The Cooking Project Celebrate wholesome, delicious, and beautiful food found everywhere around the world.

May 27, 2010

Artichoke and Arugula Pizza with Prosciutto

Filed under: Uncategorized — Editor @ 5:28 pm
by Elizabeth Woolf-Willis

I make this pizza all the time, always with my mom. It doesn’t take that long to actually make, you just have to have all the ingredients, that’s the hard part. And the flavors might seem weird at first, but they totally work well together. We changed the recipe around a little; we buy the pre-made whole wheat pizza dough from Traders Joe’s. Also, the last time we made it, we just put all the ingredients on and baked it the whole time straight because we forgot which ingredients went on first and realized we had just put them all on, so we just went with it. But never the arugula, that always goes on after you’ve cut it and cooked it. This is such a good recipe; its pretty salty, and can also get gooey with all the cheese and lemon juice and oil from the pesto, so just make sure the crust is done all the way.

Here is the original recipe from Cooking Light, Jan. 2007:

Artichoke and Arugula Pizza with Prosciutto

Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 2 wedges)

Ingredients

  • Cooking spray
  • 1  tablespoon  cornmeal
  • 1  (13.8-ounce) can refrigerated pizza crust dough
  • 2  tablespoons  commercial pesto
  • 3/4  cup  (3 ounces) shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
  • 1  (9-ounce) package frozen artichoke hearts, thawed and drained
  • 1  ounce  thinly sliced prosciutto
  • 2  tablespoons  shredded Parmesan cheese
  • 1 1/2  cups  arugula leaves
  • 1 1/2  tablespoons  fresh lemon juice

Preparation

Position oven rack to lowest setting. Preheat oven to 500°

Coat a baking sheet with cooking spray; sprinkle with cornmeal. Unroll dough onto prepared baking sheet, and pat into a 14 x 10-inch rectangle. Spread the pesto evenly over dough, leaving a 1/2-inch border. Sprinkle mozzarella cheese over pesto. Place baking sheet on the bottom oven rack; bake at 500° for 5 minutes. Remove pizza from oven.

Coarsely chop artichokes. Arrange artichokes on pizza; top with sliced prosciutto. Sprinkle with Parmesan. Return pizza to the bottom oven rack; bake an additional 6 minutes or until crust is browned.

Place arugula in a bowl. Drizzle juice over arugula; toss gently. Top the pizza with arugula mixture. Cut the pizza into 4 (7 x 5-inch) rectangles; cut each rectangle diagonally into 2 wedges.

– Kate Washington, Cooking Light, JANUARY 2007

May 19, 2010

Kung-pao-esque Stir Fry

Filed under: Uncategorized — Editor @ 9:33 pm

by Anna Reeser

To start this project off, here’s a recipe that is fully in the spirit of quick, random, delicious original meals. On Monday night, struck by after-work hunger of a serious kind, I appear at CJ’s doorstep. He claimed to have “enough food, a cabbage at least.” Yes. As long as there’s cabbage, with which anything can be accomplished. The candidates were lined up on the counter: half a green cabbage, a red onion, a red anaheim pepper, chinese broccoli, some frozen chicken thighs, a jar of white rice, peanuts, garlic and a lemon. Rice went in the rice cooker. I began chopping vegetables feverishly and with no real plan. “So we’re just frying all this stuff up?” CJ asked. We did exactly that, and what emerged was flavorful, slightly spicy, tinged with hot pepper and peanut: the best impromptu kung-pao-esque chicken stir fry I’ve ever had.

Ingredients:

1 cup jasmine rice
1/3 head of green cabbage
2 small heads of chinese broccoli greens (miniature bok choy works too)
1 red anaheim pepper
1/2 red onion
3 cloves garlic
1 (or 2) boneless skinless chicken thighs
1/2 lemon
soy sauce
salt & black pepper
peanut oil
olive oil
peanuts
hot sauce (Sriracha is recommended)

1. Start the rice in a rice cooker or on the stove.
2. Chop the cabbage and greens into strips. Chop onion into small pieces. Seed the anaheim pepper and cut into thin strips. Mince garlic. Defrost chicken (if necessary) and cut into small chunks.
3. Add peanut oil to a cast-iron pan. When hot, add chicken with a generous amount of soy sauce and half a lemon’s worth of juice. When chicken starts to brown, add peppers and onions. Stir and fry, add black pepper.
4. In a separate pan, heat olive oil. Add cabbage, greens and garlic and a little water. Put a lid on the pan to steam till the greens are soft, then remove the lid so that water cooks off. Add salt and black pepper.
5. When everything is done, serve with rice on the bottom then a layer of cabbage/greens, then a layer of chicken/onions/peppers. Garnish with peanuts. Eat with chopsticks. Adjust spiciness with Sriracha, if desired.

Yield: 2 large servings.

May 13, 2010

The Beginning

Filed under: Uncategorized — cookpro @ 10:42 pm

Hello and welcome to The Cooking Project. This summer, this site will start fresh with a slightly new mission statement. I want to turn The Cooking Project Magazine into a blog for people who find themselves cooking to share the interesting recipes they’ve invented. I just started cooking a little over a year ago, and it has grown into a complete obsession that I’m able to practice and improve everyday because, no matter what, I have to eat. I’ll begin this blog by posting one of my simple recipes that grew out of pure trial and error, and I hope to read about similar recipes from all of you.

So, how it’s going to work: send your recipes to me using the “Send a Recipe” page. Include accompanying stories for context and pictures of the food. Also, articles about food from international travels, or restaurant reviews would be fun. I’ll format them and post them to the site. Soon, we will have an archive of original cooking ideas.

Sincerely,
Anna Reeser

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