Escarole-Wrapped Chicken Meatballs

Growing up in an Italian-American family meant that most major holiday dinners would start off with a soup course. The soup of choice was most likely escarole soup, which is a chicken broth based soup containing carrots, mini meatballs and escarole, sometimes with the addition of acini di pepe pasta. You may also know this soup as Italian Wedding Soup, Italian Holiday Soup, or if you grew up in my old neighborhood you would simply call it S’cadole.

A few years back, when we started our mid-year Memorial Day Friendsgiving dinner tradition with our friends Chrissy, Carl and Lucas, I thought it would be fun to somehow incorporate the spirit and flavor of escarole soup into our menu without actually serving a bowl of piping hot soup on a seasonally warm early summer day. My solution to this was to compact all of the ingredients of the soup – sautéed carrots, celery and onions, chicken, meatballs, broth and escarole – and make a chicken meatball that was seasoned with the carrots, celery and onions, wrapped in boiled escarole leaves. This reimagined version of escarole soup was the perfect compromise for representing a traditional holiday dish during a not-so-traditional time of year.

Of course, this recipe is by no means intended to take the place of a holiday dish that is as traditional and enjoyable as escarole soup. Some traditions are just not meant to be tampered with. However, if you are looking for an alternative to a soup course – especially one that works well as an appetizer and also has the flavors of this traditional and classic soup – then this recipe is one that would work well for your holiday meal!

Escarole-Wrapped Chicken Meatballs
Serves 4-6

1 lb ground chicken
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 celery sticks, finely chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 egg
salt and pepper
1 head escarole
1-1/2 cups chicken broth

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Pour olive oil into a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the chopped carrot, onion and celery. Sauté for 10-15 minutes, until soft.

Mix the ground chicken, breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, egg and salt and pepper with the sautéed vegetables. Roll the mixture into meatballs.

Place the meatballs on a sprayed 9’x12” baking dish. Bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes, or until the meatballs start to turn a golden brown.

While the meatballs are baking, you will prepare the escarole. Start by thoroughly washing the escarole. Chop off and discard the bottom portion of the escarole head, keeping the loose leaves. Place the leaves in a pot of boiling water, and boil them for 10-15 minutes. You want to soften the leaves to make them pliable enough to wrap around the meatballs.

Once the meatballs are done baking, let them cool long enough for you to be able to wrap them with the escarole. Carefully wrap a few leaves around each of the meatballs, placing the meatballs back into the baking dish. Pour the chicken broth over the chicken meatballs, then return the baking dish into the oven. Bake for an additional 30 minutes. 

Remove from the oven. Plate the meatballs and drizzle the broth over the meatballs before serving.

Beans and Greens Stuffed Peppers

Stuffed peppers are a very popular and hearty dish that could be prepared in a number of tasty ways. On this food blog alone, you could find quite a few stuffed pepper recipes from previous posts, including ground turkey and rice stuffed peppers, crab-stuffed bell peppers, stuffed peppers and eggs, grilled Mediterranean stuffed peppers, and Aunt Tina’s stuffed peppers recipe, which uses an old world bread style stuffing that may be my favorite stuffing recipe of all time (links to all of these recipes can be found at the end of this post).

Because I have been experimenting lately with recipes that are heart healthy, yet still bursting with flavor, I decided to use a modified version of a beans and greens recipe as pepper stuffing. Beans and greens – which is another rustic and flavorful classic – could also be prepared in a number of ways, using various ingredients. Just the greens alone could take you in a number of directions. Spinach, escarole, mustard greens, Swiss chard and broccoli rabe will all work well. I’ve selected kale as my green for this go-around, but you could substitute it with any of the above mentioned, or any other favorite leafy green of your choice. For the beans, I’m using canned garbanzo beans. Cannellinni beans (or white kidney beans) would be my second choice for this dish. If you are up to the task, you could purchase and prepare fresh garbanzo or cannellini beans, but you’ll need to set aside some time to have them ready to roll for this dish. You can check out various methods on how to prepare fresh beans by clicking here.

What I really like about this recipe is that it starts off very basic, and is accommodating to many diets. Just a few spices and seasonings are enough to give it real taste and flavor. I added some cooked quinoa to the fold, and I’ve also decided to kick things up a bit by adding some bacon to the mix and sautéeing the beans and greens in a bit of the bacon grease for some real flavor. Of course, you could eliminate the bacon portion if you do not want to add meat to the recipe. But if you are looking for some knock-down flavor, I suggest you give it a try. Shrimp would also be a nice addition if you wish.

Instead of removing the cap of the bell pepper and stuffing it from the top, I went with halving the peppers length-wise, so that the peppers could sit flat on the dish. Not only does it make for nice presentation, it also makes stuffing the pepper a bit easier…and less messy to eat!

No Peppers? No Worries!

If you are not a fan of peppers, or maybe just don’t have any on hand, I suggest you still give this stuffing recipe a try. It would work fabulously served over pasta, or even just served on its own as a warm salad.

Whichever ingredients you decide to incorporate, or whichever method you decide to serve it, I can guarantee you that this recipe will leave you stuffed and satisfied.

Beans and Greens Stuffed Peppers

4 bell peppers (your choice of color), cut in half length-wise with membrane and seeds removed
*4 oz pancetta, diced, or 4 slices of thick cut bacon, cut into small pieces
1 small onion, diced
1 15 oz can cannellini or garbanzo beans
8 ounces of kale (or your preference of leafy green)
olive oil (if needed)
1/4 to 1/2 cup chicken broth (if needed)
salt and pepper
shredded cheese for topping (optional)

* If you prefer not to use pancetta or bacon in this recipe, simply start by sautéeing the onion in olive oil. Other additional ingredients that would work well with this filling are cooked quinoa, rice or other grains (approximately 1/2 cup cooked). You could also sauté shrimp before adding the beans and greens to the mix.

Also, you could prepare the filling ahead of time. Simply refrigerate until ready to use.

Preheat oven to 400˚.

Sauté pancetta or bacon pieces in a large pan over medium heat until crispy and fat is rendered, about 7-10 minutes. Remove pancetta or bacon and set aside.

Add onion to rendered fat in the pan (or start with olive oil if you are not using pancetta or bacon grease), sauté until onions are soft and translucent (add additional olive oil if needed). Add beans, stir together, cook until heated.

Add the kale, stir together. You can add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of chick broth if needed, to help cook down the kale. Season with salt and pepper to taste. If you are using the pancetta or bacon, you will not need to add much additional salt for taste.

Once the kale is cooked down, add the pancetta or bacon back to the pan.

While the stuffing is heating up, prepare your peppers by slicing them in half lenght-wise and scooping out and discarding the seeds and membrane. Place the peppers in a baking dish (open side up), and carefully stuff each of the peppers with the stuffing. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes.

Carefully remove foil, top the peppers with some shredded cheese (optional), and place back into the oven uncovered for an additional 15 minutes.

Serve and enjoy!

The beans and greens, heated up and ready to be used as a stuffing, a topping on pasta, or as a warm side salad.

The peppers….stuffed, baked and ready to be enjoyed.

Previously featured Stuffed Pepper recipes:

Ground Turkey and Rice Stuffed Peppers
Crab-stuffed Bell Peppers
Stuffed Peppers and Eggs 
Grilled Mediterranean Stuffed Peppers
Aunt Tina’s Stuffed Peppers

Our Family Cooking Class at Sur La Table

Purchasing a gift for a loved one can sometimes be a bit of a challenge, especially when you are also responsible for purchasing a gift for Mom or Dad from the kids. This year, all of the above was taken care of in one easy step as my kids and I treated my wife for her birthday to a family cooking class at Sur La Table.

Located in the Court at the King of Prussia Mall (as well as many other locations across the country), Sur La Table is a kitchenware retail company that specializes in cookware, cutlery and cook’s tools, bakeware and glassware, along with many other food and kitchen related items. Many of their stores also offer on-site cooking classes that cover various topics, such as pizza night, knife skills, seasonal favorites, grill mastering and pasta workshops. Classes may also be built into special themed nights, such as date night, seasonal specialties and family dinners. These special cooking events have always been on my radar, so celebrating my wife’s birthday with a family cooking class would no doubt make for a fun and memorable evening for us all.

The evening started with a warm and friendly greeting from Chef Michael, who is the resident chef and instructor at the King of Prussia location. The classroom generally accommodates up to 16 people, and we were at full capacity. There were families of four (including ours), along with a few groups of two. The class is set up with two prep stations that fit up to eight people at each station. We were paired up with another group of four, and would spend the evening helping each other through the steps and procedures that Chef Michael would demonstrate. The front of the classroom was equipped with a fully functional gas range and oven, with both a reflective mirror above and a tv camera off to the side to help us view the lesson from different angles. And of course there were a number of hand washing stations in various corners of the room. One of Chef Michael’s rules was to always wash our hands after handling food, along with any contact that our hands made with our faces, our hair or our phones. Yes, our phones can be pretty gnarly!

The prep area.

The theme for the evening was Italian Favorites, and our menu consisted of Fettuccine Alfredo, Chicken Parm and Chocolate Mint Gelato. Now, I’ve made each of these dishes a number of times, and I’m sure that many of you have as well. While we each may have our own methods and tricks while making these dishes, I do find it very inspiring and helpful to step back and learn the most basic yet perfected methods to a classic recipe. Chef Michael did an exceptional job of not only explaining each of the recipe steps to us on a level that both the parents and kids could understand, he also explained why the steps were being taken and how the recipe would be altered if the steps weren’t followed properly. Chef Michael also took the time to demonstrate and explain the techniques involved with preparing the dishes. Again, while many of the techniques were basic and familiar to all, there were still more than a few tips and tricks that I found to be helpful and will be sure to put them to practice in my own kitchen. Let’s take cracking an egg, for example. I’ve probably cracked a million eggs in my lifetime, and I’ve worked long and hard to perfect the skill of the single-hand crack. What I wasn’t aware of was the damage that I was potentially causing to the yolk by cracking the eggs on the lip of a bowl. That’s right, cracking an egg on the lip of a bowl can penetrate the yolk and cause it to break. It is much safer to crack one egg on a counter top or table top, dropping the egg about the distance of a closed fist. If you are using two or more eggs, simply crack the eggs by tapping them together. The shells will break, but the yolk will not. Quite a few other fun and informative tips and techniques were shared throughout the evening, but I won’t spoil the fun of you finding them out for yourself.

Ava gets crackin’!

Chef Michael demonstrating how to properly knead dough.

Rolling out the dough.

Fettuccine noodles, ready to be boiled.

Because this was a family class, there was a nice balance of kids both young and old. Chef Michael did a phenomenal job of keeping everyone involved, knowing when to ask the help of the younger students (folding the pasta dough, for example), and when to instruct the parents to take the reigns (frying up the chicken cutlets and operating the pasta machine). There was plenty of mixing, folding, flipping and stirring for everyone to enjoy, and the chicken cutlet breading assembly line made sure to keep us all involved. There was also the dessert, which was actually the first recipe that we started with (the gelato mixture needed to chill, which takes a bit of time). Making ice cream or gelato may sound intimidating to some. But with just a few simple ingredients (whole milk, heavy cream, sugar, egg yolks), plus the additional ingredients for the custom flavor that you choose (vanilla bean, mint, melted chocolate, strawberry), and a fairly inexpensive counter top ice cream maker to churn your mixture, you would be surprised on the decadent creations that you could create. Chef Michael gave us some very tasty and informative tips and tricks to make home made ice cream and gelato, but again I must leave it up to you to discover these tips for yourself.

Stirring the Alfredo sauce.

Folding in the fettuccine.

I have to give huge credit and props to Chef Michael’s kitchen assistants. Not only were they available for questions or assistance throughout the evening, they also made sure to stay on top of our mess during clean-up. If we were called up front to watch Chef Michael give a demonstration, you could be sure that we were walking back to a perfectly cleaned working station. The staff was also responsible for following through with finishing touches on our dishes while we moved on to the next recipe.

Dinner is served!

Plated and ready to eat!

If you have ever considered looking into a cooking class – whether it be as a couple, a family or even on your own – I would highly suggest looking into one of the many wonderful in-store classes held at Sur La Table.

For more information, please visit the Sur La Table website.

Cookin’ with the Gluten-Free Paisan: Ratatouille Pizza

I’m very happy to share with you my first collaborative recipe with my good friend, Mike DeStefano (aka The Gluten-Free Paisan). This is one of Mike’s favorite recipes that he and his wife often make….and with a combination of simmered fresh seasonal vegetables, tasty chicken breast and a mouth watering pizza crust, how could you go wrong?

Now, if you are at all familiar with the gluten-free diet, you may be wondering just how in the world could a pizza recipe that sounds so satisfying and flavorful as this be gluten-free? [The original recipe, which wasn’t gluten-free, was first published in Cooking Light]. The first, and most obvious substitute to make this recipe gluten-free would be the crust. Of course, you can use a traditional pizza crust (as I did) for this recipe. But if you are following a gluten-free diet, there are alternative pizza crust options available. You can find a number of gluten-free pizza crusts in the health food section of your grocery store. Common brands that you may find are Mama Mary’s, Smart Flour Foods, and Udi’s. Another popular pizza crust alternative is a cauliflower crust. These may also be available in the frozen food area of your grocery store’s health section. Of course, you can also find a number of recipes online for gluten-free pizza dough or cauliflower crusts, but it may take a little time to find a recipe that is easy to work with or has the taste and texture that you are hoping to achieve. So, if you are just starting to experiment with home made gluten-free doughs, the store bought version may be your best bet for now. But again, if you are not on a gluten-free diet or are not interested in a cauliflower pizza crust, then a traditional crust will do just fine.

Because Mike now follows both a gluten-free and Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) diet, he also made some necessary and tasty adjustments to the toppings so that both he and his wife could enjoy this delicious recipe without any concerns of dietary reaction or inflammation. Early on in his experimenting, Mike decided to leave off the tomatoes and eggplant (to avoid inflammation) and cheese (to cut back on dairy). There were plenty of other delicious flavors happening on this pizza, so the missing ingredients didn’t make the pizza any less enjoyable. Today, he has reintroduced tomatoes and eggplant back into his diet, which shows how patience and determination play into the AIP diet. Go Mike!

I had continued to make some further updates to the recipe, substituting certain toppings that may not be my personal favorite. We both thought it would be fun to not only compare notes both before and after, but to also share the results with the Cucina Domenico readers. Below you will find the original recipe, with ingredients marked with an asterisk (*) to indicate the adjustments that both Mike and I have made to suit our individual tastes.  Like all other recipes that have been shared on my food blog, we both encourage you to take this recipe and feel free to adjust it to your own liking.

(Although we didn’t get to actually work together in the same kitchen this time around, we did go back and forth sharing thoughts and ideas both before and after making this dish. I can only imagine the culinary magic that both Mike and I will make and share with you when we both get together in the kitchen, hopefully soon.)

RATATOUILLE PIZZA
Originally published in Cooking Light

1 teaspoon olive oil
1 red bell pepper, cut into 1/4-inch strips
1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
1/4 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Cooking spray

*1 Japanese eggplant, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/4-inch thick slices
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded reduced-fat pizza blend cheese
3 plum tomatoes, cut into 1/4-inch thick slices

**1 cup sliced mushrooms

***4 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup chopped skinless, boneless rotisserie cooked chicken breast (about 6 ounces)

****1 (10-ounce) Italian thin crispy pizza (such as Boboli)

Preheat oven to 375˚.

Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add oil to pan. Add eggplant, bell pepper and onion; sauté 3 minutes or until eggplant begins to soften. Reduce heat to medium. Add mushrooms; cook 3 minutes, stirring frequently. Add Italian seasoning, salt and garlic; cook 1 minute, stirring mixture constantly. Remove from heat.

Place crust on a baking sheet or a pizza stone (pizza stone is recommended). Spread vegetable mixture evenly over crust, leaving a 1/2-inch border. Arrange chicken over vegetable mixture; sprinkle evenly with cheese. Arrange tomato slices over cheese, and lightly coat with cooking spray. Bake at 375˚ for 25 minutes or until cheese is bubbly and tomatoes are softened.

Slice, serve and enjoy!

Mike and Dom’s Adjustments

*  Because Mike is following both the gluten-free and AIP diet, he has slowly had to work on reintroducing eggplant and tomatoes – which are two key food sources that can cause inflammation – back into his diet. He is also watching his dairy intake. If you are currently adjusting to an AIP diet, the eggplant and tomatoes can be left out without making this pizza taste any less flavorful or satisfying. There are still plenty of tasty ingredients, so the absence of the eggplant, tomatoes and cheese make for a minimal change.

** Dom is not a fan of mushrooms, so he replaced the mushrooms with diced yellow squash. This made for a great substitute, and could be added along with the mushrooms if you prefer both.

*** Dom really likes garlic. Mike LOVES garlic. While Dom went with four healthy size garlic cloves, Mike went all in and kicked it up to five cloves. Adjust the garlic to your taste and preference.

For the chicken, Dom went with cubed and Mike went with shredded. Apparently both were off the hook!

**** The pizza crust is open to your taste and preference. While a store bought shell will do the trick, feel free to use your own home made crust recipe. However, be sure not to go too thin while rolling out the crust, as the toppings are a bit heavy. If you are looking for a gluten-free option, you can find fresh or frozen gluten-free crusts from Smart Flour Foods, Udi’s or Mama Mary’s. Frozen cauliflower crusts are also available, or you can even experiment with making your own cauliflower crust or home made gluten-free pizza dough using  cassava flour (various recipes are available online).