Finally, I started loving brussel sprouts…

I can now confidentially say that I love all kinds of veggies. Until last week I had an exception, Brussel sprouts. Though I admired the cute miniature cabbage look of them, I just couldn’t handle the bitterness of it. Once I had bought a bag of brussel sprouts and cooked it, it turned out to be so bitter that I had to literally thrash them. After that I just ignored them.

Last week, while hanging out at the produce aisle I glanced at brussel sprouts and I had the sudden urge to try that one more time. With a little hesitation I put that it in my cart and headed home to try my luck with it. I did a little research before even thinking of cooking with it. Most of the people had the opinion that cooking it too long would bring out its bitterness and it was better to roast it. i So, I decided to roast it in the oven, well I love to roast veggies till it turns light caramelized.

Towards the end of the baking, I sprinkled parmesan cheese and almonds on the brussel sprouts. The cheese gave a nice aroma and flavor to it, while the almonds imparted the crunchiness. My hubby and I ate the entire roasted brussel sprouts with so much greed.

Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Almonds

Ingredients

To marinate brussel sprouts:

• Brussel sprouts- 1 bag, about 20 no’s
• Red wine vinegar- 1 1/2 tbsp ( you could use soy sauce instead)
• Garlic minced- 3 cloves
• Thyme- 2 sprig
• Salt- 1/2 tsp
• Olive oil- 3 tbsp

Other ingredients:

• Almonds, blanched and halved- 1/2 cup
• Parmesan cheese, grated- 1/3 cup

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Combine brussel sprouts with the above mentioned ingredients to marinate.
3. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.
4. Grease with non-stick cooking spray.
5. Spread the brussel sprouts evenly over the aluminum foil.
6. Bake for first 20 minutes, after 10 minutes toss the brussel sprouts and bake again.
7. After 20 minutes of baking, sprinkle parmesan cheese and almonds over it and bake for another 5 minutes.
8. Remove from the oven and serve warm as a side dish.

Tips:

• You could bake Asparagus in the same way.

I got bored of cooking with chicken breasts, I cannot deny the fact that boneless chicken breast is healthy and rich in protein. So I still wanted to use chicken breasts but in a different way. I seldom had to think hard before about what to cook with chicken, but this time I had to ponder a bit to come up with something new and exciting. Some of the recipes that call for chicken and vegetables ran through my mind. I even stood still with the open refrigerator to pick the right veggie for this dish. And I picked spinach as it has been my favorite green which has a very subtle and delicate flavor.

I love cooking with spinach and I have already made a few dishes with spinach: tuna spinach cakes, chick pea-spinach sandwich, spinach soup and lately I even tried making spinach chutney. This time I combined ground chicken breasts and sauteed spinach together. Made it into balls and baked it. After baking it, stir fried it along with aromatic herbs and seasonings till it got browned. It does resemble to sausage balls, but this chicken spinach balls are rather healthy and is free of red meat. It’s baked, stir fried, has greens in it and is flavorful.

Baked Chicken balls with Spinach:

Ingredients:

• Ground chicken breast- 1 pound (or grind 4 chicken breasts in a blender)
• Chilly powder- 1 tsp
• Salt- little

For sauteeing spinach:

• Oil- 1 tbsp
• Spinach- 1/2 bunch
• Fennel seeds- 1 tsp
• Onion, chopped small- 1
• Ginger-Garlic paste- 2 tsp
• Ground pepper- 1/4 tsp

For stir frying:

• Oil- 1 tbsp
• Ginger, chopped thin and long- 2 inch slice
• Garlic chopped, thin- 4 cloves
• Green onions, chopped- 3 stalks
• Ground pepper- 1/2 tsp
• Mint leaves, chopped- 1/4 cup
• Soy sauce- 2 tbsp

Preparation:

• You could use ground chicken breasts bought from the store or grind washed chicken breasts- 4 no’s to smooth constituency without adding any water.
• Combine the ground chicken with chilly powder and salt, add little salt as we will be using soy sauce while stir frying which has salt too.
• Heat a non-stick pan, add oil, when it turns hot add fennel seeds.
• Add onion and saute till translucent, add ginger-garlic paste, saute for a minute.
• Add spinach and ground pepper to it, let the spinach cook for a few minutes.
• After the spinach has cooked, add the spinach mixture to the ground chicken mixture, combine well.
• Make small balls out of it, keep aside.
• Pre heat oven to 350F.
• Place the chicken balls on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil and sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.
• Bake for 30 minutes.
• Remove from the oven.
• Heat a wok or skillet, add oil, add chopped ginger and garlic to it, stir fry for a second.
• Add green onions and stir fry for a second.
• Don’t fry the ginger-garlic and green onions till it turns brown.
• Now, add baked chicken balls and stir fry till it starts to turn golden brown in color.
• Sprinkle the chopped mint leaves over the chicken balls and stir fry it.
• Add ground pepper and pour soy sauce over the chicken balls.
• If you want it more spicy add more of the ground pepper.
• Cook for a minute and remove from the heat.
• Serve hot as an appetizer or you could even insert a tooth pick on the balls and serve as finger food.
• Mint leaves imparts a mesmerizing and refreshing fragrance to the chicken.

Tips:

• If you don’t have mint you could use cilantro, but I highly recommend mint leaves.

I haven’t come across anyone who dislikes munching. If we can make something really healthy to munch on wouldn’t that be the best snack ever? I love to munch especially at mid night during weekends. If it’s something unhealthy, I have to think twice before I empty the bag in just one sitting. Most of the time with all guilt I do empty the bag which would be often followed by making up my mind to cut down on this activity. I fail terribly the very next day when I see some delicious snacks.

One of the snacks that I loved while growing up is Sesame balls which is very common in my hometown. If I get hold of a bag of sesame balls I make sure to finish up the whole stuff. Literally, I love anything with sesame seeds in it, I often sprinkle my chicken/shrimp and veggie dishes with roasted sesame seeds or use sesame oil. I couldn’t get over with the aroma of sesame seeds/oil.

The other day, while surfing about sesame balls, I was overwhelmed to see many food blogs with recipes and pictures of sesame bars. I felt little bad for not having tried sesame bars all these years. Better late than never! I used flax seeds and white/black sesame seeds to make this. If you cannot find flax seeds, just use sesame seeds.

Flax seeds are rich in omega 3 fatty acids and helps in lowering the cholesterol level in women. Ground flaxseed can go rancid at room temperature in as little as one week. If any recipe calls for  ground flax seeds it would be good to grind the seeds just before starting your preparation.

Sesame Flax Seeds Bars

Ingredients:

• White Sesame seeds- 1/4 cup
• Black Sesame seeds- 1/2 cup
• Flax Seeds, brown- 1/2 cup
• Honey- 1/8 cup
• Maple syrup- 1/8 cup

Preparation:

• In a non-stick pan, roast all the seeds over medium heat till the seeds get aromatic, keep stirring and make sure not to burn it.
• In a bowl, using a fork combine the roasted seeds with honey and maple syrup till it is evenly coated.
• Line a square baking pan with parchment paper, grease the paper with little butter or cooking spray.
• Evenly spread the seeds mixed with honey and maple syrup over the parchment paper.
• Preheat oven to 325 F.
• Place the pan in the oven and bake for 20 minutes.
• As soon as it comes out of the oven, it will be sticky and will not be set.
• As it sits for sometime it will start to harden.
• After 10 minutes of cooling, using a sharp knife cut into square or other shapes.
• Allow it to cool for 10 more minutes and gently peel the bars out of the parchment paper.
• Now start munching these healthy bars, they are absolutely delicious.

Tips:

• If you don’t have flax seeds, use white or black sesame seeds instead.

Dinner rolls don’t get any better when they are homemade…

I love baking, however baking breads, rolls etc isn’t my thing as something or the other would go wrong while making them. So I usually depend on store bought rolls and breads, the easiest and the safest way. However, last week I somehow got the urge for baking dinner rolls from scratch. I had no other choice but bake it. I didn’t have any family recipes for making dinner rolls, so obviously had to surf the internet and bumped into a good recipe at Martha Stewart’s website. I immediately started making it, it was quite easy to make. Only thing I had to do was knead the dough for 5-10 minutes. Then I had to keep the dough aside for 3 hours to let it rise. Baked it for 20 minutes, I felt so impatient and just wanted the rolls to come out of the oven to have a bite of it. I even couldn’t wait for it to cool down, I greedily tore one of the hot rolls and put it in my mouth. I did burn my mouth but when I chewed down the soft rolls which tasted better than the store bought ones, I totally forgot about the burn and I was seen in the ninth cloud.

One of the best dinner rolls I’ve ever tasted and it’s fresh and homemade. So, what are you waiting for? Get in to your kitchen and have fun kneading and baking!

Homemade Dinner Rolls:

Makes: 13

Ingredients:

• Warm water- 1/8 cup
• Active dry yeast- 1 packet, 1/4 ounce each
• Warm milk, skim or whole- 3/4 cup
• Unsalted butter, melted- 1/4 cup (half of a stick) and more for greasing the pans.
• Sugar- 1/8 cup
• Salt- 1tsp
• Eggs- 2; 1 for making the dough and 1 for egg wash
• All purpose flour- 3 1/4 cups and more for work surface for kneading

Preparation:

• In a small bowl, place the warm water and sprinkle the yeast over it. Let stand for 5 minutes.
• In a large bowl, whisk together milk, melted butter, sugar, salt and 1 egg.
• Whisk in the yeast into the above mixture.
• Add 3 1/4 cups of all purpose flour, one cup at a time and combine using a wooden spoon, until it gets soft.
• Flour a wooden board or any work surface and place the dough on it.
• Knead the dough until it gets smooth and elastic, for about 5-10 minutes.
• Grease the inside of a large bowl with butter, place the dough into the bowl.

This stuffed, baked banana peppers was one of the main attractions from my kitchen that happened last weekend. I usually make banana pepper fritters which is a common evening snack in India. While buying banana peppers, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it besides frying it. And this time I absolutely didn’t want to fry it, wanted to make something different with it.

Stuff the banana peppers was the first thing that hit my mind, and the second thing that came to my mind was bake ‘em. In no time I was seen having fun stuffing and baking the banana peppers. For making the stuffing, I literally threw whatever was found in my refrigerator and pantry into a huge pot and the outcome was unbelievably delish!

I loved the taste of the stuffing so much that I couldn’t resist eating it while stuffing the peppers. Since I had only three peppers to stuff, the leftover stuffing was served as a side dish. The stuffed peppers was then allowed to bake in the oven. I couldn’t wait till the peppers came out charred perfectly out of the oven. As soon as I took the baked peppers out of the oven, just looking at it I had the feeling that it’s going to taste awesome. And the stuffed, baked banana peppers didn’t let me down.

Stuffed Baked Banana Peppers

Ingredients:

• Banana peppers- 3 or more

For making  the stuffing:

• Olive oil- 1 tbsp
• Onion, chopped-1
• Red beans, canned- 1 can
• Yellow Corn- 1/2 can
• Cooked Rice, I used Basmati rice- 2 cups
• Chicken loaf, deli fresh, cooked (optional), chopped- 2-3 slices
• Cumin powder- 1 tsp
• Tomato Ketchup- 4 tbsp
• Green onion, chopped- 3 tbsp
• Cheddar cheese grated- 1 cup
• Salt- if needed (taste and add accordingly)

Preparation:

• Place a wide sauce pan over medium heat, add olive oil.
• Add chopped onions, saute for few minutes.
• Drain the canned red beans and yellow corn and rinse it with water.
• Add the beans and corn to the onions, let it cook for few minutes.
• Now, add the cooked rice and combine everything well.

• Add the chopped deli fresh chicken loaves and cook for few minutes.

• Add the cumin powder, tomato ketchup, green onion and give it a good stir.
• Taste it and add salt if needed.
• Finally spread the grated cheddar cheese over it and remove the pan from the stove.

Stuffing the peppers:

• Cut the top part of the banana peppers.
• Remove the seeds from the peppers and stuff the peppers with the stuffing.

• Push the stuffing inside the peppers with a wooden spoon.
• Level the stuffing at the opening of the pepper.

Baking the stuffed peppers:

• Preheat the oven to 350F.
• Place the stuffed peppers on a baking sheet or pan lined with aluminum foil which is sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.
• Pop it into the oven and let it bake for 20 minutes or until the peppers have become charred.

• Take the baked peppers out of the oven and let it cool down slightly.
• You could serve this as an appetizer or as an entree along with other sides of your choice.
• You could also serve any leftover stuffing along with the baked peppers.

Tips:

• Make sure you don’t over stuff the peppers as some of the stuffing would come out of the peppers while baking.
• Vegans: you could make this without the chicken.

I’ve always loved participating in this joust which makes me think and cook something out of the box, each time with different ingredients. When I found out that the joust is back after a short break I felt quite thrilled. It’s obvious from the name of this post that the two of the ingredients for this joust are spinach and cheese. And the third ingredient is egg. I screamed out of joy seeing these ingredients for this month’s joust, as this time I don’t have to do any special shopping. I felt I had so many ways to combine these simple ingredients, but when it came to real cooking I felt quite challenged.

As one of the ingredients is egg, first thought that hit me was to combine everything and make an omelet, that would be the easiest dish I could ever make with these ingredients. On second thought, I felt this is a joust and I’ve to be creative and should come up with something unusual.

While peeping into my freezer I came across puff pastry sheets and I grabbed them out as the first step. I got inspired by the recipe given on the pepperidge farm puff pastry box which called for spinach, eggs and cheese. I made few changes and made my own spinach cheese rolls. I’ve been a puff pastry lover ever since I was a kid. When it was stuffed with spinach and cheese it tasted even more delicious. It’s crispy, crunchy and makes a perfect evening snack or for brunch just like the sweet puff pastry.

I am off to India for two months. I can’t wait to spend time with my wonderful family and my cute niece. So in India it’s going to be “cooking with my mom” for the next two months. Well, this is so not true, it’s going to be “Thas gobbling up mom’s yummy food”. Whenever I get a chance I’ll post more recipes from India. Till then, everyone have fun cooking and baking!

Spinach Cheese Rolls

Ingredients

• Puff Pastry sheet- 1
• Egg- 1
• Ground cinnamon- 1/4 tsp
• Grated Parmesan cheese- 1/2 cup
• Raisins or dried cranberries(optional)- 2 tbsp
• Spinach, frozen or fresh- 1/2 bag

Preparation:

• If you are using frozen puff pastry sheet, thaw the sheet at room temperature for about 30 minutes or so.
• Preheat oven to 400 F.
• Lightly grease 2 baking sheets.
• Beat egg and ground cinnamon using a hand whisk and keep aside.

• If using frozen spinach, thaw and drain it well.
• If using fresh spinach, rinse it under running water and pat dry it.
• Place the puff pastry sheet on a floured surface.

• Brush the top of the sheet with egg and cinnamon mixture.

• Top with grated parmesan cheese.

• Spread spinach and raisin over the cheese layer.

• Roll up the puff pastry sheet.

• Cut the roll into 1/2 inch slices.

• Arrange the slices on the baking sheets.

• Brush the slices with egg mixture.
• Bake for 15 minutes or until golden.

• Flip the rolls to the other side and bake for another 3-5 minutes, make sure not to burn the rolls.
• Serve immediately while it’s warm.

I know there are throngs of people out there just like me who find it absolutely hard to resist chicken wings. To stop with just three or four wings is a tough thing to do. I’ve experienced that the complete pleasure is achieved only if the whole plate of wings is emptied in one sitting, any different opinion?

Whenever I indulge myself in chicken wings, my husband will shoot this comment : “You can’t eat wings like this, this is meant for guy’s” and he earns all my hatred at that moment. My reply would be “I don’t give a damn” !! Yes, I love chicken wings and I am sure there will be many women who are die hard fans of wings. The only difference is that men enjoy it without much guilt and women enjoy each and every wings with too much guilt. Chicken wings, purely a guilty pleasure!

I had a misconception all these years that making restaurant style chicken wings in my kitchen is almost close to impossible. But after making this, I am out of this thought and now I know that I can make it in my kitchen just like restaurant style. And the best part is it’s baked, not at all fried…

Wohoo! what more do I need than a baked, crispy, juicy and spicy chicken wings just like restaurant style? I adapted this recipe from Allrecipes.com. The original recipe called for frying the wings, but I baked it. I was spell bound to see that even the baked ones came out crispy, juicy and tasted just like fried ones.

I made a spicy sauce to coat the baked chicken wings as well, this enhanced the taste of the wings a million times.

Note: To make crispy baked wings: you must marinate the wings for at least an hour or an hour and a half. This is the key to making the wings crispy. So, please don’t fail to do so.

Baked Spicy Chicken Wings- restaurant style

Ingredients:

• Chicken wings, skinless or skin-on- 10-12 no’s

For marination:

• All-purpose flour- 1/2 cup
• Paprika- 1/4 tsp
• Cayenne pepper or chilly powder- 1/4 tsp
• Salt- 1/4 tsp

For making the hot sauce:

• Butter- 1/4 cup
• Hot sauce- 1/4 cup
• Ground black pepper- 1 dash
• Garlic powder- 1 dash

Preparation:

• Preheat the oven to 350F.
• Clean the chicken wings, if you want you could remove the skin or keep it (it’s up to you).
• In a small bowl, combine all-purpose flour, paprika, cayenne pepper or chilly powder and salt.

• Place the chicken wings in a large glass bowl.
• Coat the wings evenly with flour mixture.

• Cover the dish with a plastic wrap and keep it in the refrigerator.
• Let marinate for an hour or 90 seconds.
• Spray a baking sheet with non-stick cooking spray, preferably Pam.
• Place the marinated chicken wings on the sheet and lightly spray the wings with Pam.

• Bake for initial 45 minutes at 350F.

• After 45 minutes of baking, increase the oven temperature to 375 F.
• Take the wings out and spray them with Pam or any cooking spray.
• Bake them again at 375 F for another 10 minutes, this would make the wings crispy.

Making the sauce:

• Make the sauce while the wings are baking.
• Heat a saucepan over low heat, add the butter, hot sauce, ground pepper and garlic powder, stir together.
• Let the butter melt and stir till the mixture is well blended.
• Remove from the heat and pour the sauce over the baked crispy chicken wings.

This time you could enjoy the wings without any guilt, it’s baked yet tastes like restaurant style

Tips:

• If you can’t handle much spice, reduce the amount of hot sauce accordingly.
• Health freaks: you could reduce the amount of butter used according to your needs and use fat-free cooking spray.

Beware; these beef balls will make you go insane…

Basketball, Volleyball, golf ball and beef balls are lined up in front of you, which one will you pick??? I can hear the unanimous screaming from all of you “Beef balls, beef balls, beef ballsss…

When the beef balls came out of the oven well done and browned, my husband who was calm and humble until that time, transformed into a selfish and greedy being. For the first time, he couldn’t wait till the beef balls got a neat presentation and did few posing in front of the camera. He begged me and bugged me like crazy for these beef balls. Can’t blame him, it’s the beef balls that made him insane. Finally, I was forced to throw few beef balls into his mouth just to make him shut. In just seconds he finished it and sneaked into the kitchen to gobble up other beef balls too. Gosh, what’s the matter with this man? I screamed. And I had to wind up the photo session real fast.

This recipe is adapted from Rachael Ray. These are the same meat balls, which are used for making the popular “Spaghetti and meat balls”. I ignored the spaghetti and just made the meatballs. This could be served as a finger food or as an appetizer, either way there will be a high demand for this and will vanish from the platter in just a matter of seconds.

Beef Balls

Ingredients:

• Groung beef- 1 pound
• Minced garlic- 1tsp
• Worcestershire sauce- 2tsp
• Egg, beaten-1
• Bread crumbs- 1/4 cup
• Grated parmesan- 2 handfuls
• Italian seasoning- 1 tsp
• Ground pepper- 1/4 tsp
• Salt- to taste
• Non-stick cooking spray- to grease the baking sheet

Preparation:

• Preheat oven to 425 F
• In a large bowl, combine ground beef, minced garlic, worcestershire sauce, egg, bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, Italian seasoning, ground pepper and salt.

• Make medium sized balls out of it.

• Spray a baking sheet with non-stick cooking spray and place the balls on it.
• Bake the balls for initial 15 minutes.
• After 15 minutes of baking, turn the balls to the other side and bake for another 10 more minutes.

• Take the balls out of the oven, insert a tooth pick into each balls and serve hot with ketchup or any other sauce.

Tips:

• You could even make patties out of this seasoned ground beef and bake it.

• Baked beef patties can be used for making burgers, place the patty between the hamburger buns and top it with grilled onions, pickled cucumbers, sliced tomatoes, lettuce and smear the buns with mayonnaise.

It was 5 years ago when I had made my first cake with this batter, this time tried butter cupcakes with the same batter…

My mom is an awesome cook, but she never did any major baking. This was the only cake she used to make when I was young. She used to make this cake not in an oven but in a pressure cooker and surprisingly it came out pretty delicious. So when it was my turn to make cake, I didn’t go behind any new recipe but followed my own mom’s recipe. Today, just by a click many cake recipes would line up right in front of me. But I have always found a special attachment towards this cake and hence always ended up making this.

It’s been a while since I’ve baked this cake, so today I tried making cupcakes with the same butter cake batter. Just like the cake, cupcakes turned out pretty darn incredible too. This butter cupcake is super easy to make and would be perfect for any tea party.

Butter cupcake

Ingredients:

• All purpose flour – 1 1/2 cups
• Powdered sugar or granulated sugar- 1 1/2 cups
• Butter(unsalted) – 100 gm or 1/2 cup
• Eggs(white and yolk separated) at room temperature- 3 nos
• Baking powder – 1/2 tsp
• Vanilla extract- 1tsp

Preparation:

• Preheat oven to 350 F.
• In a medium bowl, cream butter and sugar together using a hand mixer.

• Separate egg white from the egg yolk and place in separate bowls.
• Beat the egg whites and egg yolks separately with hand mixer.

• First, add the beaten egg white to the butter-sugar mixture and combine with a whisk.
• Now add the egg yolks and combine well.

• Add vanilla extract to the above mixture.

• In a bowl, mix all purpose flour and baking powder.
• Add all purpose flour/baking powder mix little by little to the wet mixture and fold it using a whisk.

• Don’t over mix the batter, fold it gently until just smooth.

• Place paper cups on the cup cake pan.
• Fill the paper cups no more than three-quaters full with the batter.

• Bake it in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until a fork comes out smooth when inserted into the middle of the cupcakes.
• After the cupcakes are done, remove from the oven and let cool down.
• For a fancy look, I decorated the cupcakes with semi-sweet chocolate morsels, which will slightly melt from the heat of the cakes.

As always I was quite satisfied with the taste of these cupcakes; but I was disappointed when I saw my cupcakes come out slightly sunken on top. Seeing this, I immediately google searched for the reasons that caused this. Here is what I found:

Three main reasons for sunken cupcakes or cakes:

• Over-mixed batter.
• Too much baking powder or soda.
• Overfilled cups.

Now I know what went wrong on my side. I did two mistakes, over mixed the batter and also overfilled the cups. Next time I will fix this for sure.

Tips:

• You could use the same batter to make butter cake, pour the batter on a greased cake pan and bake it for 20-25 minutes.
• My mom makes this cake in the pressure cooker:

Pressure cooker Butter Cake

• Make the batter following the above mentioned method.
• Pour the batter on a greased cake pan.
• Place the cake pan on a cooking rack that comes with the pressure cooker or any rack or flat steel plate and keep it inside the cooker.
• Close the pressure cooker with its lid, without the sealing ring and the whistle and don’t add water into the cooker (this is not steam cooking).
• In low heat, cook the cake for about 30 minutes or until its cooked.

It’s creamy, it has shrimp, it has cheese and it’s on a jalapeno, oooo it’s spicyyy and oh wait, it’s baked too…

My obsession with jalapeno has started not so long ago, it’s only been an year now. When there is a hint of jalapeno in my dishes I will devour it happily, of course with few glasses of ice cold water. My favorite pizza topping is jalapeno. My favorite burger is the one loaded with pickled jalapeno. My favorite Thai food is garnished with jalapenos. My favorite bread is jalapeno cornbread. By now it must be crystal clear to you that I am a genuine jalapeno lover This doesn’t mean that I will ever dare to eat jalapeno as it is, I am not in for such challenges. I would rather hide

I’ve had stuffed jalapenos in many Mexican restaurants, since then I’ve been wanting to make this in my kitchen. Finally, I did make it. I bought a few pounds of jalapeno during my last grocery shopping. I wanted to make a different stuffing for the jalapenos. That day I had shrimp in my freezer. So, I made a stuffing with shrimp, cream cheese and parmesan cheese.

Be careful while seeding the jalapenos, if you want you could have the hand gloves on. Avoid the screaming part by accidentally rubbing your eyes with your jalapeno hands. If this happens for some reason, wash your eyes with cold water several times and if this doesn’t seem to work “Call 911″ immediately (just kidding).

I loved the bite of the shrimp from it, the creaminess and the mild spiciness from the jalapeno. While baking this, your house will smell as if you have jalapeno candles lighted on. Your eyes will have a slight burning sensation, but when you have a bite of this baked stuffed jalapeno you’ll forget about everything and your taste buds will melt into this.

Creamy Shrimp Stuffed Jalapeno

Ingredients:

• Jalapeno, halved and seeded, large- 7 no’s

• Shrimp, deveined, cooked frozen, minced- 6 no’s
• Cream cheese- 5 tbsp
• Parmesan cheese- 3 tbsp
• Ground pepper- 1/4 tsp
• Dried Parsley- 1 tsp

Preparation:

• Preheat the oven to 425 F.
• Rinse the jalapenos, pat dry and cut them into halves vertically.

• If you want you could wear a hand glove while removing the seeds from the jalapenos and keep aside.
• Mince the deveined, cooked shrimp and keep aside.

• In a large bowl, combine the shrimp, cream cheese, parmesan cheese, ground pepper and dried parsley.

• Place 1 tsp of this stuffing on to each jalapeno.

• Bake the stuffed jalapenos for 25 minutes or until the top of the stuffing starts to turn golden.

• Let cool down for few minutes and serve immediately to kick off your smashing party.

Tips:

For Vegans: You could substitute shrimp with other veggies like green pepper or potatoes.