Shrimp and Feta Pizza

I love to cook.  That's pretty obvious because of this blog, right?  But at the risk of going all Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, sometimes cooking for a picky 3-year-old can be a drag.  I think the most disappointing part is that while I haven't submitted my application for traveling food freak should the Weird Foods host up and quit, I'm a fairly adventurous eater.  So when my son started solid foods, I made my own baby food so that he could experience good cuisine at an early age.

How on earth did I end up with a child whose culinary daring doesn't wander far beyond edamame and salmon?

I'm probably grumpy because dinner, aside from Mr. Finicky's exclamations of "I don't like...!" fifty-seven times during the meal, was fairly disastrous.  We love homemade pizza in our house, so it was par for the course for me to make my own pizza dough in my bread maker.  But a crying baby and high humidity created a finished dough ball that was more ectoplasm than pizza.  This was remedied with a mad dash to Whole Foods for pizza dough.  (I ended up getting their multigrain dough and it's fantastic, by the way.)  And my need for Hooked on Phonics created the second dinner debacle: overlooking the word "grilled" in the recipe.  We have a community grill at our condo, but the hurdles to grilling more than steak are limitless. 

So what happened?  I'll share with you the recipe I made, not what I was supposed to make.

Shrimp and Feta Pizza 

3/4 lb medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 onion, sliced into rounds
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing
1/2 tsp dried oregano
salt and pepper
1 lb prepared pizza dough at room temperature
1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

1. Move oven rack to lowest level in the oven and preheat to 500 degrees F.  Toss shrimp and onion in a bowl with olive oil, oregano and salt and pepper.

2.  Stretch pizza dough onto a pizza pan and brush the outer crust with olive oil.  Bake in the heated oven for 5 minutes.  Meanwhile, cook shrimp and onions in a skillet sprayed with cooking spray over medium-high heat until the shrimp begin to turn pink.

3.  Remove crust from the oven and top with shrimp, onions, tomatoes and feta.  Return to the oven and cook for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, or until crust is golden brown.  Transfer to a cutting board and cut into pieces.

The Verdict: Adults loved it.  Child dissected it like it was a high school biology experiment.

My son didn't like the grape tomatoes nor the onions; in other words, he didn't eat any of the vegetables.  Quel surprise.  He was also a little leery of the feta cheese.  He did, however, eat every bit of shrimp and crust given to him. 

As you can see in the picture, if it weren't for the tomatoes, this pizza would be pretty boring to the eye.  This is one place where the grilled vs. oven-cooked differences comes in.  The grilled pizza is has lovely little charred bits on the crust and the shrimp; the oven-baked pizza is largely white.  And because I didn't grill it, I can only guess about the next part and that is the sogginess factor.  Pizza, especially when it's homemade, runs the risk of being soggy.  It's in part because most of us don't have a pizza oven (but Lord, how I wish to have an outdoor brick oven someday!) that heats up to blazing temperatures, but it's also expertly stretching the dough and topping the pizza. 

Shrimp tends to let out a lot of moisture as it cooks, and of course, feta cheese is a high-moisture cheese.  In order not to end up with a soggy middle, drain the shrimp and dab with a paper towel after you cook it.  And squeeze out your feta before crumbling. 

Besides being too soft in the middle, the taste was fantastic.  It smells delicious as it cooks, too.  The oregano is slightly lemony, making it a perfect herb to pair with shrimp.  The feta gives the pizza a nice, salty tang and, when the tomatoes are added in, a great Mediterranean flair. 

Too bad the little critic didn't like it as much as we did.  But I'll keep trying.

Meatball Kebabs

Ha ha ha ha.

I really am finding this tour of the Mediterranean uproariously funny, especially since I didn't plan it out that way. But here we are again, dining on kebabs with cucumbers and minty yogurt on the side. We'll be flying back home from our vacation to Santorini tomorrow. I promise.

These kebabs are very simple to make. The one ingredient that I just couldn't figure out what it was doing in a kebab was Chinese five-spice powder. No matter, it works and the smell is amazing.

I served the meatballs with sliced cucumbers and Greek yogurt with chopped mint.

Meatball Kebabs

1 lb ground beef

1/3 cup plain dry breadcrumbs

2 tbsp finely chopped onion

2 tbsp finely chopped fresh mint or parsley

1 tbsp garlic paste

1 tsp Chinese five-spice powder

1. In a large bowl, mix ground beef and all other ingredients together and add 1 tsp kosher salt. Shape into 24 1 1/2-inch-diameter meatballs. Thread onto wooden or metal skewers.

2. Brush a grill pan or griddle with some olive oil. Heat to medium and cook kebabs, turning often, until meatballs are browned all over, about 8 minutes.

The Verdict: Amir has found his dream meal. It was an amazing sight to behold.

The meatballs are great. They aren't particularly complex in taste, but flavors are just enough to make them delicious. Grilling them makes them slightly crunchy, searing the juices inside. I was a little worried that they'd be too dry to withhold cooking, but they did wonderfully.

I didn't have any garlic paste, so I just took a tablespoon of jarred minced garlic and attacked it with my mortar and pestle. I don't get to use it that often, but man, it's so much fun when I do.

I would highly recommend the cucumber and yogurt as sides. The coolness of the two foods are wonderfully complimentary to the spices in the meatballs. I just added chopped mint to our yogurt; I also think the harissa sauce from an earlier kebab (kofte) post would be delish. Noyan really liked the minted yogurt, though, and we both enjoyed watching Amir copy Daddy using it as a dipping sauce.

Greek Chicken with Capers, Raisins and Feta

Boy, when I get on a roll, I really run with it. Last week you were inundated with stew recipes, this week we're visiting the Mediterranean. It wasn't intentional. It must have been some subconscious craving for capers and lemons. Hopa! Or I guess if we're in Greece, opa!

Greek Chicken with Capers, Raisins, and Feta

4 (4-ounce) skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

2 tbsp all-purpose flour

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tbsp olive oil

1 cup thinly sliced onions

1 1/2 cups fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth

1/3 cup raisins

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp capers

1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese

4 thin lemon slices (optional)

1. Place each chicken breast half between 2 sheets of plastic wrap; flatter to 1/4-inch thickness using a meat mallet or rolling pin. Combine the flour and oregano in a shallow dish, dredge chicken in flour mixture.

2. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken, and cook for 4 minutes on each side. Remove chicken from pan, keep warm. Add onion to pan, sauté 2 minutes. Stir in broth, raisins, and juice; cook 3 minutes, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Return chicken to pan. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 8 minutes or until chicken is done. Place chicken on individual plates, and keep warm. Stir capers into sauce and top each chicken breast with 1/3 cup sauce and 1 tablespoon cheese. Garnish with lemon slice, if desired.

The Verdict: Simple ingredients, complex taste. Yum!

Now, for whatever reason, my chicken breasts were not chicken breasts. They were ostrich breasts. Or maybe even pterodactyl breasts. I'm kidding, of course, but when those suckers got pounded out, I had to cut the breast in half again and ended up with six cutlets. Funny, because I was worried that I had three and not four chicken breasts to begin with. But the sauce was plentiful, so there was more than enough for my additional breasts.

The Cooking Light recipe calls for golden raisins, but c'mon, I have a 2-year-old. That means on any given day, I have a 75-pound vat of regular old raisins in my cupboard. I didn't think it made any difference. But cooked raisins, especially when sautéed in a sauce, are the best. They plump up and take on some of the flavors in the dish. And the raisins lend an almost Madeira taste.

The suggested side dishes for this dish were steamed zucchini and curried couscous, both of which I made. You can buy a pre-made package of curried couscous, or simply make some by adding a 1/2 teaspoon of curry powder and 1/4 teaspoon of allspice to the boiling liquid before adding the dry couscous. (And use a mixture of chicken broth and water rather than water alone; the taste is so much better.)