Roasted Chicken Potato Pizza

With so much leftover food from the roasted lemon rosemary chicken and garlic new potatoes, I had to come up with a recipe to use the leftovers. So, I picked up some pizza crust from Trader Joe’s and got to work. The pizza was absolutely delicious, and definitely a step up from your traditional take out pepperoni pizza. It works perfectly as a combination salad and pizza! Here’s how you can make it:

Ingredients:

• Pizza Crust (either make your own or pick some up. Don’t use the pre-cooked kind)
• Garlic Infused Avocado Oil (My favorite is from Gilbert Olive Oil)
• Leftover Roasted Garlic Potatoes
• Leftover Lemon Rosemary Chicken (cut up into bite size pieces)
• Quattro Formaggio Cheese Blend (or Italian Cheese Blend. I get this from Trader Joe’s)
• Asiago Cheese
• Parmesean-Gouda Cheese Blend (again, get this at Trader Joe’s)
• Arugula
• Raspberry Habenero Jam

Instructions:

1. Let the pizza dough rest for 20 minutes (or as directed on the box)
2. Roll the dough out to fit your pizza plan. Make sure you flour the pan before putting the dough on it.
3. Drizzle Garlic Infused Avocado Oil on the dough.
4. Sprinkle leftover roasted potatoes and chicken all over the pizza.
5. Top with a generous helping of Quatro Formaggio Cheese.
6. Dust the crust with Asiago cheese (freshly shredded).
7. Cook in the over per the pizza dough instructions.
8. When there’s only a few minutes left on the pizza dough, shred some parmesean-gouda cheese and heat up about a quarter cup of raspeberry habenero jam for 20 seconds in the microwave.
9. Once the pizza is out of the oven, top it with a few handfuls of arugula.
10. Sprinkle the parmesean cheese on top.
11. Drizzle with raspeberry habenero jam to your taste.
12. Slice it. Serve it. Enjoy it.

Have you tried this recipe? What’s your favorite pizza to make?

Succulent Fresh Roasted Chicken and Roasted Garlic New Potatoes

We recently reconnected to the world and installed Direct TV. Flipping through the channels, I discovered a new show with one of my favorite actresses called Dinner at Tiffani’s. Intrigued enough by her recipe for lemon rosemary chicken, I just had to try it out.

I’ve only roasted one other chicken in my life. I have to say this was the easiest recipe to follow and was the most tender chicken.

You can find the original recipe for the chicken here.

I served the chicken with roasted garlic new potatoes. You can find my recipe below.

Try them out and let me know what you think in the comments!

Roasted Garlic New Potatoes

1 small bag of new potatoes (2-3 lbs)

2-3 cloves of garlic

olive oil

salt and pepper

1. Start by rinsing then quartering the potatoes.

2. Toss the potatoes in olive oil and dump in a 8×8 square pan.

3. Mince the garlic cloves.

4. Sprinkle the garlic cloves over the potatoes

5. Top with salt and pepper to taste.

6. Roast with the chicken.

The Art of Spaghetti Squash – The Most Delicious Thing I Ever Ate

Hate is such a strong word that I don’t use it very often. But it is not a strong enough word for how I feel about vegetables – I absolutely despise them. It’s true that I will eat most basic salads, but anything beyond that scope causes me to run screaming from the room. I’ve learned to cook with them, simply because my boyfriend shouldn’t have to suffer through my prejudices against them. I want to eat them, I really do! But my taste buds simply refuse.

That’s why I was so hesitant to venture into the spaghetti squash department. When eating at a friend of a friend’s house on vacation, I was extremely apprehensive to eat the spaghetti squash she prepared (while thankful there was a back up kid friendly dish). I took the teeniest tiniest bite I could manage….

… and was pleasantly surprised. Upon returning home, I recreated the menu for my amazing, vegetable loving boyfriend who exclaimed “This is the best thing you’ve ever made!” I’m going to assume that is a giant complement and not an insult to my cooking, since he seems to devour every other dish I’ve made fervently.

It’s with his vegetable loving blessing and my vegetable aversion that I whole-heartedly recommend Lou Siebert Pappas’s  Spaghetti Squash with Greek Meat Sauce.

First things first, prep the spaghetti squash. They’re not the easiest thing in the world to chop in half, but nonetheless you need to slice it long ways (or hot dog style as my elementary school teachers used to say). Clean out the seeds and strings like you do with a pumpkin. Then drizzle oil (olive, canola, vegetable) on the top and season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, etc. Place the squash face down on a baking sheet and roast at 350 (F) for about an hour.

Next, prepare the meat sauce. Disclaimer: I didn’t have all of the ingredients and didn’t like some of them, so I adjusted this to my tastes. Here is the recipe as I used it below.

1. Drizzle approximately 2 tbsp oil in a pan (olive, canola, vegetable – just make sure it’s not infused with something or another) and heat over medium.
2. Drop in half a large diced white onion and cook until it begins to look translucent.
3. Add in 1.5 pounds ground beef (or turkey or chicken). Cook until brown and you have large even(ish) chunks of meat.
4. Mix in 2 minced medium size cloves of garlic. I like to use the press so my hands don’t smell like garlic afterwards.
5. Immediately add 1 tsp salt, 9 ounces tomato paste, 1 cup of water, 1/4 tbsp ground black pepper, 1/4 tsp cloves, 1/4 tsp red chili flake, 1/4 tsp ground mustard, 1/2 tsp paprika, a dash of dried basil and 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon.
6. Stir until mixed thoroughly.
7. Cover and simmer for 1 hour – stirring occasionally.

Now you have sauce and a roasted spaghetti squash. Here’s how you put the dish together. Using a fork, shred the spaghetti squash. It should come out fairly easily. Place this in a large bowl and toss with 3-4 tbsp melted unsalted butter. Pour the meat sauce over the squash in the bowl.

For toppers, I recommend halved grape tomatoes and quatro-formaggio cheese (shredded).

Let me know what you think. Is it the best, most delicious meal you’ve ever eaten?

Week 1 Challenge

I tried to keep things simple this week since it was our first week and I hadn’t planned out the menu ahead of time. I picked my menu items out of Mario Batali’s Molto Gusto cookbook – Italian is always a “go to” in our house.

First up, was the salad, which was a mix of arugula, radishes, and fennel. The cookbook says to use a Japanese mandoline to thinly slice them, but a sharp knife will work just as well.

For the main course, we enjoyed Linguine with Cacio e Pepe. It was so simple to prepare and had this light buttery sauce with just a hint on saltiness from the parmasean and peppery goodness. (FYI – I HATE pepper under normal circumstances.)

I highly recommend this for any day of the week!

A Collection of Unused… Stuff

In the most general terms, humans love to collect stuff – especially in the good ol’ U.S.A. However often we clean out our closets in our house, we always seem to have more stuff we can get rid of. And the piles seem to keep growing, as more junk comes in than goes out. This past weaken, we were going through our stuff and I realized, between the two of us, we have over TWENTY different cookbooks that we never use! Hello? Why would we go through cookbooks when we can just search online, right? 

So, my dear boyfriend and I made a deal. And I’m going to blog about this so we don’t fall off the horse. Each of us will choose a new recipe every week from one of our cookbooks and make that recipe. I figure, what a better way to discover new foods and get out of our cooking – and eating out – rut. 

A Collection of Unused… Stuff

In the most general terms, humans love to collect stuff – especially in the good ol’ U.S.A. However often we clean out our closets in our house, we always seem to have more stuff we can get rid of. And the piles seem to keep growing, as more junk comes in than goes out. This past weaken, we were going through our stuff and I realized, between the two of us, we have over TWENTY different cookbooks that we never use! Hello? Why would we go through cookbooks when we can just search online, right? 

So, my dear boyfriend and I made a deal. And I’m going to blog about this so we don’t fall off the horse. Each of us will choose a new recipe every week from one of our cookbooks and make that recipe. I figure, what a better way to discover new foods and get out of our cooking – and eating out – rut.