Thai Chicken Pizza

Once upon a time, when I was a starving college student, and my cousin was a starving graduate student, we found ourselves making dinner together one night. This memory almost feels like a dream, because my cousin lived on the opposite coast of the United States from me, and I am pretty sure that only once in our lives did we make dinner together.

Anyway, she had a new cookbook she was trying out, and we leafed through it together, to choose a recipe to cook for dinner that night. We chose the Pacific Rim Chicken Pizza, which was a sort of Thai-inspired chicken and veggie pizza with peanut sauce. Being as we were starving college students, we couldn't afford to buy all of the 13 ingredients it required, so we made some cuts and some substitutions and came up with a poor man's version of the dish. But as I recall, it came out great and we were quite proud of our culinary achievement.

I decided right then and there that I needed the cookbook. I am not sure why, as a student who couldn't afford to buy any of the ingredients to follow the recipes, I felt that I had to have this cookbook. But I did. My mother got it for me as a Christmas gift that year, and I have to admit that I haven't used it too much since then. When I do use it, though, I really like it.

Anyway, when I saw that the Improv Cooking Challenge this month was to use carrots and ginger together in a recipe, I immediately remembered this pizza, that I haven't made since that night 17 years ago  long ago  when I was in college.

This time, rather than substituting things that are cheaper, I made different substitutions. I made my own pizza crust instead of buying one (I find it easier to turn on my mixer than to run to the market). I also used orange marmalade since I like the tang of it better than mango chutney. Finally, I substituted a half of a leek for the green onions, since I got one in my Abundant Harvest CSA box this week.

Here is the Thai Chicken Pizza that I largely based on the Pacific Rim Pizza recipe from Eating Well is the Best Revenge.

Thai Chicken Pizza


1 pizza crust (I used my recipe, which you can find here)
3 carrots, cut into matchsticks (about 1 cup)
1 green bell pepper, cut into matchsticks (about 1 cup)
1/2 leek, diced
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast (if you have leftover cooked chicken, that's great. If not, you can bake a breast while you work on the pizza)
1 tablespoon coarsely grated ginger
2 tablespoons orange marmalade (I make that too, which you can see here... or just buy it)
3 tablespoons unsalted peanut butter
2 tablespoons Asian cooking wine (or use some dry white wine or cooking sherry)
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro


Start by making your pizza crust. Or if you are using pre-made pizza dough, roll it out. Trader Joe's has a great pizza dough in the dairy case. Heat the oven to about 450 degrees, and bake the pizza crust until it is about half-way done. (about 6-7 minutes). This will keep it from getting soggy when we load it up with the other yummy stuff.

If you are cooking your chicken, pop it in the oven once the crust is done, and take it out as soon as it is cooked through (about 10-15 minutes).

Meanwhile, start chopping the carrots, bell pepper, and leeks.  Set them aside, and in a small bowl, whisk together the ginger, marmalade, peanut butter, cooking wine, and vinegar.

Once the chicken is done, cut it into matchsticks also. Keeping all the toppings the same size and shape makes sure that each bite of pizza has a great balance of all the yummy flavors!

Toss together the chopped vegetables, the chicken, and the peanut/ginger sauce.

Spread it out evenly on the pizza crust, making sure to get it close to the edges all around.

Bake it for another 6-7 minutes, until the edges of the pizza begin to brown.

Sprinkle the chopped cilantro on top, slice, and serve.

This recipe is linked to the Improv Cooking Challenge.

winter stew

My vegetables are telling me it's winter. They are coming up from underground, where the cold temperatures are helping them produce sugars, which make them nice and sweet and tasty.

The carrots I got this week were, by far, the very best carrots I have ever eaten in my life.

This week I got potatoes, rutabagas, beets, and carrots from under the ground. I also got a lot of other stuff, but for now let's talk about these bottom dwellers.

These root veggies just beg to be cooked slowly for a long time. They want to be roasted or stewed, releasing heat and aroma into the house for hours. It is just the thing you want for a long, cold, winter day,

Despite the fact that it has been rather warm and sunny here in southern Cali, I went ahead and made a stew.

It seems like the new trend (and by "new trend" I mean "back to the good old days") is to not use a recipe.

I have been reading quite a few cookbooks lately that actually provide very few recipes. They are centered on teaching the reader how to cook, rather than just giving measurements and instructions for one particular dish.

So, I decided to go ahead and give it a shot. After reading the chapter called "Stewing, Braising and Steaming" in the book Kitchen on Fire, I felt equipped curious to test their instructions, and to take my winter veggies and turn them into a stew. 

Plus, I have a whole bunch of chicken stock just begging to be used.

First, I went to the store to buy some stew meat. Although stew meat is usually the toughest (which is fine if you are going to stew it for a long time), and therefore the cheapest meat, I found that my market had tri-tip on sale for even cheaper than the stew meat, so I bought that.

I cut my pound of beef up into bite-sized chunks and browned it in a little bit of olive oil.

Once it was browned, I cut up my veggies and added them. I used, from this week's Abundant Harvest Box, three potatoes (peeled), two rutabagas (peeled), four carrots, one large leek, and one onion, all cut into bite-sized chunks.

I cooked this all on high for about 10 minutes, so everything could get a teeny bit browned and tasty. Then I added 3 cups of chicken stock and a small handful of fresh rosemary. Just before it started to boil, I reduced the heat and covered it, and let it simmer for about and hour and a half.

It turned out nice and sweet and delicious!

On my honor, I will serve mankind

Every summer, my husband and I load up the car with almost everything we own a travel-sized version of almost everything we own, to spend 9 days or so in the wilderness a campground. I truly am not exaggerating... our home away from home is a tent, our beds are air mattresses, and our dressers are suitcases. In lieu of a range, refrigerator, and kitchen sink, we have a stove, a dutch oven, ice chests, and dish pans.

It is roughing it without really giving up anything... just making the stuff all small enough to fit inside a car, and doing everything outside. Ideal, really. If there weren't these pesky things called a job for the adults around here and an education for the little guys, I might sell the house and camp year round. In that one place where it is summer year round.

While we are there, I spend the days relaxing, eating, tanning, swimming in the creek, eating, reading, hiking, eating, and drinking. In order for all that eating to occur I do spend a wee bit of time cooking. But in order for all that relaxing to occur, I try to make cooking pretty simple. 

One of our favorite meals comes from way back when my oldest brother was a boy scout, and it's called a foil dinner. Basically, you wrap some meat and potatoes up in foil and nestle it down in the coals of the campfire until it's cooked through. 

The other day I decided we didn't need to be camping to enjoy foil dinners. We went ahead and did them in the kitchen, and popped them in the oven. Although we weren't following up a day of hiking and swimming, or eating in the great outdoors, they tasted pretty darn good.

Tradtional Boy Scout Foil Dinner in a non-traditional setting:

First, you need to chop up your veggies into bite-sized pieces. The usual suspects would be potatoes, celery, carrots and onion. However, you can use whatever you have on hand. I, of course, used those veggies that came in the box this week.

zucchini, corn, bell pepper
fava beans, potatoes, leeks
(to prep the fava beans for cooking, read this)

Next, get out a sheet of foil for each person who will be eating. Place a patty of ground beef on each foil. The ground beef should be on the shiny side of the foil, so that when you fold it up, the dull side will be out. I am not sure why this is, but the boy scouts say to do it this way, and who is going to argue with a boy scout?

Next, let each diner select his or her vegetables. They should be piled on top of the ground beef willy-nilly. Then sprinkle it with salt and pepper.

Now, fold each dinner into a packet. This should be done carefully if you are going to be putting them into a campfire, so that you don't end up eating ashes. 

As you finish preparing each packet, be sure to have the diner write his or her name of the outside of it, so everyone gets the exact veggie combination they created. Or in the case of our family, I draw pictures of everyone. The kids love it. 

May I present to you, my lovely family:

So sorry the pictures look so bad. It turns out it is a little hard to photograph something that is wrinkly and reflective.

It's a good thing we all have distinctly different hair in my family. I am a terrible artist, so the faces look identical.

Once you have marked the packets in a way that will differentiate them from one another, it is time to let it all cook. If you have a good set of coals in your campfire, place the packet in them for about 30 minutes or so, depending on how much meat you use, the heat of your coals, and the air temperature. Feel free to check on them if you need to, as long as you wrap them back up again. If you are doing it in an oven like we did this week, heat the oven to 400 and cook them about 25-30 minutes on a baking sheet.

Here is the magic of it all. No matter which vegetables you use, no matter what the ratio of veggie to meat is, no matter whether you eat it with 40 boys scouts or your own family, no matter whether you are in the dining room or a campsite, it turns out absolutely delicious. Every time.