Roasting the cherry tomatoes allows them to absorb the heat from the chili flakes and the flavor from the garlic an the herbs.  The resulting pan sauce is delicious mopped up with a crusty french bread, but I’d love it served over a garlic mashed potatoes as well.  I served the dish with lentils and a spinach salad, it made a colorful presentation and was all completely finished in 45 minutes with a lot of idle time!  Enjoy!

Spicy Chicken with Tomatoes, Garlic, and Oregano Recipe

serves 4

4 bone in split breasts

2 bags cherry tomatoes (next time I’ll try grape tomatoes!), whole, washed, and stemmed

5 garlic cloves, chopped

1 and 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

1 and 1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp kosher salt

6 turns fresh ground pepper

1/4 c. olive oil

Preheat oven to 450.  In a 9 x 13 glass casserole dish, place the four split breasts evenly spaced.  In a medium bowl, combine tomatoes, garlic, red pepper flakes, oregano, salt, pepper, and olive oil.  Season the chicken breasts with a sprinkling of kosher salt and pepper, then pour tomato mixture over the top.  Roast in oven for about 40 minutes, until an internal temperature of 170.

Enjoy!

These delicious summery sandwiches were a perfect weeknight dinner.  With crops of tomatoes (not mine but other people’s) right around the corner, here’s a great way to highlight your seasonal produce.  I roasted a whole chicken to get my chicken breast meat, partially because I think it yields the best, most tender flavor, and partially because I was planning to make tortilla soup later this week.  My roasted chicken recipe can be found here.  If you don’t have the time or energy to roast a chicken, a grocery store rotisserie chicken would work fine, or you could coat skinless boneless breasts in olive oil and salt and pepper and just cook them up on your grill pan.  We’re a family who loves to dip, so I brought out one of our staples a Garlic Balsamic Vinaigrette to be used as our dipping sauce.

I think due to the crusty nature of the bread used in a panini, you could easily make these in advance then pop them in the microwave for a quick cheese melting with great results.  I generally make mine with ciabatta bread, but I had pugliese on hand this round.  Pugliese is very similar to ciabatta, just a little rougher of a crust and a slightly different loaf shape, though I guess that could change based on who is shaping the loaf.  At the end of the day, either will work or some other crusty loaf of Italian bread.

Roasted Chicken, Tomato, Onion, Mozzarella Panini Sandwich Recipe makes 5 sandwiches

Breast Meat from a Roasted Chicken, skin removed and sliced into 1/2 inch slices

3 Roma Tomatoes, cored, then sliced very thin

1/2 a white onion, Sliced paper thin

Fresh Mozzarella, 10 slices 1/8th of an inch thick

10 slices pugliese (or ciabatta) 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch thick

olive oil

Coat one side of each slice of bread with olive oil.  Preheat a grill pan on medium heat.  Place one slice of bread oiled side down on grill pan.  Top with 3 roasted chicken slices, mozzarella, then tomatoes and onions, followed by another slice of bread oiled side up.  Grill on first side for about 5 minutes until you see cheese beginning to melt, then use a good pair of tongs to flip quickly.  Use a spatula to squish down and continue grilling on second side about 4-5 more minutes.  Be sure to watch grill temp and lower heat if necessary to ensure you’re not cooking any faster than this.  Serve with Garlic Balsamic Dipping Sauce.

Garlic Balsamic Dipping Sauce

1/4 c. balsamic vinegar

1/2 c. olive oil

1/4 c. water

1.5 tbsp fresh garlic, minced

1/2 tsp Murray River salt

8 turns fresh ground pepper

For the vinaigrette, combine vinegar, oil, water, garlic, salt and pepper.  Whisk together then let rest for at least 30 minutes for the flavors to combine.  Whisk again before serving.  Keep remainder in fridge for up to two weeks.

A bonus for this crust is that this is a no yeast recipe, so need to have yeast on hand, or wait for rising, etc.  This recipe was very good – I’d serve it to guests with absolutely no qualms.  But it’s just not exactly what I was aiming for.  For one thing – I want a super duper thin crust.  This was thin, but it wasn’t as thin as I was hoping.  So for next time, more rolling – to the point of insanity.  In addition, the bottom was crispy – but it could be crispier and be even better.  I’m musing over this and my current thoughts are, perhaps a hot pizza stone would help.  Perhaps an even hotter oven.  Perhaps the aluminum foil I placed below the pizza somehow reflected the heat resulting in a less crisp crust and I should just let my oven get messy.  That one is a question for Robert Shimmin.  I’ll update when I have a chance to ask him and he sends me an answer.

For simplicity, the sauce I used on this pizza was Nona Caputo’s Homemade Spaghetti Sauce.  Who is Nona Caputo?  I have no idea.  It may actually be homemade.  I suspect it came from Jimmy’s Italian Market as it was a part of the gift basket SMIL bought for me at the Dallas Food and Wine Festival’s Silent Auction.  I’d imagine you could use any high quality spaghetti sauce with similar results or just your regular grocery’s jarred pizza sauce.

Extra Thin Crust Pizza Recipe

So back to the olive bread.  My reason’s for attempting this bread were three-fold.  One, I still have a large quantity of white whole wheat flour on hand just begging to be baked.  Two, I’ve had a couple of catering related questions on bread, and I want to hone my skills.  And three, SMIL just won a wonderful bottle of olive oil for me (in a huge gift basket) in the Dallas Food and Wine Festival’s silent auction benefiting the Farmers Market.  It’s delicious and perfect for dipping.  And of course the OLIVES.  Unlike my sisters or Monet, I truly believe olives make everything taste better.  Happily, I discovered my MIL has a large rosemary bush in her front yard, resulting in my having all the necessary ingredients on hand!  I used Nicoise Olives in my bread, which in retrospect the slightly tarter flavor of the Kalamata’s would probably be better – or maybe even green olives!  Yum!

Be sure to hop over to Anecdotes and Apple Cores to check out her other super recipes like Cranberry Almond Muffins and Honey Yogurt Whole Wheat Bread !

White Whole Wheat Bread with Nicoise Olives and Rosemary Recipe

(from Anecdotes and Apple Cores)

1 tbsp Active Dry yeast

3/4 c. warm water (105-110 degrees F)

1 tbsp sugar

2 tsp kosher salt

1/4 c. olive oil

2 tbps fresh rosemary, chopped

1/2 c. Nicoise olives, chopped

1 c. All-Purpose Flour

3 c. White Whole Wheat Flour

In a bowl, stir to combine yeast and water for approximately 10 minutes.  In the bowl of your stand mixer, combine sugar, salt, olive oil, rosemary and olives.  Use paddle attachment to stir on low, then add yeast mixture and continue stirring with the paddle attachment.  Add the flour in small batches at a time until combined, then switch to your dough hook.   With mixer on lowest setting, use dough hook to knead dough.  Add additional flour to dough as necessary to let dough form a ball and pull away from the sides of the bowl.  Knead on low speed for 7 minutes.

Coat a glass bowl with olive oil then move dough from stand mixer to bowl.  Rub a teeny bit of olive oil all around the sides of the dough, then cover with plastic wrap and let rise for an hour and a half.  Move bowl to a cookie sheet, then form a loaf shape.  Cover with a damp towel and let rise for an additional hour.  Sprinkle surface with flour and score the top of loaf.  Bake in an oven preheated to 400 for 30 minutes.  Continue to sing Hot Cross Buns over and over again while you wait for your fresh bread.  Dip in olive oil and enjoy!

If you find yourself sitting around coveting a fabulous stand mixer, biscuits and cakes and frostings dancing through your head, DoughMessTic has a contest running through midnight this Tuesday where you can win one!  Hope over there, make a comment in the comment section noting you were sent there by dinnerandconversation.  If the random number generator picks your comment number, you can with a Stand Mixer in a color of your very own choosing!  While you’re at it, you can become a fan of DoughMessTic on Facebook and my site!  Just search for doughmesstic or dinnerandconversation.com in your facebook, then click Become a Fan of!

The very very very best way to make Southern Style Biscuits requires White Lily Flour.  Really.  All other flours yield a biscuit though delicious, lacking a delicacy and levity unparalleled.  If you’re in Dallas, you can pick up your White Lily Flour at Central Market.  And if you’re lucky enough  to be in Austin, you can pick it up at almost any HEB.  Otherwise I hope you live in the southeast or you’ll be paying exorbitantly to ship 5 lb. bags of flour from either the site above or another you google.  Quality ingredients are worth the shipping.  Just ask me about my shipments of Heinz Genuine Dill Pickles.  At the end of the day, my pickles cost over $10 a jar.  That’s almost enough to make me hide them from my children.  But who am I kidding, I can’t blame them for their highly refined palates ; )  And at least I’m no longer buying them from the Piggly Wiggly, who gracefully managed to pack them so that at least 1/3 of my shipment broke every time.  Sigh.

Southern Style Biscuits Stand Mixer Recipe (makes about 14 biscuits)

I originally served this tossed with gemelli pasta and shredded chicken.  To be honest, I’m not really a huge pasta fan.  Or rice.  Or other side grains.  I started wondering halfway through my meal why in the heck I had served it this way.  Because I really would have rather had this pesto lovingly served on the side of beautiful roast bone in chicken breasts, with a vegetable for a side, that could share the dipping glory with the bites of chicken breast.  Then I remembered.  I am very used to preparing straight to the table meals, cooked to order so to speak.  But every so often the occasion arises where I need to prepare a dish well in advance.  Pasta dishes are good for this sort of thing.  You could totally serve this cold.  Or warm it just before serving, and it would still be good – in fact probably better if the pasta had time to rest in the pesto and let the flavors lovingly meld together.  So if it’s your turn to host your book club, make this the day before and pull it out right before the guests arrive.  Or if your friend has a baby, and it’s your night to bring dinner – try this out, because it’s wildly difficult to make and deliver fresh roasted chicken breasts, I know, I’ve tried it.  Or any other occasion falling into that Make and Store Category that remains so empty on my side bar.

But the way I advise eating it – to really get the flavor kick – is the way pictured in the top photo.  I made the crostini from half a loaf of leftover baguette, which I revived with a bit of water in a paper bag in the microwave for 20 seconds.  Unless you’ve recently broken it off with your vampire love interest and you’re trying every angle to keep him away, don’t rub the bread with garlic the way I usually do, just generously lather it with olive oil.  The garlic really has a way of becoming more pronounced when the pesto comes out of the fridge on the second day.  This would also be delicious on cucumber slices or veggie sticks.

1 can artichoke hearts in water, rinsed and drained

3 tbsp chopped Italian parsley

4 large cloves garlic

1 c. grated Parmesan Reggiano cheese

4 tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice

1/4 c. slivered blanched almonds

1 tsp kosher salt

8 turns fresh ground pepper

3 tbsp olive oil

Combine all ingredients except the olive oil in a food processor.  Pulse to chop, then turn food processor to on/medium, then slowly drizzle in olive oil from top to emulsify.  Continue to run food processor until you like the texture.

So all this nostalgia brought me to pumpkin bread.  Since I’m not an intuitive baker and able to create bread recipes off the top of my head yet, I googled it.  One entry brought me to this Olive Oil Pumpkin Bread recipe (and what a perfect rise that loaf had!).  I love all things olive oil, so I gave it a shot.  This is a delightfully moist bread, the polar opposite of dense, and lovingly spiced to awaken your tastes without overwhelming.  The only change I made was using fresh ground nutmeg, which I was totally enchanted by when we visited Jamaica last year.  If you decide to head that direction, at least halve the nutmeg quantity, since fresh ground nutmeg is *STRONG* and has a much more sturdy, earthy flavor than the ground counterpart found in your grocery’s spice aisle.

Olive Oil Pumpkin Bread Recipe (from seriouseats.com)

4 eggs

1 c. extra virgin olive oil

2/3 c. water

2 c. canned pureed 100% pumkin

3 c. sugar

3 and 1/2 c. lily white all-purpose flour, sifted

1 and 1/2 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cinammon

1 tsp ground cloves

2 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350 and grease two metal loaf pans with olive oil.  In a stand mixer fitted with the flat beater, gently beat the eggs, then add olive oil, water, pumpkin, and sugar to mix completely.  In a large bowl, sift flour, then use a spoon to measure out 3 and 1/2 cups, discarding any extra.  Sift flour again, this time adding salt, spices, and soda.  Add dry ingredients to wet, stirring just to integrate.    Divide mixture between two loaf pans, then bake for 45 -50 minutes, or until center is firm when shaken and a wooden toothpick can be inserted and removed clean.

So buttermilk cornbread it was.  I bought the buttermilk for a remake of the biscuits found here.  I had altered the original recipe – which turned out well on the initial run.  While in Florida, I found the Lily White flour biscuit people are always raving about so I brought some home.  In a non-scientific method experiment, I not only used the different flour, but also used the original recipe’s cream of tartar.  The result was dismal.  Edible, but so not worth the effort.  These results are frustrating as well as tiresome to a home chef.  So I decided possibly the buttermilk was the culprit – that perhaps my homemade buttermilk wasn’t enough to over take the cream of tartar flavor.  When I saw the 95 cent buttermilk at the strange Kroger, I hopped on it.

As for the salmon, I’ve mentioned before, but if you own a Lean Mean Grilling Machine – by all means cook your salmon on that!  Or spend the 30 dollars to get one.  If not, it still works, but it’s loads easier on the Lean Mean.  I’ve currently lost mine, but it’s somewhere in this house, and I vow to find it again.

Brianna’s Salmon

1 c. Brianna’s French Vinaigrette

1.25 lb Coho Salmon

kosher salt

Olive oil

Preheat oven to 350.  In a glass dish, place salmon skin side down.  Sprinkle with Kosher Salt, then pour French Vinaigrette over the top.  Marinate for 15 minutes – no more – marinades cook salmon!  Heat a grill pan on medium high heat.  Brush grill pan with olive oil, then place fish flesh side down, cooking until opaque 30 percent of the thickness.  Flip to skin side.  Cook in oven until opaque throughout.  About 10 minutes total for 3/4 inch fillets.

Buttermilk Cornbread

(note I have a very large cast iron skillet.  If yours is 9 inches or smaller – half this recipe)

6 tbsp canola oil

4 c. white self-rising cornmeal

1 tsp. baking soda

3 c. buttermilk

2 eggs

Preheat oven to 425.  Add canola oil to a large cast iron skillet and place in the oven for 3 minutes.  Combine cornmeal and baking soda, then mix with buttermilk and eggs.  Pour hot oil into mixture, stir then pour back into hot cast iron skillet.  Bake for 22 minutes – or until edges are gently brown and an inserted toothpick comes out clean.  Serve with real butter.

Well, it’s been a rough week for me, so for some reason, my reaction has been to bake.  Baking is not something I’m particularly good at, so I’m not sure what prompted this adventure.  Possibly it’s that I *can’t* do it in my sleep and it requires a level of concentration distracting me from other thoughts.  That said, the biscuit process probably took me about three hours start to finish, which is absurd.  The recipe doesn’t take that long, I just kept getting distracted by life or phone calls or a small child or a grown husband.  And there was the problem of I missing several key ingredients.  Well, I never have buttermilk on hand as I just don’t see the point in buying it when you can make your own very simply using ingredients I always have on hand.  Plus, what in heavens name, am I going to do with the remainder of the buttermilk after I’ve used the portion the recipe requires.  Aside from throw it out after it expires, Ahem.  Not so great for my food waste reduction goal.

The cream of tartar was another problem.  Cream of tartar in baking is a leavening agent.  I know how to sub for baking powder using baking soda and cream of tartar, but I wasn’t sure how to get backwards.  It was more complicated than I imagined, and I probably should have just asked Robert Shimmin, but I was trying, stubbornly, to pull this off on my own.  The biscuits turned out well, though if I’d gone with the original recipe, who knows, they may have been better.  I’m going to try them again with the cream of tartar and report back on my results.

The recipe is adapted from a post by Jen of userealbutter.com She writes a fabulous food blog that I love and admire.  Her original recipe is here.  Go by it – or go at it with my changes.  She has wonderful pictures for a play-by-play cooking experience.  The adjustments I made are the buttermilk – to 2 cups of 1% milk, I added two tablespoons white vinegar – you can also use lemon juice – and let it stand for a good 10 minutes.  Since I didn’t have the cream of tartar, I used 4 1/2 tsps baking powder and only 1 tsp baking soda instead of the original 2 tsps.  Also, I used a glass to cut out my biscuits since I don’t have a biscuit cutter, a neat trick I learned from my big sis!  I also wasn’t paying attention at the point when it said to start with 1 and 3/4 c. of the buttermilk and dumped it all in.  My dough wound up too wet for proper kneading, but I rescued it by sprinkling on lots of excess flour.  Forgive me Internet!  I’m not a true baker by nature!  My oven’s kind of persnickety,  so I started checking at 16 minutes and felt like my were finished in about 17 minutes.

Two other points of conversation for this recipe, the White Lily Flour mentioned in the original recipe is something I’ve sought after for YEARS but can never find.  Back in school in my Nutrition and Food Science days, this flour was purported as being the chief flour for baking.  It’s been 12 years and I can’t remember why now, but if you can find it, you should buy it!  The other great rec for non-bakers like me is a pizza stone.  Back in my working days, I had an employee who just loved to host Pampered Chef parties.  I always felt compelled to buy something and most of what I bought I disliked for one reason or another.  But the pizza stone is awesome.  It makes it nearly impossible to burn cookies or biscuits.  Nice even baking.  A++ and highly recommended! Looks like now they have a rectangle one I’d like even better.

Extra Flaky Style Southern Biscuits

4 1/2 cups  all-purpose flour
4 1/2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsps salt
1/2 cup cold butter, cut into pieces
1 3/4 to 2 cups cold buttermilk
8 tbsps butter, really softened and cut into 1 tbsp pieces
1 tbsp butter, melted

Preheat oven to 450° . Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. In bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Cut cold butter or shortening into dry ingredients with a pastry blender. (Mixture will resemble coarse crumbs, with no large chunks of butter.) If butter gets very soft at this point, refrigerate mixture for 20 minutes. Add 1 and 3/4 cups buttermilk, stirring just to moisten all ingredients. Dough should be soft and moist; add remaining 1/4 cup as needed. Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface and knead gently about 10 times, or just until dough holds together. Roll or pat dough into a 14-by-10-inch rectangle. With short side nearest you, spread top two-thirds of dough with 3 tablespoons soft butter, leaving bottom third, closest to you, unbuttered. Fold dough into thirds by pulling bottom third up over center and then pulling top third over middle. Turn dough so short side faces you. Roll into a 9-by-12-inch rectangle. In same manner, spread again with 3 tablespoons soft butter and fold letter style. Turn once more in the same manner. Roll into a 9-by-12-inch rectangle (I used the rolling pin again); spread with remaining 2 tablespoons soft butter and fold up. Work quickly and gently so as not to overwork dough. Roll dough into rectangle 3/4-inch thick on floured surface. Cut into rounds using the top edge of a drinking glass. Place on pan, 1 inch apart. Lightly brush tops with melted butter. Bake in center of hot oven about 17 minutes, until golden brown and firm.

The end of the party preparation had me totally feeling like the Iron Chef.  There was a point when I was actually running from the kitchen to the grill and back again.  The clock was winding down, the chicken was on the grill, the crostini were in the oven, I was whipping cream for my sauces and had pasta on the stove.  I was flying.  It was really fun.  Intense, but I loved it.  Kind of like that two hour power yoga class I took yesterday in an 85 degree room, standing next to the world’s toughest lady, over 40 weeks pregnant Darcie!  Intense, but I loved it.

This Bruschetta recipe came from one of those grocery store checkout aisle recipe pamphlet things.  The ones that are sort of like a magazine, but with no articles and the pamphlet covers some bizarre theme, like Church Potluck meals or the entirely crock-pot pamphlet or such.  Well this one’s theme was all recipes involving 7 ingredients or less, but every recipe involved Dijon mustard.  I’ve long since lost the pamphlet, but I found the exact recipe on the Kraft website, (Kraft owns Grey Poupon).  I’ve taken this to several parties and people always ask me for the recipe.  It’s extremely solid and very easy.  I brush my cut up baguette slices with olive oil, then toast them in a 425 degree oven.  I made double this recipe for the party and used two whole baguettes and everything was gone.  Click through to the Kraft recipe here, it’s delicious fresh tomatoes, green onions, olives and classic vinaigrette.

The herbed pasta salad is adapted from a Martha Stewart recipe, I swapped the ratios on the herbs and changed a few things.  Below is the recipe as I made it.  The garlic infused olive oil was very nice and this would be a great process for making chili oil as well.  This salad can be made the day before.

Herbed Pasta Salad

1000 g. (2.2 lbs) Casarecci pasta

2/3 c. olive oil

9 large cloves garlic, sliced

1/2 c. chopped basil

1 bunch parley, finely chopped

Murray River Salt

Fresh Ground Pepper

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tsp of salt, and pasta.  Cook 9 minutes or until al dente.  Drain.

In a small saucepan, cook olive oil and garlic over medium heat to sizzling then cook a minute to two more.  Remove from heat and let stand 10 minutes.

Pour oil through a strainer onto pasta to remove garlic pieces.  Add chopped herbs, stir then season to taste.