Hummus Quesadilla

The pinto beans were a bit elderly and not quite feeling up to being eaten, so the hummus bravely offered up itself. The result was so delicious I couldn't do anything else while I ate but taste.

Spread a generous layer of hummus on a (whole wheat, what else?) tortilla, then cover with lots of (red leaf) lettuce, tomato slices, carrot slivers (when this guy isn't busy trying to kill me, it does a great job with the carrots), and hunks of sharp cheddar. You gently fold it in half and microwave until the cheese is quite melty.

Devour distractionless. :)

Super Crispy Tortilla Pizza

Pita bread doesn't like me: when I try to make it poof up, it just sits there; when I try to make the tortillas crispy by baking them at 450 for a few minutes before adding pizza-y toppings, the tortillas fill up their lungs to sing. Molto strano.

They got what they were asking for: a violent and crunchy punching down. Then they got a liberal covering with tomato slices, basil leaves, cheese, lots and lots of dried basil and dried oregano on top, and a spoon-controlled drizzling of olive oil.

Back in at 450 for 10-15 minutes, and devoured. Delicious!

P.S. I also roasted the tomatoes before hand, which I think helped. The cookie sheet wasn't too happy though...

Untitled Improvisations

Here are two delicious fast things to do with a saute pan. They're somewhere between risotto and stir-fry, and have infinite flexibility. The 28th and 29th saw improvisational cooking at its best.

Day 1:

Saute some of the minced garlic in olive oil until fragrant, then add chicken. Cook until just brown on the outside and set aside. Saute more minced garlic, then chopped onion, carrot, and celery (about a cup each?) and saute some moe. Without adding water, add about 1 c chopped tomatoes and boil with 1 tsp oregano, dried basil, rosemary, thyme, and a bit of black pepper.

Add chicken and rice (how much depends on how many veggies you use). Cook, stirring often, until the chicken is cooked through and everything is nice and hot and well blended. Serve with heavy whole wheat bread. :)

(Sorry it's a crappy picture; the flash was misbehaving and I was hungry!)

Day 2:

Brown the chicken in sauted minced garlic like day 1, but with the addition of Famous Dave's Country Roast Chicken Seasoning. Remove, add more olive oil and minced garlic to the pan, and saute the already cooked broccoli for a minute, then add cooked brown rice and browned chicken to the pan. In lieu of canned cream of whatever soup, I added a 1/4 c (skim) milk and about 3/4 c grated cheese (mostly cheddar, but also some romano to use it up), and lots more of the chicken seasoning.

(Easy, efficient way to grate cheese. These guys are infinity times better than the box kind.)

(This guy reminds me of  Gavroche singing "Little People" from Les Mis)

Cook, stirring often, until the chicken is cooked through and everything is nice and hot and well blended to creamy deliciousness.

Taco Salad

In some ways, taco salad is even more fabulous than stir fry. Unless you make your own refried beans, which is easy and fast, it involves only a bit of knife work and some washing of vegetables. Tonight's included red leaf lettuce, tomatoes, scallions, corn off the cob, onion sprouts, cheddar cheese, refried beans, and a small handful of tortilla chips. It was definitely fit for a payday celebration!

Triple-Type Pizza

It looked better than it tasted. It was a lesson in why not to put raw tomatoes directly on the crust: sog city (the drizzled olive oil didn't help either). The olive oil I used to grease the pan, since I didn't have cornmeal, did however make the crust nicely crispy. It was still too thick, despite the absence of leavening.

The crust was simply 1.5 c whole wheat flour, maybe 1/2 (unmeasured) salt, a generous (maybe 1 tbsp) honey, and about 0.75 c water. I kneaded it just to mix it more easily and to work in a bit more flour.

Then I slathered the cookie sheet with olive oil, spread the crust, and slathered it with oil. Then on went a layer of tomatoes (part of the problem with this pizza was also that the tomatoes hardly tasted like anything; thank goodness my flight for Italy leaves tomorrow!), three columns of toppings: basil, broccoli, and diced yellow pepper (see top picture), and about seven cloves of garlic, minced (I really prefer garlic powder but I refuse to use the garlic salt thingy in the cabinet). Then knife-shredded Cheddar and Romano cheeses, a hearty dose of freshly ground black pepper, oregano, and dried basil, and finally another (bad idea) drizzle of olive oil. I baked it at maybe 450 for about 15 minutes.

At least it was pretty.

Quesadilla Adventure

One of the things I always say I love about cooking is the creativity involved/required, and now I'm officially adding the adventure factor. Today, I had an adventure. I am being grateful it was not only edible but delicious (sometimes adventures can be of the exploding variety...); I am being grateful that the sun's fury can't touch the cool breeze floating in the window; I am being grateful that the cheese, whose fault this whole thing is anyway, can make anything taste good; I'm being grateful for the corn I got to dig out of the cob with my teeth.

Today's adventure was an attempt to make a quesadilla with slightly crunchy tortillas, and I decided this would be be done in a greased frying pan (So it was basically this but with scallions and much messier). What I didn't count on was that the cheese needs to be close to the heat (not in a layer on top as shown above) or it won't melt and won't hold the whole thing together. Admittedly, there was probably not enough cheese together, but it wasn't noticeable by the end because none of the ingredients were evenly distributed by the end anyway.

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not quite as easy as flipping pancakes...

Still delicious, but we'll stick with the micronde for now.

What was your biggest cooking adventure? Any you'd repeat?

Stephxican Lasagna

If I were Mexican, I'd probably not want this called Mexican, so it's Stephxican. Don't ask me how to pronounce that. (Pictures were taken before I realized I forgot the corn.)

Last night's delicious feast was preceded by a stunning spectacle of surgical skill: I forgot the corn, but was able to lift off each layer of lasagna (take that, Italians!) to add the corn back. (The masses that told me it wasn't possible were clearly not aware of my spectacular surgical skill!) It was heavenly. It was in a springform pan.

Legitissimo Tortilla Pizza

Legitissimo Tortilla Pizza- Preheat oven. Slather tortillas with olive oil. Add chopped tomato, cheese, and ripped fresh basil leaves. Add plenty of oregano and a generous drizzle of olive oil. Bake for 10 minutes at 450. The tortillas were too thick to get properly crispy. More oil next time?

Quesadilla/Sincronizada

Quesadilla- Slather refried beans on a hearty whole wheat tortilla, then thick layers of chopped tomato, cheese, and sweet corn cut off the cob. Add another tortilla on top, and microwave until everything's melty and ideally sticking together. Next time this needs to be done in a greased (to make the tortillas crispy) frying pan because nothing really stuck to the top tortilla.