Mexican Dinner Pies

It's Friday! Time for the weekend and maybe a little winning of 540 million dollars. Muahahahaha. But seriously, I know I'm 1 of like 176 million who fell victim to the urge to get a ticket. Unlike everyone else though, I got mine with a decaf coffee and some skittles. So, I've already won with the whole Skittles part. Plus, when 11 o'clock comes around tonight and I don't win it will be ok cause I have a bottle of wine at home already with my name on it, specifically for drowning my sorrows in. Just kidding... sort of. Anyway, enough about the lotto and more about food as usual! The other day I was feeling like I needed a little spice in my life and what better way to get it than Mexican, duh. Mexican dinner pies to save the day! More like a mixture of a pie and biscuit but who really cares anyway? They are muy bueno and quite tasty with a side of some Mexican Slaw which will be coming up next. Make these tonight and serve them up with a couple margaritas to celebrate the weekend.

Mexican Dinner Pies
Yield 12 pies

1 pound chicken
1 onion
1/2 green pepper
1 cup corn/black bean salsa
1 cup cheddar cheese
dash of garlic powder, chili powder, oregano, and red pepper flakes
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup bisquick
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cut up chicken into 3/4-1 inch squares. Put a little oil in a pan and add in the chicken, onion, green peppers, and dash of garlic powder, chili powder, oregano, and red pepper flakes. If you like spicy, go a little heavier than a dash of red pepper flakes. Cook until chicken is finished, then mix in the salsa. In a bowl, mix the milk, bisquick, and 2 eggs. Pour about an ice cream scoop sized amount into the bottom of a greased cupcake tin. Then put enough of the chicken mixture to fill it up about 2/3 of the way. Next sprinkle as much cheese as you would like on each hole. Last pour another ice cream scoop sized amount to fill up each little cup. Bake for 20-22 minutes or until golden brown on top.

Cauliflower Pizza Crust

In my everlasting attempt (I say attempt for a reason) to always eat healthier I came across an idea for a cauliflower pizza crust through my constant food browsing. Lately this word has just meant pinterest. I click on someone's pin then I find myself immersed into another fellow food blogger's site. Then I am lead to another and another and there goes over an hour of my time. The internet is and will be the downfall of me. It's no wonder I'm left wondering why I have zero time to do anything. Last year I rarely used my computer, now I have so many bookmarks it's almost a miracle of God that pinterest was created. I tried for a very long time not to jump on the pinterest band wagon but I had to give in and upgrade my Facebook to timeline just so I could join. Now my Facebook is just even more confusing.

On to the reason I even brought up pinterest. Cauliflower pizza crust... this crust was really good! It was a definite change from your typical pizza crust but it reminded me more of a flatbread. Now you should go make this crust and create as many culinary masterpiece pizzas as you wish. I just loaded mine up with a bunch of vegetables and some shredded chicken. I thoroughly enjoyed mine and I know you will too!

Cauliflower Crust
Yield ~2 8 inch pizza crusts

2 cups grated cauliflower
1 cup grated mozzarella
1 egg
1 tablespoon pizza seasoning
1 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Take a head of cauliflower and grate ~2 cups of it. If you have a food processor you can put about half the head of cauliflower in and pulse it. Next mix this in a bowl with the mozzarella, egg, pizza seasoning, and salt. If you do not have pizza seasoning you can just throw in a dash of dried basil, oregano, and some garlic powder. Spray a cookie sheet and cut mixture in half and form pizza crusts. Bake in oven for 15-20 minutes depending how crispy you like your crust. Take out crust and put toppings on and increase heat to 500 degrees. Place back in once complete with toppings and bake another 5 minutes or so.

Corned Beef and Cabbage

Here I am, leaving you with my last St. Patrick's food posting of the year. Maybe you're kind of glad about this and you'd rather me be making Thai or Mexican posts. I know I might prefer to be eating those currently or maybe not considering I just ate 6 cookies. Eeeep! If you have followed any of my recent posts though, you have read about my quest to cook corned beef and cabbage. Lent put a little damper in my plans but I wasn't about to give up. I did a quick rescheduling for the corned beef and set out to make it this past Saturday. Step one: set up everything in the crockpot. Step two: Set alarm for 1AM to get up and plug in and turn on crockpot (which I thought I did) Step three: Wake up to amazing smells of beer and meat. Step three never happened because for some unbeknownst reason the darn outlet wasn't working! My crockpot doesn't have a light that goes on, you just switch the knob to low or high. When I woke up at 7:30 I smelled nothing and quickly realized crockpot never was on. Once again my plans were thwarted. Another readjustment and quick thinking and I put everything in a huge pot and boiled it for 3.5 hours. Luckily, it turned out perfectly and it was the best tasting fall apart corned beef and cabbage I've had.


Corned Beef and Cabbage

2.5 pounds of red potatoes
3+ pound corned beef (and seasoning packet)
1 head of cabbage, quartered
1 cup carrots
1 onion
1 12 ounce can of beer
2 tablespoons brown mustard
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon garlic powder

Cut up potatoes into quarters and onion into slices. Place onion, carrots, and potatoes at bottom of crockpot or large pot. Add in brown mustard and brown sugar. Place corned beef on top of vegetables and pour seasoning packet on top of the beef with garlic powder. Last add in the beer and enough water to leave about 1 inch of the meat uncovered. Now, if you are going to cook this in the crockpot turn it on low and cook for about 10 hours. When you have about 2-3 hours left add in the cabbage. If you are cooking this in a large pot go ahead and add in the cabbage and turn the heat on high and bring to a boil. After it has been boiling for about a half hour, reduce heat to medium and continue cooking for another 3 hours. By the end of both of these cooking methods the meat should be falling apart and perfect!

Pin It

Baby Stuffed Peppers

These puppies make me happy purely by the colors. When you just look at this dish doesn't it put you in a good mood? What's even better is today I am going to the store to get little baby seeds so I can get a head start on our gardennnnn! I'm going to get so many types of peppers (and tomatoes, cucumbers, etc) then I can just have a bunch of these right outside.

This past Saturday I went to an Italian potluck. I definitely brought a dessert but I really wanted to make a dinner dish too. I had to throw something unexpected in there. I love stuffed peppers so I decided to make those on a smaller scale so they were a bit more party friendly. One thing this meant though was I had a lot to carry to my friend's place. She lives in downtown Annapolis so parking is limited which means long walks to her place sometimes. On the walk home, somehow all the dishes ended up in a box being balanced on top of my boyfriend's head while we sang the Lion King song... I have no idea what to even say about that except it made the walk home much more enjoyable.

Baby Stuffed Peppers
Yield ~25 baby peppers

25 baby sweet peppers
3/4 cup uncooked rice
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1 lb ground chicken
1 onion diced
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp Italian seasoning
2 cloves garlic
1 can tomato sauce (~15 ounces)
1 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
dash salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Boil 3/4 cup rice with 1 1/2 cups water until cooked. In another pan spray with vegetable or canola oil and add in ground chicken, onions, and garlic on medium high. Keep on heat until chicken is cooked through. Once rice and chicken are cooked add them to a bowl and mix in the parmesan cheese, red pepper flakes, Italian seasoning, worcestershire sauce, half the can of tomato sauce, and salt and pepper. Place the baby peppers in a casserole dish and then fill them with the filling. This could also be used for regular sized green peppers. It should make about 5 or so. Once you have filled all the peppers fill the dish about 1/2 inch with water and pour the rest of the tomato sauce on the peppers. Place uncovered dish in oven and bake for about 45 minutes.

Pin It

Muffuletta Pizza

Busted. At least that's what my forecast did. At least I can say I told you so. That it would bust along with most of the other meteorologists. Sorry, Justin Berk but I didn't really have #faithintheflakes. That dumb system just HAD to go farther south and bring snow to North Carolina. What the heck, they aren't supposed to get snow. We are, and we're notorious for snow on President's Day Weekend. Oh well, better luck next year. On to my next topic of discussion. Food, as usual.

THE sandwich to have in New Orleans is a muffuletta. Well, that and a po' boy. I decided to make a nice little twist on this typical sandwich and turn it into a pizza. Pizza is always good and it's even better when you throw some variations in. I present you with Muffuletta pizza!

Muffuletta Pizza

Yield ~1 large pizza

Paul's Pizza Dough (recipe below)

Olive Salad (You can make this but also can find this in the olive aisle at your grocery store- what I did)

Salami ~10 slices

Ham ~8 slices

Provolone cheese ~ 10 slices

Olive Oil

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Roll out your pizza dough and place on your pizza stone or baking pan. (Store bought dough works too) Brush the soon to be crust region with some olive oil. Spread out a layer of olive salad on the dough first. Next make a layer of salami, then a layer of ham, and finish it up with a layer of provolone cheese. Place the pizza in the oven on a rack about 2/3 of the way up in the oven. Bake for about 10 minutes, then check on pizza. You may need another 5 minutes more though if you like your pizza a little crispier.

Paul's Pizza Dough

Yield ~ dough for 1 large pizza

1 3/4 cups flour (possibly another 1/4 cup if it seems too sticky)

1 cup slightly warm water

1/2 packet yeast (5/16 oz size)

1 tsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

Mix yeast and water together. Let sit and become frothy for about 5 minutes or until it looks foamy. Next add in flour, olive oil, and salt. Mix together until becomes dough consistency. If it seems too sticky you can add in a little more flour until it seems more like pizza dough. I ended up using just a dash more than 1 3/4 cup flour. Roll dough into ball as pictured below and place in a bowl to rise for an hour at room temperature. After an hour or so punch it back down and create a ball like this again. Place it back into the bowl to rise for another few hours. By this time it will look like the second picture on the right below. Punch it back down again to a ball and begin to roll out into your pizza dough.

Pin It

Shrimp and Grits

You would think that since I can bake, I could cook. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely positive that's the case. At least that's what my boyfriend has led me to think (by my own conclusions of course). He cooks, I bake. Period. The End.

So this year, for Valentine's I told him I was going to cook our dinner. I have only cooked us dinner 2 times in the almost 2 years we've been dating. I settled on Shrimp and Grits. Good thing I did since he said it was perfect! Maybe I got some motivation to do an extra good job from the flowers that were waiting for me when I got home. *Cue typical Valentine's facebook picture of flowers and chocolate* At least I saved it for my blog.

Shrimp and Grits
Yield ~3 servings, originally planned for 2 but was more than enough

9 tbs instant grits (I know, a true Southerner only uses real grits. I'm only Southern by blood, not birthplace)
2 1/4 cup water plus 2 tbs
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Pinch of garlic powder
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 1/2 tbs butter
1 pound medium shrimp, peeled
2 large cloves garlic, minced
2 tbs white wine
Pinch of Old Bay seasoning
Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tbs cut fresh parsley

Bring 2 1/4 cups of water to a boil. Next mix in the grits with a dash of garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Reduce the heat to medium and stir frequently until thick, which will only take a few min. Once thickened, mix in the parmesan and 1/2 tbs butter.

Next, season the shrimp with Old Bay seasoning, salt, and pepper. Melt the last tbs of butter in a skillet. Add the shrimp, garlic, and crushed red pepper flakes. Mix this around until the shrimp turn pink which should take around 5 min. Remove shrimp from little butter sauce and place in a bowl for time being. Add in 2 tbs of white wine and 2 tbs of water, the lemon juice and parsley to butter sauce. Place back on heat and simmer for another few minutes to reduce. Place shrimp back in to coat in the sauce. Fill bowls with grits and pour some shrimp and a bit of the sauce on top. Bon Appetit!

Pin It