when you have ingredients left over from a pizza party…

…you make pizza toasts!

I had a pizza party type evening on Sunday with a few of my friends to break in my new floors. This had left me with a lot of leftover pizza toppings – but no left over dough! Not feeling like kneading out some more dough for the rest of the week – and inspired by pizza toasts that I had a few months ago at my sister and her boyfriend’s house, I constructed this surprisingly tasty alternative.

I pre-toasted the bread, and then layered the toppings – and finished it off with a few minutes under the grill – couldn’t be simpler. I paired it with a rocket, parmesan and balsamic salad – a tasty dinner indeed!

chilli, lime and mint chicken with watermelon, haloumi and red onion salad – or yum

So I got a bit of my cooking mojo back last night (somewhat lost over the Christmas and Thailand holiday period) and cooked up a recipe from my latest Real Living mag - Chilli, lime and mint chicken with watermelon, haloumi and red onion salad - a bit of a mouthful to say, but I can attest to it being delicious to eat.

The watermelon first drew me into this recipe – as it was just amazingly sweet in Thailand and since I have been looking at ways to incorporate it into anything I am eating. It may seem a bit out-of-place in a savoury meal – but trust me you won’t be disappointed!

a wagamama salad

So it seems I am slowly on the mend, my sinus infection is abating, although still somewhat present. But it does mean that I am well enough to not go straight to sleep when I get home, and blog instead!

Now I have quite a few cookbooks, and a high majority of these cookbooks have never been cooked out of. I felt inspired to remedy this after watching Julie & Julia. If you haven’t seen the movie it centres around a girl who sets herself a challenge to cook through all the recipes in Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking.  In the movie she ends up blogging about her challenge, which has really had me thinking about a cool blogging challenge to set myself…but anyway, a discussion for another day.  So I had a good look at my bookshelf and took out a few of the cookbooks I hadn’t touched since the initial flick through, and decided to tackle a recipe from The Wagamama Cookbook  which I had bought probably over a year ago now. The book itself is filled with numerous delicious sounding recipes, however I had been put off previously with its often hard to find ingredients and multiple recipes within recipes (when the ingredients themselves require separate recipes).  But in the spirit of adventure I decided to tackle one recipe, and if it was worth the effort, may even more.

I decided on tamarind chicken salad recipe. It only require a few out of the ordinary ingredients (tamarind paste – which in the end I didn’t even end up using, so I suppose I really just made chicken salad…whoops!) so it seemed like a good start. Now the recipe itself was short but the ingredients required three more recipes before you even got started. These were the marinade for the chicken (which needed to be left over night), the sauce and the salad dressing. All of these three weren’t complicated to do, but they were time consuming – this is not an easy, whip it together salad. That being said – it was ah-maz-ing! The flavour packed into this salad is the best mix of powerful, yet not overbearing, all the flavours compliment each other so nicely, without having anything shout out above anything else.  Now I haven’t had this particular salad at the actual Wagamama’s restaurant, so I can’t compare my version to theirs, but I am extremely happy with how it turned out. It is not a great one for keeping (it is on its third day legs now and the leaves are looking worse for wear) but it would be a fantastic salad to pull out to impress your guests. I am going to try a few more of the recipes from the book in the future, so I’ll let you know if those are just as impressive.

May not look the most appetising – but I promise you it was delicious.

 

chicken tonight?

After what was a fairly challenging day I was glad to consult my meal plan and discover the simple Chicken Caesar Salad was planned for tonight. I’ve always loved caesar salad – especially that dressing – and I’ve found it’s a salad I’ve been able to replicate quite easily. My other favourite, Greek Salad, I find harder to replicate as the freshness and flavour of those ingredients is hard to find, especially when I’m comparing them to the greek salads I had in Greece. The ingredients for a caesar salad are also a lot cheaper than a greek (I am looking mainly at you feta!) and thus it has become a fixture in our meal plans the past year.

I take a rather simple approach to my caesar salads, combing the basics of lettuce, chicken, bacon, parmesan and crutons – plus a whole lot of store bought dressing! (I’d like to try making the dressing one day, however I know it wouldn’t keep, so I’d need to eat a whole lot of caesar in a short amount of time) I’ve detailed my rough recipe below – but it is so malleable with whatever you want to put into it.

Ingredients

1 whole cos lettuce

2 chicken breasts

4 mid-rashers of bacon

Handful of shaved parmesan

A couple of slices of bread

Store-bought caesar dressing of your choice

Method

I start by baking the chicken breasts, either whole in an oven (then slice after it’s cooked), or sliced in a frypan, until cooked through. Set these aside to cool slightly.

Fry bacon rashers to liking, and cut into smaller pieces. Set aside with chicken to cool.

Cube the slices of bread, and place under the grill until brown and crunchy. Again set aside to cool.

Rip lettuce into desired size and place into salad bowl. Add chicken, bacon, crutons and parmesan. Drizzle desired amount of dressing over salad – toss and serve!

If you’re like phil and I, no plates required, it can be eaten straight from the bowl. But if company comes round, it can easily be served as a main, or on a side of dish. The result – yum!