We grew up with Croque-Monsieur, progressed to Croque-Madames and now Croque-Uncle Jimmy!

Sunday mornings have become rather lazy around here so even though I may rise early, it doesn't mean I'm moving around early.  Today was perfect example, up @8, surfed the internet; read emails; created and emailed a client's menu and read some news.  Finally, around 11 o'clock I got up from the computer desk and exercised on the elliptical. Once I was done I realized I hadn't eaten breakfast and was now famished.  So instead of our typical breakfast of fruit, cereal and toast, I opted to make brunch!  Had watched Melissa D'Arabian make Croque Madames, while exercising, so wanted something substantial like that based on what ingredients I could find. 


Check out this Wikipedia list of different Croques!


The results of my search:


Bacon; Gruyere Cheese; Eggs; Whole Wheat Tuscan Pane; ingredients for a mustard dressing; a variety of fruits for a Fruit Salad.


First while the bacon was baking with fresh ground black pepper on it, I made the fruit salad: Pink Grapefruit, Orange, Sliced Strawberries, Blueberries; Blackberries and sliced Banana.  Easy to prep, very tasty, sweetened the grapefruit and orange juices a bit with raw sugar, tossed all together, see the pretty bowl it made!


All the other ingredients were for Paninis.  To make the dressing I used a simple to remember proportioned recipe:  1/2 teaspoon, 1 tablespoon, 2 tablespoons, 3 tablespoons.  


!/2 teaspoon fines herbes
1 T Capers chopped
2 T Dijon Mustard
3 T Mayonaisse
if it's too mustardy for your taste just add more mayo!


Brushed the dressing onto one side of each slice of bread, topped one side with 3 bacon slices and 3 planks of cheese, fried the eggs in butter with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper placed one egg on top of cheese and covered with the other slice of bread.  Spray outside slices of bread with Pam and place on Panini Grill.

Simple yet tasty, served them with additional dressing as desired.


So that takes care of breakfast and lunch---now dinner?  Leftovers or something new and fresh?  Hmm, there is grilled Flat Iron Steak, Roasted Fingerling Potatoes, Fava Bean & Corn Succotash and Salmon Croquettes from last night's dinner with Tiff & Howie!  Or maybe save that for Monday after cooking all day!


Need to read a cookbook for inspiration!  Enjoy the day, and don't forget the evening will be all about Oscar night!

More Cathching Up: Rhode Island Weekend

Last weekend we trekked to Rhode Island to cater a surprise Birthday party for our son, the oldest!

It all started very innocently, by asking our daughter-in-law what the plans for the weekend were.  We suddenly had more free time than we had expected and figured we'd drive up on Friday, and depending on their plans, have a barbecue on Saturday. Within a few hours and a ton of back and forth emails it turned into a surprise party of 20 on Friday.  That way our presence would also be a surprise!

Meanwhile the Birthday Boy is inviting people over for Saturday night having no clue as to what's going on.  His wife convinced him to come home from his extra job and they'd go out to dinner for Date Night, after dropping the grandsons with a friend! We did successfully surprise him, even though as he's pulling up (the ONLY time in his life he was actually early) he spotted one of the guests walking towards the house carrying wine!   Bobby's response was great, he acted confused and said he thought Burke had invited him for Friday not Saturday.  Burke's thoughts were that Monica had switched days to surprise him, but still only imagined Bobby and his family were inside!

It was text book surprise, when he walked into a room full of friends and family and the bonus his NY parents!  It was great fun, the house had been quickly decorated in a tropical theme to signify the true end of summer!



Here's the menu:

SPINACH BALLS

TEQUILA LIME CHICKEN THIGHS W/ROASTED TOMATILLO SAUCE

TACO & TORTILLA FIXIN'S:

BEER MARINATED GRILLED SKIRT STEAK

PULLED PORK

BARBECUE SAUCE

PERUVIAN AJI VERDE SAUCE

COLESLAW

SHREDDED LETTUCE, TOMATOES, GRATED CHEESE

MINI SCALLION CORN MUFFINS

CUBAN STYLE BLACK BEANS & BROWN RICE

WHITE RICE

SMOKED PAPRIKA ROASTED BABY POTATOES

MEXICAN CREAMED CORN W/CREME FRAICHE & COTIJA CHEESE

TOSSED SALAD W/SHERRY VINAIGRETTE

BROWNIE BITES

STRAWBERRY CHEESE CAKE

CHOCOLATE CAKE

We all had a great time, good food, wonderful family and friends to share it with! Even the Grandsons were excited to surprise their Dad!

The picture to the right are Nana's Favorite Boys!

The Great Fire Pit

And we even managed to take some leftovers for an impromptu tailgate party at the beach on Saturday night, with cool ocean breezes, crisp salt air, sunset, kite flying and glorious fire pit, what could cap a great weekend better?

Cold Chef Eating

Sunset @ the Beach

Tailgating!

Tailess Kite Flying







Celebratory Dinner

Tonight we had Tiff & Howie over for dinner to celebrate their sixth wedding anniversary. Seems like yesterday we were in Las Vegas attending their wedding which ended with dinner @Tom Colicchio's CraftSteak in the MGM Grand Hotel. Maybe by next year I'll figure out how to embed the Internet broadcasted video of their ceremony on this blog!!

We started out the day trekking out to Old Brookville to go to Rottkamp's Farm for corn and tomatoes. Of course we never come away from the Farm with only what was on our list! We got Field Tomatoes, Corn, Purple & Red Potatoes, Red Onions, Red Bell Pepper, Cucumber and Yellow Grape Tomatoes all for dinner. And just cause we couldn't leave them there a few peaches and a couple of Heirloom Tomatoes.



On the way home we stopped at Trader Joe's for the other ingredients and general grocery shopping.

The menu turned out to be:
Hors d'oeuvres
Guacamole/Chips
Roasted Yellow grape tomatoes & goat cheese tarts
Prosciutto wrapped Bread Sticks
Mixed Nuts
Trader Jose beers with lime


Dinner
Purple & Red Potato Salad
Salad Plate: Field Tomatoes, Yellow Grape Tomatoes, Cucumber, Radishes and Deviled Eggs w/capers
Pickle Plate: Pickled Cauliflower, Green Cherry Tomatoes & Brussels Sprouts
Oven Roasted Corn
Marinated Filet Mignon Roast
Grilled Chicken Breasts w/Barbecue Sauce
Rosado Rioja Wine/Sauvignon Blanc/Iced Tea


Dessert
Glazed Chocolate Cake
        (a Martha Stewart recipe you can find here.)

Pickles

Salad Plate

Potato Salad

Dinner Table

BBQ Chicken/Corn/Filet Mignon

Chocolate Glazed Chocolate Cake

Odds and Ends

Scrolling through some pictures on the memory card, I discovered that my sous chef/master photographer, Nana, has a few pics I'd forgotten about. 

So here's quick descriptions of what you are seeing:

Lamb Cubes with Eggplant and Tomatoes served with Herbed Couscous with Raisins.  This is one of those dishes that I make for clients and never got around to making it at home.  It was well received here as it is with clients.  Works very well in the pressure cooker!

Another Naan Pizza for lunch, Chopped Ham, Provolone Cheese, Trader Joe's Garlic Mustard, Fresh Figs and a drizzle of Balsamic Reduction.  Simply delish!

New Orleans inspired Shrimp and Rice dish:

Rice/Broken Spaghetti/Red Onion/Red Pepper/Corn/Garlic/Capers/Cilantro/Saffron tossed with Shrimp w/Cajun Spices, Sauteed with Cherry Tomatoes and splash of Vermouth.

Impromptu Dessert:  Toasted Pound Cake, Sliced Strawberries, Vanilla Ice Cream and uncooperative Nutella!

Enjoy!

 

Fast, Fast, Fast Fresh Summer Meal

This is a really quick post for a quick light meal.  It's all in the picture! 

Grilled Galena Street rubbed Chicken Breasts
Grilled Romaine halves
Quick Grilled Grape Tomatoes
Grilled White Onion halves
Crumbled Blue Cheese
Blue Cheese Dressing
Drizzle of Balsamic Reduction
Garlic Bread Sticks
Olives for the heck of it!

That's it! So tasty, so easy, somewhat healthy!

Corn finally cooked!

Finally, got around to cooking the corn we bought at the farm over the weekend! I wasn't feeling like corn before today and kept wavering back and forth as to what I wanted to do with it.  This morning Mark Bittman was on the Today Show with fresh corn recipes which you can find here. They include Corn Salsa; Guacamole with Corn; Cornbread; Corn and White Bean Salad and Corn Chowder!  That's it, I want Corn Chowder.  He took the corn cobs and boiled them in water for broth and cooked other ingredients adding the broth and half and half. 

Chicken Corn Chowder is another childhood memory of a visit to a Lancaster, Pennsylvania summer fair where the volunteer fire department served the best soup I'd ever had at that point in my young life!  It was Chicken Corn Chowder, my Mother's Uncle was instrumental in making sure we got a good serving.  I've followed bunches of recipes over the years and while nothing was ever inedible nothing was star quality.  Even ones from "authentic" Pennsylvania Dutch cookbooks!

Tonight that is all changed.  Yes, I have learned a thing or two over the years about cooking, proper seasoning, how to combine flavors etc.  But, also, I have learned that trying to duplicate taste memories is folly for the most part!  So I've begun focusing on making a good quality, fresh tasting, well seasoned version of whatever I'm creating.  So I read another recipe of Mark Bittman's for Corn Chowder, from August 2008, and went to the kitchen.

Here's what I did:  I stripped the corn from the cobs and put the cobs in 4 cups of water and simmered them with some salt for 20 minutes.  Sauteed a diced yellow onion and 2 diced white potatoes with salt and pepper.  Added the corn kernels and sauteed a bit, added a pinch of sugar and a tablespoon of flour.  Strained the corn broth and added to the pot, stirring to fully mix. Simmered this for awhile to thicken a little. I might suggest a little more flour for a thicker soup, if that is your preference. I added 1 1/2 cups half and half and heated through, did not let it boil. Tasted and adjusted the seasoning, adding salt and white pepper.  Meanwhile I poached two boneless skinless chicken breasts simply in chicken broth with salt, pepper, sprigs of parsley and rosemary. 

For serving I pulled the chicken out of the broth cut into 1 inch cubes and placed in soup bowls, ladled the corn chowder over the chicken and garnished with chopped scallion and chopped roasted red pepper.  The tasty result can be seen here:

It was very good, and made a wonderful meal with a sliced heirloom tomato with Russian Dressing and garlic bread!  Can't beat summer farm fresh ingredients!

Road Trip: Farmstands in Old Brookville, NY

We drove out to Old Brookville on Long Island's "Gold Coast" on Saturday to visit two farms that we love.  Purchased lots of goodies.  The first one is Rottkamps on McCouns Lane see here: 


 
View Larger Map





Here we bought wonderful Tomatoes, yellow, green and red heirlooms; three colors of Eggplant: lavender, white and graffiti;. Yellow and Green Zucchini; Pale Yellow Hungarian Bell Peppers; Corn; Basil and Yellow Melon; Peaches and Nectarines.

Next we went to Young's Farm on Hegeman's Lane here: 



View Larger Map



At Young's we bought Blueberries, Blackberries and Red Onions in the produce section and in the Annex we got a delicious Dark Cherry Pie, Tangerine Shortbread Cookies and a jar of Tart Cherry Jam.

On Sunday I got busy cooking these wonderful finds.  First I made a gratin inspired by Claire Robinson on the Food Network show: 5 Ingredient Fix. Her recipe was with Green Tomatoes & Caramelized Onions with a Breadcrumb & Bacon Topping that you can find here.

In my version I cooked two strips of Bacon, removed them for later, caramelized a sliced Red Onion in the Bacon Fat and drizzled them with Balsamic Vinegar.  Placed them in the bottom of a glass deep-dish pie pan and layered thinly sliced Green and Yellow Zucchini on top.

Then I sprinkled with Dried Oregano, Olive Oil, Kosher Salt and shredded Parmesan Cheese. 

Next I sliced the Green Tomatoes and seasoned them with Kosher Salt, Dried Basil, Olive Oil and placed them atop the squash layer.

I toasted Bread Crumbs with a chopped Garlic Clove in the remaining little bit of Bacon Fat and added the crumbled bacon.

I placed this on top of the tomatoes and put it into the oven for 40 minutes and then topped with shredded Parmesan Cheese and baked for another 5 minutes.  The aromas were incredible! 



While cleaning up I went to pour the remaining bread crumb mixture into a ziploc bag for storage and had a slight mishap as  you can see here:

My beautiful breadcrumbs literally down the drain!

This was dinner along with a salad of Roasted Yellow Beets, Crumbled Goat Cheese, toasted Marcona Almonds and Arugula. My vinaigrette was Orange Muscat Champagne vinegar, dry mustard, chopped shallot, sugar, olive oil.  It was very tasty and good pairing with the cheese and Arugula.  Found some frozen Sun-dried Tomato Foccacia in the freezer and heated it up and served it with a dollop of basil pesto sans Parmesan!  Another highly flavorful summery meal! 

                 

I also made roasted vegetables using the Lavender and Graffiti Eggplants, Green & Yellow Zucchini, the Yellow Pepper, Red Onion, and Garlic.  Will use these as side dishes and on top of grilled Polenta Squares as an accompaniment to the Sun-dried Tomato Sausage and Diced Tomato Saute I cooked up. 

Used the Basil for a batch of Pesto most of which I froze without the Parmesan Cheese added. This way it's more versatile when used in the future. 

Need to cook the Corn tomorrow, still considering what I want to make with it, am leaning towards a Corn, Red Pepper Risotto!  Sounds interesting!  Or maybe a corn puree like we had @The Mermaid Inn on Friday night! It was under Grilled Scallops with cubed Bacon and Fava Beans!  Awesome dish!

Although, honestly, I have been really craving old fashioned Corn Relish!  Stay tuned, I'm sure it'll be interesting!

 

Summer Lunch @Home

Do you think maybe, watching DVR'd cooking shows while working out on the Elliptical is a bad thing?  Today I caught a dated Molto Mario where he made a salad with a frittata.  It's called:
Frittata Salad: Frittatine Verdi in Insalata  it sounded wonderful. But I didn't give it a second thought as I didn't have a lot of those ingredients on hand.  After exercising I watched another stored episode where he stuffed a veal roast--saved that idea for the winter!

However, when I went foraging through the fridge for lunch fixins' I thought of the frittata and wanted a salad with eggs.  The herb drawer proved to be a big disappointment today, so much for Mario's inspiration.  So I grabbed Arugula, two Eggs, Sun-Dried Tomato Gouda Cheese, a small remnant of Parmesan Reggiano, and a Cantaloupe. Still not sure where this is all gonna fit, and at the last second before closing the fridge door I grabbed bacon.  Cause everyone says everything is always better with bacon.  Also the left over piece of French Baguette, which is hard as a rock!  Think like a "Chopped" market basket of ingredients!  I was up for the challenge!

First I rub the baguette with water and tightly wrap in foil. Preheating the oven to 375 and prepping the bacon, I decide not to go the brown sugar route and used freshly ground Black Pepper.  Pressed the pepper into the bacon placed on small rack on small sheet pan and put into the oven along with the bread.

Thinking of what to do with the eggs I plan to add Fines Herbes from the dried collection to the lightly beaten eggs.  Heated butter and olive oil in nonstick skillet and added eggs gently pushing the edges to the center until a nice "pancake" is formed. Drizzle on some shredded parm, flip the frittata when I feel the center is almost completely set and finish less than one minute later!  Set this on the cutting board to cool before cutting into strips.  Why? Because Mario said frittata's are good warm, room temp and even chilled.

The Cantaloupe is cut in half, one half wrapped and stored for later use, the other peeled and cut up into pieces and served as a side dish to the salad rather than in it. Since now I've decided to grab a lemon and make a quick vinaigrette with lemon, dijon mustard, fines herbes, black pepper and what else?  Bacon Drippings! Cause everything goes better with Bacon!

Plating--Sliced the Frittata into strips tossed with arugula and chunks of the still warm bacon and a drizzle of vinaigrette.  Two slices of Sun-dried Tomato Gouda and several very thin slices of the crunchy baguette. I was using the soup and sandwich plates we have from IKEA, for this so I placed the melon chunks in the bowls and sprinkled them with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.  I know, never heard of seasoning your Cantaloupe?  This is the way we ate it at home with biscuits and butter, and it was perfect following to the peppered bacon and pepper in the vinaigrette!  See, a peppery theme!  

Lunch was greatly appreciated and once again the opportunity to utilize ingredients on hand saved a trip to the store in the heat!  Now I need inspiration for dinner!!  To quote a chef friend:  "...chef advantage, we can always come up with something!"  Thanx for that tidbit Christine! 

Another No-Recipe Meal

Last night I started with the Trader Joe's Ciabatta Flatbread and some desire for Mexican flavors.  Next I pulled together a quick homemade salsa with black beans, orange bell pepper, red onion, garlic, jalapeno, drained canned diced fire roasted tomatoes, cilantro and lime juice.

After that I marinated shrimp in lime juice, olive oil, cilantro, garlic and jalapeno.  Sauteed the shrimp quickly in hot pan. 

Brushed the flatbread with olive oil, spread the salsa over the bread, topped with shrimp sprinkled with chopped scallions and cilantro then shredded Mexican cheese blend.

Awesome: Mexican Shrimp Pizza!

Pulled out of the oven added more chopped Scallions and Cilantro!

On the side we had Corn, Tomato, Cucumber, Radish & Avocado Salad over Romaine.

Recipe free, but a little bit labor intensive, yet a great light summer dinner!  Worth the effort, leftovers very welcome for lunch today! The leftover salad was served like a salsa with grilled chicken breasts for tonights dinner.

Ratatouille Flatbread Pizza

We loved Trader Joe's Ciabatta Flatbread as a pizza base, see the original post here, so we grabbed one last week thinking they might get popular and then be in short supply.  We weren't sure when we would use it so we threw it into the freezer to test the frezzeability.  Defrosted it today for dinner and used up the last of the Ratatouille as a topping.  Added some fresh oregano, bufalo mozzarella, shredded pecorino romano and chopped parsley.  Ten minutes later we enjoyed some awesome pizza!  It was just as good defrosted as the first one that we made fresh.

Finished Pizza

Today's salad accompaniment was Jersey Tomato on Butter Lettuce with Tzatziki for a dressing.  Simply delish!

And look is that all that's leftover???  MMMM lunch tomorrow!!!

Simple Summer Dinner

Another fridge cleaning turned up some great morsels for dinner. We had been to Trader Joe's and bought boneless skinless chicken breasts and corn on the cob.  The first planned part of the meal was the grilled chicken breasts with roasted pepper coulis.  This came to me while standing in front of the jarred roasted peppers in Trader Joe's trying to remember if I had any at home!  So I bought a jar just in case and sure enough it was a good thing I did. 

I used two whole peppers from the jar, two cloves of garlic, 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 1 tablespoon chopped basil.  Pureed it all in the blender.  Simple right? And yet so tasty! 

Used Penzey's Galena Street Rub on the chicken breasts, marked them in my enameled grill pan and finished them in a hot oven. Napped the finished chicken with sauce when plated.  I grilled 5 chicken breast halves and saved 3 for future salads, easier than heating up the kitchen every night!

Next I stumbled upon a nice bunch of late asparagus I had bought with the intention of making an asparagus salad, but forgot!  So I was lucky enough to catch them in time before they went south!
Spread them on a sheet pan tossed with kosher salt and pepper and olive oil and roasted for 10 minutes next to the finishing chicken breasts!

For the third dish I had the 3 ears of corn we purchased, so I cut the kernels off the cobs. Then sauteed red onion, red and green bell pepper, and corn seasoned with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper for 5 minutes. I steamed a few broccoli florets in damp paper towel in the microwave for 1 minute. Tossed the broccoli in the saute for 2 minutes then added quartered Campari tomatoes, 1 tablespoon butter and 2 tablespoons lemon juice and 6 leaves of basil chiffonade.  Sauteed for another minute or two and served immediately.  All the ingredients other than the corn were leftover scraps from other recipes throughout the week. We're really getting better at using up the odds and ends, finding them before they become refrigerator science projects!

Doesn't it look fresh and inviting?  Simple yet so delish!

Things I learned this weekend!

I was a bachelor this weekend, Nana took a trip to Rhode Island and joined up with our Daughter-in-law and her posse and they all went to Cape Cod for a Melissa Etheridge concert. 

So Saturday I had made a plan to go to the Brooklyn Flea Market to check it out but the TV weatherman was reporting thunderstorms in New Jersey were moving in and flash flooding warnings were posted. So I figured I'd stay in and avoid getting wet.  PS we had a 20 minute shower around 6 p.m.

After collecting some new recipes from the Internet and putting them into Mastercook, I decided to clean the kitchen.  I started by scrubbing a grill pan that didn't get a good cleaning last week.  I heated up some water and baking soda in it and it boiled over making a mess on the stove top.  So once the pan was clean I cleaned the stove top.  Then I started on the counter top, put all the utensils and their crocks into the dishwasher and scrubbed the counter top and the stainless steel back splash.  A few hours later I was done and made dinner.  After dinner I unloaded the dishwasher and put everything back together the way it should be and made a plan to wash the floor in the morning.

Today, I decided to try out the new Beer Can Chicken Roaster I got via UPS on Thursday.  I'd make a nice roast chicken for Nana's return home dinner.  So off to the store I go, returning with a bounty of food and a plan to spend the afternoon cooking.  I started by brining the chicken with Herbes de Provence added to the salted & sugared brine.

Then I started to make Ragu Bolognese from a Mario Batali recipe. I had printed it out but hadn't made the adjustment for smaller quantity so I was dickering with the calculations in my head.  I rarely measure out olive oil but decided I'd better make a perfect mis en place so I didn't need to continuously recalculate the measurements as I was cooking.  I put the needed 1/4 cup of olive oil in a small prep bowl and set it onto the cutting board.  Just as I was putting the last two items for my mis en place in their containers I bumped the little bowl of olive oil and it spilled onto the counter.  Since my bamboo cutting board sits on feet, the olive oil ran under it.  

So here's what I learned: always resize the recipe before printing; don't bother measuring out olive oil, since I'm a klutz and will probably spill it; and the kitchen counter is not level as the oil ran down the entire length of the counter towards the sink.  Once it was spread out it looked like a lot more than 1/4 cup!!

I debated about cleaning it up, which would now require removing all the mis en place to another location.  I decided to blot up only the section of counter nearest the stove, (possible fire danger) and start cooking, and once all the mis en place was used, and the sauce simmering then I could clean up the mess!

Eventually, I was able to get this accomplished and moved onto making a big batch of Ratatouille; a Summer Squash & Buttermilk Soup to be eaten cold tomorrow night; and the Roasted Chicken we enjoyed for dinner.  I filled the container with red wine and a fresh bouquet garni of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme.  Along with the chicken I roasted onions, potatoes and baby carrots.  With a salad of Spring Mix Greens and thin slices of Ciabatta toasted we had a very satisfying meal!

And the other thing I learned, I probably shouldn't deep clean the kitchen the day before I'm cooking four meals for the week!

   

A Confluence of Summer Salads

I've been saying for years that most people find it hard to eat in the summer heat and tend to loose weight, but I'm the opposite.  Since everything is so fresh, and usually has less fat involved I tend to eat more!  So as I approached the kitchen tonite to make something with Shrimp from the freezer I knew I'd like to make a plated salad with avocado and an heirloom tomato I'd just purchased while out today.  Other than that I had no plan. 

I created a rub for the shrimp with a plan to marinate for awhile and then grill in the grill pan.  So instead of following a recipe I found calling for lots of dried herbs I subbed lots of fresh herbs that I had on hand.  I combined Cilantro, Oregano, Chives, Lime Zest with Garlic Powder, Ancho Chili Powder, Smoked Paprika,  Ground White Pepper and Kosher Salt.  Tossed the defrosted and dried peeled and deveined shrimp with the rub and drizzled with olive oil.

Next I combined shredded carrot, julienned jicama, celery, red pepper, and cucumber and chopped cilantro.  Salted with kosher salt and dressed with rice wine vinegar combined with small amount of sugar and a dash of olive oil spiced with chili pepper.

Digging through the fridge I found some frozen Edamame and decided to combine them with the extra Farfalle pasta I cooked and cooled with only a drizzle of olive oil.  So chopped red onion, red pepper and celery combined with the pasta and edamame needed a dressing.  Aha, let's make a Miso dressing!  A quick Internet search turned up this one on Recipezaar!  It was perfect adding a healthy helping of chopped cilantro, see the theme?

Sliced up the heirloom tomato and avocado tossed them with lime juice, lime zest, cilantro and kosher salt.  Grilled the shrimp and plated all over a bed of torn romaine!  A very filling meal!

Flatbread Pizza----Oh Yeah!

We were strolling through the aisles at Trader Joe's trying to decide what we wanted for dinner tonite when we stumbled upon Ciabatta Flatbreads shaped like a pizza.  It was covered with a sprinkling of herbs and had dimples in it similar to Focaccia  Curious, I quickly looked at the ingredients list and there were no preservatives and it is recommended that you refrigerate it if not used by the date on the outside of the package. 

So at home I pulled together some ingredients:

Sweet Italian sausages (2 links)

1 red bell pepper

1/2 red onion
1 clove of garlic
1/2 teaspoon crushed red peppers
Kosher Salt
Ground Black Pepper
Basil
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Chunky Slices of Mozzarella
Shaving of Pecorino Romano
Trader Joe's Jarred Pizza Sauce (I know coulda made my own, but after a wonderful day at the beach, easy peasy, was the priority)

So I made a quick version of sausage and peppers, browning the sausage bulk style with veggies and adding chiffonade of basil.  Brushed the flatbread with EVOO and then spread thin layer of pizza sauce; topped with the sausage & peppers mixture; dotted with chunks of mozzarella and a nice shaving of Pecorino.  I slid the pizza onto the pizza stone in a 425º oven, then I switched the oven to Convection Roast.  The stone crisps the flatbread like a pizza crust and the convection circulates the heat over the toppings melting the cheese and heating them properly.  After 8 minutes I turn off the oven and let the pizza rest for 2 more minutes on the stone.  Pull it from the oven and sprinkle with more basil chiffonade and serve! YUM!  We have a winner!  So great for an easy meal accompanied by a salad.  While I love traditional Pizza dough, I'm always challenged by the handling of the dough and get frustrated that my shapes are more than rustic!!

Can't wait to try the next version!  Hope the leftovers heat nicely!

Finished Pizza: