Import 2

Pizza chicken pasta

I found this recipe in Great Food Fast, my favorite pressure cooker book, but it's easily adaptable for baking in the oven too. It's warm and comfort-food-ish without being heavy, and is very kid-friendly as well! I mean, it's practically PIZZA. This is great served with some garlic bread or, I don't know, some vegetables? I seem to have skipped that part. Ahem. Anyway! Try this:

Pizza chicken pasta

Ingredients

• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 2 Tbsp. olive oil
• 1 jar (24 ounces) spaghetti sauce
• 2 Tbsp. water
• 24 slices pepperoni
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella
• Corkscrew pasta

Instructions

1. Whisk together the salt, pepper and flour, then toss the chicken breasts in the flour mix
2. Heat the olive oil in a skillet or in a pressure cooker set to brown, then lightly brown chicken on each side
3. Put chicken in pressure cooker dish or casserole dish and cover with spaghetti sauce, water, and pepperoni
4. Cook in a pressure cooker on high pressure for 8 minutes, or bake at 350F in a casserole dish for 40-50 minutes depending on thickness of chicken breasts
5. While chicken is cooking, cook pasta in well-salted water
6. Serve chicken and sauce over pasta, sprinkling mozzarella over all of it

Notes

You can also transfer the chicken to a sheet pan, then top with mozzarella and cook under the broiler till melted and bubbling. This would be easy to do in a slow cooker as well! Just allow 4-6 hours for the chicken to cook

Help me out! What's your go-to side dish for spaghetti sauce based recipes?

Cheese straws

After talking and hemming and hawing about it forever I finally bought a cookie press. It's so much fun! I can't believe I waited so long. I just had to try cheese straws first, and they were fantastic. They also kind of made me want to wear a big hat and drink mint juleps, but that's for another day. The cookie press I bought came with a recipe book with this recipe included; I changed it to use butter instead of margarine, because yuck.

Cheese straws

Yield: 5 dozen 3 inch straws

Ingredients

• 8 oz sharp cheddar cheese, graded
• 3/4 cup butter, well softened
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp hot sauce (I used Louisiana)
• 1 3/4 cups flour, sifted
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (or more if you like the heat)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven 400 F
2. Blend cheese, butter, egg and hot sauce and set aside
3. Sift together flour and spices, then knead into butter mixture, either by hand or in a food processor with the metal blade
4. Use cookie press with star disk, or pipe out of ziptop bag onto ungreased cookie sheet, and bake for 10-13 minutes until golden brown. Remove immediately to cooling rack; store in airtight container when completely cooled

By the way, show of hands: who has had cheese straws before? Turns out my lived-in-the-South-all-her-life friend Vanessa had never had them. What about y'all?

Candy cane syrup

Who else has leftover candy canes? I love the look of them on the Christmas tree (I should probably take that thing down, huh?), but I'm not likely to sit around and eat a dozen candy canes when it's all over. I love peppermint in my coffee, though, so I figured why not use them up?

Candy cane syrup

Ingredients

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 6-12 candy canes

Instructions

1. Stir together sugar and water in a heavy pot over medium heat
2. When sugar has melted, drop in unwrapped candy canes and stir until dissolved
3. Let syrup cool in the pan, then pour into clean jars

I hear tell this is also great over ice cream. How else should we use it?