Polenta "Pizza" Crust with Sun-dried Tomatoes, Chicken, and Peppers; Menu Plan for 2/6/11 - 2/12/11

 I think it's safe to say that all of us who don't eat wheat or dairy miss pizza terribly.  Whether it's a thick, chewy crust you adore, or a thin, crispy one, it's hard to find a wheat-free equivalent that: isn't crumbly, doesn't stink like beans, or isn't like eating cardboard.  

 
While this polenta crust is no pizza dough equivalent, it is a tasty base for toppings and your choice of non-dairy cheese.  Unfortunately, without gluten, I don't think I will ever enjoy pizza the same way.  Instead of pining for food I can't have and being completely unsatisfied or grossed out by substitutions (sometimes very fake and processed), why not try something that is just delicious to begin with?  Polenta? Yes, it's delicious!  Sun-dried tomatoes?  Yup, love those, too!  Bell peppers?  My favourite topping!  Goat Cheese?  Yes, please!

I used a Silpat to line to baking sheet but parchment paper cut to fit the pan, covering the bottom and sides will work well, too.  Do NOT place polenta directly on a non-stick pan.  In my experience, the polenta has pulled the non-stick coating (the gray-ish stuff) off the pan.  Not only is your pan ruined, but so is your dinner.


For the "sauce" I adapted a sun-dried tomato jam recipe I made in the past.  It's a pretty rich-tasting jam so I decided to add shredded chicken and some bell peppers.  The husband was advised to avoid onions by the Naturopath, so we omitted those (see here for the original recipe) even though they really do make the jam.

For the chicken, we found a great deal on bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts at our local supermarket.  As much as love a crispy skin chicken dish, we are trying to watch our fat intake.  I used this method to cook the chicken and saved the fatty chicken water (sounds appetizing, I know) to use in a veggie soup later on.  It's still chicken fat, but at least it'll be spread out over several bowls of soup, rather than consumed by us in one meal.


The verdict:  Tasty!  The tartness of the sun-dried tomatoes complemented the creaminess of the polenta well, and the water from the sun-dried tomato "jam" kept the chicken pieces from being too dry.  The only downside was that this is not a "pizza" that you can pick up and eat with your hands.  The center of the pizza gets soggy pretty easily, so make sure the crust is baked well, and is firm before you put toppings on.  I think I will make several smaller pizzas next time to avoid this.

Polenta Pizza Crust
adapted from Cooks.com

1 cup corn meal
3 cups water
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp olive oil

Toppings 
Sun-dried tomato jam adapted from Everyday Italian


8 oz. jar sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil, finely chopped (reserve 1 tbsp of the oil)
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme leaves
salt and pepper to taste


Cooked, shredded chicken (I used the meat from 2 large chicken breasts)
Chopped bell peppers (I used each of yellow and orange)

For the crust:

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Put a Silpat on a cookie sheet (or parchment paper to cover the bottom and sides of pan).
Stir the cornmeal, water, and salt together in a medium saucepan. Heat over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a boil and thickens enough to pull away from the sides of the pan. Remove from heat and stir in the olive oil.

Let cool for about 2 minutes, then spread evenly over the Silpat with a rubber spatula. 

Bake for 15 minutes, or until set.

For the toppings: 

Place a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the chopped sun-dried tomatoes, 1 tablespoon of the reserved sun-dried tomato oil, olive oil, and garlic. Stir and cook until mixture starts to bubble slightly. Add the sugar, vinegar, water, and thyme, stirring well until mixture starts to bubble again.  Add shredded chicken and toss to ensure that all the chicken bits are covered in the tomato mixture.

Spread mixture evenly over polenta crust and top with chopped peppers and cheese.  Bake in oven at 375 F, or until cheese is melted.

This week's menu:

You will notice that I have a snack and a late lunch from Wednesday onwards, as I'll be at a training session that finishes at about 1:30 PM.  I plan on having a snack (S) at the training and a small late lunch (LL) when I get home.

Monday: B-Oatmeal and apple; L-  ; D-Polenta Pizza with steamed broccoli

Tuesday: B-Oatmeal; L-leftover Polenta Pizza and broccoli; D-Vegetable lentil quinoa soup

Wednesday: B-Oatmeal; S-hummus, peppers, crackers; LL-leftover soup; D-Leftover pizza

Thursday: B-Oatmeal; S-Banana ; LL- Leftover soup  D- out for friend's birthday

Friday: B- Oatmeal; S-banana and spelt cookie; LL- Bell pepper and quinoa soup ; D- Out for sushi!

Saturday: B-Mango smoothie; L- Out for Thai food; D-Husband's fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and broccoli

Spinach, mushroom, and sundried tomato frittata with feta

If you're like me, you've got random bits of stuff sitting in your fridge, or else something just looks so pretty at the supermarket that you have to buy it.

Here's what I had:

Mushrooms
A small chunk of feta
A huge jar (a la Costco) of sun dried tomatoes in oil
Extra firm tofu
Too many eggs

Here's the really pretty thing I just had to get at the supermarket:

A bunch of fresh spinach.

This bunch of spinach looked so clean, green an unbruised - all things that make me want to buy the bagged variety. It was also organic!

Ingredients:
Serves 3-4 people.
Adapted from: http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/cooking/ht/howtofrittata.htm

5 eggs
1/2 bunch of spinach - washed, dried, stems trimmed
4 large white mushrooms
1/4 block of tofu, patted dry with a paper towel and crumbled
2 tbsp of sun dried tomatoes in oil, chopped
3 tbsp of soy milk (or regular, of course)
Crumbled feta cheese (or any other cheese you have)

1. Adjust top oven rack - with a skillet (ovenproof!) on it, you want the top of the skillet to be 4-6 inches from the broiler. Turn on broiler.
2. Heat oven-proof skillet ( 10") on medium heat and add enough oil to coat the bottom and sides generously.
   
3. Add any the tofu, mushrooms, spinach, and saute until spinach is wilted, and mushrooms are soft. Add the chopped sun dried tomatoes and continue to saute for 1 minute.
   
4. Whisk eggs with 3 tbsp of soy milk. Add egg mixture to skillet.
5. On medium heat, cook eggs for about 2 minutes, scraping the sides and bottom with a heat-resistant spatula. When eggs are mostly cooked but still very wet, stop stirring. You want to see cooked egg scattered throughout, but loose egg in between.
6. Continue cooking on stove for another minute so underside sets.
7. Sprinkle the cheese on top. Put skillet under broiler for 5 minutes. This may vary oven by oven so watch carefully while top browns.
   
8. Remove skillet from oven and let sit for about 5 minutes to finish cooking in center.
9. Cut in wedges and serve.

The salt from the sun dried tomatoes and the feta give the frittata a lot of flavour so go easy on any seasonings. I read somewhere that frittatas reheat well so I'll probable make this again to take for lunch with a side of steamed broccoli, and maybe some soup.

I made this with stuff I had kicking around in the fridge, but I'd love to make it again with other ingredients like pancetta or sausage, bell peppers, goat cheese, pesto, etc.

Spinach and Artichoke Spread with Goat Feta

I wanted another dip or spread to have with the sun-dried tomato jam for a light lunch. I had a big jar of marinated artichoke hearts in the fridge so decided to base it off of that. I used to make spinach and artichoke dip but that was laden with mayo, sour cream and of course, cow's milk mozzarella. I wanted something my dairy-free, egg-free sister could have so that was out of the question.

I really like the combination of spinach and artichoke so I thought of substitutes for the mayo and dairy add-ins. I came up blank. Sometimes, it's better to just leave it as simple as possible, and that's what happened here.

Spinach and Artichoke Spread with Feta

Ingredients:

1 pkg frozen chopped spinach
About 10 marinated artichoke hearts
About 2 tbsp of the artichoke marinade
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil for drizzling
Some feta cheese

In a saucepan, bring salted water to a rapid boil. Add chopped frozen spinach and cook according to package instructions.
In a food processor (or by hand) coarsely chop the artichoke hearts.
Drain spinach, and squeeze out as much of the water as you can.
In a bowl, combine the spinach, artichoke hearts, marinade, salt and pepper.

Heat the spread (either in the microwave or oven) and drizzle with olive oil.
Serve on bread or crackers, and with feta.

I know "some feta" is really not helpful but it really depends on how much you like feta. If you like it a lot, use a lot. If not, then whatever. You could even crumble the feta into the spread before heating it up, but I wanted to give people the option of adding the feta to their bread/cracker or not.

I think this spread could also be tossed with hot pasta (with some additional olive oil) as well. My sister was able to enjoy this spread and the rest of us cut various-sized chunks of feta cheese to have with ours.

Chickpea spinach salad with feta

*Disclaimer: I've been copying and pasting recipes from all kinds of blogs for years now and had been keeping them for my own use. I never thought I'd start a food blog so I never cited the source. If this recipe is from your blog, please leave me a comment so I can properly credit you.

Chickpea spinach salad with feta:



I love chickpeas and I love feta. I decided to indulge the other day at the supermarket and but a block of high quality (or at least the price made me think so) goat feta. Not as salty as the stuff in the brine, which is kind of a bummer because I was hoping the feta would add some saltiness to this salad. Not the end of the world that it didn't though, because it still added a creaminess to it.

I'm not the precise measuring type so all ingredient quantities are approximate.

1/2 cup dried chickpeas, soaked and cooked until soft (you could use 1 can instead)
2 bunches of spinach, blanched, squeezed dry and chopped roughly
1 tbsp good olive oil
juice of 1/4 - 1/2 a lemon (depends on how lemony you like it)
1/4 - 1/2 cup crumbled feta (depends on how feta-y you like it)
Salt and pepper

Place the blanched, squeezed and chopped spinach in a bowl, making sure it's evenly spread out, and leaves are not squeezed together. Pour the chickpeas over top. Drizzle with olive oil, making sure it is evenly distributed. Add lemon juice, tossing to coat all of the spinach and chickpeas. Sprinkle the feta cheese over top and again, toss to distribute evenly. Have a taste and season with salt and pepper as needed.

You could keep the spinach raw if you like, but the spinach I had on hand was pretty beat up so I decided to blanch. Your call...

Wine Party Recap

The wine tasting went really well in my mind. I only hope everyone else had a good time, too.
It was a blind tasting so we had 5 bottles wearing paperbag "shirts" thanks to the talented Dylan. It was bit tiring because I had to rinse out everyone's glass and then pour the next wine, and doing that 11 times is not fun.

An alternative: Maybe next time I'll pour all the wines into a carafe or decanter and number the container, and mark the glasses with a dry-erase marker. That might make for easier and less messy pouring.

Another alternative: Pre-cut cheeses so people can quickly grab the cheese that best compliments the wine.

The next alternative after that: Have three pitchers full of water and three empty pitchers and place them around the room (1 full and 1 empty at each place) so people can easily rinse out their glasses and move onto the next wine. I think there was a lot of waiting around and that might have been boring for some people.

The faves: Rioja Crianza 2005 Tempranillo Campo Viejo got some good responses. I believe most found it to be an easy-going wine that wasn't too intense.

Wolf Blass 2006 Shiraz had a good length of flavour.

Smoking Loon 2006 Old Vine Zinfandel was another good one.

I don't think any of them scored very badly. Most people found something they liked and at the end of the evening, all bottles were empty which is always a good sign :)

The best part of the evening was seeing everyone drinking and eating together. Corny as it may sound, having good food with good wine and good friends is one of the finest pleasures in life. (Cue the throwing of the cheese...)

Some cheese with your wine?

Over the last few days I've been all over town (well, my side of town) gathering together stuff for the wine party which is in 2 days. 6 kinds of cheese for 5-6 kinds of wine for 8-10 people. Hope it's enough!



Clockwise from top: Brie, Havarti, Black Goat's cheese (?), Cambozola, Balderson's aged cheddar, Jarlsberg

I'm really excited for the black goat's milk cheese:

Yup, aged 2 years! Old stuff...

This party is going to be a blind tasting. The bottles will be covered up with paper bags and guests will use their senses to come to an opinion about the wine. I wrote down a few of the characteristics of each wine so we'll know what to smell/taste for. Here's a score sheet I made:

It's fairly straight forward, just jot down what you smell, taste, etc., then rate it out of 5 wine glasses. It might seem kind of school-ish but in a fun way! (Or maybe it's just fun for me?)