this week we tried 3 new things! Monday was chinese bbq chicken, Tuesday was gochujang jjigae (red pepper paste soup), and Wednesday was roasted garlic chicken pesto pizza.
MONDAY: unfortunately, i can’t say much about the chicken, except for the fact that it was delicious! kevin made it and he combined 3 different recipes online but didn’t remember what personal touches he made to it…all i know is that it’s some sort of combination of garlic, ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce, hoisin sauce…maybe some honey and rice wine too? my only note for kevin was to let the chicken get some good grill marks and charring on it before adding the sauce, as opposed to grilling the chicken IN all the sauce.
TUESDAY: gochujang jjigae is probably one of my top 5 favorite korean soups! this paled in comparison to my mom’s but it was a valiant effort. we didn’t have any seafood or beef to add lots of “punch” to the soup base, so i used chicken broth instead…i personally think it tasted too “chicken-y” but oh well. it was good enough to hit the spot. just took my mom’s instructions:
1) heat up the broth + water with garlic, and then dissolve the gochujang/add more to taste. 2) once the soup starts to boil, added the potatoes and onions. 3) when it got closer to eating time, heat the soup till it boils again and add the tofu, squash, and slice green onions to top it off! (tonight, thursday, we reheated this soup and i added some korean soybean paste and it made the soup taste reeeeeeally good! note to do that next time!)
WEDNESDAY: now the pesto pizza…this was AMAZING! we had leftover pesto and mozzarella cheese that needed to be eaten, so we decided on this yummy meal!
i was inspired by a recipe i saw online, but didn’t quite follow it exaaaactly. here’s how i did it:
1) in a convention oven, bake 3 medium sized chicken breasts, seasoned with garlic salt and pepper. drizzle 10 cloves of garlic with oil, wrap up in aluminum foil, and put in oven with chicken. 2) after those cook, cut the chicken into cubes and set aside. smashed the garlic with fingers and smear them over the pizza dough, to get that good roasted garlic flavor everywhere, and then place them evenly on the dough. *a quick side note about the dough: we did much better this time! worked the dough a bit before letting it sit and rise. also, we decided to make a rectangular pizza so that we would have fewer dishes to wash. 3) spread the pesto evenly on the dough. place the chicken evenly on the dough. 4) cover everything with LOTS of mozzarella cheese (i personally think we may have gone overboard with the cheese and overpowered the pesto, but kevin liked it that way). finally, top everything with some grated parmesan cheese. 5) bake at 475 degrees for about 10-12 minutes.
then voila! a delicious pizza! again, we could only eat half of it, so it turned into a midnight study snack and lunch the next day.
ooh i also made homemade honey mustard salad dressing (because we don’t have any dressing in our house) for the salad to go with our pizza. it was suuuper simple (and delicious)! it’s also pretty healthy, only 40 cal per Tbs (and a Tbs is way more than enough for a serving of salad).
- 6 Tbs honey
- 1/3 cup dijon mustard
- 1 Tbs lemon juice
next week we will begin our attempt to unlock the key to the delicious Yorkside clam & sausage pizza!
alice in cook-ING land 