Meet Dooley + Sweet Potato, Spinach, and Goat Cheese Pizza

Posted on December 10, 2013 by kiwiandpeach

We have a little addition to the Kiwi+Peach family. Meet Dooley.

She is five years old and likes long runs, chasing tennis balls, staring at you while you eat, cuddling and popcorn.

Kiwi and Peach | Meet Dooley

While she certainly isn’t a new addition, she hasn’t been living with us for about two years. For lots of logistical reasons, Dooley living in Germany was not going to work out. My sweet, sweet parents volunteered to look after her while we were away, but now that we are back, she will obviously be coming with us to Asheville.

I mean, I’ll try not to turn into a crazy dog lady, but seriously, look at that face. No promises.

Kiwi and Peach | Meet Dooley

So, so lucky to get to be her human. It’s safe to say she’s going to be a regular around here.

You know what else is going to be a regular around here, this pizza. {see what I did there}

A couple weeks ago I was trying to use up the last of food and clean out the pantry when inspiration hit in the form of pizza. As soon as it starts getting the least bit cold, I put sweet potatoes on just about everything. Why not pizza?

Sweet Potato, Spinach, and Goat Cheese Pizza from Kiwi and Peach

Sweet Potato, Spinach, and Goat Cheese Pizza + Roasted Red Pepper, Hazelnut, and Fig Pesto

The Potatoes
1 sweet potato
drizzle of olive oil
salt and pepper

The Basics
1 batch of whole wheat pizza dough
1 batch of pesto {recipe below}

The Toppings
1 cup of spinach, packed
5 oz goat cheese
drizzle of maple syrup

Preheat the oven to 400°F/200°C.

Wash your potato and dry it well. Slice it into rounds about the width of you pinky finger, about a 1/4 of an inch think. Lay them flat on a baking sheet, brush both sides with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and a bit of pepper. Pop them in the oven for about 20 minutes. When they are finished transfer them to a bowl and set them to the side.

Once you put the potatoes in, proof the yeast for your pizza dough and set it to the side. When the proof is done, go ahead and finish the dough. By the time you’re finished mixing that up the potatoes will be finished. Take them out of the oven and turn the heat off. Leave the door of the oven open so the oven can cool down a bit.

Put the pizza dough in a well greased skillet and pop it in the oven to rise for about 15 minutes.

While the dough is rising, whip up that pesto.

Roasted Red Pepper, Hazelnut, and Fig Pesto

makes about 1 cup

1/2 of a roasted red pepper
2 tsp tomato paste
1/4 cup hazelnuts
1 clove of garlic
3 dried figs, stems cut and quartered
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp olive oil

In a food processor, combine all of your pesto ingredients except the olive oil. Give it a whirl and then start slowly adding the olive oil as the machine is running. When you get it to a consistency you like, you’re done!

{Quick note about the pesto. The freshness of the hazelnuts you use have a huge effect on the taste. Some hazelnuts, usually ones meant for baking tend to taste slightly stale when eaten fresh. Once baked, that stale aftertaste disappears and it is delicious, so using not-so-fresh hazelnuts is okay for the pizza since you’ll be baking it. However, if you wanted to use this same pesto on say a crostini, or as a pasta sauce, you’re going to want to use fresher hazelnuts to avoid that unpleasant, stale aftertaste.}

When the dough is finished rising, transfer it to the baking sheet. Crank the oven back up to 400°F/200°C.

Roll the dough out to the size you’d like your pizza. Leaving space around the edge for a crust, slather the dough with an even layer of pesto then layer up the spinach, sweet potatoes, and finally the goat cheese. Drizzle a bit of maple syrup over the whole thing and pop it back in the oven for 20 minutes to bake the crust and melt that delicious, delicious cheese. Enjoy y’all!

Sweet Potato, Spinach, and Goat Cheese Pizza from Kiwi and Peach

Turkey Joes

Posted on August 29, 2013 by kiwiandpeach

When I was cooking just for myself, Sunday nights I would make a big batch of something and then just eat on it for lunches and dinners that whole week. I had about four things that I would rotate between which is good because when you’ve been eating something pretty much every meal for a week you don’t really want to see it again for a month. I will eventually get around to sharing all of these recipes {in their new and improved versions} because they really are still some of my favorites, but today we’re just going to talk about one.

Sloppy joes.

Or rather, turkey joes since I make them with ground turkey breast as opposed to ground beef which, after one of my foods classes, really freaked me out in college.

Ground turkey breast is pretty hard to find here in Deutschland, so these days, more often than not, I end up using beef. I will say that the grass-fed cows that led happy lives in the Alps before they ended up on my plate freak me out a bit less that the stuff we talked about in that class.

However, if I ever see ground turkey in the shop here, there is usually a squeal of delight {which gets many disapproving looks from nearby Germans} and I snatch that sucker up like they’re going to take it away from me {which they probably are because they think I’m insane}. What can I say? Turkey joes are a comfort food for me, and there is nothing like having your comfort food made just right.

I’m curious, what is your ultimate comfort food? When I was sick as a kid my grandmother would make me a fried bologna sandwich. You probably won’t be seeing it on the blog anytime soon, but man! Nothing says you’re safe and loved like mixed meat fried in bacon grease slapped between two pieces of Sunbeam, the whitest white bread imaginable, with globs of mayo. Am I right?

Probably not.

Turkey Joes

The Slop
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 of an sweet onion, diced
1/2 of a red pepper, diced {capsicum for the Kiwis}
200 grams ground turkey breast
2 tsp chili powder
2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup BBQ sauce

The Assembly
1/4 cup BBQ Sauce
2 buns

Heat a deep sauté pan on medium high heat and add the olive oil. When it’s hot, throw in the diced onion and red pepper. Stirring occasionally, cook until the peppers are soft and the onions are translucent. This usually takes about 5-7 minutes for me. When you’re happy with the veg, push them to the side of your pan then add the ground turkey, chili powder, paprika, and cinnamon. Use your stirring device to break the meat up and slowly incorporate it into the veggies. Cook until the meat is no longer pink and appears to be cooked through.

{If you’re using ground beef instead of ground turkey breast, I advise doing the meat in a separate pan and draining off all the grease before adding it to the onion+red pepper mixture.}

Reduce the heat to medium low and stir in the BBQ sauce. Let the whole thing simmer away for about 5 minutes or until the BBQ sauce has reduced by about half.

While the slop is reducing and caramelizing and becoming awesome, you can be prepping the buns. Slice them in half and spread about a tablespoon of BBQ sauce on the top and bottom slices. When the slop is ready, spoon a big ol’, sensible size portion of it on the bottom bun. Add the top bun, smush a bit, and dig in.

Prepare to get messy.

Pineapple Glazed Chicken Kebabs

Posted on August 27, 2013 by kiwiandpeach

This past weekend was a rainy one. We cleaned, we organized, we did a step-by-step photo shoot. I sewed until I broke my last needle. But really, we wanted to be at the lake. We wanted to be grilling. We wanted to soak up every last bit of summer in Bavaria.

So could we grill when it was bucketing? No, but we could still make kebabs.

Pineapple Glazed Chicken Kebabs

The Marinade {inspired by Tupelo Honey Cafe}
1/3 cup pineapple juice {orange or grapefruit juice would work as well}
3 Tbsp soy sauce
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 clove of garlic, minced
1-2 chicken breasts

The Veg
1 bell pepper {I generally use some combination of red, green or yellow.}
1 medium sweet onion
4-5 button mushrooms
1/2 of a zucchini

Soak 6-8 bamboo skewers in water. {This will prevent the wood from splintering and if you’re grilling, it will keep the wood from burning.}

Combine all the ingredients for the marinade in a tupperware container. reserve a couple tablespoons and set aside. Cut the chicken into bite sized cubes and pop it in the marinade. Best case scenario, marinate the chicken overnight, but if that’s not possible at least marinate it while you’re prepping the veggies. {If you can do overnight, I swear the chicken will actually melt in your mouth.}

Wash and dry your veggies then cut them all into bite-sized bits.

Thread the skewer through the veggies and chicken. Get creative with the order. It doesn’t really matter/have to be exact. {Unless you’re OCD, in which case, carry on with your patterns.}

If you can grill these babies, do it! We couldn’t due to rain/lack of grill device, so I just popped them in a pan on medium high heat for about 3-4 minutes on each side. Remember that bit of the marinade you reserved before you put the chicken in? Brush it over the kebabs each time you flip it.

Perfection.

Serve with some green beans or maybe some potatoes or baked beans and dig in!

{This post contains an Amazon affiliate link. That means that if you head over to Amazon from the link and choose to buy the book, a tiny bit of the money you spent on the book will come back to me for the referral.}

Lauren’s Summer Favourite

Posted on June 27, 2013 by kiwiandpeach

The Kiwi has lovingly volunteered to help me out and share a few recipes of his own while we are away on holiday. Today’s recipe was the first thing he ever made for me {before he even knew about my love of coconut}, so I find it quite fitting that it’s the first thing he is sharing with y’all as well! So, without further ado, I’ll turn it over to the Kiwi.

I have no idea what the original source for this recipe was—I appropriated it from a couple of friends I was staying with after watching them make it and then made it my own—so there isn’t really a name for it. This was the first thing I ever cooked for Lauren {having not yet located a supply of lamb mince in Munich to make my usual favourite}. Ever since then it’s just been known to us as “Lauren’s favourite”.

Suffice to say, this dish comprises a range of diced vegetables in a coconut sauce, served over pasta. As well as being extremely tasty, it features an agreeable spectrum of colours and feels perfect for a summer’s evening. If you’re feeling carnivorous, or you just have some leftover {cooked} chicken to use up, then you can stir it in at the end, but it’s really not necessary.

Lauren’s Summer Favourite

The Pasta
200g {6 oz} whole wheat spaghetti
1tsp salt

The Sauce
½ a large zucchini
1 small red bell pepper
1 small yellow bell pepper
½ a large eggplant
2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp whole wheat flour
½ can {200mL or 6 oz} coconut milk
¼ cup grated parmesan cheese
⅛ tsp ground black pepper

Chop all of the vegetables into roughly 1.5cm {½ inch} cubes. Eggplant can sometimes have a bitter taste in the liquid around the seeds, so chop that first, place it in a bowl and sprinkle liberally with salt to draw out the moisture. Set aside while you prepare the other ingredients, or even do this step half an hour ahead if you have time.

Preheat a large frying pan on medium-high. You’ll be sautéing the vegetables so that they cook quickly without turning to mush.

Separately, bring a pot of salted water to the boil in preparation for the pasta. Where I come from not even the poorest English Lit grad student could imagine life without an electric kettle and this job takes two minutes. However, in America folks prefer to eschew such cheap and easily-available conveniences in favour of heating the water laboriously on the stove.

The zucchini takes the longest to cook, so add it to the frying pan first along with the oil and start sautéing. After a couple of minutes add the peppers and finally, after a few minutes more, wash the salt off the eggplant cubes and add them to the pan as well. You’ll want to begin cooking the spaghetti as directed at about this point. Continue sautéing until the vegetables are soft, but not yet starting to break down. This process takes about 5-10 minutes in total.

Reduce the heat to medium and add the flour to soak up any remaining oil. Stir for about a minute, then add the coconut cream. Grind in the pepper and grate in the parmesan cheese. I recommend moving to Europe, where you can bind blocks of genuine Parmigiano Reggiano in every supermarket fridge. That doesn’t make a big difference to the recipe; it’s just something I like to recommend.

Continue cooking and stirring for a few minutes until the sauce is thickened. Serve over the spaghetti with a little grated parmesan and black pepper for garnish.

Homemade Spanish Rice

Posted on May 29, 2013 by kiwiandpeach

A few weeks ago, as I was planning our Cinco de Mayo festivities, I found myself nursing a serious craving for some spanish rice. Which brought on this revelation– I had never made spanish rice from scratch. What?! I know, I was shocked too. I mean, how could someone who has been cooking up ‘Mexican’ food for her Tex-Mex loving family since she was thirteen have never given homemade spanish rice a go?

Then I realized that it was because I never had to. The quick, easy, just-add-water packets of spanish rice had always been readily available. So why make it from scratch?

Now I’m making it out of necessity since they don’t have those little packets here in Deutschland. However, you should give it a go because your homemade version will have tons less sodium, more fiber, more vitamins, and hardly any preservatives. {and you’ll be really proud of yourself and everyone needs a confidence boost sometimes!}

Regardless of the reason for my inexperience {laziness}, it was high time I remedied the situation. After a little experimentation, I came up with this recipe that will be my go to from here on out. I added black beans for a bit of extra fiber {and to make whole proteins since grains and beans are complementary}, but you can leave them out if you would like.

Homemade Spanish Rice

The Rice
2/3 cup brown rice
1 1/3 cup water

The Goodies
1 tsp oilve oil
whatever veggies you have on hand
1/2 cup black beans {optional}

Some of the veggies I’ve had success with:
red pepper {half}, onion {half}, green chilli {half}, fresh kernels of corn {1/4 cup}, and tomato {half}

The Seasoning
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp cumin
1 Tbsp paprika
1 Tbsp chilli powder

Boil your jug and put the rice on to cook. Follow the directions on the packaging for length of time but it is usually about 25-30 minutes for brown rice. {The 10 min quick rices will work if you’re in a pinch, but you will lose most of the yummy fiber that you get from brown rice and it’s less filling.}

When the rice has about 10 minutes left, start heating a deep sauté pan on medium heat and dice up your veggies. I just used what I had on hand, but feel free to add other veggies if you’d like. Tomatoes and green chilies would be great in this too. Add a little olive oil to the pan and toss in your veggies. Rinse your beans and add them too. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

When the rice is finished, pour a little more olive oil in the pan and add the rice. Stir the rice in with the veggies and black beans. Add the cumin, paprika, and chilli powder and mix well. Cook for 2-3 more minutes so all the flavors can get to know each other and you’re finished.

This is a great side for all your Tex-Mex faves like quesadillas, burritos, and enchiladas. Tonight we are having it with baked beer taquitos!

Cashew Chicken Noodles with Coconut Peanut Sauce

Posted on May 24, 2013 by kiwiandpeach

For better or worse, one of my favorite things to eat for lunch is a PB&J. I think it stems back to my high school days when our lovely lunchroom ladies whipped up this magical concoction of peanut butter and jelly that was a party in my mouth, and put it on two pieces of Sunbeam {the white bread to beat all other white breads}. They would only sell this amaze-balls delicacy AFTER you had eaten a real lunch. Fortunately, I was told early in my high school career, that if you flash a lunch box and a smile they would sell it to you anyway. And so began my love affair with peanut butter and jelly. My lunch time PB&J {or rather peanut butter and honey} has come a long way since the days of those super refined, albeit tasty, sandwiches. However, when I moved to Germany, I had a bit of a crisis.

You see, Germany does not share my love of peanut butter. When I first moved to Germany, I was living in a small village with my host family. After searching high and low for peanut butter in said small village, I decided to give ‘Erdnuss-Sauce’ a go. For future reference, ‘Erdnuss-Sauce’ is satay sauce—not peanut butter–and it tastes awful when mixed with jam.

After complaining about it incessantly to my English speaking friends and a failed attempt at making my own, I eventually found the American aisle at the stores in the city and now have a healthy supply of peanut butter on hand. I know you were worried.

However, I still had this jar of satay sauce in my cupboard waiting to be used. This recipe was the perfect thing. It is a super quick meal that is perfect for a busy week night and has become one of our go to meals. When we finished up that jar, I decided to try my hand at making my own healthier, less processed version. It was perfection and, even with making my own satay sauce, it still can be knocked out in less than 30.

Cashew Chicken Pasta

{Adapted for two from Armommy}

The Pasta
4 ounces {100 grams} whole wheat pasta
½ of a red pepper, cut into strips

The Protein
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 chicken breast
salt and pepper for seasoning
¼ cup of cashews

The Sauce
{barely adapted from Kitchen Thymes}
1/3 cup crunchy peanut butter
1/3 cup coconut milk
1 tsp honey
1 Tbsp soy sauce
juice from ½ a lemon
1 Tbsp olive oil
sriracha sauce to taste {we use about 2 tsp}

Start by heating up a deep sauté pan on medium heat.

Put the pasta on and cook according to the directions on the package {usually 11 to 13 minutes}.

While the pasta is cooking, slice your red peppers and set them to the side. You’ll add the red peppers to the pasta for the last 4-5 min of cooking.

Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces and season with salt and pepper. Add the olive oil to the pan and throw in the chicken. Cook until the chicken is nice and brown {about 4 minutes on each side if your pan was good and hot}.

While the chicken and pasta are cooking you can whip up your peanut sauce. Add everything {except the sriracha sauce} to a bowl and whisk until it is all mixed together. Add a bit of sriracha. Whisk and taste. Repeat until you have the right amount of heat for you. {If you don’t have sriracha sauce red chili flakes will do the trick too.}

Once the chicken is cooked, remove the pan from the element and add the cashews and drained pasta and peppers. Mix in the peanut sauce, add a bit of fresh black pepper, and you’re finished!