OKC Eats: The Shack

The Shack - Seafood & Oyster Bar

Nate, Matt, and I went out to lunch at The Shack. It's a hole in the wall about four blocks away from work - if you weren't looking for it, you'd miss it. 

For our appetizers we got a plate of fried alligator chunks. The taste was a mix between mussels and chicken - it was good. 

Nate got the boudain. It's like a pork/ rice sausage. It was packed full of good cajun flavor. 

Matt got a plate of oysters covered with shrimp and cheese. The oysters were grilled. The dish didn't smell very good but it tasted amazing!

For my entrée I got a classic shrimp and crawfish poboy. In the picture below you can see how much I liked it - loved it! The sandwich was stuffed so much that the meat was falling out the sides.

Overall assessment: the portions were perfect! There was plenty to go around and they got it out to you pretty quickly. I can't say the same about the drink refills - but I do drink a lot.

But don't just take my word for it - check it out for yourself here.

Dining In for Date Night

Lacey Bagley - Guthrie, OK 

Dining out can be a little expensive, especially if you want a meal that'll make you feel fancy and special after a week of chaos. So! Instead of spending oodles of money, why not make this fancy and meal for you and your sweetheart this week.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Chicken Parmesan!

First off, I've made this meal a couple times and this recipe was my absolute favorite so far. Super flavorful!

Here we go:

Pound the chicken breasts until they are thin, however thin you want. Do they make special kitchen rulers? If they did, I'd tell you how thin they were. So... just pound it until your anger from the chaotic week goes away :)

Then, you're going to bread the chicken:

In one bowl: whisked eggs - I also added a shot of heavy cream to the eggs. Does this help with breading or flavor? No idea. I just had some in the fridge and thought it could be neat. AND - it was.

In the second bowl: bread crumbs and any seasonings of your choice.

Before you start the breading process, put 1/4 cup of vegetable oil in a frying pan and turn it on medium heat. And - get your tongs ready for a party.

Now: dip the chicken breast in the eggs mixture, then coat it in the bread crumbs, and then set it in the oil.

Brown the chicken on each side. This means like 2-4 minutes per side in the oil. Tong party! The goal isn't to cook the chicken through, so have the oil hot enough to just brown it.

After the chicken is browned, place it on a tin foil covered baking sheet. "And clean-up's a snap!"

Layer the following on top of your browned chicken breast: a dollop of your favorite tomato sauce, cheese (I used parmigiano reggiano and mozzarella), and italian seasoning. Don't wimp out on how much italian seasoning you use. Let the chicken know it's going to taste great! Remember: fancy and special - all the way around.

Then bake it - 400 degrees for 15ish minutes. 

Haha, 15-20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked all the way through. 

Oh man - so delicious! And I promise you will definitely feel fancy and special without having spent any obnoxious amounts of money.

Happy date night y'all and definitely happy eating!

Candy Bar Cookies

Personally my two favorite things to do on Sunday afternoons are taking naps

and baking. Especially baking cookies. I found an awesome recipe awhile ago and fell in love with it. The original is a Twix cookie cookie and oh man are they good. Today however we wanted to make them but didn't have any Twix. We did however have a king sized Symphony bar. You know the one with toffee and almonds. Yeah you see where I'm going :) So here's what you need.

Ingredients:

2 cups and 2 Tbs. Flour

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar (I like dark brown sugar for cookies)

12 Tbs. butter

1 egg and 1 egg yolk
2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 giant yes giant sized Symphony candy bar

Directions:
-Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
-In a small bowl stir together flour, baking soda, and salt. Set bowl aside for later
-Melt butter and mix with sugar and brown sugar

-Mix in egg, egg yolk, and vanilla

-Add flour mixture in portions till all is mixed in

-Cut the candy bar into chocolate chip sized pieces

-Mix candy into cookie dough

Use your favorite scoop and load up your cookie sheets. I STRONGLY suggest that you line the cookie sheets with parchment paper. Doing so avoids all chance of sticking and makes for not having to wash the sheets. 

-Bake cookies for 15-18mins. 

Watch the bottoms to see if they are slightly brown. If they are take them out. 

 -And POOF! You have amazing candy bar cookies!!!

So there you have it. May you have a relaxing and joyful Sunday. 

This recipe has been hubby tested and hubby approved!

~KayLynn

Cursed Meatballs

Lacey Bagley - Guthrie, OK

Meatballs should be easy to make, but I can never get it right! Maybe it's just me. Here's what I did this time:

I started by sautéing the onions, nothing fancy; a dash of garlic powder went into the pan too, just to kick the flavor up a little. Then I mixed together: beef, eggs, bread crumbs, milk, salt & pepper, and more garlic powder. I added the onions to the mix, rolled it all up into a package of a little meatball, and baked it at 400 degrees for 12 mins. They weren't cooked through, so I put them in for another 5 minutes. Still pink! What was wrong... nothing. I'm cursed.

On top of being slightly pink in the middle (which isn't a crime), they were not super flavorful and the texture was more like meatloaf. So folks - I'm desperate! What are your go-to meatball recipes?? It can't be just that I can't make them... right?

Help!

Beginner Cake Balls

Lacey Bagley - Guthrie, OK

The latest craze (besides cupcakes - obviously) is cake balls/ pops! What's your favorite? Chocolate? Vanilla?

"Red velvet, please!" Evan and Matt.

Can do.

Here's what I used - nothing fancy. There are fancy ways of making them, that's why this is Beginner Cake Pops! Boxed red velvet cake, store bought cream cheese frosting, and chocolate almond bark. Let's do this!

I'm not usually the type of girl that eats raw dough, except this stuff was ridiculous good! Sorry Betty Crocker... you did too good of a job :)

To get started - you want to follow the instructions on the back of the box (minus the don't eat the cake batter thing... ) and bake a cake. Simple.

Pull it out of the oven and let it cool, but for just a little bit. Dump the cake into a mixing bowl and add the cream cheese frosting. Mix it all together and definitely taste it now - mmmmm!

Then roll them into balls (however big or small you want), put them on wax papered cookie sheets (that sounds weird - but do it), and stick them in the fridge to cool. Another option is to put the sticks in them and freeze them, that would be Beginner Cake Pops.

Word to the wise: put the wax paper on the cookie sheets before rolling the cake into balls or else this will happen:

Now for the fun part! Melt the almond bark on the stove - I doubled up on pans because I was nervous about ruining the chocolate. It took a little longer to melt, but it was worth not having a catastrophe!

 Then, keeping it simple, use a toothpick or a fork to dip the chilled cake balls in the chocolate and them put them back on the cookie sheet. The almond bark sets up really fast so you don't have to chill them, necessarily. However, they are extra delicious when they are cold - personal preference - so I put them back in the fridge until it was time for dessert.

There you have it folks! If you've ever been nervous to try and make cake balls or pops, don't even worry. Keep it simple and happy eating!

Sweet Goodbyes

Matt Davis - at Bagley's Guthrie, OK

This week we said a sad farewell to Matt, as he was headed back home to his family. But he couldn't leave without fulfilling his promise: cinnamon rolls + pastry dough! My - oh, my.

He changed up the pastry dough just a tad, but it was pretty similar to the original dough he made. Here's what he did this time:

Start with two sticks of butter, soften. Mix the butter with two TB flour and roll between two sheets of wax paper and refrigerated until hard. Smile because you have sheets of butter in your fridge again :)

DOUGH -
Dry ingredients: 2 cups flour, tsp salt, and 1/4 sugar. Mix well.

Wet ingredients (biggest differences are here): warm up 1 cup buttered milk & 1/4 cup heavy cream to luke warm temp. Beat in 1 egg.

Pour in dry ingredients. Add yeast mix and 1/2 stick butter - mix all together.

Lastly: add flour (1/4 cup at a time until dough loses stickiness). Kneed on a floured surface for five minutes - follow pastry procedure (fold into 1/3rds twice) (pastry instructions here: http://yourmomsinthekitchen.blogspot.com/2012/07/cream-cheese-and-chocolate-danish.html).

Make cinnamon rolls as usual (see how here: http://yourmomsinthekitchen.blogspot.com/2012/07/let-me-see-that-tootsie-roll.html). He made these with cinnamon - not cocoa powder.

Let them rise in the pan before you cook them.

Baking time. It took them a while to bake because we kept peaking in to see how the dough was turning out - perfectly flaky of course!

  

While they were baking, Matt whipped together the icing: butter (surprise, surprise), cream cheese, and powdered sugar.
 

Just as soon as you pull them out of the oven, slather on the icing. You can never put on enough - just keep going until you've used everything in the bowl.

If you do have leftover icing - Matt suggests using it later by putting it on top of a ball of raw cookie dough (don't even act like you won't be trying this). 

We didn't get a chance to take a picture of the absolute final product because these went from the oven, to just barely being iced, to directly into our mouths! I think we had this whole pan gone by the end of the day... don't judge!

Huge success as these were the most savory treats imaginable. Each layer of the buttery dough was so delicious and the morsels with cinnamon were to die for! Try it - right now.

Also, thank you Matt for transforming our kitchen and our worlds. We wish you the best life has to offer.

(We have an open room now - any new takers? Only one requirement, you must cook for us!)

Happy eating!

Cream Cheese and Chocolate Danish

Matt Davis - via Bagley Home, Guthrie, OK

How many sticks of butter can you eat? Now smother those sticks of butter in sugar and add some cocoa - how many can you eat now?

For a whole week Matt dreamed of danishes! So Saturday morning he bounded out of bed and went briskly to work in the kitchen, with Evan photographing the adventure.

Step 1: Mix lots of butter with flour, roll out in a sheet between two layers of wax paper. 

You think these four sticks of butter are a big deal? They are nothing!

Step 2: Dry ingredient time: flour, salt, sugar.

Step 3: Wet ingredients: water, yeast, sugar. Gotta love the yeasties!

 

Step 4: Mix all together: milk, heavy cream, yeast mix, dry mix, and flour.

Step 5: Kneed and refrigerate. After you refrigerate the dough, roll it out and lay the sheet of butter from step one on to it. LAY THE SHEET OF BUTTER! Who gets to say that :)

Step 6: Fold the edges of the dough to the center, roll it out, fold into 1/3s, refrigerate, and repeat.

Pastry pros out there know that this layering is going to make the end result dough flaky and delightful. For non-pastry pros out there, just imagine your body melting into a million pieces with every bite. Everyone together now? Excellent - let's move forward.

Step 7: Roll the dough out flat and cut dough like so (see below pic), add chocolate/ cream cheese filling, freak out because it's so awesome, and braid the loaf.

 

Step 8: Place the loaves (because we couldn't just make one!) onto baking sheets. Let them rise in a warm place (like the oven). After they've risen, brush the outside with egg.

 

Step 9: Bake

 I (Lacey) was out of the house when all this happened, trusting that my house would still be standing after leaving the fellas cooking in the kitchen all day. They texted me this picture (above) around 6pm - so I quickly said my goodbyes and sped home!

This is what I came home to:

 

Step 10: Admire. It was so beautiful! The smell was intoxicating and the dough was perfect. The egg made it shiny and it was flaky and there was chocolate... 

Step 11: Be jealous. 

Total sticks of butter used - what's your guess?

PS. This was one of the greatest things that has ever been made in the Bagley house! That was until Matt leaned over to Evan in church today and said:

"What if we combined the danish recipe and the cinnamon roll recipe?"

His jaw dropped.

Post pending :)

Enchilada Date Night

Lacey Bagley - Guthrie, OK

We planned a Mexican dinner/ date night last week for some friends. I made enchiladas, guacamole, and cake balls - because they are número uno on the list of favorite Mexican foods!

Evan and I already showed off our mad guacamole skills, but you guys need to know the results of the competition: which is better - corn tortillas with beef (right) or flour tortillas with my mom's traditional creamy chicken recipe (left)?




The recipe for the corn tortilla filling is simple: beef, taco seasoning, salsa, and red enchilada sauce. My mom's flour tortilla filling is, well... a picture is easiest:




Pretty different, but give my Minnesotan, Norwegian mom a break - eh? Let's just say this, if I were on death row, this would be my last meal. It's that good.

So I'm out of the judging. The other four people voted:

Corn/ beef: 2
Flour/ chicken: 2

Well, that's not okay! So I had to use my vote to break the tie... so mom's recipe wins!

I guess I can say that this week: my mom really WAS in the kitchen!

Happy eating!

Truffle Adventure

       Sometimes I think I watch the food network too much :) I had some heavy cream left over from making ice-cream and have been wondering what to use it for. Truffles randomly came to mind so I went to my computer to search the web for an easy recipe. The one I found had only three ingredients; chocolate chips, cream, and vanilla. Easy enough right? I went to work and melted the chocolate chips with the cream. When it was all melted and smooth I turned off the heat and added the vanilla. I then put the concoction in a bowl and popped it in freezer to cool and harden it. After impatiently waiting I pulled the semi hard truffle out of the freezer and scooped out balls to be dipped in either cocoa powder or chopped walnuts. I even sprinkled some salt onto a few plain ones. Here's how they look!

  The top two on the right have kosher salt on top while the other seemingly plain ones have an alder wood smoked salt sprinkled on top. The others either have cocoa powder or walnuts. 

                  Here's the link to the recipe that I used: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/basic-truffles/  

  

   I'll let you in on the tweaks that I made to the recipe. I just used regular semi sweet chocolate chips instead of the bittersweet. It called for 1/3 cup of cream but I had a little extra so I think in the end I added about 1/2 cup of cream. I also added 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla instead of the 1 tsp. 

   The things that Ill do differently next time is divide the cream/chocolate mixture and try adding different extracts like orange or mint or raspberry or maybe even almond. Im also going to make the balls smaller. More bite sized. These are a little hard to hold cause they melt in your fingers as you're eating them. I might even try using milk chocolate chips. I wonder how that would turn out.

    Tips to consider:

* Use a rubber spatula when mixing the chips and cream. 

* Be patient and make sure the mixture is nice and creamy. The chocolate chips like to leave little bits that take longer to melt.

* Lightly toast the nuts. I had frozen walnuts so I just chopped them up and put them in a pan over low heat stirring frequently to get them crunchy instead of mushy

* Experiment with different toppings

    So there you have it. A really simple way to make decadent chocolate truffles! Enjoy!

~KayLynn

Holy Guacamole - we've got chips!

Lacey Bagley - Guthrie, OK

Here's a quick post.

I have never made guacamole successfully. I have made brown nasty crap that was a waste of space... and a waste of two perfectly good avacadoes. We had a Mexican date night coming up, so I needed some help - stat!

I asked a good friend what his secret was: lime juice, pico de gallo/ salsa, and lots of salt.




Here we go! Evan helped me cut up, mash, and season the avacadoes.










We kept it simple and added each item a little at a time. I was so excited when Evan, my guinea pig, handed me a chip with a smile - "try it."




I almost felt like jumping up and down, I was so excited! We did it! So folks - keep it simple and happy eating.