Barefoot In The Kitchen

First of all, I would like to say I sincerely apologize for the lack of new blog post. Things just went into serious overdrive but I promise to be more consistent when it comes to blogging from now on. As for my first post in what seems like forever, I decided to share one of my hobbies, which is cooking.

When I was younger, I would always watch my uncle and grandmother cook. I would observe and even help them out if they would let me. I even took cooking lessons when I was 10 years old until I was 12 and I would go grocery shopping with my mother to buy the ingredients I needed. However, as I got older, I lost the motivation to cook. I didn’t exactly completely stop. I just cooked less often. It wasn’t until I got to the States wherein I started really cooking again.

For tonight’s dinner, I decided to cook chicken breast that I marinated using the recipe my dad thought me with a little help from this recipe I found as well. Basically, I just mixed olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic powder, salt, pepper and brown sugar and let the chicken marinate in it overnight. When you are ready to cook, you can either pan fry or grill them. Obviously, I don't have a grill inside my apartment so I pan fried them using a large skillet. 

We sliced the chicken so it would cook faster.

As for sides, I roasted some asparagus and made pasta using this really simple recipe I found online as well. When I say easy, I really mean suuuuper easy because I only had to use 6 ingredients! I could have used less but I wanted to add extra flavor to the pasta so I added some sun-dried tomatoes in it. If you don’t want to add sun-dried tomatoes, that’s ok. All you really need is some thinly sliced garlic cloves, olive oil, dried parsley, crushed red pepper flakes and of course, some salt and pepper to taste. Heat them all in the pan with the pasta and viola! You are done. Like I said, it could not be any simpler. 

Ingredients

At first, I decided to include mushrooms but I ended up against it because it might be too much.

Before I forget, to roast the asparagus, you just preheat your oven to 400 degrees. In a baking sheet, toss your asparagus with some olive oil, garlic and season it with salt and pepper. Once the oven is ready, put it inside and wait for 15-18 minutes or until tender. Take it out and let it cool for a bit.

before

after

The end result is an amazing dinner to be enjoyed with a friend. Just look at Laura's happy face! LOL