Homemade Pizzas

Boyfriend and I found ourselves wandering through the markets this weekend trying to decide what we wanted to make for dinner. We walked past some people chowing down on pizza and decided. Yup. Fancypants pizzas for us!

The great thing about being a the markets, of course, is the wide variety of fresh, cheap and delicious ingredients to choose from. Example: 3 bags of garlic for $4. There will be no vampires in our home any time soon, that's for sure.

Unfortunately, they didn't sell any pizza dough at the markets. Big disappointment. They had premade pizza bases, but apparently we're purists who only want pizza if we get to knead the dough. And by we in this statement I mean he wanted pizza dough so I could knead it. Blarg.

Oh well. I spent a good hour or two looking up recipes for pizza dough once we got home I decided to go with a nice simple recipe from taste.com.au for pizza dough.  It was one of the only ones that actually described how much dough it created (this is a bit of a peeve).  So I have one ball of pizza dough in the freezer and we made two medium sized pizzas.

Pizza Dough
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 7g satchet dried yeast
1/2 t caster sugar
4 cups plain flour
1 tsp salt
4 T olive oil, plus extra

1. In a medium sized bowl, combine water, yeast and sugar. Stir gently to combine then send aside for ~10 minutes (small bubbles should appear after 10 minutes).
2. Mix flour and salt in a large bowl, forming well in the centre.
3. Pour yeast mixture and oil into well, mix to combine with a butter knife.
4. Turn out onto a lightly flour surface and knead for ~10 minutes or until dough is smooth and elastic.
5. Return dough to a lightly oiled bowl, turning dough to coat fully.
6. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm draft-free area for 30-40 minutes or until doubled size.
7. When dough has risen, divide into three balls.
8. Turn out a ball of dough onto a lightly floured surface. Coat your hands lightly in flour and punch the dough to get the air out.
9. Once air has been punched out of dough, knead the dough into appropriate shape. A rolling pin is helpful here.
10. Another helpful tactic is to lift the dough up by the sides and let gravity stretch it, then turn the dough and stretch another side. If you're really fancy, you can throw it around like those pizza makers in movies and on TV. Warning: floor pizza does not taste as good.
11. Any unused dough can be wrapped in plastic wrap and frozen.

Pizza Toppings

Roasted Red Peppers, Roasted Garlic and Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

One Large Red Pepper

One head garlic

6-10 cherry tomatoes.

Olive oil

Salt

1. Preheat oven to 230C (~475F).
2. Peel excess skin off of garlic head, keeping cloves together.  Chop off the tips of the cloves.
3. Put head of garlic in a ramekin or similar small container, pour a glug oil over top of garlic.
4. Cover with tin foil.
5. Put garlic on middle rack of oven and bake for 40 to 50 minutes.
6. Rinse the red pepper and slice in half, removing stem and seeds.
7. Rub thoroughly with oil.
8. Place, outside up, on a baking tray covered in baking paper. Slide into the oven with the roasted garlic, as close to the top as possible.
9. Cook for 10-15 minutes.
10. When red pepper looks well roasted and skin is slightly blackened, take them out of the oven and transfer to a ziploc bag.
11. Set aside bag of peppers for about 10 minutes.
12. Rinse cherry tomatoes and slice in half.
13. Place on a baking tray, cut side up and sprinkle with salt and olive oil.
14. Put in oven for 5 minutes.
15. Meanwhile, remove pepper from bag and peel the skin off.  
16. Chop as desired and set aside (congrats! You've roasted red peppers).
17. Remove tomatoes from oven when they look sufficiently roasted
18. Let garlic sit for 5-10 minutes after removing from oven to cool down.

Once your pizzas are garnished, bake at ~200C for 10 to 15 minutes, or until cheese is melted and crust is looking golden.

For our pizzas, we went a big gourmet.  We picked up a spicy tomato relish to use as our salt base, along with a glug of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt on my pizza.
Boyfriend fried up some grilled sausage meat which he had formed into small balls.  He also had some sliced button mushrooms, roasted garlic, roasted red peppers, roasted tomatoes and finely chopped basil. For cheese, he had sliced baby bocconcini balls and a handful of grated tasty cheese (it's a type of cheddar).

For my pizza, I used some proscuitto, tomatoes, garlic, red peppers and basil.  For cheese, I used the bocconcini balls and some Meffra Garlic Cheddar we found at the markets. I'd never tried it before but it was YUM. I was originally gonna go for a pecorino or similar with the bocconcini, but I'm glad I changed my mind!

Our pizzas turned out freaking DELICIOUS. And the leftovers were awesome for breakfast this morning too!

PS - This was actually last weekend, but then it took me a week to get the photos off of boyfriend's camera.  You know, the ones that are in focus and look nice? The other ones, obviously, are mine.  More baked sweets coming soon.

Ginger Green Beans and Spring Smashed Potatoes

I've had a lot of disappointing adventures in the kitchen recently. I tried making jam, which resulted in me having a strawberry flavoured explosion in the kitchen.  Then I tried to tackle making ravioli. It turns out that pasta is REALLY difficult to make.  Well maybe not so much difficult as finicy? Anyway, it ended up being more like delicious sweet potato filling in a leather wallet. Ick. The recipe for the ravioli and filling is from Petite Kitchenesse and was actually a great recipe. I'm definitely going to try out that filling again. I will be honest, I ended up eating most of it with a spoon :)

So when I finally got something right in the kitchen, even if it's something simple, I wanted to share it with you folks.  Sadly, because I'm horrible at remembering to get photos, there are no photos... but I'm sure you can use your imaginations.

I picked up some big juicy looking Toulouse sausages from the butcher yesterday, and decided to do a lemony potato smash and a green bean dish (thanks to the ladies on Facebook who helped me decide on green beans).

The potatoes were prepared according to this recipe which I posted a few months ago, with a few modifications, see below.

Ginger Green Beans and Spring Smashed Potatoes
Ginger Green Beans
~500g fresh green beans, washed, trimmed and sliced into 1-2" sections
1-2 t fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small red chili pepper
olive oil
sesame oil

Spring Smashed Potatoes
4 desiree potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
2 spring onions
zest of half a lemon
juice of half a lemon
1/2 t hot english mustard (optional)
1-2 T butter 
2 T white wine vinegar
salt
chives

Spring Smashed Potatoes

1. Place peeled, roughly chopped potatoes in a pot of cold water, add a pinch of salt.
2. Place over med-high heat, bringing to a boil and cooking potatoes for 30-40 minutes.
3. Clean and chop green onions.
4. Drain cooked potatoes and toss into a large bowl with butter, lemon juice, vinegar, green onion and lemon zest.
5. Mix well, smashing potatoes slightly with a large spoon but leaving some textured clumps.
6. Add hot English mustard, salt and chives to taste.  If potatoes seem dry, add more lemon juice, vinegar or butter as desired.

Ginger Green Beans

1. Heat a small amount of olive oil in a frying pan. 
2. Add green beans and toss in oil. Cook at medium heat for 5-10 minutes.
3. Add garlic, ginger and chilli, tossing to coat in oil.
4. Cook for further 5 minutes, or until green beans are desired level of 'crunch'.
5. Transfer to a serving bowl and add a small glug (1-2 t) sesame oil for flavour.

I keep forgetting to include this in recipes - but this makes enough green beans for two and enough potatoes for probably 4, but I love leftover potatoes.  These are simple enough that I'm sure you can figure out how to scale these recipes up to feed more people.

On a side note - I actually much prefer my mashed/smashed potatoes with the skin still on, but the potatoes I picked up this week had really dry and scaly looking peels.  Clearly not the best produce is available at the supermarket in the mall.  Not only does leaving the skin on the potatoes give a nice visual effect, it also provides texture and more importantly, I'm told that there is a lot of good vitamins and minerals directly under the skin.

For the green beans, this is a variation on a recipe I've been toying with for a while - the Chinese 5 spice green beans. I'm constantly changing it around. Adding discs of ginger instead of finely chopped bits, adding bacon or water chestnuts, sometimes some toasted sesame seeds.  It's something that's easy to have a lot of fun with and (unless you have 5 spice to add) requires very little effort towards seasoning. Really, green beans are one of the best vegetables.

Is it weird that my grocery store and butcher are in a mall?

Mince Meat Pie

I found myself on Thursday night with a bag of defrosted ground beef and no clue what to do with it. I decided to poll my Facebook friends for their advice, and the wonderful Pixie Kat was kind enough to send me a recipe for Shepherd's pie, so between her and this recipe for Shepherd's Pie I found over at taste.com.au, I was set!

So, I began to make my Shepherd's pie, but once I got started I realised I only had two potatoes, clearly not enough to make the necessary mash.  So instead of covering my mince meat filling with mashed potatoes and baking, I covered it with puffy pastry (thanks Jamie Oliver for teaching me another way to be a lazy cook).  It was delicious :)

Mince Meat Pie
~300g ground beef
2 brown onions, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
2/3 cup frozen peas
2 cups salt reduced vegetable stock.
1 T salt reduced tomato paste
1 1/2 t Worcestershire sauce
2 T flour
1 t oregano
1/2 t cumin
2 bay leaves
1 sheet puff pastry
olive oil
small bit butter
salt and pepper

1. In a large sauce pan, cook onion, carrot and garlic with a small glug of olive oil for about 5 minutes.
2. Add ground beef, breaking up into small bits, cook for 5 more minutes.
3. Add oregano and flour, and stir until well coated, cooking for an additional 2 minutes.
4. Add stock (I used 1 cube of veg stock to 2 cups boiling water), bay leaf, cumin,Worchestershire sauce, frozen peas, tomato paste, salt and pepper. Stir to combine all ingredients and simmer on low for 20-30 minutes or until reduced.
5. Meanwhile, defrost and then roll out puff pastry.
6. Preheat oven to 190C
7. Remove bay leaves, then pour mince mixture into a pie dish, top with puff pastry.  Trim edges to puff pastry and poke hole in the middle.
8. Brush pastry with a small portion melted butter (or olive oil if preferred).
9. Bake for ~30 minutes on lowest rack of oven, or until pastry is golden.

Best served with ketchup and bbq sauce. Yum.  A vegetarian version could be easily made by swapping out mince meat for chickpeas, potato, or more vegetables (frozen corn is also good).  Makes delicious leftovers (it's really good cold as well as reheated).

To make this a proper Shepherd's Pie instead of a pastry-based pie, simply use 4 or so large potatoes to make mashed potatoes, and spread that over pie in place of pastry and bake for ~20 minutes.  Also good in a deep casserole dish.

PS - I really am a terrible photographer, but I'm blaming it on the fact that we currently have no kitchen lights.

Hot Cross Buns

So it's Lent I think, which means it's Hot Cross Bun times. These are one of my favourite seasonal treats, they taste so good lightly toasted with butter and jam. YUM.

I keep eyeing them at the grocery store, but they're $4.50 a pack and I'm still fairly poor. I don't wanna spend all my extra money on tasty bread. That's the money I save to spend on wine!

So I dragged poor boyfriend all over the mall on Saturday looking to replace my 2L Pyrex mixing bowl which I had dropped on the floor a few weeks back. Turns out they are sold out all across the mall. Except for one store, which had them, but was selling them for twice the price that other stores carried them. I had a little mini breakdown in the mall. I totally threw my shopping list at boyfriend's head and had a hissy fit in the grocery store too. Bread flour. WTF is bread flour because they certainly don't sell it at grocery stores here. 

So, weary and triumphant we finally left the mall, then I blew up some strawberry jam in the microwave (not awesome to clean up by the way) and made some hot cross buns. They did not turn out beautiful, but they definitely turned out delicious.

Hot Cross Buns from Recipes+ magazine
4 cups plain flour (or bread flour), plus 1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 7g packet dried yeast (2 tsp)
1 t cinnamon*
1/2 t nutmeg
1/2 t allspice
200g raisins**
1 t salt
1 1/2 cups warm milk
60 g butter, melted
1 egg, lightly whisked
1 can apricots in juice

1. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, yeast, spices fruit and salt.
2. In a separate bowl, mix  milk, butter and egg.
3. Form a well at centre of flour mixture, pour milk mixture into well and stir until dough is just mixed.
4. Either turning out onto a lightly floured surface, or using dough attachment for your hand mixer, knead dough for ~10 minutes or until smooth and elastic.
5. Place dough in bowl cover with clean tea towel, and set aside in a warm draught-free area untili doubled in size (~1 hour).
6. Grease a 23x23cm slab pan (or similar).
7. Scrape dough from bowl using a spatula and turn onto a lightly floured surface. 
8. Divide dough into 16 small balls (20 if using a larger, rectangular slab pan).
9. Place balls side by side into slab pan and set aside in a warm draught free area for 30 minutes.
10. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 200C/180C fan forced (375/350F).
11. Combine 1/3 cup flour and 1/4 cup water in a small bowl and mix to form a paste.  Transfer to a ziploc bag and cut a small (really small) hole in the corner.
12. Pipe crosses onto the dough.  Let me tell ya, this was strangely tricky.
13. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown and cooked.
14. Heat a small bowl of syrup from canned apricots in microwave, brush tops of buns with the sauce.***

* The recipe calls for 'mixed spices', which is actually a thing you can buy at the grocery store.  However, all it is is cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice mixed together. I happen to keep all these things on hand anyway.

** Raisins are our preference, but dried fruit mix is also pretty commonly used in hot cross buns, I just don't like it much.

*** Recipe calls for warm, strained apricot jam, however I don't like apricot jam so instead I simply used the syrup from canned apricots and ate the rest. Yum. Apricots are good.

These made for a fantastic breakfast with some homemade strawberry jam.  My jam, however, needs some work.

Pflaumenkuchen

Growing up, my mum often made us 'Pflaumenkuchen' (German for Plum Cake), which as a kid was a mouthful to say. It is probably one of my favourite cakes ever (the other being Armenian Orange Cake, another specialty of my mother's), and the best part is the combination of a sweet crumbly cake topped with fresh, tart plums.

Since plums came into season, I've been meaning to make some Pflaumenkuchen, but somehow every time I buy plums I end up just eating them. I can't help myself, I love stone fruits (plums, apricots, peaches, etc.).  Luckily for me, someone at work brought in a huge bag of plums which I suppose were from their tree at home, and I quickly pilfered a selection and vowed to make a plum cake. I even went so far as to tell other people at work about my plan, which forces me to actually follow through (otherwise I get that look that says 'where's the cake?'). I think they all think I'm insane since I'm constantly bringing baked goods into the office for no reason, but they hardly complain when they get to eat the fruits of my labour. Except for that one guy who reminded me of the recent article pointing out that sugar is a poison.  He still ate my cupcakes though, so that says something.

This recipe calls for plum prunes, because they're a more tart variety, but since I was using free plums, I have no idea what variety I used. They were a delicious variety.

Pflaumenkuchen (German Plum Cake)
1 1/4 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter
1 egg
1/2 lemon peel, grated (zested, etc)
1 t baking soda
~1 T milk
1/2 to 1 t cinnamon
1-2 T bread crumbs
(1-2 t lemon juice, optional)
Plums (6-7)

1. Using a food processor (preferred) or hand blender, cream butter and sugar, add egg, flour, baking soda and lemon peel.  Mix well.
2. Add milk, mix well.*
3. Wrap dough in wax paper and refrigerate until cool. (I left it in the fridge over night, an hour would probably do).
4. Preheat over to 400F/200C (190C if fan forced).
5. Lightly grease a springform pan (or a pie dish, that's what I used.... the springform is much better though).
6. Lightly flour your fingers so the dough doesn't stick, and transfer into pan.  Press down around edges with your fingers to create a slight ridge. The dough will be fairly shallow across the base of your dish.
7. Wash, pit and slice plums and arrange across the top of the dough.  I prefer concentric circles of slices (quarters or eighths), but you could also use halves, arranging them face up.
8. Mix bread crumbs, 1-2 t sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl, and using your fingers sprinkle across the  plums.  The amount of cinnamon you use is totally up to your taste, I'd recommend the smaller amount. Add a few small dollops of butter ontop of the plums.
9. If your plums are quite sweet, squeeze a small amount of lemon juice across the plums to add a hint of tartness to the flavour. **
10. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Cake is done when a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clear.

* For the amount of milk to add, my recipe actually says 'a little'.  This is one of those things where you want to have an idea of the desired texture of the dough, you don't need much as it's a relatively dry dough, you just want enough to bind all the ingredients.
** I *really* like the tartness, and the plums I used were quite sweet so it worked well for me when I squeezed maybe a quarter of a lemon across the surface. If you prefer a sweeter flavour, or if your plums are already tart, you can skip this step entirely.

Another useful tip, since it's about 30C here (summer, finally!), I put the plums in the fridge overnight, which actually made them easier to slice.  They weren't as juicy and dribbly and mushy (which of course is the best part if you're simply eating them over the sink) as they would have been had I left them on the counter. This was helpful since these plums were a bit bruised.  I may or may not have had to eat a few aesthetically unpleasing slices (they're the most delicious) during the preparation.


So, this cake disappeared within 10 minutes at my office. These people are food ninjas!

Cucumber and Cream Cheese Salad

No photo this post, I ate too quickly.

Last week, I decided to do a 'leftover dump' and eat all the fresh veg in my fridge before it went bad.  So, I made some spaghetti sauce from scratch, which I may post about another day, but oddly, I also found some cucumber and thought "what can I do with cucumber today?".

I had a fair amount of leftover cream cheese from the Red Velvet Cupcakes I made for Valentines day and said 'hey, lets see what Google gives us'. I'll be honest, that's how a lot of meals come about. Without further rambling, here's what I found, based on a bento box recipe from lunchinabox.net. I don't think this qualifies as healthy, sadly, but it did fall under delicious.

Cucumber and Cream Cheese Salad
1 cucumber (telegraph/English)
Half an 8 oz block cream cheese
1 tsp dill
Salt and Pepper

1. Wash the cucumber and chop off the ends.
2. Using the slicing side of a cheese grater, thinly slice the cucumber.
3. Soften cream cheese (either leave out for an hour or so, or microwave on low for 10-20 seconds).
4. Mix cream cheese with cucumber slices and add dill,  fresh cracked pepper and salt (to taste).
5. Serve chilled.

I have two complaints about this meal. The first complaint was from boyfriend who said it wasn't chilled enough, he was probably right. The second complaint was that I was really looking forward to eating the leftovers the next day, but boyfriend ate them all. As a side, one cucumber was just enough for two people who really enjoyed this, so feel free to upscale and add cream cheese to achieve desired 'creaminess'.

I might also recommend adding some lemon juice or seeded mustard.  This was mostly inspired by Jamie Oliver's Evolution Cucumber Salad (online) from his Ministry of Food book, which uses greek or plain low-fat yogurt instead of cream cheese. It's also delicious, but is less... well... Philly.

Easy, Fluffy Hamburger Buns

Last weekend, I was minding my own business, looking at the various cooking people I follow on Google+, and someone (I'm sorry, I can't remember who) posted a link to the Kitchn's post on 12 Recipes to Know By Heart, and I got sucked in (no surprise there).  So one of the recipes posted on this list was How To Make Your Own Hamburger Buns.  I thought to myself, this must be difficult, bread is complicated, but wait, all the other recipes here are so easy, I'll check it out.

So I did.

And it was easy.

After spending the weekend at the Multicultural Festival here in Canberra, I woke up on Sunday morning envigorated and decided to make slow cooker chili. I'm not going to bore you with the recipe because a) ground beef in the slow cooker is nothing special and b) my chili recipe is nothing special either.

However, these buns were delicious. I halved the recipe from the Kitchn blog, simply because I only had enough yeast for half a batch, and it worked pretty well. I look forward to trying the full recipe some time soon and seeing if it makes a difference (it often does).  They were great with chili and not bad the next day either :)

Easy, Fluffy Hamburger Buns
1 7g packet active dry yeast (1/2 T)
1/4 c warm water
1/4 c milk
1 large egg
1 T olive oil
1 T sugar
1/2 t salt
1 1/2 c plain flour
1 T butter
(Sesame Seeds)

1. Poor water into mixing bowl, stir in yeast and let sit until dissolved.
2. In a second bowl, whisk milk, egg, oil, sugar and salt.
3. Pour milk mixture into mixing bowl with yeast and stir.
4. Add flour and mix until combined. 
5. Using a hand mixer (or similar pastry mixer), mix on low speed for 10 minutes, or knead slowly by hand against the counter.
6. Finished dough will be smooth and springy.
7. Place dough into mixing bowl and cover (tea towels are perfect for this).  Let sit in a warm area for ~1 hour (until doubled in size).
8. Turn dough out onto floured surface.
9. Divide dough into 8 pieces and shape into a tight ball by rolling between your hands. *
10. Place balls on baking sheet and let rise until puffy, roughly 30-40 minutes.**
11. Preheat oven to 375F/190C
12. Brush melted butter over risen buns, and then sprinkle lightly with sesame seeds if desired.
13. Bake until golden, ~15 minutes.
14. Slice when buns cool to room temperature.

* I made slider-sized buns, so I made 8, for full sized burgers, this recipe would only make 4. If you make full sized buns, cook for 15-18 minutes.

** Don't touch the buns after they finish rising, I had the brilliant idea to reposition the buns on the sheet before baking and my bun deflated! Horror!

Anyway, these were delicious and light and were great with chilli, and with jam the next morning. I highly recommend them, and pretty much every other recipe I've seen over at the Kitchn Blog, and for the record, the original post has some suggestions on substituting in wheat flour and tips on kneading dough, etc.

On yeasts, they also have a brilliant post that makes yeast seem less scary. For me, this isn't a huge deal, however, since the only yeast they have at my local grocery store is the 7g sachets of active dried yeast... It's really easy to use.  My local grocery store, however, is easy to hate.  I had to explain the difference between baking cocoa and hot chocolate powder to the stock boy today when I asked if they had any cocoa powder in the back. He rolled his eyes at me. I deliberately put the hot chocolate powder back in the wrong aisle. I'm a rebel.