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 Lancaster - Spicy Yoghurt Marinade for Chicken

Although we've been back at home a week from our US trip, and there are no jet lag excuses left, cooking is still something I don't really want to get involved with in any deep way. Not least because I haven't really been seriously food shopping and so I don't have everything in the house. So it was with some relief that I remembered a jar of pasta sauce in the cupboard which would do in an emergency. And today seemed to be that emergency - I definitely wanted an easy dinner that I didn't have to think about much.

Hidden away.

I suddenly remembered that bit of chicken in the freezer and wondered if there was anything simple I could do with it so I quickly scanned the index of River Cottage Everyday in case there was something I could rustle up without too much effort. To my surprise I noticed Spicy Yoghurt Marinade for Chicken which I had never seen before. I thought that there wasn't a recipe in the book I hadn't at least read through so when I looked this up I eventually found it tucked away at the bottom of the Herby Chicken page. It looked so simple, so trivial, that even opening a packet of pasta sauce seemed complex (just getting the lid off seems to be quite a faff these days). So I took out a little pot of home made yoghurt from the fridge, added curry powder, garam masala and a little bit of lemon juice and mixed them together adding a clove of garlic and dropped in the chicken. I did this at lunch time so that the flavours would develop. 

Marinading

Then I cooked a bit of rice and voila! it was all done. 

Ready to eat!

PS It was, incidentally, lovely to eat too. One of those infinitely adaptable recipes that you can put in almost any combination of spices that you like and it will always be that little bit different.

Jottage from Lancaster - er.....

We have been away on holiday for nearly 3 weeks travelling round the North West USA doing some touristy things like Yellowstone National Park, Jackson Hole, Seattle and Portland. Coming back home after a 9 hour flight without too much sleep was a bit of a culture shock, and adjusting to this time zone some 8 hours ahead of what we have been used to hasn't been too easy. Overall, we haven't felt too ill - just tired at unpredictable times of the day.


I dragged myself to the freezer last night in an attempt to find something light and tasty for dinner that would perhaps make us both feel a bit better. There was an unmarked plastic tub of something tomatoey which looked rather nice. I am always of the opinion that I will remember stashing away these little left over bits and pieces and will know exactly what they are. This time (in truth like all the other times) I had absolutely no idea what was in it. But it looked quite nice and so I pulled out a piece of haddock that I bought some time ago and put the frozen tomato stuff on top, covered that with a bit of cheese that I had put into the freezer before we went away and cooked in it my faithful Remoska. As it happens, it was really rather nice. Now I am trying to rack my brains to work out what that tomato stuff was as I want to do it again. It was certainly a River Cottage something. 


Tonight I have found a chicken breast and I don't have any ideas about what to do with that but I may well mine the freezer again just in case something else turns up...

Jottage from Cambridge: Packed Lunches

Everyday, usually just after 7am when my husband is playing with Tristan in bed, I get up and make up him a packed lunch. The main reason for doing this is because he works on a back street in Angel with no cafes or shops nearby and, although a trolley does apparently go round his workplace with sandwiches on display, I figure that by making his lunch we probably save around £5 a day. (A significant saving now I’m not working.) I like to think too that, like Hugh who writes that his passion for food is equal to his passion for his wife, I am demonstrating how much I love my husband by including things that he likes to eat. On special days, for example, I cut his sandwich into diamonds rather than rectangles, and I get excited in Sainsbury’s when roast beef or mortadella are on offer as I know how much he prefers them to simple tuna mayo or ham salad. I always include something savoury, usually a pork pie, scotch egg or hard-boiled egg though at the moment I’m giving him pieces of the broccoli quiche I made at the weekend for Tristan. (Tristan has become a bit more fussy recently and, although he adored the quiche when I made it first time, he now only really wants to eat bananas –preferably two or three in one sitting.) More often than not though Theo’s lunches are quite bland and, as he’s away from home for nearly twelve hours a day, I’m not convinced that he’s really eating enough of the right things to offset the afternoon sluggishness. 

Hugh lists his reasons for making packed lunches in a chapter titled ‘weekday lunch (box)’ in the Everyday book. Although cost does come into it, for Hugh the main reason for doing it yourself is because, compiled from leftover meat and veg, you’re bound to be able to make something much nicer than a pre-packed sandwich. Certainly at the moment I’m not sure that my efforts are better than an M&S, or even Tesco, meal deal. So, with Hugh’s help, I am going to transform  the contents of theo’s lunchboxes, and I will make sure that he posts up his comments on this blog for you to read!

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.

Jottage from Lancaster - The 2nd loaf

We managed to eat all the first loaf, which I didn't expect. But apart from being very obviously 'artisan' it wasn't that good. But I was quite excited about having another shot at it. I have some four grain flour which was milled reasonably locally and also the end of a bag of white flour. I was more confident about the recipe, and perhaps being a little freer with the water than the first time and going more with my instincts. 


As it was mostly whole wheat flour I wasn't expecting it to turn out like tights after kneading, but I was a bit surprised when it could have passed for maybe a new Aran sweater and the dough definitely had some stretchy quality that the last lot didn't have. I gave it plenty of time to rise and we went out and I just left it to fend for itself. When we got back it was deep and spongy.

I knocked it back by poking it with my fingers as the book says. I still wanted to physically thump it, but I poked it quite thoroughly into submission so that it was flat like a pancake. 

You have to fold it, roll it and pinch it just so to get it into shape. This is the one process in the 40 pages that he doesn't explain the reason for. In the past, I would just sort of mould it into shape with my hands but apparently that isn't the done thing to do. I thought I would make a baton-shaped loaf and the book says that that is the most complicated to do. Regardless of the difficulty, I had a go and it did make quite a satisfying baton-shape which I am quite proud of.

If this turns out like the last loaf, then it will be a great weapon to attack potential burglars but I am much more optimistic this time. John brought in an old stone flag which must have been on our roof some time in the past and so I put that in the oven to warm up so that this time I can call it stone-baked. At the moment it's in the oven and I am watching anxiously through the glass doors. It looks lovely - hopefully it will taste good too.


Here is the finished loaf fresh from the oven - I only hope it tastes as good as it looks!

Jottage from Cambridge - Chard and New Potato Curry

I happened to watch a little bit of Saturday Kitchen the other week, and they were raving on and on about Jersey Royals. To me potatoes, whether they’re from the Basics range or Taste the Difference, taste pretty much the same though, for aesthetic reasons, I do like it when they’re nice and yellow inside. Well anyway Jersey Royals were on offer in Sainsbury’s so I decided to buy a bag and use them to make the Chard and new potato curry (RC Veg, p.24). It was Theo’s birthday last week and I thought it would make a nice Birthday tea (followed by an M&S Lemon Tart). Although it was very easy finding Jersey Royals tracking down some chard proved tricky. They certainly don’t stock chard in our Sainsbury’s, so Tristan and I trekked down Mill Road on a mission.

 I started at Al-Amin, the largest grocer’s on Mill Road and infamous for its owner who ran for the position of Cambridge University’s Chancellor when Sainsbury’s expressed an interest in the site opposite (Lord Sainsbury was also running to be Chancellor and did, in the end, win the majority of the votes), but the guy at the till clearly hadn’t heard of the stuff. According to Wikipedia chard has a variety of names: Swiss chard, silverbeet, perpetual spinach, spinach beet, crab beet, bright lights – but I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t lurking with the spinach and lettuce with this name or any other in Al-Amin, or indeed in Arjuna where they also sell a variety of greener than green green veg. 

Garlic, chilli and ginger being after bashing

Tesco doesn’t stock chard either – when you type it into the search engine the website helpfully asks: do you mean ‘hard’? and brings up a selection of Hard Skin and Nail Files and Hard Skin Remover – not quite what I was looking for. So where can you buy the stuff? Well, certainly in Waitrose where chard appears in their ‘Limited Selection’ range (chard is in season in April and May so I suppose they might only sell it in those months.) With Waitrose being so far away I ended up substituting chard for kale which Hugh himself recommends. I don’t find kale all that interesting to eat but the dish was very enjoyable. The potatoes were as yellow as the pudding to follow and all the flavours came together in a very satisfying way. It was perhaps a bit too hot for my liking so I’d use half a chilli next time rather than a whole one. I would certainly try and make it with chard too as, having learned how nutritious the stuff is, I am determined to find some! 

Tasty, though a little too hot