The Final Four

The final four recipes in my adventures with enticing recipes that is. These four are all main course based and were all delicious.

Spinach Tomato Sauce

During one particularly stormy day I had a hankering for tomato soup and grilled cheese, but we were out of tomato soup and it was raining therefore I was not about to leave the house. Instead I set about to find a soup recipe. Well turns out we did have the diced tomatoes, or tomato paste that most recipes called for but we did have a few fresh tomatoes and some spinach. So I took this recipe, subbed real tomatoes for the canned, skipped the milk, skipped the bread and added oregano and basil.

So basically I completely messed with the recipe but the outcome was amazing; more sauce like then soup like. I poured it on some noodles, made a piece of garlic bread and dug in. It was so good I also ended up putting it on top of my garlic bread, and eating for lunch the next day.

Black Bean Tortilla Cakes

This was another recipe that I played with the ingredients on.
My pie filling consisted of:
black beans
onion
bell pepper
asparagus
taco seasoning
garlic

Instead of a giant pie I used a muffin tin to make miniature ones with corn tortillas. I had to cut my tortillas into small circles to fit into the muffine tins; I used a measuring cup to make the circles, it was quite the experience. The handle of the measuring cute kept getting in the way and the edges being very dull (needless to say some round cookie cutters would have been nice). These were also delicious especially when topped with some hot sauce! (I’d show you a picture but my camera was broken and I devoured this dinner before I thought to take one with my phone…but I promise they were cute and tasty.)

All But the Kitchen Sink Pizza

Do you ever have a craving for some pizza, but you just don’t have the right ingredients and don’t want to order one? Well I did; and this here was my solution. I found this pizza dough recipe a year or so ago when my roomates and I were experimenting with the many different ways you could make pizzas: english muffin, french bread, bagel, you name it we probably tried it. Ironically I never actually used this to make pizza, I did however make it as garlic bread to serve alongside some spaghetti. This is not your traditional pizza crust, it turns out pretty thin, probably due to the lack of yeast, but not super crispy like many thin crusts. Either way, it is super easy to make and makes a nice surface for whatever toppings you might happen to have (everything but the kitchen sink or garlic butter).

The everything but the kitchen sink part is up to you, mine however included:
pesto
jalapenos
mozzarella cheese
asparagus
onion
garlic

I realize this might sounds like an odd combination…but they mixed well and pizza is all about mixing it up anyways.

Baked Chicken Nuggets

My friend, whom I’ve actually know since I was two, and I were having a nice night in watching movies and eating dinner. I decided that we should make these, which resulted in us spending dinner reminiscing about eating Mcdonalds happy meals in her backyard when we were kids. I actually did follow this recipe, almost to the tee actually. I did however omit the panko crumbs because we had tons of bread crumbs and no panko. These turned out wonderfully, no complaints. I served them alongside breaded asparagus which a lot of people have been raving about. We however, were not impressed and would much prefer our asparagus plain or with a bit of salt.