Canadian Bacon, Green Pepper and Red Onion Pizza

It's been a while since we posted about pizza that we've made. And pizza has quickly become our Saturday dinner/Sunday lunch standby week in, week out. With a little ingredient assistance from Melissa's parents, we've come to perhaps the perfect pizza:

Canadian bacon, green peppers, red onion, black olives, mushrooms, mozzarella, reduced-fat sharp cheddar cheese and herbs and spices.


In a word, delicious.

Vegetable Lasagna

We are big fans of "America's Test Kitchen" and "Cook's Country," both of which you should check out on local public television. And we recently had an opportunity to buy one their cookbooks at reduced price.

And, as most other home cooks would do, we wanted to make something from it. So we choose Vegetable Lasagna.

We started by processing diced tomatoes in a food processor until they were almost smooth and then threw them into a pot with sauteed onions and salt in olive oil. Before the processed diced tomatoes, we also added garlic, tomato paste and pepper flakes. After the garlic becomes fragrant, we added another can of diced tomatoes with the processed diced tomatoes, chicken broth, bay leaves, basil and black pepper. That sauce simmered for 45 minutes.


For the filling, we sauteed the mushrooms in oil and salt and let them release their liquid and it evaporates. Set aside those mushrooms.


Then simply repeat the mushroom step in the same pan, but using zucchini instead.


Then, in a separate bowl, we combined the ricotta, mozzarella, Parmesan, basil, egg, pepper and salt.

Lay some sauce in the bottom of a 9-by13-inch dish and lay 3 no-bake lasagna noodles on top. Place the ricotta filling on and then add more sauce and the mushrooms. Then more sauce and more noodles, repeating the process for a separate layer of zucchini and broccoli.



We screwed up a bit in forgetting the ricotta mixture for the mushroom layer, so our lasagna had a bit more difficulty staying together on the plate. However, the flavors were great and it was a hearty meatless dish.

Broccoli Cheese Soup

Even though we're at the tail end of several days' worth of unseasonably warm weather, it is undoubtedly soup season in our household. We've made a couple of different kinds in the past couple of weeks.

The first one we made was a Broccoli Cheese Soup since we had a bunch of broccoli from the farmers market.

Broccoli Cheese Soup
3 bacon strips
1 pound broccoli
3 cups chicken broth
6 tablespoons butter
1/2 onion
1/3 cup flour
1/4 pound Velveeta cheese
1/2 cup hot milk
2 tablespoons sour cream

We started by cooking the bacon and then patting dry of grease in paper towels.


We cooked the broccoli in chicken broth.


While the broccoli was cooking, we sauteed the onion and bacon in butter. Then we thickened the mixture with the flour.


After combining the sauteed onion mixture into the broccoli and chicken broth mixture, we added the Velveeta, cut up into smallish chunks to aid in the cooking process. Also add the hot milk and the sour cream.



It was definitely cheesy and the broccoli was cut into some nice big chunks, giving a good texture to the soup. It's fun to see that soup season is here, and it's fun to make these soups from plentiful stock of ingredients.

Mile-High Lemon Meringue Pie

Otherwise known as the pie that almost killed me. This was my first attempt at pie crust, and what was supposed to virtually be a fool proof recipe was not so much. The recipe is actually from "America's Test Kitchen," probably my favorite cooking show next to "Good Eats" and really the first cooking show I remember watching as a kid.

It began with blending chilled butter and vegetable shortening with flour and salt in a food processor. Then it's time to add a little bit of chilled water and chilled vodka. The reason for the vodka was that it is supposed to prevent the dough from being over worked.





Once mixed, form it into a rectangle and refrigerate for an hour. Then roll it out into a 12-inch diameter circle.


And place it into a pie pan.


Refrigerate again for 30 minutes, flute the edge and refrigerate again for 30 more minutes. Then bake at 425 degrees with pie weights for 15 minutes. Remove the weights and bake for another 5 to 10.

Unfortunately, this is where it all went wrong. My fluting wasn't up to snuff and during baking the pie crust slumped in the pan. So much so that I couldn't use the crust. So I made the dough again, only to have the dough turn out with the wrong consistency. After the third remake of the dough, I finally got something I could work with, although it wasn't exactly pretty. But we must admit the failed attempts were some of the best tasting pie dough we've ever had.


After all of that, the lemon curd seemed easy. The curd took 1 cup of juice, 2 tablespoons of lemon zest, 8 egg yolks, sugar, salt, cornstarch, butter and water.


Cook over medium heat and strain.


The curd should then be refrigerated for a minimum of an hour or up to one day. Then it was onto the meringue, an Italian meringue at that. Mix sugar and water for 4 minutes to make a simple syrup.


Begin to whip egg whites with salt and cream of tartar. Once at soft peaks, slowly add syrup to the egg whites. Whip for about 10 minutes.

Then top the pie with the meringue, ensuring that it attaches to the pie crust to avoid any shrinkage during the browning phase.


Place in the oven set on broil until the meringue has browned. Serve once cooled.


The pie had great, tart lemon flavor and was quite good. Unfortunately, as you can tell by the below picture, the pie lacked structure. There wasn't a piece that came out looking picture worthy, but luckily the flavor made up for it.


Lesson learned: From-scratch pies are not as easy as I thought they were. I looks like I'm going to need a lot of practice.

Parsley Potatoes and Green Beans with Toasted Almonds

When we made the Grilled Pork Chops with Shallot Butter, we wanted to have some side dishes, too. We had a lot of leftover potatoes and green beans from the farmers market, so we decided to base the sides off of those.

And Cooking Light helped us with Parsley Potatoes and Green Beans with Toasted Almond Gremolata.

For the potatoes, we used whatever we had on hand, which didn't include reds, and Melissa added some chicken broth to steam the potatoes since they were searing at too high of a temperature. But other than that, we cooked them with the garlic, parsley, salt and pepper.


For the green beans, we stuck closer to the recipe by steaming the green beans and then draining and adding parsley, toasted almonds, lemon rind, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, black pepper and garlic.


Our menu that night:

Grilled Pork Chops with Shallot Butter

I've mentioned this before, but pork is one of our least used animal proteins. So when we recently had Melissa's parents for dinner to thank them for help around our new house, we chose pork to guide us through the night.

Thankfully, Cooking Light had a wonderful recipe for Grilled Pork Chops with Shallot Butter.

We cut the recipe in half and used 4 bone-in pork chops. Sprinkle each with salt and pepper. Then combine olive oil, chives, thyme, rosemary and garlic and rum the mixture over each pork chop thoroughly.


Then it's time to grill. Grill until the pork reaches about 155 degrees (our charcoal grill took a bit less than the time the recipe gives).


Take off the grill and let stand for a few minutes. Meanwhile, combine softened butter, shallots and lemon rind. Then rub the mixture over each pork chop.


This was a really good meal, the rest of which will be shown tomorrow. But the chops hand excellent grill marks and hit the temperature spot on. The meat was still a bit juicy, and the shallot and lemon rind butter added a nice hint of butteriness and citrus.

Breakfast Mexican Torta

I was watching an episode of Rick Bayless' "Mexico: One Plate at a Time" recently. He was making a torta, a Mexican dish that is served on a bun. What struck me the most about it was its versatility: There are so many things you can do with it.

So we decided to nearly replicate the first one he made in the episode, a Breakfast Mexican Torta.

We began by making the mashed black bean spread on the bottom bun. We soaked some dried black beans and then cooked them and mashed them. (Bayless used canned black beans.)

Then we made the other layer by cooking about 1/2 cup of salsa in some olive oil and then putting in some scrambled eggs seasoned with chives.


To build the sandwich, we carved out some of the bread from each end of the bun, then put some raw red onion below the mashed black beans. We topped with the salsa-egg mixture and ended with some shredded pepperjack cheese on top.


The sandwich was quite filling. But it was a bit underwhelming as we put in too much salsa and our rehydrating and cooking of the black beans was not sufficient. In other words, this was an execution issue, not a flavor issue.

We needed to add less salsa and the black beans were not mashed consistently because the outer skin was not fully cooked and our masher was not the appropriate one for the job.

We certainly have other plans for torta using other ingredients, and maybe we'll try to make the breakfast one again with better execution.