Making Pestos

Pesto is an ingredient we love to use for both pasta and pizza, but itss something we've never actually made on our own up until this point.

Traditionally pesto is made with basil and pine nuts, but there's no reason it can't be put together with different fixings entirely. Today we'll look at two interesting variations we whipped up - sun dried tomato pesto and spinach pesto!

For our sun dried tomato version we're going to use walnuts instead of pine nuts, since they are cheaper and we're more familiar with how to cook them. To start off with we take a bag of walnuts and lightly bake them in the oven.

Next we use about half a bottle of sun-dried tomatoes, using most of the oil packed in the jar.

The tomatoes and walnuts go together in the blender or food processor.

Next we throw in a half cup of Parmesan cheese along with some standard seasonings. It all gets blended together and magically becomes delicious pesto sauce! Add more oil as necessary until you get the correct consistency.

For this pesto we cooked up some rigatoni and then tossed it with the sauce.

This was some of the most delicious pasta we've had in recent memory, and it's a fairly simple recipe. Cover it with some more Parmesan and pepper and throw together a vegetable side for a fantastic weekday dinner.

Next up we made something a little more along the lines of the traditional green pesto. For this version, we toasted almonds in the oven and then blended them with spinach and seasonings to get this thicker pesto below to use as a pizza sauce.

We topped our pesto pizza with roasted red bell peppers and mozzarella cheese.

Here's a slice of delicious pesto and pepper pizza ready to be devoured! We're looking forward to making these again, as well as trying out several new pesto variations in the future.

Bistro Pear and Ham Pizza

It's time for another crazy pizza experiment at Six-Seven-Eight. If you've seen our previous pizza blogs, you know we love to try out non-traditional ways to put together delicious baked pies using ingredients you wouldn't normally see on a menu, from various fruits like apples and strawberries to pizza recreations of sandwiches like the Rueben.

Today we've got another crazy concoction for you - a pizza made with pears and ham. To get started, we're of course making our own crust, although lately we've been using half whole wheat flour and half white flour. If you don't already have your own pizza crust recipe, you can find a bunch of great ones right here.

Making the crust is a little more time consuming, but sometimes it's half the fun! Besides being cheaper than buying pre-made crusts, these tend to be much tastier, and they have a better texture.

After the rising and kneading process, here Megan is rolling out the crust on a pizza pan.

To start our toppings, first we caramelize some diced onions on the stove top.

Next we finely chop up a few cloves of garlic (for a stronger flavor, use whole garlic cloves as a topping!)

Rather than a tomato or alfredo sauce, for this pizza we're using a homemade butter, garlic, and herb mixture.

While putting together the pizza, we realized this would be pretty awesome as a stuffed-crust, so here's some mozzarella cut into small sticks and placed around the edge.

Carefully pull up the edges of the crust and wrap it around the cheese to get the stuffed-crust effect. If you have packaged string cheese it takes a lot of the work out as you don't have to slice cheese into the correct shape ahead of time.

Next we lay down thin slices of pear and top the pizza with mozzarella. Smoked gouda or provolone would also be fantastic on this!

The next topping is thinly sliced brown sugar ham.

Finally we toss on the caramelized onions and pop the pizza in the oven.

And here it is, baked and steaming hot!

After cooling for a few minutes, it's time to slice up this delicious pie.

Another successful experiment in pizza! If you missed it before, be sure to also check out our spicy strawberry chicken pizza.

Asian Style Veal Meatballs

Megan and I plan our weekly meals around what's on sale at the grocery store, but sometimes we stumble upon interesting clearance meats, which promptly hit the freezer until we figure out how we're going to work them into the meal schedule.

One week we found ground veal on a great sale and decided to give it a shot, as it's not something we'd normally consider spending money on.

For this dinner, we decided to do veal meatballs, but rather than the standard Italian style with pasta and tomato sauce, we went for an Asian twist. Most meatballs call for bread crumbs or panko crumbs, but we find using oatmeal works just as well for providing structure and keeping the meat together.

For a closer look at how to put these together, you can see our previous blog on making mozzarella stuffed meatballs. Here we're mixing the meat and seasonings with the oatmeal.

Oil your fingers and roll out a small portion of ground veal into the first of several large, delicious meatballs!

Next we start the sauce, which begins by sauteing sliced mushrooms.

Then we add in soy sauce, ginger, beef bouillon, teriyaki sauce, sesame oil, and thicken it all with corn starch. After it's cooked down for a short time, everything goes into a pan and prepares for baking.

After they come out of the even, we use the meat balls to top noodles. Here we're using bead threads, rather than linguine or fettuccine, which can usually be found in the Asian section at the grocery store.

Grilling Recap: Sweet Tea Pork and Trying Out Salmon

Last summer was unquestionably the year of the ribs, as we tried out many different ways to cook these iconic grilled delicacies - from cherry rubbed ribs to injecting them with homemade root beer BBQ sauce.

We may not have done nearly as many rib cookouts this year, but the 2013 season was still packed to the brim with delicious grilled dinners, like our crowd-pleasing Asian chicken skewers, or the grilled lamb feta sliders.

This summer's grilling is now winding down to a close, and looking back there's still a good deal we haven't covered here at Six-Seven-Eight, so today we'll quickly recap some interesting things we made you might want to try for yourselves.

Rubbing and injecting ribs always results in great flavor, but if you don't want to spend hours cooking a huge rack of ribs over indirect heat, you can get awesome results with just plain old pork chops (or beef or chicken!) Here we're going to make sweet tea pork chops. To save time we're using a store bought rub, but a homemade tea rub could be delicious, and it would let you experiment with all kinds of fabulous flavors (just make sure to get loose tea, not the bagged kind).

While the rub is store bought, of course the sauce won't be! Here are the ingredients for our sweet tea BBQ sauce: molasses, a can of sweet tea (experiment with different brands and flavors!), liquid smoke, worcestershire sauce, ketchup, ginger, orange juice concentrate, and garlic and onion powder.

We've covered how to put together BBQ sauces pretty extensively in the past, and if you need a refresher, check out our look at making smoky raspberry sauce right here.

Our rubbed and sauced up pork chops are getting cooked over direct coals along with some corn (which always tastes better grilled).

Of course you'll want to baste the chops with extra sauce after turning them over for more flavor. Man did these turn out great!

You may notice we don't do much in the way of seafood at Six-Seven-Eight, as Megan isn't a fan of things with gills or fins. For one weekend grilling I did finally get to try out some salmon, however. Here I've got two salmon fillets, one coated with a mixture of mayo and dill, and the other coated with lemon juice and a sprinkling of pepper.

We're also going to be grilling up a selection of sliced bell peppers and partially boiled potato wedges.

We got this nifty grilling skillet that prevents smaller things like sliced veggies from falling through the grating.

Here's my salmon cooking, along with some bratwursts for our non-seafood eating guests.

The salmon turned out well, but I'd really like to try them in different ways, like using grilling cedar planks. Here Megan has turned her bratwurst into a delicious meal on a bun with a side of grilled veggies:

Thanks for stopping by, and check back soon for a lot of amazing things we've made lately, from baked vegetable fries to Asian style meatballs and much more!