Chicory, Green Apple and Mozzarella Salad | You've Got Meal!

Simple and healthy croutons salad idea. A recipe using endives, apple and Mozzarella. Perfect lunch/light dinner salad or as a starter.

Can’t believe that it took us so long to actually make a post about this dish. We’ve been making it for the past couple of years and we got the recipe from either Jamie Oliver or Good Food, can’t quite remember who we have to give credit.

Nonetheless, it’s a great salad, full of crunch, flavor, and it’s so light that you can use it as a starter to a longer meal. 

You’ll need:

• fresh mozzarella (for 2 generous portions we used 2 balls with roughly 150 grams each), 
• 1 rather tart green apple (Granny Smith), 
• 2 medium sized chicories (or endives, if you know them by that name), 
• a couple of slices of bread, 
• salt, pepper, 
• olive oil, lemon juice. 

1. Just roughly chop the endives – by the way, the salad looks better if you can find and use both red and yellow - tip types, and cube the bread. 
2. Heat up some olive oil on medium high heat and stir-fry the chicories for 2-3 minutes, remove from the pan and set aside. 
3. Next, in the same pan add the bread croutons, splash a small amount of olive oil on top and cook them until they are slightly crunchy and browned all sides.
4.  Meanwhile, cut or break the cheese in any way you like, dice about 1 quarter of the apple per portion and add it to the mozzarella. 
5. Make a vinaigrette of 1 part lemon juice/ 3 part olive oil, salt, pepper and pour it over the endives, apple and mozzarella. After that, pop in the croutons and mix well.

The next part of the recipe is optional, but we definitely recommended it: open your very well chilled bottle of Prosecco, pour yourself a tall glass of the bubbly and enjoy this great salad that will make you love it at first taste.

Cheers,

Homemade Pizza- 3 Amazing Versions + Pizza Dough Recipe | You've Got Meal!

I honestly think that fast food has gained a far too bad reputation than it deserves. Pizza, hamburgers, kebabs, fries, all these food industry bad boys can be redeemed with just a little ingenuity and effort into some great tasting healthy meals. From all the choices, pizza is my favorite for cooking at home. It’s simple, delicious, let’s you combine a lot of incredible flavors and, if you make your own dough, it gives you that rewarding feeling that you get when baking.

In this case, I used the recipe for the dough from the Jamie Oliver site, except I halved the quantities he suggested, meaning I used:

• 500 grams of 000 flour, 
• 7 grams of dried yeast (that’s basically a small dose that you can buy individually), 
• 1 tbs. sugar, 
• 1 tsp. fine salt, 
• 2 tbs. olive oil, 
• 325 ml of warm water. 

1. Sieve the flour in a large, deep pan (I tried doing this on a work surface but I ended up making a giant mess in the kitchen), add the salt. 
2. In a separate bowl, mix the yeast with the sugar, olive oil and the warm water. 
3. After leaving the wet mixture sit for a couple of minutes, pour it in a well in the middle of the flour and start bringing in the sides into the middle, gradually. 
4. Use your hands to knead the dough until you get a nice, smooth and elastic result. 
5. Next, put the dough in a well floured bowl, cover it with a damp cloth and let it rest in a warm room without a draft source for an hour – it should double in size. 
6. The resulting dough was enough for 3 pizzas with a diameter of 30 cm with a thin base.

The 1^st one was with: pancetta, salami, zucchini, broccoli, as seen above. The pancetta was amazing especially when we curled it on the dough and it became just a bit crispy. The broccoli alongside the zucchini made this pizza so special that it was Mrs. G's favourite. Plus, it is healthier than most. I have to mention the broccoli stays just a bit crunchy and that is perfect and you have to use fresh broccoli, as the frozen one might leave some water and make the pizza more runny.  

Mean while, prepare your ingredients for the pizzas. For all 3 pizzas we used some fresh Mozzarella that we crumbled on top. Also, I started by massaging the rolled pizza dough with a very small amount of olive oil (just enough to give it some shine) and relatively thick tomato paste (also used some of the home made paste that we made for this recipe). The cooking time in a hot oven (200 Celsius) was around 10-11 minutes. As another advice from our pizza adventure be careful with the Gorgonzola – don’t use too much and place it near the center of the dough as it tends to melt a lot and get runny. The same rule applies only partially for the fresh mozzarella as it tends to hold its own better, but, again, don’t overdo it, especially near the edges. 

The 2^nd one: salami, Gorgonzola, zucchini, mushrooms, onion, as seen above. This one had a classic taste, a nice tangy hint from the Gorgonzola and you can't possible not love mushroom and onion together on a pizza.  

The 3^rd one: pancetta, broccoli, zucchini, olives, onions and artichoke hearts, as seen above. Basically the one where I went all out, a true veggie delight on a pancetta bed and topped with cheesy, Mozzarella goodness. 

Super easy, super fast, super fun and super delicious food. And the next time you start taking a look at those menus from your neighborhood pizza place keep in mind that you can take them out of business any time with this kind of tiny effort. Ok, might sound worse than it actually is, a slight exaggeration there, but you get the idea.

Enjoy,

Lumaconi alla Parmigiana- Oven-baked Vegetarian Pasta | You've Got Meal!

While we were grocery shopping we stumbled upon a great variety of pasta. Even though we like to make our pasta from scratch, sometimes is nice to come home in the evening and put together some pasta and other simple ingredients for a nice, under 30-minutes dinner.

We got some Pizzocheri pasta, that still wait patiently in the pantry, and a pack of Lumaconi. Lumaconi is a snail shell shaped type of pasta, that is quite thick and long, which makes them perfect for very al dente boiling and oven baking to finish the cooking.

I like my pasta dishes 2 ways, really light and simple or super cheesy, and I always thought that oven baked pasta is super filling. that is why I wanted to go for a meatless choice for Lumaconi. Eggplant or aubergine is a great choice for vegetarians, being high in fiber content it makes you feel full.

The usual layers needed for an oven baked pasta dish are the pasta, some sauce or filling and some other sauce or topping to seal everything. I chose not to fill the pasta to save time, but the flavor was not lost.

I started off by preparing the sauce:

• 4 tbs olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic finely chopped
• small handful of olives, pits removed and cut in round slices
• 1200 ml tomato passata/ pulp (of course you can make your own)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Heat up the oil, add the garlic, then the olives, stir well.
• Add the tomato paste and let the sauce thicken, stirring from time to time. I let it simmer for about 15 minutes with the lid on because it gets bubbly.

You will also need:

• 1 small eggplant
• 500 g dry Lumaconi pasta
• 500 g mozzarella, cut into cubes
• some basil leaves, depending on how much you like basil
• 100-140 g Parmesan
• some olive oil, to oil the baking tray

• While the sauce simmers, cut the eggplant into slices and then into cubes, deep-fry it until it gets golden, then take it out on an absorbing paper towel.
• Boil the Lumaconi really al dente.
• Grate the Parmesan and prepare the basil leaves.

To arrange the ingredients in a tall baking tray:

• Oil the baking tray bottom and sides with a soaked napkin.
• Pour 3/4 of the sauce on the pasta and mix well, you can  always fill the shells with the sauce. Put aside the remaining sauce.
• Start with a Lumaconi and sauce layer, then add half of the eggplant, half of the mozzarella, some basil leaves and half of the Parmesan.
• Continue with the other Lumaconi layer, eggplant, mozzarella, basil, Parmesan.
• Finish off with the remaining sauce.
• Bake in the oven for 40 minutes, medium heat.

It really is a nice dish, is quite impressive and it is way more easy to make than it seems. We were really satisfied with the result and we hope you try it also. It is great served immediately, but in arder to set a little and have a nice and firm shape like in the first picture, let it acool for a bit.

Enjoy,