Skip navigation

Tag Archives: baked goods

I make! Individual pan pizzas edition

I don’t know if I would ever consider myself the pizza queen no matter how much free pizza I received.  Or how much pizza I ended up making…

I recently acquired a bunch of 5″ tart pans.  And by a bunch, I mean six.  Normally, I would use tart pans to make tarts, but I noticed that someone had once said that they used mini tart pans to make individual sized pizzas.  As obviously, I must try that out.  But also, I thought this would be a good time to stock up the freezer a little lunch/dinner options when I don’t have the time or inclination to cook and also don’t want to deal with eating out.

Using Jim Lahey’s no-knead dough recipe as stated, a half recipe is enough to make pizza crust for six mini pizzas.  I topped them with onion, green bell, mild Italian sausage, low moisture mozz, fresh basil, and tomato sauce that I made with a bunch of colorful grape tomatoes because I had to get rid of them (with an immersion blender and not a food mill because tomato skins don’t bother me).  And then I popped them directly into the freezer.  Because I already made dinner for that day.  For long term storage, I took the pizzas out of the tart pans after they froze through and put them in gallon freezer bags.

I did have one for dinner the other day.  I put it back into a tart pan and then onto a sheet pan and threw it in an oven preheated to 425degF for about 30min.  The crust ended up being nice and crisp at the edges and had a nice chew in the middle.  I think I’ll make a bunch more of these and stick them in the freezer.  It helps me with portion control, which is very difficult for me when dealing with pizza, and means I’ll have something relatively quick to eat on days that I can’t deal with making food.  And I don’t have to buy back up frozen pizzas anymore.WP_20160203_20_06_04_Rich_LI

 

I make! Some kind of baked chicken dish edition

I’m trying to clean out the fridge/freezer/pantry again.  Like always.  I took an inventory just recently.  SMH.  At least my grocery bill will be relatively small for the next few months?  So in this edition of me making stuff, I made dinner with an old onion, a bunch of red potatoes, and chicken thighs.

The potatoes and onion were diced and thrown together with a packet of onion soup mix and oil and then baked at 425degF until tender.  Normal stuff.  I like adding other vegetables to the mix when I make potatoes like that.  It increases the number of vegetables people are eating, thus helping empty the pantry/fridge faster.

The chicken I ended up dredging in a mix of poultry seasoning, grated parm, and red pepper flakes (no measurements, just eyeballed to see if I had enough for all the chicken), then dipped it into an egg wash, and then dredged that in some panko.  I put that in the oven with the potatoes and then forgot that I wanted to take it out before the potatoes were done.  The result was that the internal temp of the chicken thighs (boneless) reached about 190deg.  Oops.  It was ok though.  Chicken wasn’t tough.

I paired the potatoes and chicken with a salad and tada!  Dinner!  I got rid of maybe 2lb of potatoes and 1.5lb of chicken this way.  And it was pretty good.  The chicken baked up nice and crispy and the flavor of the crust was nice, not too overpowering.  Next time, I’ll probably add a little salt to the mix though.

WP_20160117_18_16_15_Rich_LI (2)