Margherita Pizza

It has been awhile since my last post, my apologies for that. It isn't that I haven't been cooking-I have. However finding the time to sit and do a small write up or remembering to take pictures has been a struggle. I refuse to write up something I made without pictures. People do not read food blogs to hear how good something looks or tastes..they want to see it!
I am also having some health issues where I am trying to adjust my diet and cut certain things out so that has also been a challenge.

So with that said I have some pictures of my version of margherita pizza. I have never made it before but its pretty simple mixture of basil, tomato, and mozzarella cheese.

The whole reason I made this pizza is because a couple of weeks ago we got a TON of the most delish fresh organic basil in our CSA. The aroma of it was simply amazing. I knew I had to use it and use it fast!

I used the basic pizza dough recipe I have mentioned in an earlier blog, again if you don't have time to make the dough grab a pre-made crust from the store. Roll that out to the desired shape/size. I made sure to get my crust as thin as possible in hopes it would be a tad crunchy after baking.

I grabbed a ball of mozzarella from the grocery store, drained it and sliced it into nice thick slices. You can cut it however you would like.

I cut a large beefsteak tomato into thick slices as well. Normally people will use roma tomatoes or plum tomatoes but this is what I had in the house so its what I used. In addition to the large slices of tomato I took a 1/4 of a tomato and diced it up.

For the basil I simply washed it, dried it, and removed the stems. I took a few basil leaves and minced them.
I had fresh garlic from our CSA so I minced up on clove of that as well.


In a small fry pan I placed the diced tomato, chopped basil, garlic, and a bit of extra virgin olive oil. I warmed it over low heat for about 20 minutes. It was long enough for the tomatoes to soften and for all of the ingredients to blend together nicely. It looked like a chunky sauce but not a lot of it.


I took that sauce and spread it on the pizza dough. Again there isn't a lot of it I just wanted to incorporate some of the great garlic I had.
Once I had that spread on the dough I gave a couple of splashes of extra virgin olive oil over the rest of the dough.
Then I simply layered the rest of the goodies-tomatoes first, cheese, and then basil.

Just make sure to spread everything out evenly. Don't have tomatoes overlapping each other and try to place a chunk of cheese on every tomato slice. Be as generous as you would like with the basil.


Pop it into an oven pre-heated at 500 degrees and cook for about 10 minutes. At the 10 minute mark I flipped the broiler on to get the cheese a nice golden brown.
Let the pizza sit for a minute or two before cutting and enjoy!


As I always recommend play around with it and add on or substitute ingredients. Its a simple pizza so there are many ways to jazz it up. Pancetta, red onions, black olives...I could go on and on!

CSA Deliciousness!

We received our first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) a few weeks ago. Very excited lots of great fresh organic goodness!
Once we laid it all out I realized that there were things in there I had NEVER seen before. In the share we have bok choy, chard, garlic snapes, head lettuce, Mustard greens, kohlrabi, radish, scallions, a salad mix, salad turnips, and spinach.



Since there is just SO much I wanted to get cracking on using it up so it doesn’t spoil.

Chicken breast with Garlic Pesto

Garlic Pesto Sauce:
4-5 Garlic Snapes
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup of cheese grated (your choose I used Parmesan)
Salt & Pepper to taste (I used pepper and no salt due to the fact I used salted nuts)
¼ cup of nuts…a lot of pesto recipes call for pine nuts. I didn’t have them so I used some cashews its crazy sounding but it’s all we had and it was good!

I cut the snapes into 2 inch sized pieces discarding the hard dark green parts of the stem. I put the snapes, cheese, salt/pepper, and nuts all into the handy dandy Magic Bullet and mixed it all together until the snapes were broken down.
Then I added ½ of the olive oil mixed it up again and then added the remaining olive oil. Mix until well blended.
This turned out AMAZING! I was beyond shocked with the results. Most pesto’s have basil in them and this one had none so I was apprehensive but it was great!



I broiled two chicken breast 5 minutes on each side, brushed the pesto sauce on both chicken breasts then broiled for another 5-10 minutes until chicken is done. When it was done the chicken had a yummy pesto baked crust. We had leftover sauce that we drizzled on top or dipped chicken into.


Roasted Kohlrabi

Kohlrabi bulb(s) peeled
1 TBSP Olive oil
1 clove garlic (I used garlic snapes again minced)
Salt and Pepper (to taste)
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese
Preheat an oven to 450 degrees.

Cut the kohlrabi into 1/4 inch thick slices..or thinner its up to you, if you cut them thinner make sure to cook for less time! Combine olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Toss kohlrabi slices in the olive oil mixture to coat. Spread kohlrabi onto baking sheet.
Bake until browned, 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally in order to brown evenly. Remove from oven and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Return to the oven to allow the Parmesan cheese to brown, about 5 minutes. Serve immediately.

Sorry I only have pictures of the pesto because I had this meal completely prepped then after a run felt so sick I was unable to eat it. So my husband was able to enjoy it and then the next day I was able to enjoy mine