Pizza Party!

I had a group of friends over for Dylan’s birthday this past weekend. We all drank way too much, ate too much, and played a ridiculous amount of Beer Pong.

And the menu consisted of homemade pizzas, that turned out FANTASTIC.

I used the same exact dough recipe and bake time as this pesto pizza I previously blogged, I just changed the toppings.

We had Veggie Pizza, Supreme Pizza, Pepperoni, and Cheese & Onion. The last being my personal favorite.

I thought I’d share the masterpieces we devoured that night 😀

Cheese and Onion

Veggie with Zucchini and Bell Pepper

Flourless Peanut Butter & Chocolate Chip Cookies

So chewy, so soft. They turned out perfectly the first time. I'm left wondering if I should start baking a lot of things this way. With baking specifically, the fewer the ingredients for me, it seems, the better the end result.

I was in the mood to bake this afternoon after a ridiculous amount of time spent organizing and cleaning. It’s really just amazing what piles up around you when you’re not paying attention. Good will, for sure, is going to be loving me here shortly. Anyway, I was in the mood like I said, but had few ingredients to throw together. Half a bag of chocolate chips, about half a cup of peanut butter, some sugar, and eggs. I remember when I was visiting with my sister in Chicago we had made “flourless” peanut butter cookies. And could vaguely remember them not using any butter. Which, I didn’t have at this point. So I started Googling recipes in search of something that could work, and came up with one off of The Food Network’s website, by Claire Robinson. She called for double the peanut butter I had, but I assumed I could half the recipe, no problem, and add chocolate chips to make them more fun.

The Ingredients:

• 1/2 a cup of peanut butter
• 1/2 a cup of sugar
• 1/2 an egg, beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon of Vanilla
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips, or so
• Pinch of coarse sea salt

(I made about 8 cookies. But mine are larger )

Heat your oven to 350 degrees.

Whisk all the ingredients together in a bowl until well mixed. Stir in chips.

Drop into rounded balls on an ungreased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Sprinkle coarse sea salt on top.

Bake for about 10 minutes, or until edges are browned. The less you bake, the softer and chewier they will be.

Let cool on a rack. Store any left overs in an air tight container.

Let me know how you guys like ’em!

 

 

Sweet and Sour Chicken with Vegetable Fried Rice

I definitely grew up loving Chinese take out. It was a go to for a lot of different reasons, though usually it comes down to the fact that it’s just… GOOD. It’s a comfort food, entirely. So many carbohydrates, so many great sauces and stir fries and soups. Don’t even get me started on spring rolls. Uh, yum.

So, what is the bad part then? It’s usually just downright horrible for you, at times greasy, and really the price of going out for it just adds up too high. There have been a few places over the years that I always make an exception for, for a certain reason. For a little hole in the wall place outside of Chicago, it was the fried rice and their egg rolls. Oh lord, were they good. Here outside of Seattle… there’s a place literally short walking distance from our neighborhood. They have this great soup, sizzling rice soup, that’s really just to die for. That is my opinion, of course. Though, I’ve heard it’s pretty popular with most of the locals.

One of my favorite dishes when I wasn’t a vegetarian was the Sweet and Sour Chicken. I loved the heavily breaded white meat, a sticky sauce. Pineapples in it are even better. I think it’s also known as “orange chicken” to a lot of people. I could be wrong on that. But there aren’t Oranges in it, so I’m only assuming that’s in reference to the sauce?  Ha-ha 🙂

I decided to look up a few recipes for a Sweet and Sour sauce, and kind of made a baby out of them. It turned out alright the first time, though my sauce never quite thickened up. I don’t think I had enough chicken to sauce to absorb a lot of it, first of all, and I’m not entirely sure my measurements were all correct. It is just one of the woes of always quartering or halving my recipes to fit a family of two; and not six. I’m also awful at math. AWESOME. Anyway, I got it right this second time, though! And I was excited to share it. My rice wasn’t half bad, either. Though, I’m definitely in need of some better Soy Sauce. The stuff I’ve been using is just… blah. Minor details, so on with it!

I used one full pound of Chicken Breast (so use that in comparison to the measurements on the sauce and coating. My recipe is for one pound of chicken) diced to about an inch all the way around. You can do whole breasts, I learned the first time, but it definitely looks (and works out) better with cut up chicken.

(At this time heat your oven to 325)

Preparing the Chicken before the sauce:

• One cup of flour
• Salt and Pepper
• 2 eggs beaten
• 2 tablespoons or so of Oil, for browning the outside

Heat a large skillet on medium-high heat with the oil. Let get nice and hot, but not smoking. You don’t want the oil burning on you.

Salt and Pepper your chicken to taste. Once that is done, dip it in the egg, and then into the flour. Shake off any excess. Add the chicken to the skillet once thoroughly heated. Cook on all sides until golden brown on the outside. It should only take a few minutes. There’s no need to cook the chicken all the way through, as it will cook in the oven later with the sauce.

Once they’ve reached a nice, golden brown…go ahead and toss them in a baking dish big enough to accommodate them all. You should be able to fit one layer. Now, they are ready for the sauce.

The Sauce:

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 4 tbs ketchup
• 1/2 cup vinegar
• 1 tbs soy sauce
• 1 tsp garlic salt

****If you do not have Ketchup, you can substitute with Tomato Paste. Here’s how:

Substitute 1/2 cup tomato sauce and 2 tablespoons sugar and 1 tablespoon vinegar for 1/2 cup ketchup.*****

Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl until sugar has dissolved and all ingredients are mixed well. Pour over the chicken.

Baking:

Once chicken and sauce have been prepared in a baking dish, cook in the oven for about one hour. You will need to turn your chicken every 15 minutes or so, to allow the breading to soak up the Sauce.

Once cooked all the way through, remove from oven and let sit for a few minutes. The sauce will thicken more, and it allows the chicken to cool slightly.

Serve immediately with fried rice (recipe follows).

Fried Rice:

One cup uncooked white or brown rice. Cook as directed on package, set aside.

• 3 tbs sesame oil
• 1 cup frozen peas and carrots (thawed)
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 tsp minced garlic
• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• Handful of diced green onion for topping.

In a large skillet or wok heat up oil and sauté the vegetables together until tender. Once tender, slide vegetables to one side of the skillet and pour the beaten eggs onto the other side. Cook eggs until nicely scrambled, and then put the mixture together. At this time, add in your cooked rice and soy sauce. Heat until rice is hot again. You can play with the soy sauce here, depending on how much flavor you want. Don’t forget the amount of Sodium involved, though!! My suggestions are measure it out to your needs, or get lower sodium sauce. Toss in the green onion at the last minute of cooking, and serve immediately with Sweet and Sour Chicken.

I hope you enjoy this recipe, and that it turns out as well for you as it did for us! Please leave me your feedback, additions, questions & comments! I’d really appreciate it ❤

~StellaBlue

My Chocolate Topped Peanut Butter Fudge

My fudge has become incredibly popular, and I’ve been begged for the recipe for a while now. Only my closest family members know the secrets to my recipe, and though there are a few things I’ll NEVER tell anyone but them… I’ve decided to share the standard recipe, so that my fudge can spread it’s love 😀

In a sauce pan melt

1 cup of butter and 1 cup of Peanut Butter together on a low heat.

Once completely melted, you can add a teaspoon or so of Vanilla Extract if you’d like a sweeter fudge. You can omit it entirely, or spice it up with some Almond Extract to give it an even more nutty, sweet taste.

Remove from heat and stir in 3 1/4-1/2 cups of Powdered Sugar half a cup at a time.

Once the fudge and sugar are combined, spread into a pan or dish. You can use wax paper, cling wrap, or grease the dish to keep the fudge from sticking and allowing easy removal.

I typically use a smaller baking pan, like a 9×9 or so, because I like a thicker fudge. If you need to spread it out more, for a larger group of people, using a larger pan will make it thinner but gives you more pieces to cut.

Once in pan how you’d like it, sprinkle about a cup to a cup and a half of milk chocolate chips on top. Let stand for 5-10 minutes, until chips look melted and shiny. Then take a knife or rubber spatula and spread the chocolate to cover all of the fudge. If your chocolate isn’t melted completely, let it sit for a minute or two more. If the end result isn’t the SMOOTHEST chocolate on top, it’s no big deal. Unless you’re going for presentation. It’ll taste wonderful either way!

When chocolate is spread and you’re satisfied, place in fridge for a few hours to chill and set.

Remove and let come to room temperature before cutting. Cutting when it is cold and hard with result in crumbling or breaking apart.

Slice and serve! Can be refrigerated for up to a week, and is wonderful to give as a gift!

Mozzarella and Basil Tomato Stacks

One of my all time favorite combinations HAS to be Tomato, Mozzarella, and Basil together. The combination of the creamy mozz, the salty and acidic tomato, and the bright basil… to die for. Throw me together a pasta plate with just those three things, some salt and pepper, and a bit of olive oil, and I’m in hog heaven.

The other day I was look for something to throw together as a snack for the Hubby, since he’d been out in the yard working and I figured he’d be a little famished. Well. He’s always down to eat, anything, at any time. So, really, I just wanted to get my hands dirty in the kitchen. But we can pretend it was all for him 😉

After searching through the fridge and the pantry, I realized my staples were running pretty low. I didn’t even have a loaf of bread to throw together a sandwich. So, I had to improvise.

I’d just bought a beautiful live bunch of basil and some beefsteak tomatoes… so I figured I could probably work with that.

I had mozzarella on hand, and even some black olives. So, why not?

I sliced my tomato into even slices. Out of one tomato I got about 6 slices. So, three sandwiches, or two depending on how high you want your stacks to be.

I made each a double-decker.

**another easy way to do this… cook each layer individually and stack them when they are nice and melted!

After slicing the tomato, I salt and peppered them, and sprinkled a bit of garlic powder on top as well. (imagine how great roasted garlic would taste spread in between each slice!!)

I set down the first layer of my stacks, and on top of the seasoning I put a thin layer of cheese and basil. Then, another tomato. On top another thin layer of cheese and basil, and then added a few black olives to each stack.

Now you can cook it one of two ways. If you have a pretty awesome broiler, you can broil these at a low heat and have it turn out wonderfully. Melty, bubbly cheese, crisp basil. HOWEVER, SOME will have a broiler that is way to high temperature, where your cheese will melt and burn instantly and the rest will not be warmed through fast enough.

I personally put my tomatoes in the oven at 375 degrees for just a few minutes, and then popped the broiler on low to melt the cheese a little more.

It should only take a few minutes to heat these babies up, and then you are ready to eat and enjoy!

Beer Bread

So the other day I was cleaning out the fridge and realized I had an opened 14oz bottle of beer, a really beautiful Amber.

For whatever reason, I hadn’t consumed it and it had gone pretty flat. So I decided to hop on the computer, not wanting to waste the beer, and figure out what I could do with it. Barbeque sauce was among the most popular, but I ended up finding a recipe for Beer Bread.

Always eager to try new things, I decided to give it a whirl. And I am SO glad that I did!

Preheat oven to about 350 degrees, and grease a 9x5x3 pan with butter and a dusting of flour (to keep the bread from sticking and allowing an easy removal.)

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
• One 12oz beer (preferably amber. Though I suspect any would do just fine. I’m leaning towards trying a Guinness loaf next)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 large eggs
• 4 tablespoons butter, melted

Combine the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and powder in a large bowl. Whisk to blend dry ingredients together. In another bowl mix the eggs and beer, whisk to combine. Stir in wet mixture to dry mixture until just combined. Pour into your loaf pan, and drizzle melted butter over the top.

Bake for about 40 minutes, or until a toothpick or knife comes out clean.

Let cool for five to ten minutes in the pan and then remove from pan and let cool on a wire rack.

This recipe creates a really dense, yummy bread. My outer shell came out perfectly crusty, and the inside was nice and soft.

I used a few slices for my husband’s breakfast that morning. I fried up some over-easy eggs and he used the bread for dipping and holding the egg. The pair together was simply delicious.

It would be great with creamy soups, too, I bet. Or just on it’s own!

Try it and let me know how yours turned out!

Pesto Chicken Pizza

Pesto Chicken Pizza

 

DOUGH:

This dough is INCREDIBLY easy to whip up, and only takes about 15 minutes total until you can load it with toppings and pop it in the oven. The secret is to use warm water, sugar, and yeast mixed together (for about five minutes, until frothy) and THEN add it to your flour mixture. This way you only need to let the dough sit for about 10 minutes before you can roll it out and Pizza the hell out of it 😀

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

Combine sugar, water, and yeast into a bowl and let sit for about 5 minutes, until nice and frothy. Then add into the rest of the mixture. Let stand 10 minutes. Then Viola! Kneed it and roll it out!

PESTO SAUCE:

• 2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano or Romano cheese
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/3 cup pine nuts or walnuts
• 3 medium sized garlic cloves, minced, to taste. I prefer a strong garlic taste.
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

All ingredients go into a food processor or blender, puree until smooth.

 

CHICKEN SEASONING AND COOKING:

Salt, pepper, oregano, garlic powder, dried minced onion, paprika. About a tablespoon of each, or to taste.

Rub over chicken and then heat skillet over medium to blacken both sides. Once nicely browned, pop into a 350-75 degree oven and cook through.

I brown the chicken first to create a nice salty crust on the outside, and then pop it in the oven to do the rest of the cooking. It’s a great way to keep your chicken moist, too, and not letting it get too dry.

Take out and let the juices redistribute (about five minutes), and then slice/carve/chop/shred to your liking. I personally chop it up into nice bite size chunks to spread over the Pizza later.

PIZZA TOPPING INGREDIENTS:

• Mozzarella cheese (a few cups. It really all depends on how you like your pizza. More sauce and veggies, less cheese. More cheese, less veggies….. MORE. CHEESE. YUM.)

I also like to use what I call an “Italian Cheese Mix” which basically consists of Mozzarella and Parmesan. Or really an “Italian” style cheese you can think of. The more difference you have here, the more flavors are brought out in your finished product. I personally LOVE the saltiness of the Parmesan/Romano/Pecorino.

• Green/Red/Yellow/Orange Bell Pepper. Or a mixture of all of them. For one whole pizza, I’d say one full pepper is MORE than enough.
• Sweet yellow onion, diced. To taste, of course. I use about a cup or so. Depending on the type of pizza.
• Mushrooms – I used about two handfuls of roughly chopped mushrooms. Just spread out among the rest of the ingredients.
• Pepperoni – Just a tiny little stack of sliced Pepperoni, just to add a little bit of kick to it

To build your pizza:

I start by putting a hefty amount of sauce on the bottom. In my house, we love us some sauce, so we don’t use it sparingly. You can put however much you’d like on it. Just remember that if you have TOO much, your crust may not be able to support it. So remember to think of the thickness you’ve rolled your dough out to in comparison to how much sauce you should use. After the sauce I sprinkle just a smidge of cheese, and then start with the toppings. I add a bit of the chicken, pepperoni, and vegetables. Then add a hint more cheese (salt and pepper, and oregano, red pepper, etc. depending on what sort of taste you’re going for) before you add the rest of the toppings, and then another layer of cheese.

You DO NOT have to build your pizza in layers, and really, you can build it however you like. Some people like the vegetables on top (like the onion, where it gets a little charred from the oven) or all completely hidden by ONE thick layer of cheese. Personally, I like to do it in layers. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, really, I just think it looks prettier when building. And it keeps the cheeses from sliding clean off the top when you are biting into it.

NOW TO COOK THE PIZZA. I usually cook it at about 450 degrees, for about 20 minutes. I like my crust to be a bit darker brown. If you like a softer crust, just keep an eye on it until it’s starting to get nice and golden. Just make sure you’re cooking it ATLEAST for 15 minutes to keep the crust consistent all the way through.  Undercooking it will lead to a soggy, doughy crust. And that’s not typically pleasant.

Once it’s cooked to your degree of liking, take it out of the oven and let it sit for about 4-5 minutes or so. This allows the cheese to harden up a little bit and makes it easier to cut.

Then, just slice and enjoy. Leftovers can be refrigerated for a few days!!

 

AND NOM. 😀

Hi there!

So, my first post on my own website.EEP.

Give me a quick jiff to get my stuff situated here, and this place will be up and cookin’ in NO time at all 😀

Please feel free to add this to your bookmarks, and check back in JUST A FEW DAYS.

My first post may even be tonight 😉

I hear a certain lady friend of mine loves some home made soups, so I may just have to make my first post on my own recipes! I love soups, too. Do you?

Comment on what types of foods you’d like to see here! Let me know what inspires YOU.

Peace & Love