Week 1: Family Night- Main Dish: Caramelized Chipotle Chicken, Total Recipes: 3

When growing up in New York, it’s hard to learn to cook in those alley way type kitchens with no windows where only one person can be in the kitchen. Over the years, as we kept moving apartments and our kitchen kept upgrading, gradually I developed an interest for food and cooking. Family night in our household is almost every Sunday night. I have a mom, dad, a sister, Kim, a new brother-in-law, Drew, and a dog, Nikki. This week, I decided to make a Caramelized Chipotle Chicken and a Cheesy Creamed Corn with Cilantro from the September 2009 issue.

It’s kind of a funny thing because the corn recipe called for fresh corn kernels from 12 ears of corn, but I did not have the time to shuck 12 ears of corn and cut off all the kernels. I went to the super market and looked in the canned food section and thought about the can-to-corn ratio. I decided to buy ten cans of corn but used only eight. My theory is: it’s always better to have too much then too little. I didn’t have to worry about not having enough. I had enough to feed an entire army.

Chipotle peppers were a little difficult to find in the super markets near my house because there usually isn’t much diversity in cuisine.  I needed canned chipotle peppers. If I couldn’t find them, I was doomed for sure. When I asked about them, the manager looked at me like I had a big giant mustache drawn on my face. Finally, one of the cashiers showed me green chilies in their tiny Mexican section and asked if this would be OK. Green chilies? No way. I had to go to three different super markets before I could find canned chipotle peppers.

I learned that on those cooking shows that you see on TV where the chef makes everything look and sound so simple? It looks so simple because they have culinary professionals who measure out all the ingredients so the chefs can cook in TV time. In real time, measuring out all those ingredients took me forever. Have you ever really diced an onion? My technique is getting better although the ones that I normally buy are probably genetically modified and don’t kill your eyes the way that these ones did. I was chopping away and crying that my eyes got blurry and I couldn’t see. I had to stop for a bit and let my eyes dry up. Finally, I finished the task with chopped onions in different shapes and sizes.

Dinner started and I made a little toast to thank them all for being my first round of guinea pigs. When we sat down, my mom put in her pancake dessert she made from the April 2009 issue. When she took it out of the oven, it looked like a popover-ish pancake. It was large and flat like a pancake but hollow and fluffy in the middle like a popover. It was definitely not the healthiest meal or anything we’re used to eating in my family, but it was scrumptious. We all agreed the corn was the best. Of course it was. It’s called butter and heavy cream. The cilantro added nice flavoring but Kim and I agreed that the feta cheese didn’t do it for us. Granted, we’re not into feta cheese that much, but the corn was so rich and filling to begin with that we couldn’t taste much of the feta. Perhaps, there wasn’t enough on our plates? My dad rated the corn a ten and said that’s on the list for Thanksgiving. My mom was finding ways to substitute the cream to make it healthier- butter milk perhaps? Drew mentioned that the chicken probably should have marinated in the chipotle sauce because the skin had great flavoring and was very crispy, but there wasn’t any flavoring in the meat and it was a little dry. The pancake dessert tasted the way it looked: light and fluffy and the brown sugar added sweetness which cleansed our palates. We did take note that the next time we do it, we’ll have ice cream on the side.

All in all we left the table with full bellys and smiles