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My absence can be summed up in one sentence:

“The boyfriend” shall now be known as “the husband.”

I just helped him make tsatsiki. AND he just got me a beer. I’m going to like the married life…

Now that all the rigmarole has died down, it’s time to get back to the blog. Allow me to jot down a few thoughts I’ve had regarding food and weddings.

1) We attempted to introduce our friends and family to the wonders of asparagus by including it on our reception menu. But it was soggy. Damn it. Now we’ll have to invite them over to dinner one by one to make them some good asparagus, just so they don’t keep the wrong idea.

2) You know how you are supposed to freeze some wedding cake and then eat it on your first anniversary? Yeah, our freezer isn’t that big. We’re eating it now instead. Screw it. It was a delicious carrot cake tier and I would rather eat it sans freezer burn anyway.

3) The wedding even helped me in my attempt to recreate Chipotle’s chicken. I stopped in on my way back from my hair and make-up trial. There was some 16-year-old kid behind the counter who got all slack-jawed and was like, “You have beautiful eyes…” “Hey, thanks. So…. what do you put in the chicken?” heh heh heh. More on that in a later post.

4) We went to Sonoma/Napa on our honeymoon, so we tastes a lot of wine. Our favorite was Bartholomew Park in Sonoma. They don’t distribute, but you can buy online. We ended up buying the cab (2005) and the sauvignon blanc (2006). The sauvignon blanc was actually a big deal for us, because we don’t like white wine all that much. Damn, I’m using “we” already. It’s true though! The husband likes it a wee bit more than me though. But this was pretty tasty, so we decided to go with it.

Stag ’s Leap was delicious too, especially their premium stuff. But it costs way too much money. I’m also happy to report that Malbec is popping up in Napa here and there. If you aren’t aware, I’ll drink Malbec with anything. It’s my favorite. The Napa versions weren’t as good as the stuff from South America, but, I’m glad they are trying.

5) We bought a lovely set of Riedel Vitis champagne glasses for our toast. If you are looking for a high-quality set, I recommend them. Especially if you are a giant, because they are enormous.

6) A channel wedding ring makes cooking… interesting.

7) Licking envelopes still tastes nasty. I’m waiting for someone to invent glue that tastes like cupcakes.

All in all, my cooking skills have grown tremendously. I’m reaching the point where I don’t need a recipe anymore. That’s huge! One night, my husband even reached for seconds of something I made. That’s even huger than the no-recipe thing, because he never gets seconds of anything. We alternate cooking nights, so I’m always on the lookout for fun and interesting new food to try.

It’s nice to be back!

Have I ever mentioned I’m a Taurus? And therefore, stubborn as hell?

I’m still on a mission to master chipotle chicken. As in, duplicating the flavor you get at the fast food place. I knew my latest attempt wouldn’t be spot on, because it looks totally different, but, I was hoping to learn a little more about the flavors used in various chipotle chicken recipes. That’s the plan anyways.

There are certainly enough chipotle chicken recipes to learn from. My goodness. My boyfriend tells me that chipotles became quite “trendy” a few years back. That would certainly explain the 33 pages of chipotle chicken recipes found on epicurious.com. When I search for “chipotle” alone, I got a whopping 266 pages. Holy crap. Whadda think? Should I change this blog to a chipotle cooking blog? A recipe a day? Think I’ll get a movie deal?

The recipe I used comes from Gourmet magazine. I changed it up a teeny bit, by using chicken breasts instead of two whole chickens. My cat’s on a diet*, so, I was just cooking for me and the boyfriend. We don’t need a chicken apiece.

Therefore, I had to guess on the cooking time. I think, just by comparing pictures, that I cooked it less than they did in the magazine. But I’m cool with that. It came out really tasty.

That first night, we had it in tacos. Like the last time I mixed chicken with taco ingredients, the flavors were overwhelmed by the other taco ingredients. It was still tasty, but, it just tasted like ordinary (yet moist) chicken.

The next day at lunch, I had the leftovers with some mashed potatoes. That was delicious. I didn’t even care about the chicken actually, I was just sucking all the sauce off. That pretty much made it BBQ chicken, but, mmmmm. Tasty.

So yeah, it still tasted nothing like the stuff in the restaurant, but I was really happy I made it. I’ll be making it again. The directions were easy to follow, and we had all the non-fresh ingredients in the cupboard. I love it when that happens.

* She’s lost three pounds! I’m so proud.

Okay, I hearby promise that the rest of this entry will be devoid of rhyming.

Instead, I will tell you all about these awesome chicken nachos my boyfriend and I made.

We experimented with the chicken marinade/rubs, so there are actually three different flavors of chicken in there. Yum…

These were all the ingredients we used. As you can see, we just went nuts. It was fun.

Dish one was an ordinary dry rub. I forgot what was in it. I apologize. I wasn’t paying too much attention. I was much too excited about dish two, which is where we tried to recreate the chicken they use at Chipotle restaurant.

I’m from the Albany, New York area, and I live there now, but for some years in between I lived in Denver, Colorado. Chipotle stores are every three feet in Denver, so it was inevitable that I’d go in someday. Once I did, I was hooked.

It’s ridiculous. They have a ton of options, but I order the same, plain thing every time: chicken tacos with cheese. That’s it. No salsa. No guacamole. No nothing. Just the yummy, yummy chicken offset with some cheese. I’d get it a few times a week. Kinda sad really. But I have no shame, so I don’t care.

I went for years without it, once I moved away. It made me sad, but that’s life. I always kept an eye out though, to see if they would ever expand this way. And a few months ago, they finally did.

I’ve settled back into the old routine. We’ve reached the point where the folks behind the counter knew what I wanted without me telling them, just like their counterparts all over Denver, lol.

So, yeah. If I could create that flavoring on my own, I’d be so happy. It turns out I have some work to do though. That smokey flavor is hard to get! Seriously, if anyone reading this works there, or knows someone who works there, hook me up. We used hot sauce, dried chipotle and some balsamic vinegar. And cilantro and garlic. I think that’s it. I should have written it down, lol.

The third dish was my boyfriend’s special, make-it-up-as-he-goes-along concoction. I liked it the best out of the three, due to the lovely sweet and spicy mix he had going on. He used brown sugar and cocoa for the sweetness, cumin, oregano, and cilantro for the inbetween, and sriracha for the heat - that’s a Thai hot sauce for those of you (like me) not in the know. Plus some salt and pepper just for fun. The end result was really tasty all by itself, but the subtlety was overwhelmed by the rest of the nacho stuff, like the cheese and sour cream.

That was my common complaint actually. The nacho stuff tended to drown out a lot of the seasoning. I’m not sure if that means more seasoning or less other crap though, lol. Next time, we have plans to marinate them longer than two hours, baste while grilling, and to actually tenderize them and flatten them out to increase the surface area of the chicken. That all should help.

My boyfriend liked the dry rub the best, actually. I appreciated the crispy crust it made, I didn’t like that the chicken was dry compared to the marinades.

It was really weird to me how different each piece of chicken looked after marinating for a while. I should have been surprised by the different staining, but I was.