Puff Pastry Pizza & A Giveaway

21.03.2012 Jackie Dodd-Mallory (Senior Editor)

For this giveaway, I’m working with the website Big Kitchen. With my crazy schedule and my propensity to take on way to much, most of my shopping is done online at the end of the day. Big Kitchen has just been added to my list of sites to browse in the free moments that I do have. Along with the wide array of items that you would expect from an online kitchen store, they also have a good selection of items made from recycled and sustainable materials.

And I’m sort of in love with these bowls and I want this because it reminds me of The Wizard Of Oz, and how have I lived my entire life without one of these?

You see how it goes.

The lovely people over at Big Kitchen sent me a set of Alligator Dicers to play with, that I have since started to refer to as my "Food Chompers." AND they are also going to send a set, one small and one big, to one of you! SO nice.

If you are the lucky winner, here is what you will get:

One Large Alligator Dicer, and one mini dicer.

I used my iPhone for a scale reference to get a more accurate idea of size.

There is a mushroom, cut in half and place on the chomper plate to show you the size difference.

To use the chomper, just place the food on the plate, and press down, the food that is diced goes into a collection bin that is attached.

The Mini dicer is above, and the large dicer is below.

Here are the two collection bins side by side.

As you can see, with a half of a mushroom (or if you used a whole mushroom for that matter, you don’t really get a dice as much as "strips." I like this cut for the Quinoa salads I seem to make 5 times a week.

I also Chomped a bell pepper, and asparagus spears and those gave me a really great, consistent dice.

The best use for the Alligator Dicers is garlic and onions. I tend to need minced garlic and chopped onions on a near daily basis, and these dicers do a fast and efficient job.

I use the small one for the garlic

and the large one for the onions

This is especially helpful for those recipes that call for 6 cloves of garlic, minced and 2 onions, chopped. Not only a huge time saver but all of the pieces are the same size, which is important to insure that they cook evenly.

For the below recipe, I chopped: red bell pepper, asparagus, zucchini, garlic, onions, and mushrooms.

The dicers cleaned up easily with a hand washing and are small enough to store just about anywhere. While I do really love having these, I will probably still just use a knife if I have only a few vegetables to chop. When it comes to those recipes that call for a large amount of diced vegetables, these dicers are great to have around.

To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on this post. Unfortunately, we are only able to ship to US addresses. Giveaway closes at 3-27-12, at 5:00 PM, PST.

This is an easy, weeknight meal that you can throw together in just a few minutes. I used the vegetables I chopped with the Alligator Dicer as toppings.

Puff Pastry Pizza

1 sheet puff pastry, thawed

2/3 cup red pizza sauce

1 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

5 spears asparagus, trimmed and chopped

5 mushrooms, diced

1 clove of garlic

1/4 of a whole white onion chopped

1/2 one large zucchini, chopped

1/2 1 red bell pepper, chopped

2 oz goat cheese

Preheat oven to 400.

Place a sheet of parchment paper on the counter with one end hanging off the counter in front of you. Place the puff pastry on the parchment paper. Press your body against the parchment paper to keep it from sliding around and roll the puff pastry in both directions 4-5 times each way to make the puff pastry thiner, wider and longer. Transfer puff pastry on the parchment paper to a pizza stone of baking sheet. Roll the edges inward slightly