I married a man who can cook, to the point where he subscribes to Bon Appetit. (Major score.)

He decided to surprise me recently by trying out some recipes from the latest edition, including zucchini fritters with green goddess dressing and shrimp, mango and avocado salad with sweet chili ginger vinaigrette.

I highly suggest you hightail it to Bon Appetit’s website and try these recipes for yourself.  What tasted like a four-star restaurant type of meal was cooked in well under an hour in the comfort of our kitchen.

The chili ginger vinaigrette on the salad was a little spicy for my taste, but very good, and I loved the combination of the shrimp, mango and avocado.

And the zucchini fritters, which basically entailed mixing zucchini and goat cheese lightly frying them in olive oil on the stove, were delish. And did I mention they were beer battered?

We dipped the fritters in green goddess dressing, which includes some light mayonnaise, anchovy paste, dill and sour cream. It apparently was very popular before ranch dressing was invented, and allegedly originated at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco in the 1920s.  It is, without a doubt, tasty.

This is a meal we’d (he’d?) definitely make again.

We like buffalo anything quite a bit at our house, and we love us some pizza. So when I found this recipe a while back, I knew it was one that would be in our weekly meal rotation quite often, with some slight modifications. If you like buffalo-style chicken and you like pizza, you won’t be disappointed in this dish.

Here’s how we make our own version of buffalo chicken pizza. You need:

One pre-made pizza crust–we prefer a wheat crust, or a Boboli crust

One chicken breast cut into small pieces

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 cup buffalo sauce

1/2 cup low-fat Kraft Three-Cheese Ranch dressing

1 1/2 cups shredded reduced-fat mozzarella cheese

Preheat the oven to the temperature your crust instructions dictate  (usually 425 degrees).

Put the buffalo sauce and the olive oil in a frying pan. Add chicken and heat until chicken is cooked.

Spread ranch dressing over the crust, then top with half of the mozzarella.  Then add the chicken pieces, and spoon some of the sauce from the chicken on to the pizza. Then top with the rest of the cheese.

Cook in the oven for about 15 minutes, then finish by putting the pizza under the broiler for a couple minutes.

Bonus: IPAs go great with this pizza. I like pairing it with Dogfish Head”s 60-Minute IPA.

I should preface this post by saying that I know virtually nothing about beer and food pairing.

Last time we made grilled pizza (see  how-to grill pizza), we decided to try something new. Landon (my husband) picked out two beers and I chose pizza toppings we thought would complement those brews. We recently went to Clipper City Brewing so we so we decided to use a couple of the beers we picked up.

The pairing

Combo 1: Clipper City Hop3 IPA
I read that IPA goes well goat cheese, so I built the following recipe around that:

Veggie, goat cheese & prosciutto pizza
goat cheese
red sauce
sauteed baby bella mushrooms
spinach
red onion
balsamic glaze
prosciutto
mozzarella


Combo 2: Clipper City Red Sky Saison Ale
I read that Saison goes well with Old Bay, so I decided to come up with a Cajun inspired pie:

Cajun Pizza
red sauce
mozzarella
Andouille sausage
garlic
green pepper
red onion
crawfish tails
Old Bay

The results

Combo 1: The goat cheese pizza was divine and combined with the Hop3 the flavors became a divine experience. The flavors of the goat cheese, sauce, balsamic and vegetables seemed like it was tripled. The prosciutto got a lost a little bit though. It was nice for a varied texture, but I didn’t really notice the flavor at all. Which is very surprising since prosciutto is so salty.

Combo 2: First of all, the crawfish tails were a bad bad idea. We picked up frozen and they added a fishy taste that was not pleasant. I removed them all from pizza and while the fishy taste was mostly gone, I still noticed it a little. Other than that it was really good. The sausage was really flavorful and the beer seemed richer combined with the spicy ingredients. The Old Bay was a nice touch and I would like to make this pizza again without the crawfish.

For my birthday, I begged my husband – the head chef in our household – to make me some tasty Indian food. And he did.

In a matter of an hour, the man whipped up a super-easy but scrumptious chicken tikka masala (a tangy, tomato-based sauce), some Bombay spiced potatoes and naan that tasted like they came right out of the Indian restaurant down the street.

Chicken tikka masala, bombay potatoes and naan

The naan came out of the bakery at our local Giant; the bombay potatoes came out of a box (microwave and you’re good to go), also from the Giant. Here’s how he made some to-die-for tikka masala that only tastes super-fattening (the sauce only has 9 grams of fat per serving and about 120 calories):

You need:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 jar Patak’s Tikka Masala cooking sauce

1 tbsp olive oil

Directions:

Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in frying pan. Cut chicken into pieces and saute until almost cooked. Add jar of tikka masala cooking sauce. Let simmer for about 10 minutes, then serve over basmati rice.