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Fast & Easy Dinner: Chicken and Onion Pizza

partysugar — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:45:23 -0700

Mexico meets Italy in this creative, uncomplicated pizza. Instead of using a traditional tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese, this recipe uses salsa and Monterey jack. If you like the heat normally associated with Mexican cuisine, use a hot salsa and pepper jack cheese. This pizza makes a great use of leftover chicken and can accommodate a variety of vegetables. Black olives, green onions, or bell peppers are scrumptious substitutions or add-ons. To learn how make it, read more.

Chicken and Onion Pizza
From The Nest

Ingredients

1 refrigerated pizza dough (10 ounces), or 1 prepared pizza crust, such as Boboli
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 medium-size onion (for about 3/4 cup sliced)
1 cup salsa
1 cup already-cooked chicken chunks
2 cups (8 ounces) shredded Monterey Jack cheese

Directions

Preheat the oven to the temperature specified on the pizza crust package. If using refrigerated dough, prepare the crust for baking and prebake if necessary, following the package directions.
Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in an 8-inch or larger skillet over medium heat. Peel the onion and slice it into rings, adding them to the skillet as you slice. Cook, stirring, until the onion is well browned and caramelized, about 7 minutes. Set aside.
Spread the salsa over the prepared crust. Chop the chicken into very small pieces and spread them over the salsa. Top with the onions and the cheese.
Bake the crust following the directions on the package until the cheese has melted and the crust reaches the desired crispness. Slice and serve.

Makes 1 pizza.

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Simple Tip: Make Leftovers Pizza

partysugar — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:30:56 -0700

After a weekend of grilling and recipe experimentation, my father and I faced a refrigerator full of food. While we could have eaten the baked beans, ribs, and salads on their own, I came up with a genius new way to use leftovers - as toppings on pizza! For $3 we purchased a "skin" - an extra-large pizza dough with no toppings - from a local pizzeria. From there we got creative. "We don't have tomato sauce," my dad pointed out. No matter. Homemade barbecue sauce acted as a bed for shredded rib meat, grilled green onions, and smoked cheese. All of these items were already in our fridge. With its balls of fresh marinated mozzarella, caprese salad turned into a lovely margharita pizza. Smoked salmon left over from brunch? That was luscious paired with pesto and goat cheese.

Don't be limited to the conventional conception of pizza - shredded chicken would be delicious with grilled peaches, or top dough with chopped hamburger patties, blue cheese, and garlic. Have you ever used leftovers as pizza toppings? What was your most inventive incarnation?

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Taste Test: Domino's Bread Bowl Pastas

YumSugar — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:00:53 -0700

The world of fast food is certainly quick paced, so the second Domino's begun advertising five flavors of pasta housed in a bread bowl, it seemed everybody was buzzing about it. When Party and I first got word of these monsters, we were simultaneously shocked (who came up with the concept?), appalled, and eager to try them. Yesterday turned out to be the Domino's day of reckoning - to find out how the bowls stood up to their shock value, read more.

It's hard to fathom why Domino's rolled out this concept of carbs inside more carbs, but the fact that competitor Pizza Hut has already racked up more than $500 million in sales of its Tuscani Pastas and lasagna, puts things more into perspective. However, as soon as we opened the delivery, we were faced with many unanswered questions: How many people was each bread bowl supposed to feed? Was the dish designed to be eaten like a pizza, or were we supposed to eat the pasta first, then the bowl?

Pasta Primavera: This bread bowl was filled with pasta, baby spinach, diced tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, and a goopy, oily Alfredo sauce. While the sole vegetarian option was filled with vegetables, I questioned whether the dish contained any protein.

Chicken Carbonara: Although this tasted somewhat like carbonara, it was covered with similar globs of white sauce.

Three Cheese Mac-N-Cheese: This was our least favorite. We love macaroni and cheese, but the flavors of the dish - bland, artificial nacho cheese, subpar penne, and a yeasty bread bowl - just did not seem to meld at all.

Italian Sausage Marinara: If we had to choose a best of the tasting, it would have been the Italian Sausage Marinara, which was rather reminiscent of regular pizza delivery with breadsticks. But then again, why not just order pizza and breadsticks?

Chicken Alfredo: All of the bowls were loaded with sodium (I drank water for hours afterward), but the Chicken Alfredo was swimming in a sauce that was over-the-top salty, to the point of being unpleasant to eat.

Unsurprisingly, the Pasta Primavera, Chicken Carbonara, and Chicken Alfredo flavors - which possess the same mysterious creamy white sauce - all taste remarkably similar. The bread bowl itself, which tastes a lot like Domino's breadsticks, was satisfying, but overall, unless we were starving and had no other options, or were carbo loading for a marathon the next day, we wouldn't eat this again.

Have you tried any of the Bread Bowl Pastas? If so, what was your assessment of them?

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