Takin a little Cali-break...

Hello all :) So I'm back in california for a couple of weeks... Meaning I probably wont be cooking much :) mama's meals an all! But I will hopefully pick up tips from my moms so that when I'm back in Florida I can start making more Indian food and some persian food too!! Also I just now learned that I can write an entry on my iPhone! So that solves my problem of no-computer.. However I have no recipe to post today! Just wanted to say hi and that I miss blogging lol When I go back to Florida I'll continue- full force! :) <3

Cajun cream pasta w veggies!!

so todays recipe is going up because of my incredible sis-in-law-to-be AND very-soon-mom-to-be, Diksha! Hi sis!! her hubby is a vegetarian (and a bellend lol- hi Sach!) and this meal is probably my favorite vegetarian dinner ive made. so here we go..

so this recipe came from one i found on pinterest.. i took a couple steps and then changed the rest. i always wanted to know how to make a proper cream sauce. turns out... you just heat cream. hah - so then the rest of the recipe was inspired by Chili's (the restaurant's) cajun chicken pasta. so obviously i omitted the chicken. but i love the cajun spices in that dish... in anything actually. so i tried to make my own and add it to my pasta.

so lately i have less to say, and i think thats okay. in fact i was feeling kind of guilty that people have to sift through all my gibber jabber to find my recipe lol. anyway, onward!

if youre making your own cajun spice mix, youll want to make a little more than just for this recipe. get a tiny tupperware or a little ziplock bag and make your mix.
Cajun seasonings:

1 tbsp salt (slightly heaping)
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp paprika 
1 tbsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tbsp ground black pepper
1/2 tbsp garlic powder

now the ingredients you'll need are:

a splash of chicken stock
1/2 packet (or 5oz) of Philadelphia cooking cream (i used the Italian Garlic and Herb)
1/2 cup regular cream (im sure you could use heavier cream, and i bet it would taste amazing! ...but of course, theres the annoying problem of heart attacks an all that :/
1 heaping tsp of your cajun seasoning you just made
2 small containers of marinated artichoke hearts (i had mentioned before that i like the brand Vigo- take these artichokes and cut them up before you use them)
1 cup of broccoli (i use frozen broccoli, microwave it for 1 minute and then cook it)
1 cup of uncooked pasta (i use bow tie :) but obviously use whatever you want. i like a pasta that scoops up the sauce the best)

fill a pot with water, drizzle it with oil and sprinkle it with salt. put the heat on high and when it starts to boil, throw in your pasta :) let it cook. i like to do this part, while im cooking the sauce so that hopefully everything is done at the same time.

for your sauce, put a medium size pan on the stove and put the heat on medium/low. pour in your splash of stock and when it heats up a bit, add your cooking cream. use a wooden spoon to stir it around and mix them together. the stock will water down your cooking cream so its more of a saucy consistency. when theyre fully mixed together, add your cream. stir them around until you feel like theyre fully mixed together too..

now add a heaping tsp of your cajun spice. stir stir stir until your previously-white sauce becomes a light orangey-coral. at this point, i like to taste the sauce.. if its a little salty, thats okay. when you mix in your veggies, they will soak up some of that salt.

let your sauce simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. then add your artichokes and broccoli. stir them all together and youre ready! i feel like red bell peppers would go well with this dish too? maybe someone try it before i do and let me know :) ?

then drain your pasta and throw the sauce and pasta together and youre ready to eat! :D enjoy!

butter chicken OR paneer :) mmm!

hello my amazing reader... whoever you are :)

last night i made butter paneer! it was just like my butter chicken (chicken makhani) but instead of chicken i used little blocks of paneer. in case i didnt explain it before btw, Paneer is a type of indian cheese.. its consistency is like extra firm tofu, but its waaaaay more flavorful, fatty and delicious! you can get it from any indian grocery store- there are a LOT of them. trust me, once you start looking for indian stores, they'll be there. especially in good ol' cali :) the melting pot of america!... im home sick hah - aaanyway, my paneer makhani turned out sooo good!!

we invited a couple of dipaks school mates over to have dinner with us, and everyone loved it! dipak said it was restaurant quality!! :D so now i feel like this recipe is worthy of the blog :)

the first time i made it, i was like 'wow, CUPS of tomato puree? CUPS of cream??' theres only two of us.. so i left out a bunch of the liquid, assuming itd be way too much sauce, but then it ended up being not nearly enough! so this time, i just used cups :)

and speaking of cups, i should mention that for the first month of my cooking career i thought that "1 cup of butter" was the same thing as "1 stick of butter" ... and its not. apparently 1 cup of butter means TWO sticks of butter- which i just think is ridiculous!! what needs two sticks of butter!? other than frosting! so because of my cooking-ignorance, i was using half the amount of butter that was in the written recipe... but my food still turned out fine!... better than fine actually :) so now, i always cut down the butter. on purpose. and it always works out really well.

so the ingredients youll need are:

1/2 a stick of butter (the original recipe said 1 cup of butter, divided. i made this last night with only 1/2 a stick and it was amazing anyway! - and i took this 1/2 a stick and cut it into 6 tabs)
1 small onion (diced - or half a big onion)
1 tsp garlic (minced - or one clove minced)
1 can (15oz) tomato puree, or crushed tomato
1 cup regular cream (theres heavy cream, theres heaving whipping cream... this one just said regular :/ ?)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp garam masala

for the chicken:
boneless, skinless chicken breast (cut into small pieces) 
1 heaping tsp tandoori masala (also, "masala" just means "spice" - for some reason, knowing that made it less scary lol - if you dont have this, you can also sub it out for paprika, garlic, and a dash of garam masala)
1 tbsp vegetable oil
salt to taste

and if youre making this with paneer instead of chicken, take out the "for the chicken" part.
for paneer instead:
1 package of paneer (cut up into 1/2 inch or 1 inch cubes - i like the cubes to be smaller, but to each his own)

so if youre making this with chicken, set the oven to 375. -- if youre making this with paneer put your frozen paneer in a bowl of luke warm water to help it defrost so it'll be ready by the time you need it. (it comes in frozen blocks)

for either recipe: take a big, deep skillet and set the heat to medium/low. melt in three tabs of butter and then throw in your onions and garlic. stir them around occasionally, and let it cook for 10-15 minutes... until it smells nice :)

then pour in your tomato sauce and cream together. mix mix mix until you have a pretty, creamy orange color. then toss in your remaining butter and all your spices: salt, cayenne and garam masala.

then mix it all together well, turn the heat to low and let it simmer for 30 minutes! (remember to keep a LID on the pan bc it will splatter) stirring occasionally. if youre making this with paneer, youre pretty done. let the sauce simmer for 30, and then toss in your paneer. let it all cook together for another 5, and serve! :)

if youre making it with chicken, while the sauce is simmering, sprinkle the chicken with salt, toss it with your vegetable oil and then douse it with your tandoori masala (or paprika, garlic and garam masala) and make sure the chicken is all coated. then spread the chicken on a baking sheet and put it in your oven for about 12 minutes (on 375)

when your chicken is done, mix it in with your orange sauce and let it all cook together for another 5 minutes. and then serve!  i like to serve it with garlic naan! its sooo good!

i hope that wasnt too confusing with the back and forth. if it is, please feel free to comment and ask questions!
good luck!! and let me know how it goes! :) also if youre having trouble commenting on the blog, as some people have told me they are, you can email me at parya.bahrani@gmail.com!

best mashed potatoes ever :D

last night i tried to make chicken, mashed potatoes and broccoli w melted cheese.. the broccoli was awesome! the mashed potatoes were my sister, Neela's recipe and they were the highlight of the whole meal, and the chicken.... :/ ..... was so salty we pretty much couldnt eat it. UH. i always feel like i under-season my chicken, so this time i thought i would make sure not to under-season :| obviously i went over board. anyway, i thought i would give out neelas mashed potato recipe!

Neela's recipe was derived from Tamara's twice baked potato recipe which is LITERALLY worth dying for. okay not literally haha but close!

the idea started bc im trying to make more dinners from the food we've now accumulated in our place. i had just bought chicken tenders (which seems to be my favorite cut of chicken, bc its small and easy to work with) we had a whole bag of potatoes sitting in the bottom of my pantry and a bag of broccoli in the freezer.

the potatoes i bought about a month ago, assuming that id be like our moms and actually USE them in everything... not so much. i also realized why it was taking so long to get the house full of usable pantry/cupboard food. at our houses, our moms know how to cook! they know the whole family's favorites. so they keep those things on hand. also if youre mainly making indian food, or just persian food, then you need a very specific set of ingredients for most things: onions, garlic, rice, potatoes, specific spices. then you buy some meat to make the meal. but the other stuff is made up of stock items.

beacuse 1. im learning to cook. and 2. dipak and i are pretty american, it took forever to fill the house with the "stock" items that i use. i love eating american and "italian" foods, dipak loves indian food obviously, but he'll actually eat most things. we both love mexican food! i like persian food too, but the things i love, dipak doesnt, and the things i think he'd like are just way too intimidating for me to make. ANYWAY, the point is.. i think we're finally there. theres enough in the house for any kind of food now :)

so back to my potatoes. first of all i would like to state that when food has "body parts" it grosses me OUT. why? why would you say that potatoes have "eyes" :/  i was just complaining about this to neela yesterday.. blekh! and naval oranges? why?? it makes me think of a belly button, and then theyre just super gross. "baby corn" ew. i dont want to eat a baby anything!!! call it little corn, potato weeds, just oranges. ukh. thinking about it makes me sick. hahaha.. okay im a little dramatic,

anyway, later i learned a little something. i asked this cute little aunty at the indian store the other day "how long can you keep potatoes before they go bad?" and i learned, from her and from internet searches (god bless google) that you can keep potatoes for months! as long as theyre kept in a cool and dark place. i also learned that when you buy a bag of potatoes, you should take them out of their original packaging and move them to a clean plastic bag. (apparently there could be roaches in the original bag from the warehouse they came from... gross fact #45 about potatoes) so take the potatoes and put them in a new bag. put them in the bottom drawer in your fridge. that way you can keep them the longest amount of time.

IF you leave potatoes to sit around for a while.. say a week or so, they can -blekh- grow. eyes. im sorry, but when you say it like that, doesnt that gross everyone out?? anyway, so if they "grow eyes" you can just wash them off.. i have gloves for that. then theyre okay again. and in fact, i read online that as long as the potatoes arent secreting brown ooze, you can still eat them and they wont poison you.


so thats my potato knowledge :) and now for the most amazing mashed potatoes ever. the ingredients are:
for 2 people!

3 potatoes (washed and peeled)
1/2 a packet of ranch seasoning mix (make sure youre not getting the ranch DIP, you want the salad dressing and seasoning mix)
2 tabs or tbsp of butter (salted)
splash of milk
start with 1 tsp garlic salt (then add more and more until its to your liking)
bacon bits (to your liking)


so you begin by putting a pot of boiling water on the stove to boil your potatoes. after youve washed and peeled your potatoes, put them in your pot of water and turn the heat to high. once the water stars boiling turn the heat down and let the potatoes sit for a while. i let them cook for about 25 minutes. you know theyre done when you can push a fork through the potato. you dont want to over cook them... i think neela said they get too mushy then. anyway, after about 25 minutes, i was so impatient and hungry that i dont think i could wait to let them overcook anyway lol.

then strain the water and use your potato masher to smash them in the same pot you just used to cook them in. (neela made sure i had a potato masher when i moved in :)) so after youve mashed the potatoes, toss in your tabs of butter. the reason you should cut up your butter into 2 tabs is so that it melts more evenly.. when the butter starts melting, pour in your splash of milk and ranch powder. i kept using the masher to mix all of these ingredients together, then i think its time to taste your potatoes. at this point, they will have flavor, but they will need salt. so pour in your garlic salt. then use a wooden spoon to mix it all up and taste it again. at this point youll be able to tell how much more salt you need.

then dump in your bacon bits. however much you want :) or none if you dont like bacon. and there you go! the best mashed potatoes ever!!

and yes. that is my super salty chicken on the right there.. :/ lol. but neelas potatoes were awesome!!! try them out and let me know how it goes :)

my Perfect Pancake

hi! :)
i was looking through my pictures and thought a useful recipe would be my cinnamon sugar pancakes! theyre SO good! i love them! in fact, theres only two of us here, but i make a whole batch and then put the rest in the fridge and dipak eats them in the mornings before school. so, yeah, very useful!

this was one of the first recipes i was after when i started cooking. i figured pancakes are a staple of a good mom hah so i was frantically looking for a good recipe. each recipe was about the same, so i figured it was up to me to try making them a bunch of times and figure out how to make it the way i want.

i was thinking of "rosco's chicken and waffles" waffles. if youve had them, you know that theyre good even without syrup. so thats what i wanted to emulate. The Perfect Pancake. lol .. although theyre not as fluffy as some people might like, but i still think theyre great!

i serve them with the best scrambled eggs i can make and fakon (fake bacon) - i use Morning Star tofu-bacon. when it gets crispy we really like it! i do not like turkey bacon tho. dont let it fool you! blekh :/

anyway, the ingredients are:

1 and a 1/2 cups flour 
3 tbsp sugar 
1 tsp cinnamon (heaping tsp if you really like cinnamon :) which i do)

1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda (if you dont have one or the other, just do 1.5 tsp of either one. i still dont know the difference between them, i just choose a combination, and if it works well, i keep it going hah)
1 cup milk 

1 egg
1 tbsp vegetable oil 

initially i just took one big bowl and a whisk and just started at it :) now i think there is a rhyme and reason to the order of ingredients. 

for an order to follow, just stir them in, in the order that i put them up.

whisk together all of your dry ingredients, and then add the wet ones. i learned this method from Alton :) except when he does it, he mixes the dry ingredients in one bowl and then the wet ones in a separate bowl, and then  mixes them together! but i just hate using extra b-- actually i hate washing extra bowls. :/

so there it is. THIS was actually my shortest recipe :) you. are. welcome. haha
let me know if you try it! i want to know how you like it!