Home Cookin’

Married life has inspired a lot more cooking in our tiny kitchen.

One of our cookbooks.  Photo by coreanscribe.

We received a number of cookbooks as wedding presents. We figured we might as well put them to good use. My wife has a busy schedule with work and graduate school classes in the evenings, so I’ve had more time and opportunity to browse through our culinary library. Looking back to last month, I must’ve had chicken on the brain; that’s all I remember cooking. Here are a few highlights: marinated wings wrapped in bacon, slow cooked chicken breast and roasted chicken with hearty vegetables. All of these cooking projects were pretty manageable; that was one of my first rules when selecting dishes to try. The most important rule? Did it look/sound appetizing?

Wings and Bacon.  Photo by coreanscribe.

The wings and bacon recipe came from the Fifty Shades of Chicken cookbook. It was easy to prepare and looked great when I took them out of the oven. I was, however, a little let down by the lack of flavor of the marinade when I finally tried one. The maple syrup based sauce should’ve added a nice sweetness, but it really wasn’t there. I’ll have to tweak the recipe in the future. Maybe I’ll even add more bacon. That’s never a bad thing.

Dinner is served.  Photo by coreanscribe.

I do everything slow: read, write, drive, you name it, I’m slow at it. One thing I don’t do is cook slow or slow cook. My wife is usually much faster at everything compared to me, and is usually annoyed with anything slow-paced, but for one night, with a little more time on her hands, she wanted to try something with an easier pace. She wanted to try out our new crock pot and took control of our kitchen. She decided slow cooking chicken breasts — the most basic of recipes — was a good place to start.

Our cool crock pot.  Photo by coreanscribe.

She set the crock pot on in the evening and let it go to work overnight. We woke up in the early morning to the delicious aroma of warm, comforting chicken throughout our apartment. My wife thought it turned out a little dry, but I still enjoyed it. We’re hoping to get a lot of use out of our crock pot in the days ahead.

Slow cooked chicken breasts.  Photo by coreanscribe.

I saw this last recipe I tried on America’s Test Kitchen’s Cook’s Country television program. I’ll usually catch at least one episode of either show on the weekends.

This particular recipe they featured really appealed to me because it looked so easy to make. It’s a simple roast chicken and vegetables dish that’s prepared all at once. My wife has a similar tasty recipe that includes roasted vegetables such as potatoes, Brussels sprouts and cherry tomatoes, so I wanted to see if I could pull off something like it.

Again, this was easy to prepare and the results were delicious. This one I’m definitely making again in the future.

It’s a new month so I’m hoping to try out some new recipes. I’ll try to stay away from chicken. I browsed through the Kimchi Chronicles cookbook on our shelves and saw some tasty possibilities so that’s where I might be headed next. Stay tuned.