Into the oven this went (which was more or less pre-heated at this point), for about 15 min, or until the cheese got all gooey and melty-licious.

Once it was warm and melty, I pulled that sucker out and add the veggies I prepared earlier in layers.  First avocado, then tomatoes, and green onions.

And… ole!  You’ve got a chicken nacho bake!  You can garnish with a little lime wedge if you like, and the margarita is optional. (Though highly recommended!)

Huh.  What do you know?  No kitchen fire today.  I must be getting better at this. ;)

Thanks again to Taneasha  and Seeley for letting me come play in their kitchen!  And to celebrate my actually edible experiment, (the boyfriend even had seconds!  Muy bueno!) I’m giving away a Hollywood Confessions tile kitchen coaster! 

Just leave a comment below and you’ll be entered to win.  I’ll have the munchie-hoarding boyfriend pick a poster at random tomorrow and announce the winner here.

Enjoy your fiesta!

~Gemma Halliday

http://www.gemmahalliday.com

HOLLYWOOD CONFESSIONS

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Someone give that girl a sammich

No, I dont' think it's quite over. The Mayhem that is. This is one hell of a long month.

Taneasha is still on the road, still plagued by the strangest weather. Srsly, the woman is like some kind of tornado magnet. Me, I've decided that working full time over the summer isn't enough. I have to do school too. Evening calculus, here I come. Well, I do school full time and work part time the rest of the year, I should be able to pull this off, right? Right??

Feeding myself in the 45 minutes I'll be home between work and school three nights a week for the next 8 weeks is gonna be fun. I'm going to do a bunch of cooking ahead, have actually started with that and no, Taneasha, I didn't remember to take pictures /hangs head in shame/. I do however have pictures of a meal that commonly goes unappreciated.

The sammich.

Humble, yet satisfying, and creators of very few dirty dishes, these things have for some reason become some kind of good-enough meal, something we sigh and resign ourselves to. But really, what beats a couple slices of bakery fresh bread made with locally grown organic whole grains with a crusty exterior and tender inside carefully cuddling an infinitely variable collection of delectible meats, savoury cheeses, perfect veggies and just the right amount of condiment. Ha. Who says purple prose is dead?

Fresh bread is an absolute requirement for me and sammiches. I'll give it two days and then the rest of the loaf is relegated to toast (now there's a meal to sigh about). Besides, when you're craving egg salad, you really need fresh soft bread. It's squishy and gooey and way too likely to ooze all over your palms if it's not on the right kind of bread.

And I was craving egg salad. And I am completely unable to control cravings. And because of that I sometimes don't take anywhere near enough pics. But, I mean, it's a freaking sammich, I think you can figure it out without the visual aids.

Egg Salad Sammich

What you need:

• 2 slices of the freshest bread ever
• 1 egg, boiled for about 10 minutes
• 1-2 tbsp mayo
• salt & pepper & butter
• Optional, at your discretion, to your taste, and depending what you happen to have in the fridge at the time:

• minced chives or green onion
• red onion
• pickled onions
• pickled asparagus
• hot pickled beans
• picked pickles
• olives, black or green
• dill, thyme, basil, tarragon, marjoram
• chili powder, cumin, caraway, paprika
• bacon
• horseradish
• ham
• capers
• sundried tomatoes
• jalapenos, pepperoncinis, banana peppers
• what else is in your fridge?

What you gotta do:

Peel and mash the boiled egg. Mash it first. Don't add the mayo yet, you don't know how much you need!

Add the other stuff to the bowl. I had some cipollini onions in balsamic vinegar (if you've never had them, find them, they're fabulous),

bacon of course, and some dill that I'd dried and jarred last summer.

Once you've got all your goodies in the bowl with the egg, start adding the mayo. And by mayo I mean real mayonaisse, not some kind of weird whipped salad dressing. And by start, I don't mean plop it all in there. Too much mayo will totally kill an otherwise awesome egg salad. And once it's in there, there's no getting it out. Start with a teaspoon or two and mix it in completely before you add the next one. For once I'm going to say that wetter is not better. You don't want the creamy goodness on your hands as you're trying to eat.

Shred yourself some lettuce. Shred. Don't try to lay a whole leaf of iceburg on top of egg salad and expect it to work. For one, iceburg is useless and flavourless. At least use romaine. And shred it as finely as you can. Stack them, roll them, and slice them into tiny hairs of lettuce. Egg salad is actually one of the more delicate things you can put between sliced bread; you don't want to go overpowering it with huge crunchy chunks of leaf.

The matter of butter on bread is one of great debate. Some need it, some hate it, some want it on one side only, some only need it if there's no mayo... holy crap. Do what you want. Me, I need butter on sammiches and on toast. Regardless of what else is on there, I need the butter. You, you do whatever your little heart desires. This is your sammich.

Start assembling your masterpiece. Butter, mayo, whatever you want on the bread. Next, the egg salad. I don't spread mine all the way to the edge because I know it's going to squish a bit. Now, the delicately sliced (and apparently very shiny) leaves.

Cut the sammich any way you want. Or don't. This is a very personal thing and everyone seems to like them done differently. Who am I to tell you how best to arrange your meal.

The only thing I will insist on is a pickle. Every great sammich needs a pickle. Yes, you could have a few potato chips, maybe some carrot sticks, but even with those on the side, you need a pickle.

Okay, I'll admit it, that is definitely not the best looking sammich I've ever made. That was a muffaletta, which I promise to make for you some day. This though, this is dinner. No, not lunch. Sammiches are dinner too.

What kind of sammich do you eat for dinner?