Comunidad Health Foods

I did not want to make pizza tonight. It felt boring and standard, and something I just did at the start of the summer. However, with the heat settling into the neighborhood and the ensuing thoughts of heavy dishes and prolonged times with the oven cranked up to 350+ degrees, I found myself scrambling for a light-but-filling, relatively quick cooking dish. All my family could talk about was pizza. Go figure. So, determined to acquiesce to their requests without sacrificing my integrity, so to speak, I went on a recipe hunt. My Blackle search (google for those of us energy-conscious enough to use efficiently colored web pages but not so hard core that we actually stop using our beloved technology), turned up a wonderful little recipe for pizza cupcakes. Ah ha! Perfect: undoubtedly pizza-y, but with a little twist to keep me on my toes.

Of course, this means that I have not altered my pizza dough recipe to take into account my previous attempt's criticisms/thoughts/musings, so you will likely be seeing pizza again this summer. In normal form. Still, the recipe turned out well, particularly considering how much improvising I did and when taking into account the all-out war I waged with the dough trying to get it into the muffin tins. More on that later.

You can find the recipe for the pizza dough over here, and the inspiration for these wonderful cupcakes at The Cupcake Project. Feel free to follow the dough and filling recipes there, take a look at mine (filling and tomato sauce "recipes" below), or think up your own! Mine was more of a bruschetta pizza pocket, while the one at The Cupcake Project was a squash and feta combo that sounds delicious (but, unfortunately, wildly unpopular with the rest of ma famille). I had enough trepidation over the - oh my goodness - tiny dices of tomatoes as the filling to dare putting in such a frighteningly different veggie.

Here's the general gist of how to put these together (though really, you should check out the link above for the real instructions):
1. Take the pizza dough and wrestle them into muffin tins. If you come out of it unscathed (re: without smudges of flour on your clothes and dried bits of dough on the backs of your arms, forehead, etc.), I commend you, and must know your secrets. I have no method for this. In the end, I got so frustrated with the dough clinging to me, sinking down, puffing up, and letting holes form in itself that I took balls of it, shoved it down into the bottom of the pans, and punched it with my fingers until it stuck to the sides. If that's a method, go for it. I somehow imagine that there is a simpler, more peaceful way of going about it, though.
2. Put some cheese on the bottom of each cupcake/muffin/thing.
3. Add the filling.
4. Put some more cheese on top.
5. If you're me and used your dough inefficiently due to aforementioned war, and therefore have little left over to top the little buggers with, do your best to work the dough up and over the tops, and use the little bits you have on your rolling mat to patch it up. Really, getting it to mostly close is fine.
6. Pop in a 425-450 degree oven for about 15 minutes.
7. Here, you were supposed to take them out, remove them from the tins, place on parchment lined baking sheets and top with the sauce (recipe below) and more cheese. I forgot to do this, and left them in the pans. I think the only thing mine missed was a little 360 browning action.
8. Cook for another minute or so, just until the cheese is melted, and serve!

Bruschetta (ish) Filling
Yield: enough for approximately a dozen pizza cupcakes?? I shall get better at this recipe-generating-and-sharing business. I'd guess it made around a cup. Ish.
The Ingredients
1 1/3 large tomatoes
1/2 - 3/4 white onion
1 segment orange bell pepper
1 tsp. minced garlic (ish) (really, normal garlic would probably be ideal - again, in a household slightly more conventional than mine)
1/2 tsp. oregano
1/4 tsp. basil (dried, what I had on hand)
fresh ground black pepper, to taste

The Method
1. Chunk the onion and bell pepper and combine in a food processor, chopping until as fine as you can stand it (I attempted to make mine as pureed as possible in the hopes of slipping it into my dinner recipients' mouths unnoticed).
2. Add the rest of the ingredients, taking care to also chunk the tomatoes. Process until a desired chopped-ness. The mixture will look fairly watery at this point.
3. Strain the mixture through a sieve, reserving the liquid. Set the bruschetta mixture aside.

Quick Imitation Tomato Sauce
Yield: Maybe 1/2 cup. It's exactly enough to "frost" the cupcakes.
The Ingredients
All of the reserved tomato juice
1/2 tsp. minced garlic (again, real garlic would be ideal)
1 1/2 Tbsp. tomato paste
1/4 tsp. corn starch (desperate non-sodium attempt at thickening it before relenting and adding the paste)
1/2 tsp. oregano
1/4 tsp. basil (dried)
fresh ground black pepper to taste
scraps of hand-peeled tomatoes (you don't have to be crazy like me and do this: I had some scraps of tomato left so I sliced them like I would a cantaloupe to get it off of the rind, and then chopped them a little and stuck them in.)

The Method
1. Combine all of the ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer and allow to reduce slightly to thicken.
2. Lower the heat to medium-low and cook for roughly 10 minutes, or until it looks like the right consistency. Be sure to mash the chunks of tomatoes with the back of a wooden spoon if you are crazy like me and chose to use them.

I served these alongside zucchini chips (coming soon!) and some fresh fruit. It wasn't the most wowing meal ever, but it was a fun and new way to use pizza dough. I love all of these insert-filling-of-your-choosing-here recipes, that can be substituted and mixed and matched to your heart's content. It makes me feel like I'm developing an arsenal of chameleon recipes that will give the illusion that I am constantly concocting new and exciting and impressive things. And you can achieve this illusion, too - no one has to know the truth. Your secret's safe with me.

Dessert, dessert, dessert! It seems around these parts all I do is show you pictures of my attempts at cakes, cookies, cupcakes, and other confectionery concoctions. Despite all of these baking excursions (of which I do, admit, have more to share), I had a goal to cook dinner at least once a week this summer. I have utterly and miserably failed so far, but do have some actual meals to share with you in spite of that. Maybe I'll get back into the swing of things and really cook dinner at least once a week, but having a summer class that leaves me out of the house until around 5 or 5:30 Monday-Thursday makes things difficult. It's like I have a job or something. What am I going to do when I'm shoved into the real world, with real schedules and real responsibilities? My mom doesn't get home some nights until 7:30, and dinner is always on the table by 8. How do all of you do it?

This tomato and tabouleh salad with lemon chicken skewers is not proof of my attempt at juggling a late class with cooking. I did this on an off-day, so I had plenty of time to prep. I cheated. However, I could have easily done this upon walking in the door at 5:30 on a weekend - it's that simple. After tasting it, I have a few tweaks, so I'm posting the original recipe with - of course - my changes in parentheses and italics. It came from Rachael Ray's Classic 30 Minute Meals cookbook that I have and have referenced here several times already. It's a pretty safe collection of recipes, and please note that safe is no euphemism for boring or bland. I have been able to branch out (who would have pegged my family for trying bulgur?!), while still delivering delicious, simple, and crowd-pleasing meals.

I should get some kind of compensation for this kind of positive advertising, don't you think? Anyway, here's what everyone really cares about: the recipe.

Tabouleh-Stuffed Tomatoes and Lemon Pepper Chicken Tenders, courtesy of Rachael Ray's Classic 30 Minute Meals cookbook
Yield: 4 servings (though there were plenty of tomatoes leftover for us, since not many people took a full tomato for themselves)
The Ingredients
3/4 C bulgur wheat (available in the rice section)
1 C boiling water
The juice of 2 lemons (change: I used one, and the lemon flavor was very present)
1 C or 1 bunch chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (change: roughly 2 Tbsp. dried, as my mom won't always buy all of the fresh herbs called for in a recipe to cut back on cost)
1/2 C or 1/2 bunch chopped mint leaves (change: I used roughly that amount fresh from my garden, and I honestly did not like what it brought to the table. It was over-powering and the grittiness of the leaf, despite being chopped, did not work well with the rest of the dish. Everyone else pretty much agreed, though perhaps less vehemently.)
1 plum tomato, seeded and diced
2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste (omitted)
4 large vine ripe tomatoes or beefsteak tomatoes

1 lemon, grated and juiced
Approx. 1/4 C extra-virgin olive oil
1 lb. or 20 pieces chicken breast tenders (change: I used skinless, boneless chicken breast that I cubed and skewered. Although my family doesn't buy organic meats, nor do I purchase full chickens to bone and split into different sections of the bird, I cannot justify buying a package of chicken breast tenders. They are so marked up due to the process by which they obtain them, and the fact that there are only two per full chicken. And you know what they say about the more hands that touch your food from farm to table...)
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste (omitted the salt - I never salt my meat before cooking, I don't care what all of the top chefs in the world do.)
10 bamboo skewers, roughly

The Method*
1. In a medium bowl, cover bulgur wheat with boiling water and stir. Cover the bowl and place it in the refrigerator to rest and soften 20 minutes.
2. While that is working, start on the chicken. In a shallow dish (I use a pie plate - yes, the very same ones I bake pies in! The sanitation board would have my head for such a confession; I'd lose my ServSafe certification, for sure), combine the lemon zest, juice and olive oil.
3. Season the chicken with (salt and) pepper, and pour half of the marinade over the chicken. Turn the chicken in the marinade to coat lightly, and either set aside if ready to cook immediately, or cover to refrigerate for later use.
4. Cook the tenders (or cubes) in a large nonstick skilled, grill pan, indoor grill or, if you're me, outdoor grill, for "3 minutes on each side." Mine cooked for roughly 7 per side and came out plenty juicy, though maybe that's the difference between cubes and tenders, which are admittedly much thinner. Use the reserved marinade to occasionally baste the tenders as they cook (or, if you're me, throw it all in at the beginning and don't bother with sporadic lemon juice baths).
5. While the tenders are cooking, add lemon juice, parsley, mint, scallions, and chopped plum tomato to the tabouleh and toss to combine. Dress the salad with olive oil, (salt) and pepper.
6. To serve, cut a large, ripe tomato into quarters, leaving the skin intact on the bottom so that the tomato resembles an open flower (or butterfly, I think). (Season with salt and pepper - is it just me, or do the salt and pepper get a lot of action in this recipe?) Pile a generous amount of tabouleh salad over the wedges of tomato (spillage is perfectly acceptable), and place 2 chicken skewers on top. I put everything on one serving dish and it fell to pieces when serving, so if you have the patience to plate everyone's for them, it makes for a prettier process.

All in all, I really enjoyed the meal. I think the tabouleh was better the next day heated along with the chicken instead of cool, but it was certainly excellent chilled/room temperature. The only real complaint I have is the overbearing nature of the mint, which I will omit next time completely.


*note: I didn't make the bulgur this way. I had never made it before, so I got a little worried and just followed the package instructions for making it. Essentially, you boil together 1 part bulgur to 2 parts water and cook for almost 15 minutes, then drain all that hasn't been absorbed and continue on with the recipe. I'm still not sure about the necessity of presoaking, which the instructions didn't call for but a recipe on the bag did. Does anyone know more about this? I'm pretty sure it's not like non-prepped Quinoa or dried beans, and my family and I certainly survived without the preliminary soak, so I get the nagging feeling that it isn't essential for all bulgur recipes.