Recipe: Pizza Casserole
On Deck: "Mom's Chicken Mozzarella" (not my mom's, though)
Because S and I will be away from home on Sunday, I decided to do the new recipe tonight. It was pretty damn tasty, but like always, if we make it again, we'll tweak it. It was also ridiculously (!!!) easy. So easy that this is the kind of meal that you could make with ingredients you could keep on hand all the time, and throw it together in a jiff and bake. S liked it (took seconds, and then picked out of the casserole dish when we were done.), and when I asked him if he is only choking my experiments down because he knows how much I want him to like them, he said no, he did actually like both of the two casseroles. But when I told him that I'd found more casserole recipes for us to try, he said, "More casseroles? You're crazy!"
He might be right. I do have an odd affinity for the casserole. Maybe because we really didn't eat them when I was a kid; I think it was because someone in my family hated them or maybe it was because it was harder to find good recipes then (now, all you do is go online and search; not so much then). Anyway, because he seems to think I can only cook casseroles, next time I'm making a sort of pseudo-chicken parmesan. I don't like real chicken parmesan (I don't much like breaded chicken, unless it's in some sort of lemony-caper-butter sauce), so this might do the trick. No breading, no frying/sauteeing. We'll see.
Anyway, here are the basics of tonight's recipe: first, I sauteed up some ground beef with a little sloppy joe seasoning (which I was doubtful of, but really did add a nice flavor). Then I pressed some reduced-fat crescent roll dough (you know, the canned stuff) into a casserole, layered meat, cheese, pepperoni, a small amount of pizza sauce, and the rest of the crescent roll dough on top of it. That simple. We used two cheeses (which the recipe called for) and I'm glad we did, because it tasted terrific. I think next time, if we make it again, we'd use less ground beef (I actually use ground sirloin, but call it ground beef because well, that is what it is), and wait to put the second layer of dough on until about 10 minutes into the cooking process. The top got too brown and the bottom not quite done enough. Edible, but certainly could be better.
I'm really just happy that I stuck to the plan and cooked another meal this week. (I almost always run the week in my head from Monday to Monday. Just seems to work that way. Which means that these two recipes were in separate weeks. In my head.) 3 down, 49 to go.
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