Jonathan the Chef (Bork Bork Bork)

props to cazi for the sweedish chef joke.

So not this weekend but the one before, I was invited to visit my friend Becca up at her place in Riverside. We chat a lot online when shes at work and home (she works for the apartment complex where she lives) and now after visiting I can actually picture what shes talking about. Anywho, while I was there I stubled across a cookbook titled "Food Network Kitchen's Favorite Recipes."



As a big fan of anything Food Network, and a desire to learn how to cook more than pasta or mac and cheese, I asked to borrow the cookbook to try out my skills as a cook.

Last Monday I gave it a go for dinner and opened up the book, the first recipe I ran across was a breakfast recipe, "Baked eggs with farmhouse cheddar & potatoes" and I thought, hey! I have all those ingredients (almost)



I substituted red potatoes for the normal ones I had, and the farmhouse cheddar with some Chipotle Cheddar(which is AWESOME). Bake'd it up.



Presentation is key (I can hear Gordon Ramsey saying "wipe those edges!")



It was delicious. I know this recipe was super easy, hashbrowns, eggs, and cheese. But I needed a starting off point.

Yesterday I kicked it up a notch. This weekend Becca was in town visiting her family and came by for dinner to help make another recipe from the book. We chose the "Turkey Enchilada Casserole" but sub'd the turkey for chicken as I imagine I'll get my fill of year's quota of turkey this week.

It was lots of fun following this recipe. One thing we learned is to prep all the ingredients first. Butter and oil was ready before we got the onion, garlic, and jalapeno chopped. And that was cooking well when we found out one of the incredients was "cooked" chicken, so we had to remove mixture until our chicken could cook. Live and learn, rookie mistake. Read the entire recipe again before you start and have everything chopped and ready to go before you start.

A small onion, a couple cloves of garlic, a jalapeno, and a touch of cumin and salt joined with some green tomatillo sauce:


Add some cooked chicken: (thanks to the speed of the george foreman grill)



(Side note on the chicken. Do your shopping. The butcher had chicken breasts waaaay cheaper than the pre packaged chicken. Also Stater Brothers has the best premade hamburger patties in the butcher's window, they are to die for.)

Add some corn torillas cut into small strips and some cheese:



Bring to a boil:



Top with cheese and bake it in the oven for 10-20 minutes:



And the presentation:



Becca and I had fun, and it was super delicious. Bummer everyone else had plans, they missed out on some great Chicken Enchilada Casserole.