Friday, December 2, 2011

French Onion Soup

  Today on November the 29th, myself and my Dad were both sick. Laying in my bed I decided to make something that would soothe both of our throats but fill our stomachs at the same time. I remembered seeing a bag of onion in the fridge and thought, might as well cook some Onion soup. The only soup I had ever made was Wild rice soup at my grandparents, oh and Campbells' canned soup. So this was going to be difficult. Especially because I have never seen a recipe for it. So I basically just spit balled it all. The soup actually came out quite nice, just what we needed too.

INGREDIENTS 

1 package of beef broth. 12oz
3 medium sized sweet onions
1 purple onion
1/2 Tablespoon sugar
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
2 bay leaves
2 medium garlic cloves
1 teaspoon rosemary
1 cup white wine
1/2 cup water 
2 or more tablespoons flour
Salt and pepper to taste.
3-4 slices of provolone.

You start off with cutting the onion in half, and cut the halved onion into small slices. Heat up a large pot on the stove and throw in the olive oil. While the oil is heating up, finish cutting up the onions. Once finished throw the onions into the oil. Saute them for about 30 minutes, until they are soft and a lot of the onion smell has been cooked out. Sprinkle in the sugar and stir it up!  Let the sugar caramelize the onions. While the onions are caramelizing, mince the garlic. Then pour in the wine, and stir it up more.  Put the lid on it and let the concoction simmer in the heat. After about another 15 minutes of stirring and simmering, take out the bay leaves that you put in there earlier. They should be much softer, but you can throw them away. Grab your flour and start sprinkling it into the mixture, stirring constantly, keep adding flour until it thickens up into a big clump. Grab the 12oz package of beef broth and pour it into the roux. Pour slowly and mix thoroughly. Once the entire package is in the soup, add in a cup of water and put the lid on and turn up the heat. Let the soup come to a boil then turn down the heat and have it simmer for about another 15 minutes. After, get yourself a spoonful of the soup and salt and pepper it to taste. Get yourself a bowl, and turn your oven on, put it on broil High. Fill your bowls up, and put a slice of provolone in the bowl ontop of the soup, put the bowl on a cookie sheet and set the pan into the oven and broil it until the cheese is golden brown and bubbling.
Be careful when you are taking out the bowls, they are hot. When I made this, I grabbed right for the bowl and burned my fingers really really bad. SO use a hotpad, and grab a plate with a napkin on it and place the bowl on the plate. Serve with bread


This is actually my own recipe that I came up with. Please, give me some reviews and tell me how it turned out for you if you are brave enough to try it ;)

Thursday, March 24, 2011

I am sorry

Hello Everyone!
...AGAIN!!!!

I am sorry I haven't posted any new recipes and terrible attempts at being funny! I dont know why I haven't been posting. But I reassure everyone, I am going to get back into the funnychef again. I am starting to come up with some new recipes and hopefully some that will taste... well!

To start things off, I must add; I have the best Aunt and Uncle EVA!
My birthday was on January 11th, and they ordered me a subscription to Bon Apetit cooking magizine, which gives you all sorts of recipes and styles of cooking and information about spices and herbs to use. For someone who loves to cook, it is the WD40 to a sqeaky chair, the ink to a typewriter.... uhm... okay, no more bad metaphors for a cooking magizine.... Anyways...

For my comeback recipe I will tell you guys how to make: In-the-pan-lasagna...(creative name, right?)
 Whatcha need!
1 pound lean ground beef
A small onion, chopped, need 1/4 a cup
A green pepper, chopped, need 1/2 a cup 
1 1/2 cups uncooked mafalda pasta
1 1/4 cups water
1/4 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1 jar tomato pasta sauce or Marinara sauce
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
 __________________________________________________________________________

1. Cook beef, onion and bell pepper in a sauce-pan over medium-high heat about 6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until beef is brown, once brown... drain.
2. Stir in remaining ingredients except cheese. Heat to boiling, stirring occasionally; reduce heat to low. Simmer uncovered 10 to 12 minutes or until pasta is tender. Sprinkle with cheese.
Of course you can throw in more cheese if your like my family, gotta have the cheese.

Enjoy everyone!! I hope you like it!
sorry that it has been such a long time since my last post.
Ill see you again.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Going camping

Hey guys, just writing to say that I am going camping and I will not be on for about 3 or 4 days, going up to a place called Winding River, in Colorado. But for the sake of this blog being about recipes, not my personal life, I am going to go ahead and post a recipe for what we are going to make for dinner tonight.

Hobo Dinners
Ingredients 
Aluminum Foil
4 Pototoes
Shreaded cheese
Hamburger meat
Pepper
Salt
Seasoning salt


Now since these are so awesome, you do not really need to put the ingredients in a certain way inside of the tin foil, nor do you need a lot of everything. Once you have everything you want inside of the foil, wrap it up, and re-wrap it.
If you are at out camping, place in a spot on the fire, but not where any sticks can poke holes on it. Have it in the fire for 10 minutes, and flip after another 10.
If you are going to use a oven, place in the oven at 350 and turn them over after 7 minutes

I will be back after about 4 days, I will see you guys then.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Bananas Foster

This is one of my mom's top favorite desert, mainly because of the banana in it, she is a fanatic about her banana.
This is a relatively easy recipe to do, and you can easily impress your lady (or man).

Ingredients
1 banana, cubed
a shot of spiced rum (or 2....or 7) just kidding
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1/2 cup brown sugar
Vanilla ice cream
Lighter

Start or with adding the cubed banana into a sauce pan, and put the brown sugar and cinnamon on top of it, caramelize it until it looks like melted caramel. Once it is at this stage, get out another sauce pan, and put the shot of spiced rum into the cause pan, let it heat up until there are a lot of bubbles. This is the part were you impress anyone, watch your hair, and set it ah-light. Let the rum stay on fire for about 30 seconds, and add to the caramelized banana. Let it cook for about 30 more seconds, then blow out the fire, and serve over ice cream.

I do not have a story to tell about this recipe, but it would be quite funny if I caught my hair on fire... Kind of. But I do have a question, feel free to comment.
Why is this called banana's foster? If you know please tell me.

Bread Pudding

So yesterday, my mother had made lasagna, and was going to make bread pudding to go with it. But she had forgotten to make it, and I personally love bread pudding, oh so much. So I commented; do you care if I make it? She was totally fine with that. For those of you who do not know what bread pudding is, either 1. Is living there life under a rock or, 2. Just a crazy person who has never heard of it. But anyway, I memorized the recipe from her telling me, how to make it. hehehe.

Home-Made bread pudding:
2 cups water
6 pieces of bread
2 tsp vanilla
6 eggs
12oz. can condensed sweetened milk
1/2 cup butter
cinnamon + sugar

Once you have all the ingredients together, start with putting the two cups of water onto the stove in a sauce pan, bring it to a boil. While that is heating up, gather together the condensed milk, two tsp vanilla, and the butter into a mixing bowl. Toast and butter the 6 pieces of bread, cut them into fourths.
Heat the oven to 350.
Once the water has come to a boil, pour it into a mixing bowl. Combine the mixture, until everything is combine well, and the butter is melted. Then add in the eggs, beat them with a whisk until a custard-like mixture is made. At this time add the small bread squares, gently mix this all together, be sure to cover the bread completely. Put the bread pudding mixture into a oven-safe dish, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar and bake for 30-45 minutes.
The amount of time depends on the size of the dish, it is finished when you move the dish, and it is a little jiggly, but wont splash, if it was watery, then it is not finished.
Serve with half and half, or heavy whipping cream on top

Some-what funny story:
I tend to be clumsy sometimes when I crack eggs, and I want to show off to myself, so I get two eggs, and crack them at the same time, one in each hand. The first time was fine, but the second time I tried this, a small chunk of shell fell into the bowl, and sunk to the bottom of the bowl, I could not find it. I didn't want to try to fish it out, so I just carried on. Once it was finished, and cooled down, I got myself a taste of my creation, and on the first bite, I get the eggshell.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Hello everyone!

Hello people who are now visiting my new blog.
My name is Brenden Biancalana, I was born January 11th, 1994 in Monterrey, California.
I am currently a Junior in my high school. When I get out of high school, I am going to go to culinary school, the school I have chosen is Johnson and Wales Culinary school, where I will get my bachelors degree in culinary arts and maybe pastry and baking. I am planning on becoming a personal chef.

I have always loved cooking, I used to come right home after school, and try and make something that would be delicious. I had realized that this is what I wanted to do for my career during my freshman year, there was a guest announcer who told us about this school, which helped me decide my career, also I remembered how much I love to cook.
Then the summer of 2010, I spent the summer in Texas,with my Aunt and Uncle, who I previously told them about me wanting to be a chef, and the jumped on it and got me to start cooking meals for them. The first meal I started with was; Chicken fried steak, with mashed potatoes and gravy with corn. Which of course would have to be our first recipe to start off with.
Let us begin!!
Chicken fried steak
You will first need:
4-5 pieces of round steak, tenderized, or, deer meat, tenderized
3 cups flour
3 tablespoons pepper
3 tablespoons salt
for those of you who have it, Texas hot salt; about 2 tablespoons, if not, then sucks to be you...but do not worry about it.
Vegetable oil
Buttermilk
White Milk

Mix all the dry items into a large bowl, and set aside.
heat up vegetable oil in a large frying pan, fill until about the middle of it.
once this is heated up, dunk a piece of round steak into the buttermilk, then coat in the flour mixture, and set into the frying pan, let it fry until one side is golden brown, then flip it...repeat.
Once you have all of the chicken fried steak fried up, drain out most of the oil in the pan into a can or a safe object, leave about a small spoonful of grease in the pan, and heat it up again. Once it is hot, throw some of the flour mixture into it, so it absorbs that fat, stir constantly. once it is all soaked up into a roux, you start adding milk and keep stirring with a whisk or a fork, let it thicken up a some, then add more milk. With the final product; Awesome home-made gravy that you can top your chicken fried steak with.

Funny story for this meal:
My mother wanted me to cook this because I had cooked it for my aunt and uncle. But when I was cooking this, I was wearing a pair of basketball shorts and I was shirtless... yes I know... Hygiene yada..yada..yada.. but anyway, I needed to flip my pieces of steak, and I was using tongs, and I grabbed one of them to flip it, and the tongs slipped and it splashed little droplets of hot grease on my stomach.. I learned something that day... Never cook greasy things without a shirt on...especially bacon..
Well this is my first blog entry...
tell me how it was, give me some feedback since it is my first one.