Stuffed Crust Pizza

Today's blog is less of a recipe and more of just an idea I hadn't thought of before... stuffed crust pizza. I was somewhat skeptical as to how this would turn out, but the process of making stuffed crust pizza was really straight-forward and produced exactly the result that I wanted.

The pizza that I made was approximately 12 inches in diameter. To stuff the crust, use 3-4 sticks of mozzaralla string cheese cut in half hot-dog style (remember hot-dog-style from grammar school??). Once cut, arrange the cheese around the perimeter of the pizza and fold the dough over, pressing it in to stick around the dough.

The rest can be assembled to your own tastes. To make the pizza above, I spread about 30 oz of Boboli Original Pizza Sauce, then lightly coated the pizza with shredded mozzarella cheese. Next I spread chopped up olives, artichoke hearts and mushrooms. I topped it off with the remainder of the bag of shredded cheese.

Since it's a thicker pizza, it took about 15 minutes to cook through.

Chicken Marsala

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 chicken breasts (flattened with meat mallet)
• 2-3 cups baby bella mushrooms (each chopped into four pieces)
• 1/2 cup parsley
• Vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup flour
• Salt, pepper, 1 tsp. garlic powder
• 1/2 cup marsala wine

DIRECTIONS:

• Cooking in vegetable oil in large skillet, cook mushrooms, parsley, and garlic powder for 5 minutes. Stir frequently.
• While mushrooms are cooking, coat chicken in flour.
• Cook chicken for 15 minutes (flipping once) with the mushrooms. Try to scoop as many of the mushrooms onto the chicken as you can... the mushroom flavor will begin to soak into the chicken. This will also keep the mushrooms from burning and will lessen the amount you need to stir/flip them.

• Add marsala wine and continue to cook for another 6 minutes. Flip twice.

When finished, not much liquid will remain in the pan. The wine will almost completely have soaked into the chicken.


Note: This chicken is quite easy to cook stovetop since the chicken is flattened. Be careful after adding the wine that you don't start to burn the chicken. Flip several times... the chicken should be sufficiently cooked through before adding the wine.



Derived from Betty Crocker Cookbook.

Twice Baked Potatoes

INGREDIENTS:
2 Russett Potatoes
2 tbsp milk
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 stick of softened butter
Salt and Pepper
Parsley

DIRECTIONS:

• Scrub potatoes and poke holes into each with a fork. Bake in casserole dish for 1 hour 15 minutes.
• Remove from oven and cut each potato in half. Scoop potato out of the skin to make "bowls". Leave skins about 1/8 - 1/4 inch thick. Put potato in separate bowl.
• Mash up potatoes with a masher. Add about 2 tbsp. milk and continue to mash.
• Stir in butter, salt, and pepper.
• Stir in cheddar cheese and add a bit of parsley.
• Scoop potato back into each skin "bowl".

Stuffed Potatoes before Baking

• Bake for 20-25 minutes. Let cool for about 5 minutes. Potatoes will form small brown spots on top when finished.

Recipe derived from Betty Crocker Cookbook.

Chicken Kiev

INGREDIENTS:

• Chicken breasts- flattened with meat mallet
• Butter (1/8 tbsp per chicken breast)
• Parsley
• Flour
• 1 Egg
• Breadcrumbs
• Salt/Pepper

DIRECTIONS:

• Flatten chicken breasts to about 1/2 inch thickness
• Sprinkle about 1 tbsp parsley on top of each chicken piece along with a dash of salt and pepper, and then place a 1/8 tbsp chunk of butter in the center of each.
• Put 1/4 cup flour into a bowl, 1 egg mixed with 1 tbsp water into another bowl, and 1/2 cup bread crumbs into a third bowl.
• Fold the first chicken piece into a ball. You'll need to hold it together completely and work on sticking the edges as you complete the next step.
• Dip chicken piece into flour bowl, egg bowl, bread crumb bowl... continuing to hold into a ball, pushing together the sides. Then dip back into the egg bowl and back into the bread crumb bowl. Place on an oven-safe dish and continue with remaining chicken breast pieces. This gets pretty messy... I pretty much submerged my hand into each mixture so that I could continue to hold together each piece of chicken.
• Top with parsley. On a skillet, gently cook chicken pieces on the stovetop for about 3 minutes per side. Then bake for approximately 20 minutes.

Enjoy!

Derived from Better Homes and Garden New Cookbook

Fettucine Alfredo with Chicken

INGREDIENTS

• Chicken- cut into strips or nuggets
• Flour
• Parmesan Cheese
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• Salt, pepper, and parsley

DIRECTIONS

• Cook fettucine
• While water for fettucine is boiling, wash chicken pieces, coat in mixture containing half flour/half parmesan cheese, and cook over medium heat on stovetop until done.
• In the meantime, begin making alfredo sauce. In a saucepan, heat butter and whipping cream until butter is melting and liquid is lightly boiling. Continue to cook for 5-10 minutes on low. Then stir in cheese, salt, and pepper. Keep stirring on low heat until chicken and fettucine is finished.

Once everything is cooked, drain the fettucine and mix alfredo sauce into the noodles. Pour into a casserole dish and put the chicken pieces on top of the noodles to serve. Top with parsley.

SPECIAL NOTES:
This recipe originally called for 1/2 cup of butter, but next time I make this I am cutting it down to 1/4 cup to make it a little less fatty.

Alfredo sauce derived from Betty Crocker Cookbook- 6th Edition- 2010

Banana Pancakes

My track record with pancakes is pretty dismal. They're never circular, never thin enough, and often wind up one big pile of mush. However... when I made this banana pancake recipe, it didn't matter... they for once tasted delicious.

Don't get me wrong... these pancakes still didn't look the part. Matt took one look at the skillet and was convinced I was making some sort of exotic banana burger. They looked a mix between that and a well-done pork chop. However... I was SO surprised when I took a bite of one and realized that what was created was the most amazing pancake that I myself have ever cooked.

I followed the recipe almost exactly. So here is the link if you want to give this one a try:
http://www.howsweeteats.com/2011/06/whole-wheat-brown-sugar-banana-bread-pancakes/.

Next time I make them, I think I better use more milk than the recipe calls for or perhaps add an egg to the mix. They were very thick and it was hard to make them spread thin enough on the pan while they were cooking. Still... very good. I'll be making them again in the future, especially since the ingredients are mostly items we always have in the cabinet.

Shrimp Tacos

Tonight's shrimp taco recipe is based off of a recipe I found on Pinterest via my sister's repinning. The original recipe came from www.cleananddelicious.com if you would like to check it out. I changed it up just a bit, but mostly took their advice on how to make a special lime/cilantro sauce for the tacos. Here it goes...

INGREDIENTS

• Corn Tortillas
• Lettuce- shredded
• Tomatoes- chopped into small pieces
• Shrimp- 1/2 - 1 pound (tails removed and cut into small pieces)
• Optional- Salt/Pepper/Lemon Seasoning

For the Sauce:

• 1 cup (6 oz) Greek Yogurt
• About 1/4 cup cilantro
• Juice from 1 lime
• Chili Powder (about 1/2 teaspoon)

DIRECTIONS

This recipe is quite simple once you have the lettuce shredded, tomatoes chopped up, and all of the ingredients nicely layed out and ready to go. Before you start heating anything up, the sauce can be made simply by mixing up all of the ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside until you're ready to start assembling your tacos.

Next, heat up each tortilla on the stovetop until brown spots begin to appear. Set aside and cover with a paper towel until you are ready to assemble.

Finally, heat up the shrimp. I started with a bit of vegetable oil in the skillet (olive oil would have been preferred). I mixed in the shrimp pieces along with a dash of chili powder and a lemon-pepper seasoning. They only took about 1-2 minutes to cook.

Once you have the tortillas, sauce, and shrimp ready... it's time to dig in and assemble your first taco!


COMMENTS
The sauce easily could be made with sour cream, but neither my husband nor I can stand the taste of sour cream. Plus... the Greek yogurt is much, MUCH healthier. I'm still not totally thrilled with the taste of Greek yogurt, though, so I'm working on coming up with another alternative.