S Can Cook!

Last night, S made dinner and it was, in a word, fantastic!  After her melt down about cooking a few weeks ago, I got her a basic cook book, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, and told her that she was now responsible for cooking one meal a week, using the cook book.  Two weeks ago S made a Bolognese sauce and pasta that was delicious.  Last week with all of our company we didn’t do much cooking, and then last night, S made chicken fajitas.  After dinner, S keep saying, “I can’t believe I made that!  It was so good!”  and while it was cooking, she exclaimed, “It smells like a restaurant in here!”  It was so cute to see her cooking happily and her extreme satisfaction at how well it turned out.  

Here is the recipe in case any of you would like to try it.  I think it would be just as good with shrimp or even beef.  We changed the original recipe up a little to our liking.  

Chicken Fajitas

Ingredients:

• 1 red pepper

• 1 poblano pepper
• 1/3 medium yellow onion
• 1 lb skinless, boneless chicken (we used the tenders, but breast meat would work fine)
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• a small pinch of ground cumin
• 1 lime
• olive oil
• freshly ground black pepper

First S cut the peppers and chicken into long strips.  I cut the onion earlier that morning for her because she hates onions so much and won’t cut them.  She only put the onion in for me and we reduced how much the recipe called for as well.  Then she put it all in a big bowl with the spices and the juice of half the lime and tossed it to combine.  It was supposed to marinate for 5 minutes, but S forgot and tossed it right into a hot hot pan with a glug of olive oil.  Jamie Oliver uses a grill pan for this recipe, but we don’t have one, so we didn’t.  Then all it needed was to be stirred around so it didn’t burn until everything was good and cooked.  The super hot pan put some nice color on the chicken and veggies.  There was a funny line in the cook book about how you should stir the pan and eventually you will be laughing and having a good time.  A bit weird, Jamie, but we like you anyway. 

Here is a shot of one of our delicious fajitas!

To serve we had some flour tortillas, sour cream, shredded cheddar cheese, and guacamole.  It was so yummy that we bickered about who would get to eat the leftovers!  I think that I won, but then I forgot them at home today, so we will see if there is anything left when I get home from work.  

Oh and the other good thing about this meal was that between chopping and cooking, the whole thing was ready in about 20 minutes!  Take that Rachel Ray!

-Liz