Pinterest Tested September Week 2

I’m back with the second week of Pinterest Tested recipes. This week I made an eggplant pizza, a 3-ingredient Apricot chicken, a quick and easy pizza crust, and two copycat DIY recipes.   I didn’t get to make any fall desserts like I wanted to, but I was happy with the recipes I tried.

Pinterest Tested September Week 2 Recipes:

Eggplant and Olive Tapenade Pizza @Sustaining The Powers

I think I’ve mentioned several times that I LOVE eggplants. Maybe it’s because of my fond memories of helping my grandfather tend to his Chinese eggplants in his square garden. It was always fun helping him pick those long shiny purple vegetables  and running them to grandma to be cooked up. My grandmother would prepare it with a miso sauce, which is how I normally eat eggplant, but I wanted to try something totally different – Eggplant and Olive Tapenade Pizza from Stephanie at Sustaining The Powers.

Do you see all those eggplants on that pizza? As soon as I saw Stephanie’s recipe, I knew I HAD to try it and it was FA-BU-LOUS! Definitely a keeper and a new favorite way to eat eggplant.

I did make a few changes to her recipe. I used the quick and easy pizza crust recipe below because I’m impatient and I didn’t par bake it.  I just threw all the ingredients on the pizza and baked it. As you can tell by the picture, it doesn’t rise as much as Stephanie’s crust, but this is my go to crust when I’m in a rush.

The funniest part of this recipe was the reaction of  my kids when I said it had anchovy paste in it…lol. They weren’t sure they wanted to try it, but everyone ate it 🙂 I will say though, be careful with how much olive tapenade you use because it can make the pizza too salty if applied with a heavy hand.

---

Quick and Easy Pizza Crust @Allrecipes

This Quick and Easy Pizza Crust recipe has been pinned over 5,000 times, been reviewed over 1,600+ times, and has almost a five-star rating. Is it the best pizza crust I’ve ever had…no. But hey, when you’re in a pinch (or just impatient like me) and you need a quick pizza dough recipe, this one is great. It really does make a crispy thin pizza crust in under 30 minutes, prep time included. Just an FYI, this recipe uses bread flour.

---

3-Ingredient Apricot Glaze Chicken @The Seasoned Mom

First, I have to say that Blair at The Seasoned Mom is a regular on the Merry Monday Link Party here on the blog. I’m so glad that she link-ups each week because I absolutely love her simple and no fuss approach to cooking. I mean, you can’t get any easier than 3 ingredients for a winner winner chicken dinner!

Okay, I have to admit that this wasn’t a 3 ingredient recipe for me because I couldn’t find Catalina dressing at the market. No problem. I Googled a Catalina dressing recipe while I was at the store and had all the ingredients at home to make it. Yay!

Now,  here’s a lesson folks. Double check your pantry before you go to the store. Not only did I have to make the Catalina dressing from scratch, but I came home and had no dry onion soup mix! Ugh, don’t you hate when you think you have something and you don’t. Thank goodness I had all the ingredients necessary to make both the dressing AND dry onion soup mix in my pantry or I would’ve been one unhappy camper.

After preparing all the ingredients, I placed my chicken pieces on a large pan and poured the sauce over it. However, I should have placed the chicken in a casserole dish or smaller pan because the sauce was spread too thin on the bottom and ended up burning a bit.  A casserole dish would’ve let the chicken pieces swim around in the sauce and probably would’ve prevented the sauce from drying out and burning. Plus, I really think the chicken would’ve been better with a little extra gooey sauce to be dipped in.

Anyway, regardless of all the small obstacles, the end result was a quick and simple dinner that I would make again – with the changes above.

9/12/2014 – I made this chicken again because I knew it would taste so much better if the sauce hadn’t burned in the large pan I originally placed it in. This time I put the chicken in a 9 x 13 casserole dish so the chicken was sitting in more of the sauce. The sauce thickened this time without burning and everyone agreed that it came out much better this way.

---

 

Dry Onion Soup Mix @Allrecipes

This is the dry onion soup mix that I used in the apricot chicken recipe above. It has been pinned more than 1,000 times and have a full 5 star review. With the exception of the celery seeds,  I think most people would have the ingredients in their pantry to make this. Now I have no reason to ever buy dry onion soup mix ever again.

---

Homemade Catalina Dressing @Kitchen Simplicity

Update 3/19/2015 – This blog is no longer up, so I am linking another Catalina Dressing Recipe.

I haven’t actually used this recipe as just dressing since I needed it for the chicken recipe above. However, I think it tasted great and would make a nice dressing over a garden salad. It uses ketchup, oil, sugar, and red wine vinegar as the main ingredients to give it a sweet and tangy taste.

---

Those were the recipes I tried out this past week. There weren’t any family complaints on any of them, so I’d say they were all a success. Now I have to decide what to make for next week’s Pinterest Tested review.

Did you try out a new recipe from Pinterest this week?