Deconstructed Jalapeño poppers!

Jalapeño poppers are a super favorite of mine.. The best ones I've had are from Jack in the box, which a popular West Coast fast-food chain. So I decided to give it a twist of my own by using some leftovers I had at home. I usually try to use up a lot of leftover ingredients at home because I get it for one recipe and have a random assortment of ingredients that need some way of bringing them together. This time around, the ingredients I was working with where jalapeños, garlic and herb flavored cream cheese and pita bread that I got with a Mediterranean salad the day before. I threw in some mozzarella cheese, ranch dressing and bread crumbs to the mixture and ended up with these deconstructed jalapeño poppers aka jalapeño and cheese pit-zza (pita-pizza). As you may have noticed, I am terrible at coming up with names for my recipe, but the end product was definitely better than my attempt at naming it. So read along...

This is a quick and easy recipe, definitely one of those weekday wonders that you can make up and serve fresh. Having fresh made dinner and using up leftover ingredients from my refrigerator, this is sure a win-win for my kitchen! I also added in tiny bits of cooked chicken on my pit-zza, but that was only to provide some meat to my ever-so-hungry-for-meat husband. This could be replaced by any other toppings you would like. Some options would be olives, bell peppers, onions, or whatever you are trying to get rid of, from your refrigerator! So without wasting more time, here goes the recipe.

Prep time: 5 mins Cook time: 10 mins

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp Ranch dressing
• 2-3 oz. Garlic and Herb cream cheese (You can use regular cream cheese and season it according to your taste)
• 1/4 cup Mozzarella cheese 
• 1/8 cup Jalapeños, sliced (I used the Jar ones, but you could definitely used freshly cut jalapenos as well)
• 2 tbsp Panko bread crumbs
• 1/2 tbsp softened Butter
• 2 Pita breads, cut in quarters (can be replaced with pizza base or any other bread of your choice)
• Cubes of cooked chicken (optional) 
• Salt and pepper to taste 

Directions:

1.  Preheat the oven to 425 F.
2.  Next spread some cream cheese on the base of your Pita breads. 
3.  Then mix the ranch, remaining cream cheese, jalapenos, salt, pepper and chicken and kept that aside .
4.  In another bowl, mix the softened butter and bread crumbs.
5. Spread the ranch and cream cheese mixture on the Pita breads and sprinkle some mozzarella cheese and bread crumb mix. 
6. Bake in the oven for about 7-10 min until the base is crispy and bread crumbs are a golden crispy brown. 

And that's it, your personal pizza is ready! I hope you enjoy this 10 min wonder like I did.. please comment below if you did enjoy this recipe and let me know how you used your leftovers. Was it Mozzarella or Cheddar? Buns or Pita breads? Either way, it will turn out delicious! Until then, Live, Love, Laugh and EAT. Oh yes, EAT! :)