Week 2, Fried Rice!

This week I was feeling a little ethnic and craving Chinese food, so I decided to make chicken fried rice. I wanted to branch out, and since I chopped some vegetables last week, I figured I could use a little more practice with that. I've also never cooked white rice before so I was a little nervous, because I've heard its difficult. To be properly prepared for fried rice I had to go to the grocery store to purchase fresh vegetables that the recipe called for.

I found this recipe at allrecipes.com, which is my new favorite site for my new cooking experience. This site seems to have all types of recipes, ranging from very easy to very difficult and includes all types of ethnicity's. The recipes says that you can use pretty much any types of vegetables that you prefer in your rice. I decided to use peas, mushrooms, carrots and onions because these are the vegetables that are usually in the fried rice I order from takeout restaurants. The recipe also calls for white rice (obviously) eggs, soy sauce, butter (to saute chicken in), 2 chicken breasts. Here is a link to the website http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Aprils-Chicken-Fried-Rice/Detail.aspx

The only problems that I encountered while making the fried rice was that I may have cooked the white rice a little too long because it ended up being somewhat sticky, and was a little difficult to "fry." Also, I could have used a bigger pan to make it in. The biggest pan I owned was a little too small and I didn't realize how many ingredients had to go into the pan. Also, the recipe used only 2 tablespoons of soy sauce. I love soy sauce so I used quite a bit more, it definitely needed it otherwise it would've been very dry. Overall, the rice was very delicious and I had plenty leftover (2 containers full!!!) If I cook this again, I will probably make a little less and cook the white rice less so it is not overcooked.

Next week I plan on making a pasta dish. I LOVE pasta from Italian restaurants, so I would ideally like to replicate a dish from Olive Garden or something like that. Since I have some experience with chopping vegetables, I could make a recipe that required to chop. So far, I've really enjoyed everything that I've made. I also plan on collecting all the recipes I've used during this experience and making a cookbook of my own. I will include recipes that I enjoyed making and hopefully ones that I didn't get a chance to make. It will inspire me to cook more and I will have recipes for the future, to use my skill. I'm really looking forward to making pasta, because like I said before, its my favorite!!

Also, the cheddar and broccoli soup didn't last very long at my house! My roommates ate it right up, and it tasted even better leftover! It was super easy to heat up for lunch on a cold winter day!