Chickpea flour Pizza with Pesto

Blogging Marathon# 66: Week 2/ Day 2

Theme: Pizza

Dish: Chickpea flour Pizza with Pesto

After yesterday's Instant pizza recipe, I have another instant pizza today too. This one's made with chickpea flour or besan. The crust tasted a lot of cheela to me, but instead of cooking on the stove top, the crust here is baked in the oven. Apparently this chickpea crepe is also associated to France where these are called Socca and are a popular street food usually served with frosty-cool rosé.

As I was looking for instant pizza bases, I found this Socca Pizza recipe on Cookie and Kate blog. The chickpea base in baked under the broiler until set -- so the longer it bakes, the more crispy and browned the pizza gets.

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Tomato Cheese Sandwich with Pesto

Blogging Marathon# 66: Week 1/ Day 2

Theme: 3 Veggies that are Fruit

Dish: Tomato Cheese Pesto Sandwich

Tomato is probably the most popular vegetable that is in fact a fruit. Today I have a simple sandwich recipe that needs just a few ingredients but tastes absolutely amazing -- Tomato Cheese Sandwich with Pesto.

This dish doesn't really need a recipe. Assemble the ingredients listed in the name, pile them on bread and enjoy as is or if you like the cheese melted and the bread toasted, then grill the sandwich. I like it toasted, so that's how I served it.

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Creamy Pesto Pasta

Blogging Marathon# 54: Week 1/ Day 3

Theme: Vegetarian Italian dishes

Dish: Creamy Pesto Pasta

Kids sure are very unpredictable. My son is the picky eater in the house and my daughter is an adventurous eater, but they are slowly reversing their likes. The little one is becoming too picky and doesn't want to try anything new.

I made this creamy pesto pasta for dinner one day and since I wasn't sure if the kids would like it, I made them something else too. But my son declared that pesto sauce is his second favorite pasta sauce right after marinara sauce. Then my little one tried a little bit and wanted to eat it for her dinner too. So the kids ate most of the pasta and the adults ended up eating what I made for the kids.

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Roasted Peppers Pistachio Pesto

Blogging Marathon# 34: Week 1/ Day 1

Theme: Cooking with Capsicum/ Peppers

Dish: Roasted Red Pepper & Pistachio Pesto with Cheese Ravioli

Its time to start this month's Blogging Marathon, BM# 34. My theme for this week is 'Cooking with Capsicum/ Pepper'. I use bell peppers a lot in my cooking either to make a curry or sambar or  add them to rice dishes. So when I saw the theme, I thought I should try making some new dishes with peppers.

For the first day, I'm using store-bought roasted red peppers from the jar. You could roast your peppers if you have the time, but store bought ones are just as good to make this dish. Recipe is from America's Test Kitchen. 

Here pesto is made with roasted red peppers, toasted pistachios and the usual pesto ingredients, parmesan, olive oil and garlic. This can be used as a pasta sauce or as a sandwich spread or even a dip for some crudites and bread.

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Israeli Couscous with Pesto & Carrots

Blogging Marathon# 28: Week 4/ Day 3
Theme: BM Pairs - Chef Mireille's Gourmet Global
Dish: Israeli Couscous with Pesto & Carrots

For the final day of this month's BM, I'm paired with Chef Mireille who blogs at Gourmet Global. Her blog's name says it all. She has tons of gourmet dishes from all over the globe. I was lucky to meet her in person and she is as lively and bubbly in person as she is on her blog.

I've bookmarked a ton of recipes to try from her blog, but today I made this very simple one-pot dish, Pesto Israeli Couscous with Carrots. Mireille used Roasted garlic spinach pesto in her dish, but I made broccoli-mint pesto. Other than that I followed her recipe to the 'T'. 

This recipe uses Harissa, a Middle Eastern chili sauce. Luckily I had a jar of harissa in my pantry, an impulse buy from a Turkish grocery store. The combination of pesto and harissa gave this dish a very unique and interesting taste that I totally loved. I loved it so much that I added them both again to a 3 grain pilaf I made the very next day :-)

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Homemade Pesto Pizza

This is our first Home Bakers Challenge. Home Bakers is an enthusiastic group of baking enthusiastic bloggers and is started by Priya Suresh @ Priya's Versatile Recipes. For the first month's challenge Divya @ Divya's Culinary Journey picked Homemade Pizza.

We were given couple of different pizza crust and toppings recipes and I made Martha Stewart's pizza crust recipe with few minor changes and a store bought pesto topping. I liked that this recipe can be conveniently made in the food processor. I added wholewheat flour along with all-purpose flour to add some fiber and nutrition.

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Penne with Asparagus & Pistachio Pesto

Blogging Marathon# 27: Week 3/ Day 1
Theme: Seasonal Dishes - Spring Entree
Dish: Penne with Asparagus and Pistachio Pesto

Growing up in South India, the only seasons I knew were Summer and Rainy. There was winter, but it wasn't 'really' winter by any standards. There was no seasonal cooking and I don't think I even heard of such a thing while in India.
Living on the east coast of US for the past 12+ years, we enjoy (or not) all 4 seasons. My favorites being Spring and Fall. I especially like Spring and love seeing the little buds on the trees, the greenery and the nature waking up from long harsh winter. Spring makes me really happy, I guess it's because I start to feel life around and it just gives me pure joy.

We start our 3rd week of our month long blogging marathon and the theme for next 8 days is "Seasonal dishes". I'm planning to showcase dishes for all the 4 seasons we experience in our neck of woods. These dishes either use seasonal ingredients or are made during that season for various reasons.

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Broccoli Basil Pesto

VeganMofo Day 30: Super storm Sandy has created quite a havoc in the tri-state area. Thankfully we were not affected too badly; few of our sidings flew away due to the wind but my husband was able to bring them back this morning; a ton of broken branches in the backyard, but no damage to the property. 

Even though Sandy did not affect us directly, we have been impacted by it indirectly. We are in the middle of changing our kitchen counter top and the guys ripped out our old counter and sink last week. We were expecting the new counter installed today, but thanks to Sandy the counter guys are not even picking up their phone. So now here we are with a kitchen with just a working stove and everything else gutted out, keeping our fingers crossed on when we can get the fully functional kitchen back. 

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Grilled Eggplant Sandwich with Tomato Pesto (Chutney)

This month, my blog completed 6 years. I wanted to celebrate by making some sweet, as is the Indian tradition, but lack of time has let me down. But I wanted to celebrate in my own way by making my favorite eggplant sandwich (you know I'm all about simple pleasures :0) ). Actually I was looking for recipes to make for Dish It Out: Eggplant &Tomatoes event and this one seemed like the perfect fit for both the event and the celebration.

This is a very simple sandwich with toasted bread spread (rather generously) with the tomato pesto (chutney) and layered with grilled eggplants, onions and lettuce. Pesto was so good that I was eating that by spoonfuls before I made the sandwiches.

 

If outdoor grilling is not your thing, veggies can be grilled on stove-top grill pan or roasted/ broiled in an oven or even sauteed in a saute pan. If you don't like eggplant (but why wouldn't you eat an eggplant......hmmmm), then you can substitute with zucchini or peppers. Don't let anything stop you from making this yummy sandwich, especially the pesto.

I used canned fire-roasted tomatoes for the pesto, but if you have abundance of good fresh tomatoes, then slow roasted tomatoes would taste excellent too. Pesto recipe is a fusion between Italian pesto and Indian chutney, you will see why from the ingredients and the method I used to make it. This is a great accompaniment to many Indian dishes like idlis, khichdi and even plain rice.

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Roasted Veggie Sandwich

Here's another great picnic food that is colorful, filling and extremely easy to make. Sandwiches are perfect picnic food as they don't require the use of any cutlery and most don't have to be refrigerated. This is a pressed sandwich that can be made at least 4 hours or even the night before the picnic, giving you time to get other things ready for the picnic.

The choice of veggies used in the sandwich is endless, any roasted, grilled or blanched veggie can be used in the filling. I used eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash and roasted peppers, but mushrooms, blanched asparagus or green beans etc. taste awesome too. I saw a recipe in Vegetarian Times that had boiled eggs, so feel free add some protein to your sandwich but make sure that you have a good cooler to keep the sandwich chilled.

Any crusty bread like french baguette or ciabatta can be used. Pressing the sandwich lets the crusty bread soak up the juices from the roasted vegetable juices and the make them super delicious by the time you get to the picnic.

Ingredients:

Crusty bread - 1 loaf (12" long)

Eggplant - 1 small, cut into ¼" slices

Zucchini - 1 medium, cut into ¼" slices

Yellow Squash - 1 medium, cut into ¼" slices

Roasted Peppers - 3-4, drained (Or roast 1 large red pepper chopped along with the other veggies)

Cheese - 4-5 slices (I used vegetable jack cheese, but mozzarella/ pepper jack or monterey jack can also be used)

Salt & Pepper - to taste

Balsamic Vinegar - 2tsp

Olive oil - 2tsp

For the pesto:

Basil leaves - 2 cups packed

Pine nuts - 3tbsp, lightly roasted

Garlic - 2 cloves, crushed

Extra virgin olive oil - 3tbsp (or more to make a smooth paste)

Salt & Pepper - to taste

Method:

• Preheat oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with foil and place the chopped veggies. Spray with cooking spray and season the veggies with salt & pepper. Roast for 18-20 minutes or until browned around the edges and they turn tender.
• Place all the ingredients for the pesto in a blender or food processor and process until smooth. Keep aside.
• Cut the bread in half and hollow inside to make room for the vegetables.
• Spread both sides with the pesto, arrange the vegetables on the pesto and pour the balsamic vinegar and olive oil on the veggies.
• Place the cheese slices on the veggies. Close the sandwich and wrap tightly with a plastic wrap.
• Put the sandwich on a plate and put some weight on it and refrigerate for at least 4 hour or up to 12 hours.

Enjoy with some baked chips for a delicious picnic meal.

Lets see what my fellow marathoners have cooked up for Day 2 of BM# 6.

Update 6.30.11: Sending these wraps over to Valli's Sandwich Mela.