Joy of Cooking

My favorite thing about cooking is that it lets you be creative and it's not as strict as baking a cake or dessert. Most of the time when I cook, I don't have a cook book right in front of me to follow. Most of the food I've created are inspiration from another recipe, a restaurant, ingredient, color, or taste. I usually let my mind wonder about different recipes I can come up with. I also like the fact that most of my recipes are healthy. I make sure that every meal I prepare is well balanced and at the same time delicious and beautiful in the eye. I've created simple foods like ramen noodles and turned it into a healthy, nutritious soup by adding mixed vegetables in it. My mom inspired me to do that, she loves to add veggies in our ramen soup growing up 'cause she didn't want us just having sodium and carbs. LOL. Sometimes she would even add egg for protein, it was really good! Last night, I found myself creating a recipe from whatever I have in my fridge. Most of the time, I plan out what I will be cooking throughout the week but since I didn't have time this week due to school, I just decided to use whatever I had. This is the reason why I find so much joy in cooking. It's a creative outlet for me and it actually makes me happy. LOL.

I had chicken breast tenderloins thawed and I flattened it out. I had sun dried tomato packed in olive oil, pesto, feta cheese, and red pepper. I spread pesto on the chicken, crumbled feta cheese, placed sun dried tomato, and diced red pepper on chicken and rolled it. I placed it on an oven safe skillet, seam down. After I rolled and stuffed all of the tenderloins, I added salt, pepper, and garlic powder on 'em. I then let all the flavors set in over night and cooked it for lunch today. I pan fried it first, some of the oil from the sun dried tomato had leaked out and I used that to cook the chicken. I then transferred the skillet (it's an oven safe skillet) in the oven and baked it for a few min. I took it out, add fresh spinach on it, and covered it. I've created something similar before but instead of serving it with risotto (Italian rice), I served it with whole wheat ravioli filled with cheese (my husband loves cheese filled ravioli). I also made my own romano cream sauce with basil, it came out pretty good. The hubby really loved this one. He made a comment that it tasted like something you order from Tre Fratelli (a very good local Italian restaurant). So I was very happy about that. :)

You too can create a dish like this. Don't be intimidated. Watch the food network and learn from different chefs. Read cook books. My mom kept cook books and recipes, and growing up I would see her read 'em and she would teach me how to cook. She's definately my biggest inspiration and I would remember her showing me techniques and tips for cooking. One thing I learned from her is being patient while cooking. You need to let the flavors blend in properly, don't move it all around too much, let is sit there, let it all mingle together. That's how you'll get all the flavors from your ingredients. We use a lot of fresh ingredients and one my favorite is ginger. I loooove ginger and it's sooo goooood for you. Ya'll have seen me post a lot on cooking and food and I'm really thankful that God has given me this gift.