Margaritaville

It's been awhile since my last posting, and to any of the 3 or 4 people that might follow along with the blog, I apologize. To say that I've been busy is an understatement. The only thing my kitchen has produced in the last couple weeks have been peanut butter and jelly or frosted mini wheats. But between my crazy work schedule this week, I managed to find time (in the middle of the night once again) to create a pretty quick but great tasting dinner. By viewer request, I took on homemade pizza.

Lets start with the dough...

I forgot to take a picture of the dough so I found this picture on google images. This is pretty much what it looked like though.

 The dough can be made a day or two in advance, which in my case I did. As long as its kept tightly wrapped and in the fridge, it'll keep - and in fact some say it actually makes for better tasting crust if it has time to slow rise in the fridge overnight. I'm not sure how much truth there is to that statement, but since some food scientist said so, I'm going to choose to believe its true. I got the recipe out of my Bread Machine Magic book, which called for 1 C warm water, 3 C flour, 2 T olive oil, 1 t salt, 2 T sugar and 2 t active dry yeast. All of the ingredients get thrown together in the bread machine (salt on the opposite side of the yeast because it will kill it...thanks mom) and then turn the machine on and wait. This can be done without a bread machine as well, just use a mixer with a dough attachment and beat it until it forms a solid ball. Then let it rise in a oiled bowl, covered with plastic wrap for about an hour. Since I went the bread machine route, I let the dough rise in the machine.

After its finished rising, or a couple days later, the dough is ready to use. This is the fun part because you can do whatever you want to make this pizza yours. I tapped in to my inner Italian roots and made a four cheese margarita pizza. I don't actually have any Italian in me at all, but nevertheless this is one of my favorite pizzas. The first thing I did was slice up some tomatoes pretty thin and marinated them in olive oil and smashed garlic for a few minutes while the oven preheated and I rolled out my dough. Once the dough was prepped, I brushed the olive oil mixture (minus the tomatoes) on to the dough in a nice even layer. Then I sprinkled on 3 out of the 4 cheeses - mozzarella, parmesan and fontina. I arranged the tomato slices around the pizza and put some freshly chopped basil on and then topped it off with some crumbled feta. Before I put it in the oven I sprinkled garlic salt around the crust because that makes it taste extra good.

Here is the pre-baked pizza. This image is legit, not googled.

I threw it into the 400 degree oven for close to 20 minutes. It probably could have used another minute or two but it looked good enough and at this point I was pretty hungry so I decided it was done.

The finished product

Ready to eat

I've never been to Italy, but I imagine if you could take a bite out of it this is probably what it would taste like. The subtle garlic flavor really comes through in the tomatoes and I think the crumbled feta is the secret ingredient. I'll keep experimenting with other kinds of pizzas, but this recipe is definitely a keeper.

XXL Oreo: Round 1

I was snacking on a couple of these, contemplating my next blog entry when it donned on me. I wanted to make an extra extra large Oreo - in cake form. I was given a set of cake pans for Christmas a couple years ago that I had yet to try out, so i thought this would be a good opportunity to do so. They are round pans with frilled edges like an Oreo. The top pan has grooves in the bottom of it that are meant to resemble the top of the cookie. I assumed this would be a fun and fairly easy project. Here is the story of one of my more embarrassing outcomes...

I was pretty much doomed from the beginning when choosing my ingredients. Like other times when I am feeling vivacious, tonight was a different story. After sitting through a graduation ceremony in a torrential downpour, I wanted to take the quickest and easiest route possible. My normally unsophisticated pantry was fully stocked with everything I needed - Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix, water, oil, eggs and even cool whip in the freezer. I got out my pans and went right to work. I read somewhere once that while making chocolate cake its a good idea to grease the pan and dust it with cocoa powder rather than flour in order to omit any white residue. Since the top of the cake wasn't going to be frosted with anything, I thought this was probably a good idea. In retrospect, I'm not so sure if this was good advice or not...but I'll get there. I mixed up the batter and poured it into each of the pans and stuck them in the oven for a half hour. When they were done, I cooled them in the pans for about 10 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack. This is where most of the cake went wrong. I started with the bottom half first, which ended up breaking in half upon removing it from the pan. Maybe I should have let it cool longer first? But the box said 10 minutes was enough! I figured it wouldn't matter much anyway since it would be the bottom of the cake. I started taking the top cake out of its pan and I had a full on disaster on my hands. The cake stuck in the grooves on the bottom of the pan that were meant to resemble the top of the cookie so I was left with a ripped up, divot-ed surface that was supposed to be the top of the cake. Thinking that it couldn't get any worse than it already was, I decided to flip the top half over and use the other side as the top. It wasn't pretty either but at least it didn't have a chunk an inch deep taken out of it. In the process of flipping it, the cake crumbled into about 6 pieces in my hands. At this point I thought I should probably just keep this mishap to myself rather than posting it for everyone to read, but then I wouldn't be holding to my original promise of documentation of trials and tribulations. I emptied a container of cool whip between layers and pieced the cake together as best I could. Here is how it turned out...

Obviously not the prettiest cake in the world, and it barely even looks like an Oreo. Not even the off-brand kind. Believe it or not, this picture actually makes it look better than it did in real life. You also can't see the entire other side which is in shambles. Oreo Cake - 1, Suzannah - 0. You can bet I'm going to take another crack at this one...

The Quinoa Project

I was recently introduced to a new grain (which really isn't new at all, its just currently in the spotlight, it was actually used regularly by ancient Incas, so its quite old). You could say its the "it" thing right now among foodies. My mom, the food hipster, has of course been cooking with it for 15 years, but it is just now making its way into my vocabulary. Per request of one of my (very few) followers, this post will be all about this grain. It's called Quinoa - pronounced keen-wah. It is used often in South American cooking and contains more protein than most other grains. Since I'm on a bit of a health kick (this week) I figured this would be a good opportunity for me to experiment with this grain and see what it has to offer.

I wasn't sure where to start with this stuff, so I typed it into Google and discovered that there are a multitude of different ways to cook it. I decided that I wanted to try out a few different recipes in order to fully grasp what this grain is all about. Besides. my health kick isn't going to last forever, so I thought I may as well get as much use out of it as I can right now.

Breakfast

Quinoa Pancakes

For breakfast I made quinoa pancakes. This is one of Martha Stewart's recipes, which can be found here. It was like any other regular pancake recipe, with the addition of a cup of cooked quinoa. Normally I can throw down quite a few pancakes, but not these guys. They were quite a bit more dense and I had a hard time finishing three. It did however keep me full for a good portion of the morning. Other than their density, I don't have much to complain about, but I'll probably stick to regular ol' pancakes from here on out.

Dinner 

Quinoa Chicken Tacos

For this I got onto Allrecipes and looked for any recipe including quinoa. I decided on the most popular and highest rated, Quinoa and Black Beans. Rather than a side dish however, I wanted to make this the spotlight of the meal, so I came up with quinoa and black bean chicken tacos. I followed the recipe down to the T and then cooked up some boneless skinless chicken breast pieces in some vegetable oil, lemon juice, water, cayanne pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and salt. I served these on whole wheat and corn tortillas with fresh cilantro, diced tomatoes and avocado.  I was pleasantly surprised with how well these came out. Turns out I can eat healthy and still still enjoy it! It made enough for 3 days worth of tacos, so I'll probably be making them again but not anytime soon. 


Dessert

Quinoa Pudding

Rice pudding is one of my favorite desserts, so when I found a recipe for quinoa pudding, I knew it had to be among the recipes I tried. This recipe was also located at Allrecipes under Quinoa Pudding. Like many of the reviewers suggested, I made a couple of alterations. I used vanilla soy milk instead of the 2 cups of apple juice it called for, and a teaspoon of lemon juice rather than two. It was a far cry from the rice pudding I know and love, but I can honestly say its 100% guilt free. It really didn't satisfy much of a sweet tooth, so I think i'll eat the leftover in the morning for breakfast. Tastes more like a hot cereal anyway. 


I guess I should note that I made all of these over the course of a couple days, not all in one day. I do have a refrigerator full of cooked quinoa now, so I will have leftovers for a few days - enough to finish my health kick without the need to cook anything else. While I may not make a couple of these recipes ever again, I'm glad that I had a chance to experiment with them and broaden my grain horizon. On the off chance that I'll ever need to cook for a vegan, I'll have a couple of recipes up my sleeve.