Recipe Wednesday: Mexican Pizza

I made this a few weeks ago because I wanted pizza for dinner, but we'd had our normal version of pizza the night before and since the experiment turned out well and we all liked it, I added it to our list of possible meals. The first time I made it, I didn't use meat, so it's easy to make this a meat free meal, if your family also does meat free meals.

MEXICAN PIZZA
Ingredients
Pizza Dough
2 ¹/₂ Cup all-purpose flour
2 ³/₄ tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp canola oil
A generous sprinkle of taco seasoning
A generous sprinkle of yellow cornmeal
1 cup warm water
Toppings
Corn and black bean salsa
Black beans
Corn
Taco seasoned ground beef
Mexican cheese blend

Directions
1. Mix dry ingredients; add water and oil.
2. Stir until it forms a ball. If dough is stiff, add more water.
3. The dough will be soft, not sticky. If too sticky, sprinkle a little flour and mix some more.
4. Use the salsa as you would pizza sauce, then add the toppings, followed by the cheese.
5. Bake at 400°F for 15-20 minutes.

Dry ingredients

Pizza dough all rolled out

Salsa and toppings

Oops! Forgot about the ground beef!

Fresh outta the oven!

I forgot that I had browned and seasoned ground beef, so it ended up on top of the cheese while the rest of the toppings were under the cheese. What toppings would you add to your Mexican pizza? 

Recipe Wednesday: Burrito Bowls

Burrito bowls are a favorite in our house. They're quick, relatively inexpensive, have lots of variation and just plain yummy! We most often eat it with seasoned ground beef, but I've done diced chicken before as well. Vegetarian or pork are other options that would work well. Use what your tastebuds prefer. 

BURRITO BOWLS

Ingredients

Prepared cilantro rice

Approximately ¹/₂ lb ground beef

Taco seasoning

Salsa

Black beans

Sweet corn

Mexican cheese blend

Sour cream
Any other burrito toppings that you desire

Directions

1. Follow the directions for preparing rice, but add dried cilantro with the water and butter. (I use chicken stock in place of the water and no butter for burritos.) If you prefer fresh cilantro, then cook the rice first and mix in cilantro after cooking.

2. While the rice is cooking, brown and season, to your liking, the ground beef. Heat up your black beans and corn as well.

3.Put desired amount of rice in your bowl, top with beef, beans and corn (and any other toppings you desire). Sprinkle cheese over top.

4. Add salsa and sour cream, if desired. Enjoy!

Cilantro rice (don't mind the diaper box on my counter)

Meat, beans and corn added

Cheese and salsa added to all, sour cream added to my hubby's

Recipe Wednesday: Enchiladas and Rice

Over on the facebook page, I asked if I should share this recipe or not and overwhelmingly got told to share it! So here it is:

ENCHILADAS WITH MEXICAN RICE AND CORN

Ingredients

Red enchilada sauce

Mild green chiles

Diced onions

Approximately ¹/₂ lb lean ground beef (I used 90/10)

Tortillas

Mexican cheese blend

Mexican rice package

Corn

Directions

1. Prepare rice as directed on package. Just throw in a handful of corn when adding the water and mix to the pot.

2. Heat up the enchilada sauce in a small saucepan.

3. Brown the ground beef with the onions and chiles.

4. Layer cheese and beef mixture in tortillas, roll up and put a spoonful of sauce over the rolled up tortilla.

5. Add a serving of rice to the plate and serve!

Serves 2

My decent looking food BEFORE the first bite

We try very hard not to waste food in the house. Even when something isn't the best meal I've made, we tend to eat it anyway because it's edible and we just make sure that I never make it again. I took two, maybe three bites of my food and Hubby took one or two bites before I eagerly agreed to throw the entire meal into the trash can! Only PGS ate his dinner, but that's because he had a tortilla with cheese only in it - no sauce, no beef mixture.

I know this meal doesn't sound that bad on paper, but it tasted horrible. The rice is too something - probably too heavily seasoned, so if I ever attempt this again, I'll use Spanish rice instead of the Mexican rice. The beef mixture with the cheese wasn't bad. I tasted the beef mixture before putting it in the tortilla and aside from needing some taco seasoning for burritos or tacos, it was good. (I figured the lack of added seasoning would be okay this time because of the enchilada sauce.) My guess is that the enchilada sauce that I bought is just terrible to our taste buds (guess I need to learn how to make my own. Unfortunately, I used up all of the beef mixture when assembling the enchiladas, so there was no way to salvage the decent tasting part of the meal.

Recipe Wednesday: Queso Dip Nachos

I originally found this copycat recipe over on the The Cooking Photographer blog when I had a craving for qdoba queso a few weeks ago. We couldn't find cooking creme at our grocery store, so we substituted regular cream cheese and some milk (while the result was edible and even good, it was a little off lol). This time we planned ahead and stopped at Trader Joe's to pick up some of their Creme Fraiche - and the resulting queso was so much better!

COPYCAT QDOBA QUESO

Ingredients

2 poblano peppers

10-ounce container Philadelphia Cooking Creme

8-ounce package Mexican Blend Shredded Cheese

2 medium tomatoes, chopped fine

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon sweet paprika

1/4 cup minced cilantro

1/4 cup water

Cayenne pepper, to taste

Directions

1. Place peppers on a hot grill or under a broiler. Blacken the skins on all sides. Place them in a paper bag and roll top down to seal. Set aside until cool to touch, about 30 minutes. Peel off skins and discard seeds and stems. Chop peppers very fine.

2. Add chopped peppers, cooking creme, cheese, tomatoes, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and paprika to a medium size pot and stir over low heat until cheese is melted.

3. Add the cilantro, water and cayenne pepper and stir for another minute or so until it thickens to preference.

4. Turn off heat and serve immediately as a dip or sauce.

Ingredients and printed out recipe

Blackening the poblano peppers under the broiler

My blackened poblano peppers

Poblanos resting in paper bag; while they rested, I cut the tomatoes

Small vine ripened tomatoes, I used three
(I wasn't sure which knife to use.)

As finely diced as I could get the tomatoes

My skin removed poblanos. As you can see, I lost some of the pepper. Oops!

Diced tomatoes and poblano peppers

What Step 2 looked like

Water, cayenne and sprinkle of dried cilantro

The taco seasoned ground turkey breast used in our nachos

Assembled nachos! (Chips on the side, of course.)