Roasted Garlic and Pepperoni Pasta

I'm excited about this one! I'm excited because I made it without a recipe, and I was trying something for purely experimental purposes, and it totally worked! I wasn't even sure it would work, but I was willing to allow my family to be the guinea pigs in this particular experiment. You see, I had several heads of garlic, and I really wanted to roast some up. With that as my starting point, this whole meal was born.

I decided to build upon my roasted garlic idea with things I had around the house that I wanted to use up. I was feeling like creating a roasted garlic sauce, but I wanted it to be creamy and not fattening. A tall order, right? Well, wait a minute. Get this: if you put ricotta cheese in the food processor with a touch of olive oil, the whole head of roasted garlic, and some reserved pasta cooking liquid, you get a nice, healthier, creamy sauce! I'm sure somebody out there has already thought of this, and I just caught on to it late. But I was pretty proud of myself, considering I just came up with it on the fly.

I sauteed a red onion, added a huge pile of spinach and a huge pile of Swiss chard to the skillet, and wilted the greens down. Next, I added some turkey pepperoni. Now, this is the part of the recipe where I would have done it differently if I had to go back and redo it. But lucky for you, I have learned from my mistake and I wrote out the instructions to include the change. Why, you may ask? Well, because the pepperoni just ended up getting a bit droopy and limp as a result of adding it in after the veggies. It was still okay, but just a bit tasteless. Next time, I would cook the pepperoni first, until it became crispy, and then I would take it out and reserve it to throw on top of the pasta at the end. Oh well, I'm learning!

Since the sauce I created did turn out a bit thin, I thought fast and added it to the skillet that contained the veggies. By simmering it for just a few minutes, I was able to thicken it up and turn it into a nice, alfredo-y sauce. If you wanted to, you could add some Parmesan cheese to the sauce and really take it over the top. I liked it as is. Best of all, the family liked it too! My husband was none the wiser about me creating this dish, and he started raving about it over dinner. When I told him that I hadn't even used a recipe, he was pretty impressed. That made me feel good; I find that some of my favorite moments in the kitchen come when I am able to "invent." So it's great when the invention works out well!

Roasted Garlic and Pepperoni Pasta
recipe by Bri
makes 6-8 servings

Ingredients
5 tsp. extra-virgin olive oil, divided
1 whole head of garlic, outer papery skin removed and top 1/4 cut off
1 lb. pasta, any shape will do
1 medium red onion, sliced
4 cups fresh baby spinach
3-4 cups Swiss chard, stemmed and chopped
1/2 cup (it's actually 34 slices, but in case you don't feel like counting!) turkey pepperoni, halved
1/2 cup ricotta cheese (I used part-skim)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Drizzle about 1/2 tsp. olive oil over the head of garlic, wrap it tightly in foil, and roast in the oven for about 45-50 minutes. Remove from oven and allow it to cool slightly.

2. Heat a large pot of water to a boil on the stove. Add the pasta to the pot and cook according to the package directions. Reserve at least 1 cup of the cooking liquid to make the sauce.

3. In a medium nonstick skillet, heat 1 1/2 tsp. oil over a medium heat. Add the pepperoni and cook until just heated through and slightly crispy, about 5 minutes or so. Remove the pepperoni to a plate. To the skillet, add the red onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 to 8 minutes. Add in the spinach and Swiss chard gradually, allowing it to wilt some before adding more.

4. Meanwhile, in the bowl of a food processor, add the head of roasted garlic, the 1 cup reserved cooking liquid, the remaining 1 Tbsp. olive oil, and the 1/2 cup ricotta cheese. Puree the mixture until it is smoth and resembles a thin sauce. Add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

5. Pour the sauce into the wilted greens and allow the mixture to come to a simmer. Turn the heat back and continue to cook at a low simmer until the sauce has thickened some, about 3-4 minutes. Turn off the heat and combine the sauce with the pasta and pepperoni (I added everything back into the pasta pot after the pasta had been drained), tossing well to coat the pasta with sauce. Divide into shallow bowls and serve.

Pepperoni Deep-Dish Pizza

After making a pizza last week for my Craving Ellie group, and failing pretty miserably at making my crust from scratch, I wanted to show everybody that I actually am capable of making a knockout pizza! I actually made this Pepperoni Deep-Dish Pizza about two weeks ago, but for some reason I'm just now getting around to posting about it. Please don't think for a second that I forgot about this recipe, because it's been quite the opposite. We're all still thinking about that pie, and my son keeps wanting to know when I am making "that really yummy pizza" again. I'm hoping the answer is soon!

I keep my back issues of Cooking Light magazine for at least six months, if not longer. I remembered recently that they had done a special feature on pizza back in their May issue, and there were several things that had caught my eye. Plus, I really had been wanting to graduate from pizza dough made in my bread machine to a more complicated, from-scratch dough that required a bit more from me. So I decided to try my hand at deep-dish dough, just to get my feet wet.

The dough was actually much easier to assemble than I thought it would be. In fact, the most challenging thing about it was the fact that you need to refrigerate the dough for 24 hours before using. Just add warm water and flour to a stand mixer with the dough hook attached, mix together, then add a mixture of water and yeast, along with some olive oil and salt. Allow all of this to mix together for about 5 minutes, then it can be covered and kept until the following day.

Once the dough has come to room temperature, it can be pressed into a 9x13-inch baking pan. In this particular recipe, the secret to a perfect crust with no soggy middle is the cheese. You divide the cheese so that most of it is layered underneath the sauce, thus protecting the dough from coming into direct contact with the liquid. The pepperoni covers the sauce, then the cheese tops it off. The pie is baked all the way on a rack in the very lowest part of the oven, further ensuring that the crust will be baked through completely and evenly.

This pizza tastes like heaven. It's an amazing blend of creamy, tangy, spicy, and savory, all on an abundant crust that tastes too good to be homemade. I think if I served this to company, they would have a hard time believing it came out of Cooking Light. It just tastes way too good to be healthy (but it totally is!). I think part of the reason is because I swapped out the recipe's basic pizza sauce, and subbed in a tried-and-true sauce that has been a winner here every time. My son thought the sauce was really pretty spicy, and it is. But it can always be toned down to please more sensitive palates, and in the end it didn't stop him from gobbling down two big pieces! Oh, one more thing: I used turkey pepperoni instead of the recommended "regular" pepperoni, and we didn't miss a thing. Dare I say, I actually made the recipe even healthier than Cooking Light did?

Pepperoni Deep-Dish Pizza
adapted from Cooking Light
makes 6 servings

Ingredients
1 cup warm water (100 to 110 degrees F), divided
12 oz. bread flour (about 2 1/2 cups)
1 package dry yeast (about 2 1/4 tsp.)
4 tsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
Cooking spray
1 1/4 cups (5 oz.) shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese, divided
1 1/2 cups pizza sauce
2 oz. turkey pepperoni slices
2 Tbsp. grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Directions
1. Pour 3/4 cup warm water in the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment. Weigh or lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Add flour to 3/4 cup water; mix until combined. Cover and let stand 20 minutes. Combine remaining water and yeast in a small bowl; let stand 5 minutes or until bubbly. Add yeast mixture, oil, and salt to flour mixture; mix 5 minutes or until a soft dough forms. Place dough in a large bowl coated in cooking spray; cover surface of dough with plastic wrap lightly coated in cooking spray. Refrigerate for 24 hours.

2. Remove dough from refrigerator. Let stand, covered, 1 hour or until the dough comes to room temperature. Punch dough down. Roll dough out to a 14x11-inch rectangle on a lightly floured surface. Press dough into bottom and partially up sides of a 9x13-inch metal baking pan coated with cooking spray. Cover dough loosely with plastic wrap.

3. Place a baking sheet in the oven on the bottom rack. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

4. Arrange 3/4 cup mozzarella evenly over dough; top with pizza sauce, pepperoni, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and the remaining 1/2 cup mozzarella. Place pan on baking sheet in oven; bake at 450 for 25 minutes or until crust is golden. Cut pizza into 6 rectangles and serve.