My Kitchen "Aide" is here!!!!!!!!!!!!! ^_^

It's here-it's here-it's here-it's here!!!!!!! My dream come true! I FINALLY got my KitchenAid I've wanted for for-EVER, as I talk about in my Homemade Pasta post to be found here. Basically, I've wanted one since I was about eight, never thought I'd get one until I made some big bucks and would be about ten years older than I am now, but here! Here it sits in my living room! ^_^

I saved up my birthday money and with the combination of that and some money I had been saving on the side, I was able to purchase it. And the best part is it made it only a day late of my actual birthday! So....here's some info about it.

                                                              Model 
 I ordered the KitchenAid Professional 5 Plus in Gloss Cinnamon I believe it was (it's like a deep burnt red). This means it has a five quart bowl and it's one of the lift-up mixers, not the tilt head. I got the kind that brings the bowl up to it, which all the Pro Series ones do, because after my research, which was very extensive, I found that the lift-up mixers had metal gears inside-the tilt-head mixers had plastic. There were countless reviews of people who said after only a few years the plastic gears stripped, rendering the mixers useless. The main cause of it was if people used their mixers for heavier jobs, kneading dough or fondant for example, it was just too much strain on the plastic components. At first I tried to rationalize that I should get the tilt mixer. I mean the Pro Series didn't even have my favorite color, "aqua sky".

                                                         (this picture was borrowed from Blondie's Journal)
Come on! How awesome is that 50's-60's retro blue?! It looks like the color of the classic cars of those days!But in the end, I realized I'd better get one that works good, not just one that looks good and can do only more basic tasks, like mixing batters. Heck, I could even do that. It's the tough stuff, like kneading dough and dealing with miserably thick things as fondant that'd you'd wanna pass off to your little "kitchen helper". :) That, and also I had read over time the bowl bases, which just have a few threads to screw them into the base of the tilt-head mixers, tended to warp from the strain of bowl being pushed every which way while mixing, so some people were having to buy another bowl-at the lovely replacement cost of $60! If you're paying so much for the mixer in the first place, you don't wanna be worrying about replacing things. Ah, what a perfect way to lead into....

                                                             Price
 Oh dear. The part everyone wants to read about except my husband. Just kidding. Like I said, I paid for it myself. Though, I suppose that doesn't mean he won't have a mini-stroke if he read the price. As it were, he was beyond stunned when I told him the cost of the next KitchenAid attachment on my Christmas wishlist. ;D
          So, I looked high and low and found that the best deal, pretty consistently (even looking on Ebay), you could get was buying a refurbished KitchenAid through the actual KitchenAid company. Refurbished just means someone sent it back because they had an issue with it, and KitchenAid fixed it and is now sending it back out. But don't let that discourage you! I've bought plenty of things refurbished, even things like cameras and flat screen TVs, and they've worked wonderfully! How I think of it is, the first customer dealt with the one problem the item might have had in its lifetime, and now the company's fixed it and so you're in the clear! It should work dandy for you from now on! ;) So yes, I bought it refurbished, and if that wasn't saving me enough money, they were also running a free shipping promo and, thanks to me "Google"-ing before I purchased it "KitchenAid coupons", I also found a 10% off coupon code! I thought I was too lucky, no way. But, when I went to the "checkout", both the free shipping code and my 10% off code went through! This left my total, after taxes and all, at somewhere around $225. Not bad considering even on Ebay at the time the same model as mine was going for around the $300-$330 mark, not including shipping.

So, now that you've had enough info about it, here's the picture of my new kitchen beauty. I hope this post has helped you if you were on the fence about which sort of KitchenAid to buy, tilt or lift-up, or even if you were even tossing the idea around. Heck, even if you don't fall into either category, thanks for letting me show off my new culinary toy! I hope ya'll have enjoyed this post and I hope you'll keep reading my blog in the future. Well, until next post, happy cooking! :D

Pasta's easy to make?!

So this summer, thanks to birthday money and money I had saved up, my dream was finally gonna come true: I was going to buy a KitchenAid mixer. Oh yeah! I had dreamed of owning one since about eight years old. But since I knew they were always in the "fancy" stores(we were dirt poor growing up haha), I thought I'd only maybe be able to get one when I was a "grown-up" grown-up(like mid-30 or 40's) someday. But alas, that someday is here and I'm not even halfway through my twenties yet! ;D So of course, after deciding on the color I'd want, and which model, I started browsing through the attachments you can get. Oh my word! What an assortment! But one in particular caught my eye: pasta cutter.

You see, I have an Italian cookbook magazine that I got, oh, I'd say eight years ago or so. In it it had a recipe for pasta. It didn't even seem like it'd be crazy to make, except for the fact that you'd have to roll out the dough, and I dread rolling things out. Rolling dough out creates a huge mess for me to clean (now you may understand why I liked the idea of an attachment that'd do it all for me!), and as I hated the idea of having to clean the dishes from making the dough AND a surface, it never got made.

Fast forward eight years, and not only am I already forking over an absurd amount of money for a mixer(alright, it was a refurbished one on sale through the company, so it was a steal, but for the price and it's only a mixer...still stings), but now I'm dreaming about the pasta attachments, which themselves are a pretty penny. "I cook a lot of pasta in this house," I think to myself. "I oughta get those so that we can save money from not having to buy pasta noodles." But I worried. What if I didn't like the taste of fresh pasta? I know tons of people online said it tastes amazing, way better than store bought, and even those who weren't as thrilled their worst comment was just that it tastes the same as the stores, so that's not bad. But just like the line I'd heard about "everything tastes better from the garden, especially lettuce," and I was the only one who disliked the lettuce from my garden, I wondered if I'd be different from all these reviewers. Maybe I'd not hate it(as I think a decent recipe for pasta you really couldn't), but maybe I'd not prefer it. So, before I put up more money for my KitchenAid dreams, I decided to make some pasta by hand, cutting and all, before I would buy the pasta attachments.

Well my friends, let's say I wasn't disappointed! The noodles turned out wonderfully, and tasted pretty good. I will admit, to me they kinda just taste like store bought but a bit better, but since the first time I've made it we've had guests over and they've said you can totally taste the difference. So, without further adieu, here's my pasta recipe I found! Found on the recipe site, Allrecipes.com, this is called "Basic Pasta", and the original recipe can be found on this page here. It's super easy, and by using a suggestion by one of the reviewers on that site, it only has five ingredients. So you can do it! If any of ya'll do try it, I'd love to hear back from you as to what you think! :)


                          Homemade Pasta Noodles

 1 egg, beaten

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup all purpose flour

1 tablespoon water

1 tablespoon olive oil

                                                         *Tips Before You Begin*
-When kneading, really do it for 3-4 minutes. What you're looking for is for it to be a bit more supple, more stretchy. I hit the three minute mark the first time and was thinking, "well, not getting stretchy like people said it should. But I am at the three minute mark...maybe I'll stop." But I decided to keep going anyway. Not even a minute later the difference happened. So keep it up! You should definitely hit that point before five minutes is up. Now again, it should be more stretchy. I'm not saying it'll be easy to stretch it, it'll just a little bit easier to work with that the previous minutes.

-If you lightly roll the dough up lengthwise when you're about to cut it, it will be easier to cut as you're not cutting it strip by strip, but just having to make one little cut per strip as you're cutting them similar to a how you cut up cinnamon roll dough. That's what I did! :)

-In the picture above, you can see Saran wrap peaking out from under the noodles. I once saw a suggestion you use Saran wrap in-between noodle layers so as to keep them from sticking together. It worked really well.


                                                    Instructions

1.In a medium sized bowl, combine flour and salt. Make a well in the flour, add the slightly beaten egg, and mix. Mixture should form a stiff dough. Now add the water and oil.

2.On a lightly floured surface, knead dough for about 3 to 4 minutes. 

3.Put dough back into the bowl, and let it rest for about 45 minutes (this lets the gluten relax, making it easier to roll out when the time comes).

4.With a pasta machine or by hand roll dough out to desired thinness. Use machine or knife to cut into strips of desired width.

As for how much this makes, although it doesn't sound like it'd make a ton, here's how much pasta we had after I cooked it:

 It works out to about two generous sized adult portions. :)

More photos of pasta once I bought the Kitchenaid pasta roller attachments:

And no, it's not cooked in this pic. This is the real deal, homemade pasta at its finest. Looking just like real spaghetti noodles like you'd get at the store! I LOVE the KitchenAid pasta attachments! They make amazing awesome shaped noodles. :) So I showed you what the alfredo pasta noodles looked like once done up for a dish, now here's a delish tasting and delish looking picture of the meal the spaghetti noodles became:

Yep, the pic at the beginning of this post was it! My friends, that is homemade spaghetti noodles covered in homemade tomato sauce made with the tomatoes from my garden(simmered for about EIGHT hours), and the tomatoes on the bread were roasted by me, and ALSO from my garden! Shoot, if I'da made the bread the whole meal would have been from scratch! All right, all right, I would have still had to have grown the herbs, made the cheese....but you know what I mean! ;)

Well, hope ya'll enjoy the pics and I wish you the best in trying out this recipe or some of the other ones I'll be posting! Happy cooking! 

Tastebuds Visit Thailand

Hello again everyone! I'm so sorry I haven't posted in a while. I have been experimenting with different recipes since the last post, but just haven't sat down to write about them. Well, today being a Saturday and with a foot of snow on the ground(with more being added by the second!), I figured today would be a PERFECT day to catch up on my writing! :D

So, one of my tastiest achievements, and one that made me really proud, that I did this summer was Green Curry. I absolutely adore green curry, how it's creamy and blends hot and spicy with the sweet of the coconut.....YUM. So I decided, why not try to make it myself?! I'm spending $8.50 or so every time I go to my favorite Thai restaurant (Chanon Thai in SLC, totally recommend!), so if I could make it myself, total money saver! Well, it cost more that I thought it would, as when all was said and done the pot of it plus Jasmine rice probably cost me probably $18-$20 (I thought I'd be more around $12), but it does work out to saving money per person. At about $5 a person, and that's figuring on giving them a hefty portion of both curry and rice, that's not too bad of a dinner cost for being able to impress others. ;) So, here follows the recipe for Green Curry! :) P.S-If you make this recipe, your house will smell amazing for like two days. Well, I guess amazing if you like the smell of curry. Haha!

I got this recipe while looking up where my local Asian market might be. Southeast Market, off 900 S in Salt Lake City has a blog where they try out different recipes, and that's where I found it! Here's the link to the original recipe, Green Curry with Seafood. I did tweak it a little, so this is my adaptation of the original.



        Chicken Green Curry With Jasmine Rice 

1 can  coconut milk
1-2 chicken breasts, cut into about 1" pieces
1 cup water (for the chicken)
 1/4- 1/2 can Thai green curry paste(put even less than 1/4, maybe even 1/6, if you're not huge into spicy things!)
2 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoon cooking oil
½ cup water (optional)
4-6 kaffir lime leaves
3 – 2” lemongrass pieces(Thanks to Youtube that day, I figured out you only use the inner yellowish core)
1 Thai chili (they say avoid if you find jalapenos spicy, which we don't, but to play it safe instead of the 4-5 they suggested, we just used one)
5-6 Thai eggplant (quartered)
1 cup loosely packed Thai basil leaves
1 ½ cup zucchini
1 cup mushrooms (they suggested maitake or straw mushrooms. We used maitake and it was delish)
1 cup sliced bamboo shoots(I used the canned kind, as the worker at Southeast Market said I wouldn't taste a difference and it would be MUCH easier he said. Haha)

                                                      Instructions

1.Cut the raw chicken into about 1" pieces and add to a pot. Add about 1 cup water(more or less depending on the size of pot), and boil on medium-high to high heat until the chicken is no longer pink inside. Drain and set aside.

2.Heat the oil in a pot on medium high heat and add the Thai chilies, lime leaves, and lemongrass to release the flavors. Sauté for a minute or two and turn down the heat to low.

Tip:  Chiffonade the lime leaves by stacking them, rolling them tightly, and then slicing thinly.  You can use the whole leaves but I find doing this releases more flavor.

3.Add the curry paste and sauté for 3 minutes until fragrant.  (You can start with even 1/6 a can and add more later if you are concern with the spice level.)  But BE CAREFUL!  If the heat is too high, specks of hot curry oil may burn you.

4.Add the coconut milk and sugar. Return heat to medium high.  Keep stirring until the curry is smooth. They suggested adding water to thin the curry. Leave out the water if you prefer a thicker consistency, like me. :)

 5.Add the eggplant and bamboo first since they will take longer to cook.  Allow the pot to simmer for a few minutes and then add the chicken. After 5 minutes, add zucchini and basil leaves. Cook until zucchini is tender, about 10 minutes.


                                          Jasmine Rice

 This is the easier part. Haha By the way, do NOT cheat yourself of the full taste journey by using plain white rice. If you're at an Asian market already to get the other ingredients, do pick up a bag of this rice. The pairing of the flavor of this rice, and it's texture and smell(it actually has one! :) ).....you must use this kind! It's simply heavenly.


3 cups water
1 1/2 cups Jasmine rice

1.In a pot, bring water to a boil, then add rice. Stir. Cover and take the pot off the burner and let it sit for about 15-20 minutes.



Well, I hope ya'll enjoy this recipe! I know Kally, Jeff, and I did. Well, kinda. Even with using the least amount of curry suggested  by Southeast Market on their blog (1/2 can), it was WAY to spicy. Kally and Jeff even went upstairs to grab more rice to try to dilute the spicy-ness of it all. But that's why I changed the recipe, so hopefully the spice won't kick ya too hard in the pants. ;) But seriously, the taste was AMAZING. That's why even with our mouths burning, we kept eating. Also, don't let the list of ingredients scare you. It wasn't so bad putting it all together once you've got everything out.

I'd better head off now, got the dough for a Festive Maple-Butter Braid waiting to be rolled out and filled! Until next post, keep cooking my friends! ^_^