Pasta with Garlic Chicken and Mushroom

This is a great recipe and cooks pretty quickly as well. I am not a fan of Alfredo sauce with my Pasta and honestly the boys were never big fans of cheese sauce either but when I came across dish that has Mushrooms and Chicken cooked with Garlic, it kind of sounded interesting.

So I got down to trying and cooking my own. I love Mushrooms, but the kids aren’t a big fan so the dish had to be interesting enough. Roasting garlic in the oven enhances the flavor in a dish. So, I roasted garlic with skin with olive oil, salt and pepper till its soft and mushy. Cook the chicken pieces in a pan with little oil, salt and pepper. Further adding butter and oil to the same pan and added the mushed garlic and a little chicken broth followed by mushrooms. After it comes to a boil added a little heavy cream and further the cooked chicken. I also added Red chili flakes and White pepper for extra flavor.

This dish can be served by itself or with Rice too, since its a little saucy, but I personally felt that it goes on best with pasta. I served it with Spaghetti Pasta and a side of Garlic bread. Trust me, my boys who do not like Mushroom at all loved this dish. This dish easily qualifies as an awesomely flavorful and delicious dish. The taste is that of a dish you’d get at a high end Italian restaurant. It might seem a little complicated but trust me if you follow the recipe and make it once, you will become pro and will manage making this dish in no time. This dish is actually perfect for those surprise dinner dates. This impresses anyone and everyone.

Chicken Ramen Noodles

This Japanese dish was made almost without any prep work. My boys watch some Japanese show which had the character in love with Ramen Noodles and the boys had been on about how delicious the dish looks. now, I have never tried Ramen Noodles only for a simple reason that we never find any Halal Japanese restaurants. And, honestly they never appealed me to try out the seafood version.

But is there any way I could have my boys think the same way. Oh! No, never. They are just out and about and want to try everything under the sky that’s religiously permissible. There are barely any restaurants that serve Halal Asian food around us and my boys are at an age where they really like trying different varieties and since, their mom can cook well and enjoys cooking different cuisines, they just trick me into trying everything they want.

So, I started looking into different recipes over the internet and with 3 hours for research. Yes, 3 hours is all I got because they just started behaving worse than me when I was pregnant with them. The more confusing part was that I didn’t even have basic ingredients. Most recipes I saw have Buk choy, Lemon grass, Broccoli but all I had was Spinach, carrots, Mushrooms, cabbage and zucchini. I could have added Onions, but I think onions have a pretty distinctively sharp taste and adding them to something that soupy. Also onions tend to get a bit too soft and the mushiness in the soup, so avoiding onions is better.

Though I am not a pro at cooking Japanese food, but I am becoming a big fan and try to make them as close to the actual food flavors as I can. A few changes here and there to make it more adaptive to our taste. This is one of the amazing ways of serving your kids more vegetables. Hope you like and enjoy it just the way we did.

Chicken Empanadas

I am from a small town in India, living in a big town in USA. Married to a man who shares the same passion for travelling and food as me. That kind of makes me believe that marriages are made in heaven and yes, I make sure I remind that to Mr. Parveez at least a hundred times during the day..LOLzzz. Jokes apart, where I love the cozy and cold destinations, he loves the sun, and our boys have taken completely after him, not just their faces and habits, but also their choices match his more than mine.

On our 5th and 11th anniversary, we took a trip to Mexico and Puerto Rico. Not only were the beaches clean and beautiful, the water was shallow enough for us to let the kids play. Besides the beautiful views, what also attracted us was the food. We loved the food, specially guacamole, Empanadas and Mufungo. Out of all the foods we tried, Empanadas became my favorite. I feel that might be their faint resemblance to samosas and the fact that they are baked [empanadas have baked and fried option] gives you the liberty of over eating.

Being Muslims, we couldn’t try the pork or chicken and beef empanadas, but the shrimp and veggie options helped me get a faint idea of how I’d like my chicken stuffing to be. I baked them instead of frying and the taste was fantastic. It is a family favorite and perfect for tea/coffee get together or play dates.

Chicken’s versatility has earned it a place on the table at least three times on our dinner table in a week. And while a fried chicken and golden fried samosas will always be a classic favorite, making these hearty chicken empanadas come in second place, being a very close favorite. To avoid a dry filling, it’s best to seek out ground chicken made from dark meat. In most cases this means you’ll need to get it from boneless thighs and leg meat. This recipe will leave you with some leftover filling, which freezes beautifully for future Empanada endeavors. Baked Empanadas can be cooled, covered in plastic wrap, and frozen for up to 2 months; you can thaw and reheat them in the oven until warmed through.