Pesto Arthichoke Pizza

I have not updated this blog since last November.   December was a busy month with my daughter's Nutcracker Ballet rehearsals.  I volunteered to help backstage for this year's performance so I had to attend a lot of the rehearsals as well.   And then my band played at Santana Row, a local shopping area, and we had a several rehearsals for that performance as well.   And of course, Christmas shopping, putting lights up, putting the tree up, decorating, all that stuff, left me with little time and energy to update the blog.

I think for 2014, I am going to update the blog only when I cook something new-- like tonight for instance!  

I got a pizza stone as a Christmas present and I have been wanting to give it a try.   We tried making pizzas sometime last year, but the crust was too doughy.   I figured the pizza stone would solve this problem and I was right... the crust came out much better when using the pizza stone.

However, there were other problems.  I had a really hard time spreading the pizza dough.  I bought pre-made, fresh pizza dough from Whole Foods.   The dough kept wanting to shrink back to its original size.   And it was sticking to the cutting mat I was spreading it on.   I sprinkled some flour onto the mat and that seemed to help prevent the dough from sticking to the mat as much.   I finally got the pizza into a sort of elliptical shape.    The dough was nothing close to a uniform thickness.   I was starting to think this was not going to turn out well.

Earlier, I made fresh pesto with basil, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil, and fresh grated parmesean cheese.   The pesto was really good.   I spread it out on the top of my "pizza" and then sprinkled mozarella over the pizza and topped it off with artichoke hearts (from a can).  

Then I had a heck of a time getting it off the mat again.   I don't think there is a word which describes the shape of my pizza once I got it off the mat.

The instructions for the pizza stone said to heat the stone in the oven to 500 deg F and then remove it and spread the pizza dough on the stone.    Trying to spread pizza dough on a 500 deg stone seems not safe to me, so I didn't do that.   After getting my pizza off the mat, I opened the oven and sat the pizza on the stone.

About 10 minutes later, the pizza looked like it was done, so I tried to remove it from the stone, but it was stuck!   I worked at it with a spatula and eventually pulled off something which loosely resembled a giant pesto artichoke pizza pretzel.

Well, the flavor of the pesto and artichoke hearts along with a well cooked crust was actually pretty good.   The pizza looked sad but the taste was happy.   I think I need some kind of paddle to move my pizza from the counter top to the pizza stone and then to lift it off the pizza stone and perhaps some oil on the work surface where I am working the dough might help.   I will do some more research on this before I attempt to make pizza again.   I am sure that there are probably hundreds of videos on you tube about how to make pizza... ok I just checked.   I found 768,000 videos which matched "how to make pizza" 

Sofie's Birthday Dinner - Spice Rubbed Pork Tenderloin and Pasta

Thanksgiving falls on my daughter's birthday this year and she protested the fact that instead of having both a Thanksgiving holiday dinner and a birthday dinner, should would only one or the other.   So, we decided to celebrate our Thanksgiving on Wednesday (yesterday) and Sofie requested her favorite dinner for her birthday-- Spice-Rubbed Pork Tenderloin with a side of Pasta. 

I have written many other posts about my Spice-Rubbed Pork Tenderloin.    Everyone who tries this dish thinks it is totally delicious and it turned out great for Sofie's birthday dinner as well.

We don't usually serve this with pasta, but Sofie requested it.  Sofie likes her pasta either plain with some butter and fresh grated Parmesean or with some sweet tomato sauce.  For my wife and I, I made some pesto using fresh basil, parsley, toasted pine nuts, olive oil, lemon juice and garlic and mixed this with pasta and fresh tomatoes.

For dessert, Kelly made apple slices with melted chocolate and caramel. 

Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday.    My daughter's birthday falls on Thanksgiving this year and she thought it was unfair that instead of having two special days, she would have only one this year.   So, since it was just going to be us this year, no guests, we decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday.  

I ordered an organic whole Turkey breast from Whole Foods.   This is the first time I have cooked just Turkey breast instead of a whole turkey, and I liked it much better.   The cooking time was much less and I didn't end up with a giant roasted bird I needed to carve and a lot dark meat that would go uneaten (especially since I have been eating a healthier diet).

I put the 7lb turkey breast in the oven at about 1:30 in the afternoon.   I coat the chicken with butter and then sprinkle salt, pepper, and Herbs de Provence  over the turkey and roast at 350 degrees, uncovered in the oven until the meat about 175 degrees.    

While the turkey roasted I made the other dishes:  fresh green beans, sweet potatoes (topped with marshmallows), mashed potatoes, dressing/stuffing (Pepperidge Farms), cranberry sauce (from a can), gravy (from a jar), and dinner rolls.   Its clearly not a gourmet Thanksgiving dinner.   Our dinner is pretty much made up of the dishes both my wife and I ate at Thanksgiving as kids minus the stuff we didn't like and still don't like green bean casserole and scalloped potatoes.   Actually, as a kid, I ate only the green beans, rolls, turkey, and marshmallow topping on the sweet potatoes.

I had dinner on the table a little before 6pm, so the whole meal took a little less than four and a half hours to prepare.   We all thought it was one of the best Thanksgiving dinners we have had.  I did count the calories and although I didn't weigh everything, I estimated that I ate about 1,000 calories for dinner. 

Herbed Chicken with Zesty Potato Salad

On Sunday, my wife, Kelly, made another dish using a recipe from the Williams-Sonoma New Slow Cooker Cookbook.   The recipe, Herbed Chicken with Zesty Potato Salad, calls for browning the chicken over the stove and then cooking for several hours in the slow cooker.  

The dish includes onion, garlic, thyme, oregano, and bay leaves, and although I always appreciate a new and different dish for dinner, I thought the flavors were a little strong and the chicken a little dry.   The recipe calls for bone-in chicken thighs, but we used boneless, skinless chicken breasts and I think the substitution contributed to the less than spectacular results.

The potato salad turned out great and it is something I would make again.  Another blogger used this recipe and wrote about it in more detail here.

Birthday Dinner for Kelly at The Village Pub

It was my wife's birthday on Thursday and on her request we went out to dinner at The Village Pub in Woodside, CA.   This has been one of our favorite restaurants for several years now and I am sure it is considered one of the best restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area.

THE VILLAGE PUB

On my birthday, I picked Giovanni's pizza.  I had not eaten pizza for months since I had been eating a healthier diet.   It was good, but if you compare our choices of birthday dinners,  there's no doubt who is the classier person in this relationship.

Dinner was amazing.   We both had the pumpkin soup and baked scallops for dinner.  Our daughter had a roasted pork chop with cooked apples and of course plenty of homemade dinner rolls.  Everything was memorable and it was really the first time we have taken our daughter to a nice restaurant and she really enjoyed it and ate something other than bread and pasta.

Mini-Farfalle with Roasted Peppers, Onions, Feta, and Mint

Mini-Farfalle with Roasted Peppers, Onions, Feta, and Mint is a dish based on a Cooking Light recipe I have written about in this blog several times.   It has always been a reliable and delicious vegetarian dish that I look forward to making.   But on Tuesday night, I succeeded in ruining this simple dish.  

 Photo: John Autry; Styling: Leigh Ann Ross

On Tuesdays, my daughter has dance until about 6:30pm and then my wife picks her up and they return home at around 7pm.   I like to have dinner ready when they walk through the door so that my daughter ends up getting to bed at a decent time and also because by 7pm everybody is usually pretty hungry (and sometimes cranky).

Everything seemed to be going well, but when we sat down to eat, I realized I forgot to toast the pine nuts and I forgot to add the raisins when I was cooking the onions and garlic.   What I soon discovered is that the pine nuts and raisins are really important to the flavor of this dish.  Without the sweetness from the raisins and nutty flavor of the pine nuts, this dish is just bland and a chore to finish eating! 

Well, we ate it anyway, and although my wife said it was alright, I was disappointed.   I had planned to serve this for left overs on Wednesday, and I did, but I toasted some pine nuts and sauteed some raisins in a little bit olive oil and threw the pine nuts and raisins into the dish and it was as delicious as I remembered.

Picadillo Tostadas

For the past few weeks, my wife has been cooking some of the weekend dinners and using recipes from the Williams-Sonoma New Slow Cooker Cookbook by Brigit Binns.   The dinners have been amazing.   Brigit Binns has published several cookbooks and they all look like they could be just as fantastic as the New Slow Cooker Cookbook.  

For dinner on Sunday, my wife made Picadillo Tostadas.   This recipe is not online, so unfortunately, I can not provide a link to the recipe, but I will do my best to describe it without copying the recipe word for word.   The boneless beef chuck is browned in oil over the stove and then placed in the slow cooker.   The same pan is used to saute onion and garlic which is then placed in the slow cooker along with apple, vinegar, and tomatoes, raisins, and spices of bay leaves, cumin, cinnamon, cloves, salt, and pepper.   The whole dish is cooked for 5 hours in the slow cooker and served over corn tortillas with a slaw made from carrots and cabbage.

I thought this dish was delicious but my wife said she didn't like it too much and that she realized that she wasn't a big fan of chuck roast.