One-Pot Cheesy Italian Pasta and Chicken

This recipe is from The Slow Roasted Italian. I am surprised it came out well. I had doubts about cooking the pasta in the same pot and at the same time as the rest of the ingredients.

I was supposed to use linguine, but I already have a bunch of angel hair pasta. I like it angel hair pasta better than all the other noodles. The last time I tried to use linguine, all the noodles broke into much smaller pieces. I did keep chicken breast as the meat instead of my usual substitution of chicken thighs.

Not realizing that I was supposed to drain the sun-dried tomatoes, I poured the jar of them into the pot. I think it was fine. The taste of the finished dish was not affected.

The instruction for the garlic was to slice it. I do not care to bite into a piece of garlic when I am eating something so I minced it instead.

I could smell the chardonnay as it was cooking and the scent was still pretty strong after it was done.

Here are all the ingredients except Parmesan cheese. This is only half of the spinach because the rest gets added after the Parmesan cheese step. It was weird to not come to boiling before putting in the pasta.

This is the dish after cheese and second half of spinach was added. I added more cheese than the recipe asked for. We have a lot of leftover for the rest of the week.

Sushi Bowls with Sriracha Mayo

This recipe is from Budget Bytes. With the exception of the carrots this is like the California Rolls I made last week. Given the difficulty I had with rolling properly, I thought I should try roughly the same ingredients in a bowl instead.

I think this came out well. The rice was better (not as sour as the roll recipe) and the sriracha mayo added a nice kick.

Here are all the ingredients together – rice, sriracha mayo, avocado, carrots, nori, cucumbers, and imitation crab meat.

The rice has a dressing of rice vinegar, sugar and salt mixed in. The mayo is chili garlic sauce and mayonnaise in a 1:2 ratio. I thought I had sriracha, but I could not find it at the time or preparation so I used the chili garlic sauce instead. I used a food processor to cut the cucumber and carrots (see the section on food processor fun), but still had to do the avocado by hand. This time I managed to cut two avocados without cutting my own thumb.

Food Processor Fun

Until this recipe, I had only used the food processor to crush ice, make a sauce/marinade starting with solid ingredients, or turn cookies into crumbs. I got to try the special blades that came with my device this time.

I used the julienne blade for the carrots.

I used an adjustable slicer blade for the cucumbers. I did not know how the numbers on the dial corresponded to thickness so I picked the lowest one. These came out thin like ribbon. I think I would like to go thicker next time.

I produced more carrot and cucumber than I needed for this recipe so I plan to use the extra for salads this week.

Honey Garlic Shrimp

This recipe is from Tip Hero. I think it came out well. It was tasty. My shrimp do not look as caramelized as the recipe photos. The green onions were supposed to be a garnish and the broccoli was supposed to be a side, but I cooked it all together so it was more like a stir fry.

The sauce – honey, soy sauce, chili flakes, ginger, and garlic.

Downtown Diner (10260)

I built the Downtown Diner over two weekends. The set has 5 sets of numbered bags. This set is meant to be part of the modulars and is not a corner piece. It is a different style from the other modulars so I am not sure that it will really mesh with the others.

Bags 1 completed – the diner part one. Includes the counter seating, gumball machine, table, grill/kitchen area and jukebox.

Bags 2 completed  – the diner part two. Includes the rest of the first floor including the cool wrap-around front window, stove hood, soda taps, and roller-skating server.

Bags 3 completed – the boxing gym. Includes bench press station, punching bag. water cooler, boxing ring, and barbell station.

Bags 4 completed – the recording studio. Includes the recording console, recording booth, waiting area and balcony.

Bags 5 completed – the roof and the car

California Rolls

This recipe is from Tasty. I wanted to be adventurous and try to make something I would have always relied on getting from a restaurant – sushi rolls. I decided to start with California rolls since I would not have to fret about dealing with raw fish safely on my first try.

This was just okay. It tasted like what I have had in restaurants except that the rice was too sour. The presentation of the sushi was not as nice. These two problems are discussed later. I do plan to make this again once I find some way to improve my technique.

I did not find any rice labeled sushi rice in the grocery store, but I found some rice that said it was great for sushi. What I was sure of was that my favorite rice, basmati, was not suitable for this task. I actually cooked the rice on the stove instead of using my rice cooker. While it was cooling, I was supposed to mix the rice with rice vinegar. The recipe asked for 1/4 cup. I think that was too much. The rice was pretty sour. I think I would use 1/8 cup next time.

The cucumber has to be matchstick cut. I had a whole cucumber, but only cut up half of it. It wasn’t clear to me how much of it was going to be used.

This was only my second time dealing with avocado. I successfully cut it in half, removed the pit, removed the peel and sliced it. (However, I did manage to slice my thumb during this task). I do not think this avocado was ripe enough. Still, I do not have enough experience with avocado to know how to pick one.

The imitation crab came in eight pieces and I sliced them again. I think the recipe wanted me to use 2 sticks per roll. I did not do this because they were too long. So I had a lot a “crab” left over.

Since these were California rolls, the rice was going to be on the outside of the roll. These are two half sheets of nori seaweed with rice placed on most of the sheet and some sesame seed sprinkled over it.

Then I flipped it over to put on the “crab”, avocado, and cucumber.

Next was the rolling part. This was really difficult and the video was not helpful. I definitely needed more practice and better instruction on this part. I do not believe my roll was tight enough. Technique was really important here.

I used this mat from Lekue and I also had a regular bamboo mat. I wanted to try this mat since I would not have to put cling wrap on this one. I do not know if the bamboo mat would have produced better results.

After all this, I attempted to cut the roll into its pieces. My knife managed to squash the roll as it was cutting, pretty much ruining the presentation. This was the same knife that cut the avocado and the cucumber nicely and managed to slice my thumb.