It’s Super Bowl time again!  We hand picked snacks and appetizers we think you might like to include on your Super Bowl Food Fest menu, we’ll be posting a few new recipes soon!

Pizza Dip

Buffalo Style Chicken Wings

Stuffed Mushrooms

Vietnamese Rolls

Beef Empanadas

B’s Homemade Hamburgers

Grilled Vegetable Pizza

Cheddar Cheese Biscuits

Shaved Asparagus Pizza

Vegetable, Basil & Zucchini Pizza

Southern Cornbread

Chicken and Avocado Pizza

Tequila Bars (dessert)

Perfect Lemonade with Basil Syrup

Mariano’s Beer Michelada

© 2012, The Foodies' Kitchen. All rights reserved.

I have a cook-off coming up. Jake Van Ness is flying to Guatemala in a few days and we will have a pizza duel after Christmas, word around the campfire is his pizza is nothing short of amazing, so I have to find myself a good recipe so I don’t humiliate myself. This is not it.

I made these last weekend because my sister Petra was coming over to visit and I wanted to make something quick and delicious we could chow down on while we caught up on our week’s events. She certainly has a lot to tell, she’s a med student on her last year and she was hours away from running yet another marathon, she’s quite the local athlete (completely opposite to moi).

This pizza sort of made itself, I didn’t really know what I was going to end up with, I just piled stuff on. My base was pita breads, I grilled vegetables I had around with olive oil and a simple salt and pepper seasoning, used creole tomato sauce and shredded mozzarella cheese, and at the end added a little kick with tabasco, which I love.

Grilled Vegetable Pizza
Yields 5 individual sized pizzas

Ingredients:
5 pita breads
1 1/2 cups creole tomato sauce
4 portobello mushrooms
1 zucchini
1 red bell pepper
1/2 red onion
2 tomatoes
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1 bunch asparagus
Parmesan cheese for sprinkling
dry basil
salt and pepper to taste

Procedure:

1. Start grilling.  I used my indoor griller, so I pre-heated it for 5 minutes. Follow your griller’s instructions.
2. Slice the mushrooms, zucchinis, bell pepper, onion and tomatoes. Keep each vegetable in a separate bowl as you will be grilling in batches.   Coat the vegetables with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
3. Grill each of the vegetables and set aside.
4. Set your pita breads on two cookie sheets (3 pitas on one and 2 in the other) and spoon a good amount of tomato sauce.
5. Follow by evenly coating with equal amounts of each of the vegetables.
6. Cover with shredded mozzarella and sprinkle with enough parmesan to your liking.
7. Season with dry basil, salt and pepper and finally, top with 2 asparagus tips
8. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes or until cheese has completely melted.

© 2011, The Foodies' Kitchen. All rights reserved.

One late Saturday morning, we were wondering what to make for lunch. We wanted something that wouldn’t take many ingredients (we needed to go grocery shopping) and use the some veggies we had left from a salad the day before. And I remembered that somewhere I read a Pizza Crust recipe that didn’t have any yeast in it. Again, we didn’t have many ingredients around! So Pizza it was! I started looking for the recipe…and then found this one! It didn’t have any baking powder in it either. I know what you’re thinking… It is strange! But so much worth it. This has to be one of the best Thin Crust pizza recipes I’ve tested and it’s also extremely easy to do.

One thing I have to be very bold about is Step#6: the tapping. I didn’t do that and got huge bubbles on my crust. Since I was baking two crusts, halfway through the baking, I pinched the bubbles and rotated their positions in the oven. You’ll see that this batter also is… very liquid. Don’t be scared! That’s how it’s supposed to be. Just make sure that it covers the pizza pan like a normal crust would. For the tomato sauce, we used some left over from our Basic Tomato Sauce, adding a tablespoon of Tomato Paste to thicken it up a bit.

Vegetable Basil & Zucchini Thin Crust Pizza
Thin Crust Recipe from AllRecipes.com
Serving Size: 8

Thin Crust Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 cup milk
1 cup of Tomato Sauce
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
1 lb. shredded Mozarella Cheese
1 cup of chopped Zucchini and Tomatos
2 tablespoons of black olives, cut into small pieces
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2. Grease a rimmed pizza pan or baking sheet.
3. In a large bowl, stir together flour, salt, oregano and black pepper.
4. Mix in eggs and milk; stir well. The batter will look like the one for pancakes or waffles – it’s ok. Don’t panic as I did.
5. Pour batter into prepared pan and tilt (or spread) until evenly coated. Tap the pan a few times on the counter, so the bubbles rise and you get rid of them.
6. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes, then take the pizza out and pinch any bumps that might have come up – I still had a few.
7. If you’re baking two pizzas at once, rotate their position inside the oven. Bake for remaining 10-12 minutes until set.
8. While the crust bakes, mix the tomato sauce and tomato paste in a sauce pan, and just warm it up a bit.
9. Remove crust from oven.
10. Drizzle on pizza sauce and sprinkle on vegetables (Zucchini, Tomato and olives), ending with the cheese.
11. Top with salt, pepper and basil.
12. Bake until cheese is melted, about 15 minutes. Let it sit for about 5 minutes before slicing.

© 2011, The Foodies' Kitchen. All rights reserved.

We love pizza, and the one who usually does the magic with it is Jake. I rarely cook pizza because honestly, his pizzas rock. I spotted this recipe over at Annie’s Eats and Tasty Kitchen. Asparagus are in season and this was the perfect Friday Dinner. I used a store pre-baked crust (I’ve been a very busy foodie), but you can make your own!

The flavor from the asparagus is soft after being “shaved”. Shaved… How you ask? With a peeler! Make sure you wash and rinse of the excess water from the asparagus, and with a peeler, start shaving the stem away. Also, cut off the woody stems from the asparagus before shaving. Also, the herb cheese I used was made by Jake’s mom Bev… and the pairing with the veggies was perfect! I barely had to season the pizza, other than with salt and pepper.

Take a leap, give the asparagus pizza a chance!

Shaved Asparagus Pizza

Recipe By Annie’s Eats
Serving Size: 8

Ingredients:

Pizza dough
Olive oil, for brushing
8 ounces asparagus spears
4 ounces fresh mozzarella, thinly sliced
1 to 1 1/2 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese
3 ounces spreadable garlic herb cheese,
such as Boursin or Trader’s Point Creamery garden herb fromage blanc
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven at 450˚ F
2. Roll out the pizza dough into a 12-14 inch round. Lightly brush the surface of the dough with olive oil.
3. Cut the tough woody stems off the ends of the asparagus spears. Use a vegetable peeler to shave the spears into ribbons. You likely will not need all of the asparagus, but use more ribbons than you think you need because it will cook down in the oven.
4. Place the sliced mozzarella over the pizza dough in an even layer. And place in oven for about 12 minutes to allow the cheese to melt.
5. Pile the asparagus shavings over the top of the mozzarella. Dot the surface of the pizza with the garlic herb cheese and the shredded cheese. Season with kosher salt and pepper.
6. Bake until the cheese is melted and bubbling and the crust is lightly browned, about 12-15 minutes.
7. Remove from the oven and let cool slightly for about 3 minutes before slicing and serving.

© 2011, The Foodies' Kitchen. All rights reserved.

I was able to spend some mother-daughter time recently with my mom, which we hadn’t done in a long time. We just wanted to veg out in comfy clothes with good food and drink and a good movie. We went grocery shopping together to make this pizza dip… Well, so I could make this pizza dip. My dear mother won’t cook to save her life.

It is basically, all the ingredients you would use to make pizza… except for the crust.  And to add the creaminess that makes this a dip, or more accurately a spread, you start off with a layer of herbed cream cheese and add the other ingredients by layers, finally melting it all in the oven for a delicious bread topping.

This is a great appetizer if you have friends coming over for movie night, or game night… and it is VERY filling. It easily serves a crowd of 10 people. You can add or leave out any of the ingredients to your own preferences. I prefer to add vegetables and stay away from meats, but you can add pepperoni, ham, prosciutto, or bacon.

To accompany this I sliced a medium baguette, brushed each slice with olive oil and sprinkled salt and pepper on top, to the oven they went until they started to brown, about 6 min.

Pizza Dip

Serves 10
Adapted from My Baking Addiction

Ingredients
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon dried oregano
¼ teaspoon dried basil
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1 cup Parmesan cheese
1 cup italian tomato sauce
1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 cup sliced mushrooms
8 cherry tomatoes, sliced or halved
12 black olives, sliced
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium bowl, combine cream cheese, garlic powder, dried oregano, and basil.
2. Spread cream cheese mixture into a 9-inch pie pan, and sprinkle ½ cup of mozzarella and ½ cup of Parmesan on the cream cheese mixture.
3. Top with the tomato sauce and mushrooms and sprinkle the remaining cheeses over the  sauce.
4. Top with bell pepper, onion, cherry tomatoes and black olives.
5. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste, and additional dried basil.
6. Bake in preheated oven 20 minutes or until cheese is fully melted and bubbly.

;

© 2011, The Foodies' Kitchen. All rights reserved.

Here’s another fun recipe to share with your kids!  Try it today to celebrate National Children’s Day!

Cooking with Kids: Mini Pizzas

Ingredients:

4 English Muffins, halved
1 cup italian tomato sauce
1 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded
Black olives, sliced (for the eyes)
Bell Pepper, sliced (for mouths)
salt and pepper to taste
powdered oregano
powdered basil

Procedure:

1. Place the english muffin halves on a cutting board, spread with tomato sauce, sprinkle with cheese.
2. Add the olives and bell papper to make a face.
3. Sprinkle with oregano, basil, salt and pepper to taste.
4. Bake them in your toaster oven until the cheese melts.

Enjoy!

© 2010, The Foodies' Kitchen. All rights reserved.

Yes, avocado pizza! I’ve been looking at new ways to use avocados in my cooking, and I got this idea from a website that features recipes using them, I’ll definitely make this one again.

Chicken and Avocado Pizza

Yields: 4 Personal Sized Pizzas
Recipe from The Amazing Avocado

Ingredients:
4 personal pizza crusts
1 cup tomato sauce
½ onion, finely chopped
2 grilled chicken breasts, shredded or cut into strips
1 cup Monterrey Jack cheese (or you can use Mozzarella)
1 ripe avocado, sliced
Tabasco, to taste (optional)

Procedure:

1. Heat oven to 425°F. Place pizza crust on a baking sheet; bake crust 7 minutes.
2. In small bowl, combine pizza sauce and Tabasco (Tabasco is optional).
3. Spread pizza with sauce; top with chicken, Avocado and cheese.
4. Bake until crusts are crisp on the bottom, and the cheese has melted, 4 to 6 minutes longer.
5. Enjoy with a nice cold beer!

© 2010, The Foodies' Kitchen. All rights reserved.