Garbanzo Bean Pizza Crust (On a Make Your Own Grilled Pizza Night)

I recently grabbed some garbanzo bean flour to make some flat bread. I figured I would incorporate it into our crust on pizza night to up the nutrient content!

It was amazing, and the kids (we had an extra child for the week who piled her goodies on!) loved it.

The Topping choices were:
sauce
shredded mozzarella
smoked diced mozzarella
grape tomatoes
baby spinach
maple roasted butternut squash
sauteed mushrooms
caramelized onions
mini pepperoni
bacon!!!!
Canadian bacon

My version was sauce, both cheeses, tomatoes, spinach, squash, mushrooms, onions and bacon. It was seriously the best pizza I have ever put into my mouth. YUM!


Garbanzo Pizza Crust

• 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
• 1 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
• 1 cup bread flour
• 1 cup garbanzo flour
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons white sugar
• In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
• In a large bowl, combine 2 cups bread flour, olive oil, salt, white sugar and the yeast mixture; stir well to combine. Beat well until a stiff dough has formed. Cover and rise until doubled in volume, about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees F (or grill like we do!)
• Turn dough out onto a well floured surface. Form dough into a round and roll out into a pizza crust shape. Cover with your favorite sauce and toppings and bake in preheated oven until golden brown, about 20 minutes (or grill!) 


The Kids' Pizzas!! 

Lemon Linguine w/ Spinach, Sun-Dried Tomatoes & Pine Nuts Plus Artichoke Appetizer

Wow. Been a while, huh?
This is a recipe that was inspired by a plethora of other linguine dishes with lemon. I didn't measure anything, but I will try my best to give you an idea at least. Yum.
The dish started off because my daughter and I were grocery shopping and she really wanted to get artichokes for me to steam....and we had a ton of lemons. So it evolved from there.
Here we go!

Steamed Artichokes

 (this can be made so many ways, this is just the way I have learned to love it-other than grilled)

2 Artichokes cut (there are a ton of places on the web so see how to do this)

Enough chicken broth/water to cover artichokes (I had one box of broth and used water for the rest)

Herbs (I use rosemary stems and basil stems from garden)

Two peeled cloves of garlic

1 sliced lemon

Bring broth/water to a boil with the lemon slices, garlic and herbs

Place artichokes in liquid and simmer for about 10 minutes

Place artichokes (along with lemon and herbs) in a steaming basket over simmering liquid and let them finish cooking by steaming.  When they are soft enough for the leaves to practically fall off is when I know they are ready. Save liquid in pan for the pasta.

At this point I called the family inside and we devoured the meat on the leaves in about 5 minutes. We usually dip them in a mayo mixture, but this time we dipped in melted butter. Next time I think I will get 3 artichokes...maybe more. It is embarrassing the way my family eats these things.

 Lemon Linguine w/ Spinach, Sun-Dried Tomatoes & Pine Nuts

I winged this meal....so I am not going to use exact measurements!

Box of wheat linguine

Handful of pine nuts (toasted)

Handful of baby spinach roughly chopped

2 Garlic clove minced

A half of a jar of sun-dried tomatoes chopped(about 2-3 T oil reserved)

Juice of a large lemon plus a teaspoon of lemon zest

Parmesan Cheese (I used asiago because I have it and love it)

2T Sour Cream

Olive Oil

Basil or Rosemary for garnish

Cook the pasta according to directions in the broth mixture left from the artichokes, then drain reserving about 1/3 of a cup to keep pasta from drying out

While pasta cooks, warm a pan and drizzle with olive oil. Saute garlic for about 2 minutes then add spinach. Once spinach is wilted, toss in the sun-dried tomatoes.

Combine drained pasta with spinach mixture, lemon juice, drizzle of olive oil, reserved sun dried tomato oil (awesome flavor), and reserved broth mixture if it seems too dry (white wine would be good here too). At the end add in sour cream, pine nuts, and asiago or Parmesan.

Garnish with lemon zest and fresh herbs. Add s&p (and red pepper flakes if you like...I do!).

That was wordy but the best I can do with describing my thrown together meal. :)

Enjoy!

xoxo

Kandice

P.S. Bacon would SOOOO rock this meal, but since yesterday I promised myself I wouldn't have any, I didn't. Haha.

Making Use Of Leftovers! Crostata with Mushrooms and Pancetta

Every few weeks we do homemade pizza. We don't aways make our own dough (didn't this week), but we sometimes do. The kids made their own crazy pizzas, and my husband and I sauteed some things we had sitting in the fridge. Shallots, mushrooms, garlic. Then added on random toppings that sounded great at the time. Then we sliced up a ball of mozzarella and he grilled the pizzas. (We have a Big Green Egg). I tell you what, grilled pizzas are so much better than baked pizzas. Doing so makes DiGiorno taste like the bomb on those lazy nights! Ok....so the pizza was great. But we had left over veggies. Hmmmm...what to do? (ahem, scroll down)

After watching Food Network, I was inspired by the oh so lovely (okay....okay...smokin HOT) Giada! So I picked up some pancetta (and a couple of other things needed for the crust) and went to town on Crostata w/Mushrooms and Pancetta. Oh my. The crust was TO DIE FOR. It was awesome. Like really really good. Since my kids don't dig the mushrooms, I think next time roasted root veggies would be very nice. So if you make this, don't hold strong to the mushroom idea. Add in any roasted or sauteed veggies. But don't leave out the pancetta. It made the dish! Enjoy!

P.S. I plan on trying the other recipes from that episode. They looked yum.

Italian Chicken Salad w/Garlic Croutons

I love being able to use leftovers to make a tasty dinner.

I had on hand (you use whatever it is that you have around):

• Left over grilled chicken (chopped)


• tomato (Roma)


• capers


• a little bit of Romain lettuce


• a little bit of baby spinach


• roasted bell pepper


• fresh bell pepper


• asiago cheese


• sliced yellow onion


• black olives


• stale whole grain baguette

Sounds like the makings of an Italian salad, huh?

So I first mixed together a little dressing:

About 1/2 C red wine vinegar, juice of one whole lemon, 1 T honey, 1/2 t minced garlic, s&p to taste, and about 1/2 C of olive oil (may have been more, I eyed it all).

I then sliced the stale bread into a large crouton size...dipped the bread into a plate drizzled in olive oil and minced garlic and then toasted the bread under the broiler for about 3 minutes (turning once).

I threw all of the chicken, veggies and dressing together and topped the salad with some grated AND shredded asiago cheese and the croutons.

Did that make any sense at all? Either way...it was yum.

Three Cheese Veggie Pizza

This is another Cooking Light recipe and it was good. I think next time I will omit the capers (although I like capers, just not for this recipe) and maybe add some cubed chicken. It was a great start though, the mushrooms UNDER the cheese was kind of cool and tricky. Haha.
Also, I patted dry any wet ingredients to keep the pizza from getting soggy. :)

Use this recipe as a template, and vary the cheeses and vegetables to make your own creations. Allow the pizza to stand five minutes before slicing to allow any liquid on top time to be reabsorbed into the toppings so the crust won't get soggy.
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 (8-ounce) package presliced mushrooms
1 cup marinara sauce1 (1-pound)
Italian cheese-flavored pizza crust (such as Boboli)
1/2 cup (2 ounces) shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup (2 ounces) shredded fontina cheese
1/4 cup (1 ounce) grated fresh Parmesan cheese
3/4 cup sliced bottled roasted red bell peppers
1 tablespoon capers, rinsed and drained
4 drained canned artichoke hearts, thinly sliced
Preheat oven to 500°.
Heat 2 teaspoons olive oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add black pepper, minced garlic, and mushrooms; sauté for 5 minutes or until mushrooms are tender and most of liquid evaporates.
Spread sauce over the pizza crust, leaving a 1/2-inch border, and top with mushroom mixture. Sprinkle evenly with mozzarella, fontina, and Parmesan cheeses. Top with roasted red bell peppers, 1 tablespoon capers, and artichokes. Bake at 500° for 10 minutes or until cheese melts and begins to brown. Let pizza stand for 5 minutes before serving.

Poor Vampires

So, tonight I wanted to include my son in the dinner making "event". So after his homework of finding 3D shapes, he pulled out his Disney cookbook to find out how to make meatballs. He found the recipe (Mr. Incredible's to be exact)but we waited to start that. FIRST, we had something else to do.

We had to try to make Garlic Oil and Garlic Smash thanks to 64 sq ft kitchen. I used rosemary as the herb though because it is what we had. Drew had so much fun smelling the raw garlic and talking about it. My kitchen (and hair and clothes and hands and son and dog) smell of garlic still. The vampires will be sad tonight.
While the garlic and olive oil were in the oven we started on the Tigger Tail pasta.Other than assistance with ingredients, Drew was on his own to make meatballs. He read the ingredients with help from me and all by himself he mixed it (clean hands folks) and formed the balls. He was mighty proud.

With all of this work we used a jarred sauce (gasp) we got from Central Market with a few additions from me.

It was a decent dinner with some special time with my son (Jordan was sleeping during the prep, she missed out).

Now, for a photographic journey (even some black and whites.. a challenge for food):

mmm...garlic

Good Night