Family Bites: Carmelized Onion, Sausage, and Apple Pizza

When my husband was a kid, his mom decided to experiment and see if the family would get sick of pizza if she made it every night for dinner.

Guess who got sick of it first?

I love having pizza for dinner. Sometimes it can be a hassle to make, but I’ve pretty much got the dough recipe down and the result is worth it, because the girl will eat it. I feel way better about pizza I’ve made vs. pizza we’ve bought. Less greasy, less preservative-filled, and good ingredients. I totally believe in fresh mozzarella.

My sis-in-law does pizza and movie night every Friday with the kids, at home. Once a week is doable. And we always make enough for leftovers.

This recipe was born out of the Newman’s Own Foodbuzz Tastemakers program, where I got to try several different products. My mom actually came up with the apple slices. Gorgeous. I knew I had good cooking genes. Sausage was a natural accompaniment with its salty balance.

Here’s a link to my favorite pizza dough recipe. It’s chewy, crusty, and no rolling out necessary (just pulling and stretching). But if you’re short on time, I find refrigerated pizza dough to be acceptable. Hopefully you’re lucky enough to live next to a Trader Joe’s and can get a good one.

Ingredients:

• pizza dough for 1 15x12 cookie sheet pan
• 1 C of Newman’s Own Sockarooni Pasta Sauce (or other red sauce)
• 10 oz fresh mozzarella cheese, shredded or sliced
• 2 T olive oil
• 1 green apple, cored and cut into thin slices
• 1 onion sliced thinly
• 2 italian sausages, casings removed.

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Unroll the pizza crust over a greased cookie sheet. Press to fit.
2. Blend 1 C of Newman’s Own Sockarooni Pasta sauce in blender for 10 seconds. Pour sauce over the pizza crust, spreading evenly. Leave a 1 inch border around all edges.
3. Sprinkle or place cheese over the pasta sauce.
4. Heat olive oil in a sauce pan over medium heat. Cook apple and onion, stirring constantly, for 12-15 minutes or until caramelized. Set aside.
5. Cook sausages in same pan, breaking up sausage into small crumbles. Cook until browned, about 5 minutes.
6. Scatter cooked apple, onion, and sausage over cheese. Place pizza in oven and bake for 20-25 minutes (until crust is lightly browned). Let cool for 10 minutes before cutting and serving.

Split Pea Shamrocks

Dana from MADE is a genius. These split pea shamrocks are amazing! She made them for decoration but I'm thinking of making some, in not so thick vinyl, to give to people as a Saint Patrick's day gift with my favorite recipe of split pea soup attached to it.  What do you think?

Visit her blog to find the tutorial on how to make these.

Tea Party

Yesterday my amazingly talented friend, Ana Paula, threw her daughter, Ms. Mila, a tea party to celebrate her first birthday.

She is extremely detailed oriented and the food was delightful, little sandwiches, scones, mini-cupcakes, and a variety of teas.

The party was girls only, which I loved. As soon as the boys invaded it was a different atmosphere. those boys have to ruin everything, no wonder they have the cooties. Maria Aurea, my baby girl, loved all the fuss. I might have to borrow this idea for her first birthday.

Ana Paula you are a goddess and Mila, you are one lucky girl.

Happy birthday pequena.

Sandwich Heaven

I say, when you don’t have time to make dinner, make sandwiches.

No, I’m not talking about PB&J or ham and cheese (although there may be days when this is perfectly acceptable), but real sandwiches. The kind where you pretend you’re eating a picnic in some French countryside with your love. And no kids in sight.

Except that you have kids, and your spouse is coming home late tonight, and there’s no way you can fix dinner with your daughter pulling on your pant leg because she’s bored.

So you make sandwiches.

We had sandwiches twice this week. I asked Jake to pick up 2 loaves of garlic sourdough because I wasn’t even going to bother baking bread. Un-uh. No way.

The ingredients are important. Real tomatoes—the kind that you can see the red all the way through, preferably local. Brie cheese. Roasted peppers. Garlic cloves. But these ingredients need no dressing up—they’re fabulous without much work.

Everyone assembles their own the way they like it. My daughter stuck with brie on a slice, with a few tomatoes and lettuce on the side. We tricked her into eating roasted pepper by telling her it was a baked tangerine (why this made sense to her, I’ll never know).

The second night we ate sandwiches I sliced up some sausage and heated them up in a pan for the hub and girl, and sliced some cold tofu for myself. I made my sandwich based on my Vegan friend’s favorite sandwich (he was drooling just telling me the assembly). I ate three in no time at all.

The best part? No dishes, except the ones we ate on.

Roasted Veggie w/ Brie (serves 4)

• 12 thin slices of sourdough bread (or other bakery bread)
• 12 slices of brie cheese (rind removed if you prefer)
• 2 yellow, red, or orange bell peppers
• 8 cloves garlic
• sliced tomatoes
• sliced avocado
• balsamic vinegar
• olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 370 degrees. Put a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Cut bell peppers in half. Remove seeds. Place bell pepper halves cut side down. Rub or brush the outside with a bit of olive oil.
2. Separate garlic cloves and rub with olive oil as well; also place on cookie sheet.
3. Bake until peppers are soft and skins are browned. Remove from oven and place bell peppers in a plastic bag for a few minutes to sweat the skins. Remove skins. Cut peppers in half again.
4. Serve vinegar and oil on the side and assemble sandwiches (sandwich pictured has: roasted garlic spread on bread, tomato, avocado, roasted pepper, brie, and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.)

Vegan Lover (makes 3 open faced sandwiches)

• 3 thin slices of firm tofu
• nutritional yeast (about 1/4 C)
• 1 T olive oil
• sea salt (fine ground) to taste
• 3 Tbsp hummus
• sliced avocado
• sliced tomato
• 1 Tbsp Ume plum vinegar (or other vinegar if you don’t have)
• 1/2 C radish sprouts
• 3 lettuce leaves
• 3 slices of good quality bakery bread

Assembly. Split ingredients into 3 servings. On top of 1 slice of bread layer the ingredients as follows: drizzle olive oil, sprinkle salt, spread hummus, press avocado slices, sprinkle yeast to taste, place tomato slices, sprinkle more yeast, place tofu slice, sprinkle more yeast, place sprouts, drizzle ume plum vinegar, top with lettuce leaf.

Note: nutritional yeast is VERY good. It’s salty and light tasting. I keep it around for vegan cooking, but I often add it whatever I’m cooking (soup, stew, sandwiches, etc) to give a little savory flavor. My closest comparison is chicken bouillon in flavor, but not really like that. You can find it easily at a natural foods market, often in the bulk section. They look like yellow flakes and melt very easily on the tongue.

Green Eggs and Ham- Celebrate the Suess

 

Dr. Suess is being celebrated this week all over the country.

Yesterday was his birthday.

Today I found a tutorial on how to sew green eggs and ham on MADE that had these adorable costumes.

I want to make some green eggs and ham for Enzo to play with

I also want to make Mariko's  green eggs to eat.

and a long long while back I wrote a post on how I often feel like Sam-I-am trying to get Enzo to try new things or just eat in general.

This feeling has not changed but it's amusing (and kind of depressing) to revisit my anxieties.

Experimenting with Food

This is a totally weird picture of Enzo, his face looks a little too sneaky for my taste. But the weird picture goes well with his weird taste.

His new favorite sandwich is .... (are you ready to barf...Mariko don't read this) peanut butter and mayo. I kid you not. Yesterday I lost all appetite while I watched him slather a ton of mayo on one bread and a ton of peanut butter on another and than happily take bite after bite after bite.

He has all sorts of creations that he comes up with. A lot of it is nasty, according to my taste buds, but he has a fun time and feels ownership and proud of his creations.

We went through a phase where he would always want to make french toast rice cakes, which is what he's holding on the picture above. It was actually not that bad, interesting texture for sure but he could down 3 or 4 of these puppies and loved sharing them. The first time he offered me some I said "no way" and he responded "first you have to take one bite and then you can say no thanks" which is what I had told him earlier that day for lunch and every day before that during any meal where I plan the menu.

Sometimes I wish I was a little more adventurous in my cooking.

Kentucky Biscuits

I’ve had this problem lately with food.

Meaning, I don’t like it.

I don’t like thinking about it, preparing it, or eating it. I especially don’t like digesting it.

Because, you see, I’m sick. Morning sick. Except it’s all day all night sick. I hate hate HATE feeling that way, but at the same time I don’t care, see?

I have an onion growing on my counter. I just can’t bring myself to cut it up. I let an entire tray of mushrooms go bad in my refrigerator. I don’t even want to look at them. And instead of healthy food going into my body, I’ve been mostly living off of Reese’s Puffs and french fries. I know. It’s just about the most awful thing I can think of.

But Valentine’s Day was last Sunday and I thought I should put away my dislikes and try to prepare something edible for my daughter and husband for breakfast, who have been suffering my lack of food interest for about four months now.

I searched for biscuit recipes even though I know I always make terrible biscuits. I’ve tried so many recipes, and I find that they always taste dry and hard. My hub loves KFC biscuits and I’ve yet to find a copy cat recipe that actually tastes like KFC biscuits. It’s so sad. I’ve read a lot about biscuit technique (cutting with a sharp thin biscuit cutter or knife so that the sides don’t “meld” together and keep the whole thing from rising properly) and thought about what makes my perfect biscuit. I even have tried Dorie Greenspan’s version and I swear, it was not good. I would like to believe that I messed up on the recipe, however.

With skepticism, and after examining many ingredient lists, I decided on a recipe I found on “allrecipes.com” which, generally, earns my disdain. I’m a Cook’s Illustrated, Gourmet mag before they left me hanging on Bon Appetit, ATFT, Smitten Kitchen, kind of girl. I like when someone has scientifically proven to me that they have the best recipe. So generally, I don’t just go around randomly. I stick to my trusted sources.

But I was wrong. This recipe rocks. It’s fluffy, savory with a touch of sweet, and moist. And my favorite part was that I didn’t have to roll out, cut the biscuits, re-roll the scraps, and spend a half hour cleaning the counter of dried flour and dough.

And my family was so happy. We were all so happy, until I had to vomit during church. But that’s a story for another time.

Kentucky Biscuits from AllRecipes.com

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 dash salt
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup buttermilk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400.
2. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar. Cut in 1/2 cup butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Mix in the buttermilk. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead together for about a minute (LIGHTLY—don’t overwork the dough). Transfer to an ungreased baking sheet, pat or roll into a 6x6 inch square, and cut with a sharp knife into 12 even sections. Do not separate.
3. Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven, until a knife inserted in the center of the square comes out clean. Separate into biscuits, and serve hot.