Category Archives: Recipe

Chicken Pesto Paninis

Posted on
7

It’s Thursday–the day I spend approximately two to three hours scouring the internet, flipping through cookbooks, and rifling through my big black book in search of amazing recipes and/or inspiration for things to cook this weekend.  It’s a ritual that borders somewhere between dedication and obsession.

Nothing cheeses me off more than spending all those hours (HOURS!) researching on top of shelling out my hard earned moo-lah on ingredients, taking the time to cook the darned thing, and having it turn out to be a flop.  After trying one-too-many frown-evoking recipes, I adopted a new blog bylaw in 2012:  only post recipes that I would recommend (without hesitation) to a friend.  Even though I painstakingly snap photos of everything I cook, if it ain’t delicious, it ain’t going on the blog.  Jarrod knows exactly what I mean when I ask if a dish is “blog worthy,” and he’s pretty truthful about so-so meals (in a I’m-just-glad-you-cooked-please-don’t-make-me-do-this sort of way).

When he REALLY likes something, he doesn’t hesitate to let me know.  Like this Chicken Pesto Panini, for instance, which he declared the BEST SANDWICH OF HIS LIFE.

If those aren’t fighting words, I don’t know what are.

Chicken Pesto Panini (8 of 10)

Perhaps it was the homemade focaccia that I woke up bright and early to knead by hand.

Chicken Pesto Panini (1 of 10)

Nah… definitely not.  He has no idea what goes down before the 10am hour rolls around.  So, maybe it was those adorable hand-dimpled nooks and crannies dusted generously with garlic salt and oregano?

Chicken Pesto Panini (3 of 10)

Or the fresh made-from-scratch pesto.  Basil, toasted almonds, parmesan, and garlic anyone?

Chicken Pesto Panini (2 of 10)

And I did slave over my Griddler grilling that chicken up.

Chicken Pesto Panini (4 of 10)Chicken Pesto Panini (5 of 10)Chicken Pesto Panini (6 of 10)

My guess is it had nothing to do with any of these things, though I was sure to emphasize each and every component of the sandwich that was in fact homemade as I wiggled my fingers in jazz-hand fashion in front of his face.

Chicken Pesto Panini (10 of 10)

If you aren’t up for all the home-cooking, you could totally buy a loaf of focaccia (or use premade pizza dough) and use store bought pesto – but it’s a heck of a lot cheaper to make it yourself and I am ALL ABOUT any excuse to whip out my spirit fingers whilst bragging.

Chicken Pesto Paninis

  • 2 large chicken breasts
  • Olive Oil
  • McCormick’s Montreal Chicken Seasoning (or your seasonings of choice)
  • Black Pepper
  • Focaccia (recipe below)
  • Basil Pesto (recipe below)
  • Monterey Jack (or cheese of choice)
Step One:  Drizzle a bit of olive oil on each chicken breast, spread with a brush, then season with seasonings of your choice.  Repeat on opposite side.  Grill chicken breast until completely cooked through (approx 7 minutes on the Griddler or George Foreman Grill).
 
Step Two:  Cut off a hunk of focaccia and slice in half sandwich style.  Spread pesto on one side of bread, top with cheese, then chicken breast, and other half of bread.  Wrap sandwich tightly in foil and bake in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes, or until heated through.
 

Basic Focaccia

Recipe slightly adapted from the Joy of Cooking

  • 1/2 package Active Dry Yeast (about 1 1/8 teaspoons)
  • 5.5 ounces warm water
  • 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading
  • Olive oil
  • 1.5 tsp salt
  • Garlic salt
  • Dried Oregano
Step One:  Combine the yeast and warm water in a medium mixing bowl, let stand five minutes until the yeast is dissolved.
 
Step Two:  Add the flour, 1 tbsp olive oil, and 1.5 tsp salt to the dissolved yeast and mix with a fork until combined.  Lightly flour a work surface, transfer dough to surface, then knead by hand (adding flour as needed to prevent the dough from sticking) for 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic.  Lightly coat a medium sized bowl with olive oil, place dough in the bowl and flip to coat.  Cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm place (a sunny window) for 1.5 hours.
 
Step Three:  On a cookie shee or pizza pan coated with cooking spray, gently roll/pat the dough out into a round(ish) slab, then use your fingers to dimple the top.  Drizzle olive oil over top, then sprinkle with garlic salt and oregano.  Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes.

 

Basil Pesto

  • 1 cup fresh basil leaves, large stems removed
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1/4 cup toasted almonds
  • 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
  • 1/8 tsp salt (if almonds are salted, omit this)
  • Pinch of black pepper

Step One and Only:  Add all ingredients to a food processor and pulse, scraping down sides of bowl as needed, until thoroughly combined.

On a separate note, today is the boyfriend’s birthday!  Now that we are once again the same age, I can no longer be referred to as a cougar or cradle robber… well, at least not for the next 5 months anyway.

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Spaghetti Squash with Sausage, Pesto, and Tomatoes

Posted on
4

Although it may seem like I eat meatballs at every meal, I occasionally opt for different meats of the non-ball variety.  (Like when I’ve run out of meatballs and don’t have the necessary ingredients to make more.)  Tonight was one of those nights.  With a grumbling belly and nary a meatball in sight, I decided to remix my usual spaghetti squash with some ingredients I had on hand.

Enter Spaghetti Squash with Sausage, Pesto, and Tomatoes:

Spaghetti Squash (8 of 14)
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How to halve a spaghetti squash without losing a finger.

Posted on
11

Right or wrong, perfect sense or nonsense, I often do things a certain way simply because that’s the way I’ve always done them.  A prime example of this ridiculous stubbornness is my method for tying shoes.  I remember trying to learn the whole bunny goes round the tree and jumps in the hole spiel on a wooden practice shoe in elementary school.  No matter how much I practiced, it just didn’t feel right.  I’d memorized the story line, but my bunny wanted nothing to do with that stupid tree and my stinkin’ index finger kept messing up the loop.  Honestly, I didn’t see what the big deal was.  For weeks I’d been using my own method—the make-two-bunny-ears-then-crisscross-then-fold-one-under-and-pull-to-tighten method—and my shoe laces looked perky and perfectly bowed.  So why change?

I have a lot of these little quirks, especially in the kitchen.  My knife skills border on horrifying (trust me, you’d shudder if you saw me chop an onion), but hey, I get the job done.  Even though I’ve nearly severed several fingers over the years, I’d never really given much thought to the dangerous method I employed to halve a spaghetti squash.  I always proceeded in cutting a spaghetti squash as if it were a giant rock-hard avocado—with a knife painstakingly seesawing around the perimeter of the squash.  I’m not sure what events occurred that caused my subconscious to one day realize this was a horrible HORRIBLE idea.  I’m just thankful it did before I’d involuntarily amputated something.

Spaghetti Squash (1 of 14)
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Brown Dump Chili

Posted on
4

I love to cook, but sometimes all I want is to dump a bunch of ingredients in a pot and come back an hour later to a piping hot bowl of flavorful comfort.  I need my unproductive internet perusing and phantom shopping time, which means I can’t spend every ounce of my free time in the kitchen.  That’s what I love about this chili.  You simply brown the turkey then dump everything in the pot.

Dump Turkey Black Bean Chili (4 of 9)

Perhaps, at first glance, the name Brown Dump Chili is unappealing to some.  Given the two-step process behind the chili, I’m sure you wholeheartedly agree the name is appropriate (or, at the very least, foretelling).
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Amaze(meat)balls.

Posted on
7

I shamelessly consider myself a meatball connoisseur.  If meatballs are on the menu, you can bet your last breadstick I’m gonna order one.  Just one solitary meatball is all I need for my analysis.  Texture, taste, accouterments.  More often than not, I’m disappointed.  I’m not a fan of mushy ones and I need them to be thoroughly seasoned, preferably bobbing along in a vat of marina sauce (though I’m flexible on that stipulation).  Every once in a while, about 1 in 5 tries, I will sink my teeth into an amazing meatball and for that brief moment this crazy messed up world is right again.

Healthy Meatballs (1 of 6)

I have been trying to create a delicious healthified meatball recipe for YEARS, and have been wholeheartedly devoted to the cause.  I’ve tried dozens of impromptu turkey meatball concoctions, but they always left something to be desired.  Too dry, too poultry-ee, not meatbally enough, etc.  I kept crawling back to my favorite, albeit it no-so-healthy, meatball recipe:  Meatball Nirvana on Allrecipes.com.  I LOVE this recipe because it results in meatballs that are juicy, flavorful, and that have the coveted sink-your-teeth-in meaty texture.

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Sausage Stuffed Peppers

Posted on
3

During my kid years, stuffed peppers were in the regular dinner rotation at my dad’s house.  I hated them.  My step mom would fill crisp green peppers with a beef mixture in the morning, pop them into the slow cooker with some tomato sauce, and when we got home in the evening we’d find the crunchy green peppers had been transformed into a slimy mushy mess.  Back then, I had deep-rooted hatred for lots of cooked veggies—carrots, celery, and tomatoes to name a few—but cooked green peppers took the medal for most loathed cooked vegetable.  To my young taste buds, cooked green peppers had this toxic unnatural taste to them—like they’d been marinating in a puddle of Windex for a few hours.  It just wasn’t right.  Luckily, peppers were pricy so my step mom was more than happy to make me a meatball sans pepper for dinner while the rest of the family subjected themselves to green pepper poisoning.  I love a good meatball.

To this day, I’m still not a huge fan of stuffed green peppers.  As I aged and grew wiser, I discovered that other types of peppers could be stuffed just as easily and infinitely more deliciously than green peppers ever could. 

Case in point:

Sausage Stuffed Peppers (10 of 11)

Some of my favorite peppers to stuff are banana peppers, cubanelles, and Anaheims.  I usually buy whichever variety is the biggest (i.e., most stuffable) at the grocery store that day.

 
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Pork Tenderloin Medallions with a Shallot Balsamic Reduction

Posted on
2

I learned two things while making this recipe.

#1 – Balsamic vinegar makes everything better.

#2 – It is incredibly difficult to photograph black foods in low lighting.  *insert childish temper tantrum here*

Baby steps….  baby steps.

This sweet and savory supper was courtesy of a Cooking Light recipe I had filed away in my big black book.  I went to the book in search of a new pork dish to make for dinner.  Truth be told, I wasn’t super excited about making pork, but the thought of pork covered in a sweet thickened balsamic glaze changed those feelings pretty darn quick.

Balsamic Pork Tenderloin (7 of 7)

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