Pesto Chicken Pizza

The first meal I ever cooked for M was a pesto pizza in my crappy Allston apartment in an ancient oven in the kitchen with windows that looked into a sketchy alley. I used pesto made my former boss' mother, a little Sicilian lady we liked to call "Mama T" (Mama T was crazy...for reals, but a good kind of crazy: she always used to say "wha's tha matta you? Shutuppa you face!"). We've made pesto pizza since then, but never with homemade pesto.

So, last night we decided to whip up some Chicken Pesto Pizza. I used the almond meal pizza dough derived from NorCal Strength & Conditioning, and a walnut pesto recipe derived from Everyday Paleo.

Walnut Pesto
Ingredients:

4 cups fresh basil
1 cup walnuts
1 cup olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
6 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp lemon juice

I combined the olive oil, garlic, walnuts, sea salt and lemon juice in the food processor and processed until well blended.

I then added the basil cup by cup until the mixture was a pesto-y consistency


Chicken Pesto Pizza
Ingredients:

Almond meal pizza crust
1 chicken breast
4 tomatoes
1/2 cup cheddar cheese (I used Cabot Seriously Sharp)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
As much pesto as is desired (I used a bunch, probably 1 1/2 cups)

I prepared the pizza crust and rolled it out onto a greased baking sheet. We allowed it to bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

While the crust was baking, M seasoned the chicken with garlic powder and parsley and cooked it in olive oil over medium heat.

Once the crust was finished pre-baking, I covered it in pesto and tomato slices (from my mother's garden in VT!)


Once the chicken was done cooking, we covered (smothered?) the pizza.

I added the cheeses,

and she was ready to go in the oven. We baked the pizza for about 15 minutes: until the cheese had started to brown.

While the pizza was baking, I whipped up a salad using cucumber and cherry tomatoes from my Mama's garden.

We snacked on homemade guacamole that M's mother had brought over!

After about 15 minutes, the pizza was finished.

The olive oil from the pesto ended up exploding over the sides of the crust. I'd never made pesto pizza with an almond meal crust, so I didn't account for the oil that would seep through--usually a wheat pizza crust will catch and hold the oil. All of the extra oil caused the almond meal crust to be a total fail-- it stuck to the bottom of the pan.

Even though it wasn't technically a pizza, it was still delicious! The pesto was so garlicky! Just the way I like it! The chicken was tender and the tomatoes were sweet. I'm sure that Mama T would be impressed...

Sometimes I Get Jealous...

I love eating the way that I eat. I love eating the foods that I eat. Eating this way has helped me gain energy, changed my body composition and allowed me to comfortably stop counting calories and worrying all the time about gaining weight.

How do I eat, you ask? Well, I try very hard to follow a Primal way of eating. I'm not strictly Paleo, but I do avoid grains, legumes and dairy* whenever possible. I use unsweetened almond milk in my coffee and I enjoy the occasional spoonful of peanut butter. I will eat special goodies made with wheat flour at family get-togethers, but for the most part I bake with almond meal and sweeten said baked goods with honey or maple syrup. No oats, spelt, amaranth, sorghum, barley, buckwheat or kasha for me.

That being said, sometimes I get a bit jealous when I go through my daily food blog rounds. Carrots 'N' Cake, KERF, Oh She Glows and The Edible Perspective (to name a few) are always creating amazing looking oatmeal or pancake breakfasts. Oatmeal and pancakes with nut butters, chia seeds and berries and coconut! Drool-worthy overnight oats. When I look that the pictures of these concoctions, I sometimes feel like I'm missing out. I want to put all of those delicious toppings on top of something, but I choose not to eat grains. Thus, a grainy base is out.

Last weekend, I gave in to my jealousy and created an almond meal pancake monster, which I topped with blueberries, almond butter and maple syrup. Totally hit the spot!

Monster Almond Meal Pancake

Ingredients:

1/4 cup almond meal
1 egg
1 tsp cinnamon
1Tbsp chia seeds
~2Tbsp shredded coconut
blueberries

I fried this puppy in coconut oil over medium heat until cooked through and browned on each side. Once finished cooking, I topped it with maple syrup, almond butter and additional blueberries.

This was going to be a single serving sized pancake, but it turned out to be gloriously dense and pretty gigantic, so M and I split it. It was everything I'd hoped it would be and more.

The primal way of eating works incredibly well for me. Not only do I feel and look healthier, I've also made huge gains in my workouts since switching away from the standard American diet. Eating this way, on top of my exercise routine, has given me the fitness results that I've always wanted...and I'm still improving everyday. A lot of that has to do with the way that I work out, but, they say, your body composition is 20% exercise and 80% diet.

I rarely crave grains, legumes or dairy and I don't really miss them either. Peanut butter is an exception: I do crave PB every now and then, but because my diet is pretty clean otherwise, I allow myself to give in to this craving (within reason). I eat so many vegetables and such a wide variety of vegetables that I never really want breads or baked goods.

* Okay, so lately I've been less than stellar with the avoiding of cheese. I really don't drink cow's milk, eat yogurt or consume any non-cheese dairy products. I try really hard to avoid cheese...but sometimes it sneaks into whatever I'm eating...mostly because other people put it there to sabotage me. Cheese is delicious, and I'm pretty sure it has addictive properties. I try to avoid it...really, I do.

Lazy Paleo Cookies

I call the following endeavor "Lazy Paleo Cookies" for the following reasons:

1. I used a vegan recipe from Eat Me Delicious, but replaced some ingredients I didn't have with ingredients I did have, because I was too lazy to go grocery shopping.
2. The cookies are not really "paleo" cookies, because they have maple syrup and honey in them...which are better than regular, white sugar, but some paleo sticklers will say that any sweetener is no good.
   
3. The finished product was not actually a "cookie" per se...mostly because I was too lazy to grind my almond flour fine enough...
   

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup almond meal
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
  
• 1/4 cup dried cranberries
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1 Tbsp maple syrup
• 2 tbsp almond milk
• 1 tsp raw honey
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 3 tbsp coconut oil
  

I mixed all of the dry ingredients into a bowl and stirred to combine.

My coarsely ground almond flour

The rest of the ingredients went into another bowl. The recipe called for flax meal, but when I tried to grind my flax seeds, they just kind of spun around in the food processor...and I was lazy, so I just added some kinda-broken-flax seeds to the mix.

I combined the wet and dry ingredients and stirred until they were just barely mixed together...


Plopped about 1 Tbsp of "batter" onto an ungreased cookie sheet and cooked for 10 minutes at
350.


The result was more of a granola than a cookie. I have a feeling that the cookies crumbled because the almond flour was too coarse, and because there was no flax meal. The next time I attempt this recipe, I will make sure to be diligent with my almond flour, and maybe add an egg to keep everything together. Granola is fine. Granola is great! Something for M to put on his oatmeals in the morning.

Have you ever had a recipe turn out differently than you...err....expected?