Tag Archive for 'spinach'

Chicken and Biscuits Florentine

Published by Hal on April 6, 2008 in recipes. 1 Comment

So, what’s the worst thing a food blogger could do (besides not cook, or write about it)? Not have batteries in the camera to take a picture of the food s/he is writing about. Ooops.

Well, anyway, I don’t have pictures to share, but I thought I would provide the recipe anyway, just in case I forget (because I am prone to do that, now). I came up with this because I needed to use up a lot of things: I had a can of cream of chicken soup that we bought for some reason, and I had a ton of vegetables in fridge that were calling out to be eaten. I thought I might could do a chicken primavera, but then I didn’t haven’t enough farfalle pasta. I thought linguine would be too much. So I opted for rice. But as I was eating this with the rice, I realize that the chunkiness of the veggies and the sheer volume of the spinach was calling for something else–a biscuit! So, there you have it.

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 onion, finely diced
  • 3 carrots, diced
  • 3 ribs of celery, diced
  • 4 cloves of garlic, smashed and minced
  • 4 chicken tenders, cut in to bite sized pieces
  • 1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
  • 1 can of milk
  • 1 box of frozen spinach, thawed and very well drained
  • 1/2 green pepper, diced
  • 1/2 red pepper, diced
  • salt and pepper

Procedure

Heat the oil over medium heat in a large saucepan. Add the onion, celery, and carrots, and a dash of salt and pepper, and cook until the vegetables are tender. Add the garlic and chicken, stirring just until the chicken is nearly cooked, about 5 minutes. Add the soup and milk and stir to combine. Then, add the spinach and stir to evenly incorporate everything. Once the mixture has come to a bubble, add the peppers. Spoon over a split biscuit and serve.

One final thing to note: I upgraded my WordPress installation tonight–if something doesn’t look right, please contact me at blog [at] commonculinarian [dot] com.

Food Reviews: Kroger Private Selection Woodfired Stone Baked Italian Garden Pizza

Published by Hal on January 27, 2008 in product reviews and recipes. 5 Comments

Edit: Hi, and welcome to the Common Culinarian! If you’ve come here as a result of a search for this particular kind of a pizza, special welcome! Don’t forget to check out the rest of what this site has to offer: http://commonculinarian.com

We can’t cook all the time, because some time we just want something that is tasty and we want it in a hurry. Often times, this means that we resort to convenience foods–you know the ones, those TV dinners, frozen pizzas, pastas-in-a-can, and so on. Sometimes you just stumble on a gem, and it can quickly become a standby for those days when you just don’t feel like cooking, you’re short on time, or you don’t want to think about what to throw together.

Private Selection Italian Garden PizzaStacie and I seem to have found such a gem. We love pizza–in fact, I thinking about experimenting with my own dough and coming up with some fun creations to write about. So, today, when trying to decide what to have for lunch we pulled out this pizza I picked up at the grocery store on a whim.

If you have a Kroger in your area, I would recommend checking this pizza out. It’s the “premium” store brand, Private Selection, Woodfired Stone Baked Italian Garden Pizza. Once you get past the rather long title, at it’s core this is a simple vegetable pizza; the pizza has sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach, pecarino Romano and feta cheese on top of a crispy, thin crust that has been lightly covered in just enough tomato sauce to hold the whole thing together.

The pizza also has very generous servings–one third of each pie is one serving. And, it’s reasonably healthy, making it that much more appetizing: 340 calories, 12 grams of fat, and 5 grams of fiber per serving. Since there are just two of us, we each had half the pie, giving us 540 calories, 18 grams of fat, and 7.5 grams of fiber. That’s a little on the heavy side, but still respectable for a decent amount of food and still much more healthful than, say, a Big Mac.

And, it only put us out about $5.25, much cheaper than most carry-out pizza joints.

Want to make this on your own, or don’t have a Kroger (Fred Meyers, Scoops, etc..) near-by? Here is my deconstructed version of this pizza:

Ingredients

  • 1-10 inch pre-made thin pizza crust (or, you could try my quick rising pizza crust)
  • 1/4 cup of pre-made pizza sauce
  • 1/4 cup of cooked, well-drained spinach
  • 1/4 cup of chopped sun-dried tomatoes
  • 1/4 cup of sliced mushrooms
  • 1/4 cup of Pecorino Romano cheese
  • 1/4 cup of crumbled Feta

Procedure

Pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees (F). Spread the sauce over the crust. Then, layer the remaining ingredients, reserving the cheese for the top. Bake directly on the rack for about 6-8 minutes, until the crust is crispy and the cheese has melted and turned slightly golden.