Home Made Pizza

A few weeks ago we decided to make our own pizza using a Jamie Oliver recipe. It was a bit of a disaster, as the dough was so sticky that it was impossible to handle. I'm not sure if this is how it was meant to be or if we measured out the ingredients incorrectly, but I think it probably could have done with some extra flour. When it came to rolling the mixture out, I couldn't stop it from sticking to the surface and rolling pin which made it difficult to get the base thin enough. Transferring the pizza base to the baking sheet without it falling apart was also a bit of a mission. When we got the first pizza out the oven we realised we'd forgotten to flour the baking tray, so we had to saw it off with a knife. Despite all this, the toppings were really delicious; it's just a shame the base was too thick as it meant it was stodgy in the middle and hard rather than crispy on the edges. I'm not sure if there's anywhere you can buy good quality pizza bases, as choosing your own topping makes for a much better pizza, but the hours we spent trying to make the bases meant it probably wasn't worth the hassle. If you're better at making pizza dough than I am, the toppings below are delish:

Tomato sauce:
250ml passata
4 garlic cloves
A good handful of basil, chopped
Plenty of seasoning

1. Simply mix the ingredients together and spread over the rolled out base

Chili beef topping:
250g beef mince
2 green chilies, diced
1 ball mozzarella
Half a red onion, sliced
Half a red pepper, sliced
4 mushrooms, sliced

1. Fry the beef until browned, add the chilies and cook for a further minute
2. Top the passata with chili beef, add the sliced vegetables and dot with the mozzarella. Drizzle with Tabasco to taste

Goats cheese topping:
Half a butternut squash, deseeded, cut into small chunks
A few sprigs of thyme, chopped
1/2 red onion, sliced
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp redcurrant jelly
Goats cheese, sliced

1. Roast the butternut squash with the thyme and some oil, for 45 minutes or until soft.
2. Meanwhile lightly fry the red onion in a little oil until soft. Add the balsamic vinegar and let it reduce, add the redcurrant jelly and allow to melt into the onion. Take off the heat and allow to cool.
3. Top the pizza with the roasted squash, balsamic onions and slices of goats cheese - tasty!

Chili Beef Pizza:

Plenty of Tabasco:

Goats Cheese & Butternut Squash Pizza:

Thai Green Curry with Prawns

I love Thai food, but I’ve never been particularly successful at recreating it at home. Unless you’re lucky enough to have a good Asian supermarket close by, I find it’s quite difficult to get hold of the ingredients for the paste. As you can see from this recipe on the Guardian’s excellent ‘How to make the perfect…’ blog, the majority of the ingredients aren’t the kind of thing you can pick up from the local supermarket. As I have to make do with ingredients from Sainsbury’s and I’m quite lazy when it comes to midweek meals, I decided to make do with a ready-made curry paste. The paste has the basic flavours needed for the curry, by adding extra lime, fish sauce, lemongrass etc. it gave the sauce the extra zing the paste alone was missing. The end result was pretty good, and considerably cheaper than buying all the ingredients for the paste, the remainder of which would inevitably have ended up rotting in my fridge.

Serves 4:

4 tbsp green Thai curry paste

1 lemongrass stalk

1 tbsp fish sauce

1 tsp light muscovado sugar

Juice 1 lime

Tin coconut milk

1 green chilli

3 cloves garlic, grated

2cm piece ginger, grated

1 onion, finely chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

1 courgette, chopped

1 small butternut squash

100g mange tout

Handful basil leaves

Method:

1. Cut the squash into 1cm chunks, toss in olive oil and roast for 45 minutes until soft.
2. Fry the onion, garlic & ginger for 5 minutes until soft. Add the chilli, pepper and courgette and fry gently for a further 5 minutes.
3. Add the curry paste, fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, lemongrass and coconut milk. Bring the sauce to a light simmer, add the mange tout and roasted butternut squash and keep on a low heat for 20 minutes. If the sauce gets too thick add a little vegetable stock to loosen it.
4. To serve, remove the lemongrass and top with basil leaves and spring onion. If you’d like to add some protein, either add some raw king parwns for the final 5 minutes or add chicken breast chunks for the final 15 minutes and allow them to poach in the sauce.

Curry cooking:

Ready to eat!