Potato, rosemary and blue cheese pizza

Another one from Hugh’s Veg Everyday book… and another one using his magic dough (which I used before to make flatbreads) but this time to make pizza.

It was the first test of my oven in my new flat, to see if it would get hot enough for pizza. And if my flat would be warm enough to get the dough to rise! Well, the dough didn’t rise as much as I thought it would, but I thought that might have been due to the metal bowl I had it in, as opposed to the glass Pyrex bowl I’ve used previously. But it didn’t matter as the dough was perfectly easy to use and seemed to taste pretty good!

The recipe from Hugh makes 3 pizzas so I thought I’d make two that evening, with the intention of having the leftover pizza for lunch the next day and freezing the leftover dough. So that didn’t quite happen… The first pizza was the new potato, rosemary and blue cheese topping, which was just so delicious I ate most of it… Oops! It also had some slow cooked sliced onions on it too, but perhaps you can’t see that in this photo:

Then the next pizza I made was a traditional margherita one… I had some home-made tomato sauce, mozzarella and fresh basil. All yummy ingredients but the pizza didn’t look all that pretty so no photo of that one! It was tasty though.

Finally, I had some dough in the fridge (the third portion) that I was going to freeze. But for some reason I didn’t and the next day I ended up making a kind of calzone by filling the dough with cheese, tomato and basil and frying it in a hot pan. It may have gone a little overcooked (some blackened patches on the outside), but as I was uncertain as to how to make this, I think that was for the best and it still tasted good. I’ll definitely make it again! But sadly, no pic… what can I say – was too yummy I ate it so fast!

Chocolate chip cookies

Inspired by a recent post from the Guardian on how to make the perfect chocolate chip cookies, I went ahead and attempted them.

I did the smart thing and read the recipe through before I started… I don’t always do this, and good job I did, as they recommend leaving the cookie dough in the fridge overnight before cooking. I would have been very disappointed if I had tried this on a Sunday only to find I would have to wait til the Monday (after work) to make them.

So, I have made a batch of cookies. Two trays in the oven – the ones on top cooked in the alloted time and came out well. The ones on the lower tray weren’t cooked in the 15mins so I left them in a little longer… perhaps a little too long as they have turned out very well done!

Very full tart

Since moving into my own place, I missed all the kitchenware which I shared with my housemate… one of which was her quiche dish. I am not very good at making shortcrust pastry (even with the bought, pre-rolled kind) but I still liked to give it a go. Especially as I saw her quiches all come out so well!

As a housewarming gift, my (now ex-) housemate gave me a lovely quiche dish, so I can now attempt quiches to my heart’s content. My first attempt was not a quiche, per se, but what Ottolenghi calls a “very full tart” (from his book, Plenty).

It’s basically lots of roasted veg in a tart with an egg/cream mixture to bind it, topped with feta and ricotta. Here’s a couple of pics… First a close up of the very full tart…

And next, the tart itself. I think I over cooked the pastry but at least it wasn’t soggy as a lot of my pastry is!

Honey cake

I was given a recipe from a friend for a lovely sounding Honey Cake. She had told me beforehand that it contained almonds but you couldn’t taste them. Although I was skeptical, I got round to making it this weekend…

Firstly, it was a super-easy cake to make, and came together very nicely. Secondly, I think its actually quite a “healthy” cake, as it used wholemeal flour and not all that much sugar. OK, so it had 300g of butter (or Stork in my case) in it, but I think the wholemeal flour makes up for it!

The gist of the recipe was a mix of butter and sugar, to which you add 4 eggs, one at a time, with a touch of flour to help the mixing. Then sift in the flour and baking powder (I found that all the “good” bits of the wholemeal stayed in the sieve after sifting, but I put them in the cake anyway) and fold into the egg/butter/sugar mixture. Then stir in the ground almonds, put the mixture into a cake tin. You can top with sliced almonds at this point, which I did do, but I think next time I will omit these, or add at the end. Then into the oven for 45mins.

I found that my cake looked like it might burn on the top, and not knowing what I should do to prevent this, I turned the oven down a tad. Unfortunately, I think I turned the oven down too much and my cake started to sink in the middle! I couldn’t rescue it, sadly, but I don’t think it impaired the flavour too much – just its appearance!

So here is the finished cake… a little brown on the top (not burnt, just well done). After it comes out of the oven, you drizzle it with honey and leave to cool in the tin. The honey really makes this cake, and its lovely and moist. The outer edges which have gone more brown than the rest actually taste the best – slightly caramelised. YUM!

On a side note, I think this recipe came from a River Cottage cookbook, but I’m not entirely sure.

Vegan Lancashire Hotpot

I made some lovely veggie (vegan in fact) Lancashire style hotpots on the weekend. Simon Rimmer had a recipe for them in the April 2009 BBC Good Food magazine which I’d always had my eye on, but never attempted.
I was kindly given some lovely mini Le Crueset casseroles as a housewarming gift and they seemed perfect for this. A mandolin I was given a year or so ago also proved very handy for getting the potatoes sliced really thin!
So here they are… The recipe said serves 6 but I’d say it’s more like 4. And I didn’t use the veg in the recipe but substituted in some others (out went the celery and in went leeks!).

I think they tasted good but maybe better using fresh thyme (not dried like I used) and adding Madeira like the recipe said. As I didn’t have any, I used red wine instead. Possibly not the best substitute!

Mini Victoria sponges

Yesterday, for a friend’s housewarming I decided I would make a Victoria sponge cake. However, I had seen a recipe ages ago in The Guardian weekend magazine for mini Victoria sponge cakes, which I thought might go down so much better. And you know what? I think they did.

The recipe was a basic plain cake recipe (I think!) which was divided among 12 muffin cases, rather than into two cake tins. After baking and cooling, you slice the cakes in half horizontally and layer in some whipped cream (whipped with some icing sugar & vanilla) and sliced strawberries. Top with more cream & strawberries and you get the following little tower of yummy-ness!

They can be a bit messy to eat but they are truly gorgeous! I may sound a little big headed saying that but the thanks really goes completely to the person who wrote the recipe (and I’m not sure who but it was in the Weekend supplement to the Guardian on 7 May 2011).

I’ll update this post once I’m connected up to broadband (this post is brought to you via 3G) and I’ve found the recipe online.

UPDATE: The recipe for these is by Lorraine Pascale, and featured in summer picnics in the Weekend supplement to the Guardian.

Spinach and feta filo pie

A short post and a slightly blurry photo about this lovely pie I made last weekend. If you hadn’t guessed, it had spinach and feta in it, and it was super tasty!
A couple of changes I made to the recipe:
– I made two pies in cake tins about 20cm across rather than one large pie. There was enough filling for this and seemed to work well. As such, I used all the sheets of filo from the packet.
– I added a few sliced mushrooms to the filling mixture and if I make this again, I’ll do the same but add more, plus maybe some sun-blush tomatoes.

So that’s it and here’s the blurry photo I have of one of the portions: