Cooking recipes: Rice with chicken meat

Category: main dishes
Difficulty: 2/5
Time needed: up to 1 hour

I cook this dish quite often, especially when I don't have too much time or I'm too lazy. Recipe is simple and the end result is delicious. And normally I don't need to rush to the grocery store because all I need is often already at home.

Ingredients (for 4 persons):
- 500 ml rice (I prefer parboiled one)
- 1,2 L chicken soup or bullion
- 1 middle sized onion
- 4 husks of garlic
- 300 g chicken meat (fillet from chests or back)
- oil (I prefer olive oil)
- spices (depends on your taste - I would suggest curry, parsley, 2 leaves of bay)

Procedure:
- make chicken soup or bullion. I don't complicate so I use 2 chicken soup cubes. Put it to boil.
- in the meantime peel the onion and cut it to small pieces
- peel garlic, too
- in a pot (app. 2 L), put some oil, heat it, put the onion and fry it until it gets glassy look
- while you are frying the onion, chop chicken meat into small pieces
- when the onion is fried, put the meat in the pot and fry it (don't forget to mix)
- just before adding rice, cut garlic in small pieces and put it in the pot to fry just a little bit (to feel the smell of it)
- then put the rice in the pot and fry it just a little bit
- pour the chicken soup in the pot, stir and add the spices
- cover the pot, boil everything and then lower the heat. The soup has to boil just a little bit. Leave the pot covered
- normally don't stir anymore. After app. 30 min (check in between) the rice should soak almost all the soup and should be cooked. If it's not, just add some hot water. Turn off the heat, put the pot aside and leave it covered for about 10 min, so that tastes spread all over the pot and the rice calms down
- serve it with some parmesan cheese and white wine


Buon appetite!

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Cooking recipes: Pancake - basic recipe

Summer is such a nice time for cooking because there is normaly more time, especially during vacations. This week my wife is on vacation so I can expect to have something good for the lunch.
Today she surprised me with vegetable stew and palačinka. Palačinka is a slovenian word for pancake or crêpe (in french). We all like them very much so I decided to put down the recipe for them.

Pancakes are well known all over the world. There are many variations. In Slovenia we fry "panequets" (french word), which are a little thicker, and "crêpes" (french again), which are very thin. I've also tried american pancakes, which are very thick, but I prefer first two types. If you check cookbooks or internet (for example Wikipedia), you will find a lot of other information.

Pancakes can be used in various ways. We use both sweet and non-sweet variation. Sweet ones are filled with different sweet ingredients, like jam, sugar and lemon juice, whipped cream, chocolate sauce etc. and used as sweets. Non-sweet ones are filled with mashrooms, cheese, ham, eggs etc. and used as a main dish.

Basic recipe for palačinka (pancake, crêpe).

Ingredients for about 20 crêpes:
- 1 cup (230 mL) plain flour
- 1 cup (230 mL) milk
- 2 eggs
- 20 g of butter or oil
- 1 pinch of salt
- 2 table spoons of sugar (for the sweet variation)

Insead of milk, you can raplace a part or all of it with the beer which makes them more soft.

PROCEDURE
First melt down the butter. Put the flower in a mixing bowl, make a hole in the middle and in that hole we put eggs, the butter or oil, the salt and a bit of milk. Mix all ingredients so you get a thick paste. Then continue mixing and slowly add the rest of the milk, mix well to avoid making lumps. Leave it to rest for about 2 hours (if you are not in the hurry).
Heat a pan (non-stick ones are the best), put a small piece of butter until it melts down (you can also use oil) and spread it all over the pan by rolling it. A drop of water can be used to test the pan temperature: too cold, and the water will sit on the pan, too hot and it will vanish immediately. At the right temperature, the water will seem to "dance" on the pan.
Pour a ladle of crêpe paste in the midle of the pan and roll it so that paste spreads all over the pan. Use the right amount of paste so that crepes will be as thin as possible.
Cooking it the crêpe slides when you shake the pan, then turn it over to cook the other side; with some practice, you can flip it in the air by swinging the pan.
Crêpes can be filled and folded into triangles or rolled up.

You can fill crêpes with different sweet things. I prefer this ones:
- jam
- sugar and lemon juice
- chopped fruits and whipped cream
- chocolate souce
- nutella

There are many recipes about crêpes. I'll take a look at my cookbooks and put down interesting ones in the future.

TIP
Crêpes cool down quickly. If you want to serve them warm, which are the best, take a pot, fill it with some water, and boil it. After that put down the heat and put a plate for crêpes on it. Put crêpes on that plate when you bake them.

Buon apetite!

My Cooking Recipes

The first blog

Hi, everybody. I have decided to make this blogg about cooking, which is a favorite hobby of mine. I will try to regulary post recipes that I find interesting, cooking tips and tricks and other interesting stuff. I hope you'll find it interesting.

Slovenia is a small country, as you probably already know, located between Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia. Troughout the history we were always part of some bigger country, until 1991, which has influenced a lot of our habbits together with our culinary art.
Our food is diverse, many times quite strong, and we like to consume it in a "slow food" manner.

As far as I'm concerend, I prefer that kind of food. I like to have strong breakfast, a big lunch and normally no dinner. As one of our saying quotes: "Have breakfast like a king, lunch like a gentelman and dinner like a beggar." It's working for me.
What about you? What are your eating habits?

My Cooking Recipes