Recipe Reviews: Bruschetta, Turkey Reuben, and Spinach and Mushroom Mini Pizzas
Hey guys! Guess what?! I recently had the chance to interview Food Network Chef Claire Robinson, host of 5 Ingredient Fix and Food Network Challenge (interview will be posted later tonight). In preparation for my interview, which was set up in thanks to Nicole of Marina Maher Communications, I was sent a few of her recipes to try featuring Arnold Sandwich Thins.
I’ve actually reviewed Arnold Sandwich Thins on my blog before,
and while I love them, I don’t love the fact the fact that they contain sucralose! I actually can’t taste it when I eat the sandwich thins, but I still don’t like knowing it’s one of the ingredients! So Arnold Bread, get the sucralose out of your sandwich thins!
Okay, moving on…
In addition to sending me the sandwich thins, Nicole was also kind enough to send me a gift card so that I could purchase all the perishable ingredients I would need in order to make Claire’s recipes! Thanks, Nicole!
Grape Tomato Bruschetta
If you love tomatoes, you’ll love this recipe! Now, I actually hate raw tomatoes, so if I were to make this just for myself I would heat the tomatoes first since I like cooked tomatoes. However, since everyone else loves raw tomatoes, I made the recipe as is, which they enjoyed! Oh, except I made it with just regular olive oil instead of garlic infused olive oil – I was going to make this at a friend’s house, who already had garlic infused olive oil, but I ended up just making this at my house, and so I used what we had. Still came out good, though!
Three Layer Turkey Reuben
Growing up, my mom always made turkey sandwiches with turkey, American cheese, lettuce, and Russian dressing. I liked having this turkey reuben because it was like a slight twist on the classic turkey sandwich. I liked that there was melted cheese, and thought the sauerkraut was an interesting addition. I did substitute mustard for the thousand island dressing just because I used to have Russian dressing all the time (tastes pretty similar to thousand island dressing) but now prefer mustard on sandwiches instead. This turkey reuben also seemed to be a twist on the classic reuben sandwich, since it was made with turkey instead of corned beef and multi-grain sandwich thins (I used whole wheat sandwich thins) instead of rye bread. This made it seem a lot lighter and the perfect sandwich to eat in the summer.
Mushroom and Spinach Mini Pizzas
These mini pizzas were interesting because they were made with ricotta cheese and sundried tomatoes. Now, you are supposed to pulse the sundried tomatoes until smooth, then add ricotta cheese and pulse to incorporate. I wasn’t sure if the sundried tomatoes were smooth enough, so when I added the ricotta cheese, I kept pulsing it until the texture was even smoother. I think it was fine before, though, because you know what happened when I kept pulsing it to make the texture smoother? The ricotta cheese turned this orange pink color, and looked kind of like Russian dressing. Which meant that when I tried it I already had it in my head that I wouldn’t like it. If I had just pulsed the ingredients a little bit like it said, I think I would have really liked it! Oh, and I might have added too many sundried tomatoes - I got the julienned sundried tomatoes instead of the whole ones, so I tried to just estimate how many julienned sundried tomatoes would make up one whole sundried tomato. It’s possible that I added too many! Anyway, the mini pizzas were topped with spinach and mushroom, which tasted great! 
Hope you guys enjoyed these recipe reviews! If you liked these recipes, stay tuned for my next post, which is my interview with Claire – she has some recipes for sweets and treats to make with Arnold sandwich thins, plus she answered a whole bunch of my questions about foodie ideas, recipe inspiration, her food philosophy, and more!
August 7th, 2010 at 7:07 am
These all look like fantastic recipes!! I especially love the turkey reuben. Those are a weakness of mine
I had no idea Arnold Thins had splenda in them. I guess that’s better than aspartame though, right?? I bet they added that to replace HFCS, which no one likes, but to be honest I’d rather have HFCS I think!
August 7th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
[...] and her recipes are so easy (reviewed a few of them here) [...]
August 9th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Gina ~ Yeah, I agree! For some reason, I think I’d be a little less weary of the HFCS – probably because a lot of the foods I used to eat had it! No one ever worried about it before, since we didn’t know a lot about it, but now we do so if you can avoid it, great! But, that doesn’t mean one not-so-good thing should be replaced with another!