Winner Winner Chicken (and Burger) Dinners!

Our latest cooking adventures were both smash successes! Maybe we're getting better at cooking, or maybe we're getting better at picking recipes, but the last two meals have both been tres delicious!

Last Week:
We picked Mini-Meatball Burgers on Antipasto Salad. This sounded kind of weird, but it turned out to be our highest rated meal yet! See the recipe:

Mini Meatball Burgers on Antipasto Salad

• 1 1/2 pounds ground sirloin or ground beef, pork and veil combined

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

• 1 egg yolk

• 1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano(a couple of handfuls)

• 2 T tomato paste

• a handful of chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon crushed hot red pepper flakes

• EVOO for drizzling, plus about 1/4 cup for dressing salad

• 2 romaine lettuce hearts, chopped

• 1 can (15 oz) quartered artichoke hearts drained

• 1 jar roasted red pepper, drained and shopped

• 4-5 pepperoncini peppers, chopped

• 1/2 cup pitted good quality olives

• 2 celery ribs, chopped

• 3 T red wine vinegar (eyeball it)

• 1/2 pound fresh mozzarella or fresh smoked mozzarella sliced

• 1/4 sliced provolone cheese, chopped into strips

• 1/4 pound sliced genoa salami, chopped into strips

• 2 vine ripe tomatoes, seeded and diced

• 1 cup basil leaves, torn or shredded.

• Preheat a grill pan or large nonstick skillet over medium-high or prepare an outdoor grill.

• Place the meat in a bowl and season with salt and pepper. Add the egg yolk, cheese, tomato paste, parsley, garlic, and hot red pepper flakes. Mix the meat and form 12 large meatballs, 2 inches each. Flatten the meatballs and form patties. Drizzle patties with EVOO and add them to the hot pan or grill. Cook for 3 minutes on each side. Hold the cooked patties on a plate under foil.

• On a large platter or salad bowl, combine the romaine with the quartered artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, hot peppers, olives, celery. Toss the salad with vinegar first, about 3 tablespoons, then toss with EVOO-up to 1/4 cup to your taste. Season the salad with salt and pepper to taste. Scatter the sliced Mozzarella, tomatoes and basil across the salad. Arrange the cooked mini meatball burgers on top of the arranged antipasto salad.

• Note: When dressing an oil and vinegar salad, put the acid on first then the oil. IF you add the EVOO first, the oil keeps the acid from getting to the greens.

The prep for this meal was a lot of chopping (obviously, it was a salad), but went fairly quickly with many hands. We also chose to omit the olives because none of us particularly care for them. The mini-meatball burgers were mixed and shaped by Ms. D and grilled by Mr. M. After one bite of the finished burgers, we all decided that they were completely delicious! Most and flavorful like a meatball, but complete with grill marks! What could be better?

Um, we're going to need to start buying this stuff in bulk.

The salad and dressing were also phenomenally delicious, and we agreed that this salad could easily stand on it's own as a meal, no burgers needed. We also agreed that if you decided to make this meal just for yourself on a weekday evening, it would be appropriate to make a poor man's version and leave out the roasted peppers, artichokes, and olives.

This recipe was, in fact, so good that I made it for my husband the very next week! I skipped the olives and artichokes, but we happened to have roasted red peppers so I added those in. He agreed that the salad and burgers were delicious.

I do believe the final score of this meal was 4.25. Yay for making AYP!! Let's hope this was a predictor for our students who are in the middle of taking their high stakes state tests this week!

This week:

We struck gold twice in two weeks - this week with Chicken Greek-a-Tikka Salad with Parsley Feta Pesto. It was my turn to host, and Ms. A was absent to to a dinner date with an old friend. It's a good thing we're so nice and made her a leftover portion of the meal before we ate, because this one was so good we would have easily eaten her portion too!

Chicken Greek-a-Tikka Salad with Parsley-Feta Pesto

Ingredients

• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 tablespoon grill seasoning (recommended: McCormick Montreal Seasoning)
• 2 to 2 1/2 pounds white meat chicken, cubed into bite size pieces
• 1 heart romaine lettuce, chopped
• 2 vine ripe tomatoes, chopped
• 1/2 seedless cucumber, chopped
• 1/2 red onion, chopped
• 3 ribs celery, chopped
• 1/2 cup pitted kalamata olives
• 6 pepperoncini hot peppers, chopped
• 1 lemon, juiced
• Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling
• Salt and pepper
• Special equipment: metal skewers

Parsley Feta Pesto:

• 1 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves
• 1/2 cup feta crumbles
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 teaspoon coarse black pepper
• 3 tablespoons chopped walnuts
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Directions

Preheat a grill pan to high heat.

Combine yogurt and next 4 ingredients. Coat chicken in mixture then thread meat onto metal skewers. Brush grill pan with oil and grill meat 5 to 6 minutes on each side.

Combine chopped lettuce, chopped veggies, olives and hot peppers on a large platter or in a serving bowl. Dress the salad very lightly in lemon juice and extra-virgin olive oil and salt and pepper.

Place all ingredients for pesto in the food processor except extra-virgin olive oil. Turn processor on and stream in extra-virgin olive oil.

Place grilled meat on salad and top liberally with pesto.

The prep was again a lot of chopping due to the fact that the main component of the meal was a salad. Once again, we left off the olives due to personal preference.

The prep for the chicken kabobs went quite quickly. Ms. D. made the Greek yogurt sauce (minus the coriander, because I didn't have any) while I chopped the chicken into bite size pieces for the kabobs. Once they were cut, we mixed them up in the yogurt and slid them onto the skewers.

In the meantime, Mr. M opened bottle after bottle of wine (it was a rough week) and chopped all of the ingredients for the salad, while I discovered were were out of propane and therefore would not be grilling the kabobs. We decided to bake the kabobs at 350 and then finish them off under the broiler, and they turned out completely delicious!

Our last task was to make the Parsley-Feta-Pesto. As we began to look at the ingredients, we began to doubt Ms. Rachel Ray. How could a pesto made of parsley and walnuts be anywhere near as delicious as a basil and pinenut pesto? I happened to have basil, pinenuts, and Parmesan cheese on hand, so we decided to make the Parsley Pesto as directed, but also to whip up a batch of traditional pesto, just in case. As soon as we made the walnut pesto and tasted it, Mr. M said "That bitch, she was right again - this is incredible!", which pretty much summed up all of our thoughts. This pesto was out of this world - and why we doubted something with Feta cheese as a primary ingredient, I have no idea.

We did end up eating all of both of the pestos with this meal, so I might double the pesto recipe the next time I make it. It was that good.

The lemon-olive oil dressing was light and refreshing, and paired perfectly with the yogurt covered chicken and pesto. This meal, on the whole, was absolutely one of the best! Ms. D gave it a 5, I gave a 4.25 (same as mini-meatball meal), and Mr. M gave a 4.5, for a total of 4.8. We're still making AYP (barely!).

Yes, this is actually our picture. We are that good!

I'm sure we'll be screwed next week, but in the meantime, we'll enjoy this victory.