Bagel Pizzas with Fresh Mozzarella and BBQ Sauce

Nothing incredibly original or stretching my skills here, but a good, quick snack nonetheless.

Luckily, I have a couple of good bagel stores in walking distance to get fresh bagels. (No pre-packaged, mini-bagels here!) And I can also get a fresh mozzarella, with or without salt. (We prefer without -- you can always add it if you need to.)

I didn't have any pizza sauce or leftover sauce from pasta, and I wasn't going to open a can of tomato sauce, figure out what spices I needed, for just two bagel halves. Next best thing, there was a bottle of BBQ sauce in the fridge from Dinosaur BBQ. A little on the spicy side, but that's a plus.

Cut open the bagel. Make a circular depression with your thumb going around the bagel. Put the bagel in the toaster oven and toast it for about half the time you normally would.

Spoon in BBQ sauce into the depression and spread it around. (Don't fill it like a trough.)

Cut up the mozzarella. Here's one time where the packaged stuff, particularly string cheese, might have been better. The fresh kind is a little watery, especially if you refrigerate it in water after you buy and use it the first time. I tried to dry the slice a little with paper towels. It worked a little.

Sprinkle some spices on top: garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, salt, whatever. Pop it back into the toaster oven and cook it some more. Watch that the cheese isn't burning ... or dripping all over the inside of the oven.

Meals for Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Mushroom omelette, BBQ chicken pizza bagel, Chicken pasta salad.

Breakfast was an omelette with mushrooms. The mushrooms were part of the gravy for the roast beef for a past last weekend. I heated them in a pan with a little olive oil, cut them up a little (probably should've done that first, but then there would've been something else to wash), poured in a scrambled egg on top it.

Lesson Learned: Check the house for bread before starting this. There were bagels in the freezer, but I wanted one for lunch. The choices were burger and hot dog buns or taking a walk to the bakery for a decent roll. I had already started cooking and it was already 85 degrees outside and climbing. When the egg and flipped and done, I cut it into three long slices with the spatula and nestled it on a hot dog bun. Egg was good, but overall a little bit of letdown. Also, it could've used some cheese, but I thought of that too late.

Lunch was a bagel pizza. Thanks to the heat, the bagel thawed on the counter in about 15 minutes. (By the way, the bagels were bought fresh, not frozen. We freeze the extras.) Sliced it open and squeezed some Famous Dave's BBQ Sauce on both halves, spreading it with a knife, and toasted the bagel for a minute or two. Back to the fridge for the leftover grilled chicken from last night and a couple of string cheeses, shredding both. After removing the bagels from the toaster oven, I lined the rack with foil, put the bagels back and added the chicken, topped with cheese (and a little more BBQ sauce, why not?). Set the toaster oven to bake at 350 and let it heat up for about 5-6 minutes. Not bad. I could've added some mushrooms, but I didn't know how the gravy and the BBQ sauce would interact.

I'd try this again, fiddling with the ingredients.
By the way, I like fresh mozzerella for sandwiches, but I've learned that it's too watery for stuff like this.

Dinner preparation started early. I boiled half a box of mini-penne just so there would be some pasta in the fridge in case anyone wanted to make microwave mac-n-cheese. Then I glanced at the back of the box and saw the pasta salad. Since I knew we were having the leftover chicken for dinner (did I mention the heat outside? I wasn't going to the grill again), I changed what I would've had, which was grilled chicken salad (lettuce, tomato, chick peas and chicken, with Caesar dressing) to pasta salad. Heated up some generic (but small) frozen veggies. When we were ready to eat (in the A/C'ed living room with a tape-delay of the game on), I threw some pasta in the bowl with sliced chicken and a couple of scoops of veggies. I added in some olive oil and a splash of milk. (The box called for heavy cream. I made do.) Thirty seconds nuking later, I was having dinner.

Verdict: A little on the dry side. I like sauce. Maybe it needed more oil. Maybe it needed the cream. But it's something that could be improved upon rather than thrown out.