Tag Archives: onion

Holy Guacamole

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My all-time favorite guacamole.  I usually find that store bought guac is, well, gross.  And restaurant guac is either too spicy or not spicy enough.  Enter my “no real recipe needed, adjust spiciness to your liking, super fresh, super easy” guacamole.

All you need is 6 ingredients (forgot to add the garlic in the picture):
1. About 1/4 of a small onion, finely chopped.  And remember, chopping onions is easy peasy.
2. Fresh squeezed lime juice (from a really small lime)
3. One small tomato, diced
4. 1 small serrano pepper
5. 3 ripe avocados
6. 1-2 garlic cloves, depending on your tastes

Essentially, all you need to do is mush the avocados and mix in the chopped onion, squeeze in the lime, add the diced tomatoes, mince the garlic and finely chop the serrano.  Add salt to taste.  Adjust spiciness by keeping the seeds for some serious kick or removing most of them.  I just left a handful of seeds and the guac has just the right amount of spice but my mouth isn’t on fire and my eyes aren’t watering…at least from the spice.  Note to self (and to all of you contact wearers out there).  Do not.  I repeat, do NOT attempt to take your contacts out or scratch your eyes after chopping the pepper.  My eyes were on FIRE.  Oops!

In case you didn’t know, here’s a tip for removing avocado seeds…carefully throw the knife directly into the seed and twist.  The seed then slides right out:

I devoured the guacamole with some Trader Joe’s “Reduced Guilt” tortilla chips (haha reduced “guilt”).  Gotta love the witty Trader Jose’s:

Not sure if it’s an old wives tale or if it actually works, but I leave in one avocado seed in the guacamole.  Apparently it’s supposed to help slow the dip from browning.

Fresh, flavorful, easy and  completely customizable that beats any pre-made goo some places try to pass as guacamole:)

Rosemary and Garlic Chicken with Heirloom Potatoes

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I can’t say it enough.  I’m obsessed with the farmer’s market, and every Sunday, I usually end up picking up things that looked pretty, but I had no idea what I was going to do with them.

Enter my latest find: heirloom potatoes.  Schlepping my big canvas bag packed full of goodies around the market, a few colorful potatoes caught the corner of my eye.  I grabbed some purple and yellow potatoes simply because they looked cool.  But I really had no meal in mind.

Then something clicked.  I also had a handful of sprigs of rosemary.  Bingo.  Rosemary potatoes.  But hey, let’s make it a meal and throw in some chicken too.

I started out by adding a few sprigs of rosemary, a few cloves of chopped garlic, salt, pepper, chopped onions and the beautiful heirloom potatoes to a large mixing bowl, drizzled with a generous amount of olive oil:

I learned this time saving, non-crying-inducing method of chopping onions, which is absolutely brilliant.  Start out by cutting the onion in half from top to bottom (i.e. not horizontally):

Lay the flat end on the cutting board and slice off the top.  Next is where the tricks begin.  Make thin slices through the onion, but leaving about an inch or so uncut towards the bottom part of the onion:

Once you’ve made enough slices through the onion from one side to the other, carefully make similar sized slices horizontally through the onion, again stopping about an inch from the bottom:

And finally, just start chopping straight down into the onion, and voila, perfectly chopped onions with very little effort and zero tears:

I added the chicken drumsticks into the mixing bowl, added even more olive oil, and tossed well.  Next, I dumped everything into a baking dish, covered with foil, and baked at 400° (I have absolutely no idea how long I cooked it for, since I forgot to set a timer.  I just kept an eye on the chicken until it was thoroughly cooked).

It wasn’t particularly flavorful right out of the oven.  But I still had a ton of leftovers, so I saved it and put it in the fridge.  After a day of sitting in all of the rosemary, garlic and olive oil, the chicken was significantly more tasty the second day.  Next time, I’m throwing everything into a large freezer bag and letting it sit overnight before cooking.  Hopefully that will make it taste just as good the day I cook it:)

BBQ Chicken Pizza

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It was love at first sight.  Ever since I stumbled upon the pre-made pizza doughs at both Trader Joe’s and Fresh&Easy, I haven’t been able to stop trying new pizzas…pesto pizza and goat cheese and roasted tomato pizza…

Making the pizza is insanely easy.  All you need is: a bag of pre-made pizza dough of your choice (I went with TJ’s whole wheat dough), shredded cheese (a quattro formaggio blend for this one), some chopped red onion, barbecue sauce, chicken and cilantro.

I started out with kneading the dough while the slices of chicken breast soaked in barbecue sauce cooked in the oven.  Of the entire process, this was the most time consuming (and it didn’t take much time at all).

Once the pizza stone was heated, the dough was stretched out and the chicken was cooked, I took the stone out of the oven and threw the dough onto it.  I slathered on some barbecue sauce, followed by a few pieces of chopped red onion, then a generous helping of cheese, finishing off with the cooked chicken:

I let it bake in the oven at 450° for about 8-10 minutes (watch it carefully, it cooks quickly!):

Finally, I topped it off with fresh chopped cilantro:

Of all of my experiments with pizza, this is by far my favorite.  Absolutely delish.  I have to give some serious kudos to the barbecue sauce itself.  I picked up a bottle of D’s Original BBQ Sauce at Whole Foods a while back.  The sauce is just the right amount of sweet and tang, bottled up together to create barbecue sauce perfection.

Easy.  Yummy.  Filling.  Fantastic.  I kind of want to whip this up again already and I just made it a day ago…

Avocado Salsa Verde…Olé!

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For a themed girls’ night in (Senioritas and Margaritas!), we all brought different Mexican food to devour, and I went with an avocado salsa verde recipe I found on foodnetwork.com

Although the recipe is actually for shrimp tacos, the avocado salsa is really the star here.  It’s a refreshing alternative to your standard (usually too watery) store-bought jar salsa.

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Avocado Salsa:

  • 1 small onion, quartered
  • 1 jalapeno, quartered, seeds optional
  • 1 garlic clove, smashed
  • 4 medium tomatillos, (about 8 ounces) husked, rinsed, and coarsely chopped
  • 1/2 Hass avocado, peeled, seeded, and cut into chunks
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt
  • 1/4 cup loosely packed fresh cilantro leaves, coarsely chopped

Put the onion, jalapeno, and garlic in a food processor and finely chop. Add the tomatillos, avocado, and salt and pulse until chopped but still chunky. Transfer to a bowl and stir in the cilantro.

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This was another experiment as a guest in someone else’s kitchen (thanks to Cher, my frequent post-commenter!)  Her lovely kitchen is about 4 times larger than my hallway/closet-like kitchen.  She actually has (gasp) counter space!!  I’ve been working with about 2 feet x 2 feet of counter space:)

Seeing a lot of green here:

The chopped tomatillos look like green apples:

Getting ready to stir in the cilantro:

Ready to partaaay:

The dishfulthinker’s tips:

  • I doubled the recipe for the party, and came out with roughly 2-3ish cups of salsa.
  • Remove the seeds from the jalapeños if  you don’t like spice!  Otherwise you’ll get  a salsa with a bit of fire in it.
  • I didn’t pre-measure any salt.  I threw a little bit in, stirred up the salsa, and added more to taste.
  • Serve with tortilla chips, don a sombrero, have a margarita and you’ll have yourself a fiesta!