Peter's Cooking Diary #7

Well this cooking was actually done a week ago, but I didn't get around to posting pictures. This recipe was a re-do of the chicken enchilada tamale pie, but this time with the right topping of prepared instant polenta. There will be another post later in the week with what I cook this week.

Seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper before putting them in the pan.

Cooking the chicken in the pan.

Cooking the other side of the chicken.

After cooking the chicken added a little water to the pan to let it finish cooking through.

Prepped onion, garlic, and spices.

Cooked onions and garlic in bacon grease.

Canned corn, creamed corn, black beans and enchilada sauce in the slow cooker.

The secret ingredient for the recipe is minute tapioca, it adds a little sweetness, and helps to thicken the enchilada ingredients.

All of the ingredients mixed in to the crock pot, ready for the polenta topping.

Water and polenta before cooking in the microwave.

After it was cooked I added cheese and butter to the polenta.

The polenta gets so thick once all the cheese and butter is mixed in.

Enchilada ingredients topped with cheesy, buttery polenta.

The finished product, its not exactly pretty, but it was even better than the previous attempt. This will definitely be something I make again.

Peter's Cooking Diary #3

Well last week with the shortened week, I didn't really cook anything special, just cooked some burgers on the stove, because I don't have a grill at all, and then I steamed some broccoli and mashed some cauliflower to go with it. It was good, but nothing really of note to mention in this blog.

For other food I have been eating a lot of hummus and veggies, as well as some cottage cheese, this has constituted whole meals for me as the fiber and protein in there can be quite filling. Another plug for Aldi, they have tubs of hummus for $1.99 with a variety of flavors too. One tub lasts me a week, and I eat a lot of it. They also have cheap avocados available year round. just $.89 each at the grocer store they can be $1.50 or more. And they will go well with my lunch.

For my lunch this week I made slow cooker chicken enchilada tamale pie. Now the recipe comes from my favorite slow cooker cookbook that I have mentioned before in my writings. I had been wanting to make this recipe for a long time, but haven't been able to find instant polenta anywhere! I decided to try the recipe with grits instead, because I really wanted to make it. Now the assembly of this dish is a few stages, first you mix the chicken, enchilada sauce, corn, beans and other ingredients into the pot, and it will look something  like this:

The layer that will be placed on top of this was pretty much a layer of cheesy grits, microwaving grits with some water and salt until the water was absorbed, and then mixed in cheese and butter as per the recipe, then that is spooned on top and of the enchilada mixture, which looks something like this:

Then this is cooked for 4 hours with the lid on, on low, and the goal is to get it to be almost a cornbread topping on top of the enchiladas, but mine didn't turn out that way. There may have been too much moisture in my mixture or something, the grits didn't solidify, then kind of mixed in with the enchilada mixture, and it didn't look too pretty. Even though it didn't look pretty, it was delicious! I have been eating it for my lunches this week.

Even though I was unable to find instant polenta at 2 grocery stores or Target, I actually checked while I was at wal-mart, and they actually have it, so in the future, I will probably try to remake this and actually be able to follow the recipe. I guess the grits I have will just have to be eaten on their own, aww darn.