Jottage from Lancaster - making my own pizza

Heather mentioned to me that she made her own pizzas so that was enough to throw down the challenge to me to have a shot at it. I decided to make the Magic Bread as the basis but because I was in too much of a hurry, I chucked the ingredients into the bread maker to let it mix it all up rather than go to the effort of kneading it myself. Lazy, I know, but I ended up with some nice stretchy stuff that I suddenly realised would have to rise for an hour or so before it could be made into pizza. So I postponed the idea of having pizza and put the covered dough into the fridge in the hope that it would be OK to use tomorrow. 


Now tomorrow has turned into today and that bowl brimming over with risen dough seems to be filling the fridge so this morning I took it out and next I had to work out how to make a thin circle. In River Cottage Veg Hugh seems to make out that you can just roll it out very thinly but the dough seemed to refuse to roll and stubbornly stuck to the rolling pin or just shrank back to its original size. Suddenly I remembered a silicone roller I had bought from Lakeland in a sale and I threw the ball of dough on to the baking sheet and eagerly rolled it into shape. It seemed to obey and obligingly stayed in shape.

Nice rolling thing

I then slathered it with a layer of passata, cut up a red pepper very thinly and layered on peperoni, mozzarella and a little grated cheese. I was very spare with everything making one little ball of mozzarella do 2 large pizzas and barely used an ounce of cheese on each. I had put the oven on to very hot, threw in the 2 pizzas (I had enough dough left over to make a plain flat bread-y thing which I'm not sure what to do with yet) and this is what came out:

Now this may not look that appealing or professional - but it tasted wonderful - much tastier than anything shop bought and I would say barely a quarter of the price. Success, I think!

Jottage from Cambridge: Tomato and Mozzarella Risotto

I gave Tristan some of last night's dinner for lunch today. Although I probably can't claim to be 'weaning' him any more (he's been on solids for over 6 months now) some meals still leave me on the verge of tears. I am never sure how much he's going to eat and sometimes all he wants are bananas and yogurt. He'll always eat cheese and apple on toast (River Cottage Baby & Toddler) but I can't really guarantee that he'll be tempted by a spoonful of something which Theo and I have found appetising the previous evening. It was with some trepidation that I gave him some of the tomato and mozzarella risotto. I blended it up a bit and made sure the yogurt container and fruit bowl were well out of sight. I'm happy to say that he did quite like it, though perhaps not as much as me and Theo.

I adore making risotto as it only takes half an hour on the stove and you can't really go wrong - as long as your saucepans are non-stick. However this recipe from River Cottage Veg really beat every other risotto I've ever made. I was all ready to make the roast tomato sauce but didn't realise that the tomatoes needed to be in the oven for an hour, and all of us were famished. So I used passata instead and cut up a couple of really delicious tomatoes and plonked them in the pot. I added a bit of marjoram and thyme that I had in the cupboard and cut up some Basics mozzarella. The end result was deliciously creamy, and I am not going to bother making any other kind of risotto for a while.