Grace Family Pizza

This one is a recipe I learnt from my father. When I was younger Mum always used to cook every day but Saturday, and that was when she'd get a break and Dad would take over. After several false starts I learned this recipe at the foot of the master, and then after making it properly once I immediately started messing with it. 

This does take a little while, but it's honestly not as much of a hassle as you might think - although things do get a little messy in the kitchen.

Step one is bloom the yeast.  All quantities here are for two pizzas.  Add a tablespoon of dried yeast to a big bowl, then add a tablespoon of sugar and a cup of warm - but not hot - water.  Cover the bowl with a teatowel so it's relatively dark in there and leave on the counter for 15 mins.

Then add about a teaspoon of salt and about two cups of flour.  Keep the flour out, you'll need it again. At this point you can mess with the recipe a little - some olive oil will give you better browning, some oregano will give you a herby crust, I've even substituted some flour for oat bran in the hopes of making a healthier crust.  Mix everything in with a spoon, then as it starts to come together switch over to your hands.  When things are inevitably too sticky, dust in some flour.  Work it into one lump then start pressing your fingertips/knuckles into it to make divots and then folding it over. You're trying to work some air into it as well as agitate the flour enough to form gluten, so you need to use a fair bit of pressure but try not to flatten it too much. You should probably do this on a floured work surface, but I'm lazy and just do it in the bowl.  Knead for 5-10 mins or so then shape into a ball, drizzle a tiny bit of olive oil on the ball to stop it drying out, then recover and leave to rise.  After about 30 mins it should have roughly doubled in size.

This is where some more room for experimentation comes in.  I've done a lot of research on pizza dough recipes and textures, and one technique that crops up a fair bit is to let it rise for a few hours (sometimes even overnight), then put it in the fridge for three days, then bring it out and let it come to room temperature, then proceed.  

I tried this once with about 8 hours in the fridge - the technique is to roughly cover it with cling wrap so it doesn't dry out in the fridge and then leave it. Thus far I have not had the foresight to start making pizza three days in advance of when I want to start eating it, but I am told the long, slow rise in the fridge improves both crust flavour and texture.  I must try that some time.  Anyway, back to the actual pizza I did make.

Grab your big doughball and twist it in two.  Reshape those into nice orbs and then press the centres to get a semi-toroid with a thin membrane in the middle instead of a hole.  With your hands make the toroid bigger for a bit, until it gets a little difficult to handle, then plop it down on a pizza stone or tray (any tray will do, really) and press it the rest of the way out to the edge with your hands, trying to keep a "lip" at the edge that is a bit thicker than the rest so you get a nice bulge at the crust.  No photos of this as my hands were covered in flour by this point, but the trick is to push out rather than down.  Your dough might be a little elastic, if so just stretch it and let it relax a few times - the gluten will loosen up eventually.  If you find yourself sticking to it at any point, just dust your hands with a little flour.

When making pizza you are supposed to build on a slide (called a "peel") while you pre-heat the stone/tray in the oven in order to get it nice and crazyhot.  I have never bothered doing this, which means I have to cook my pizzas at a lower temperature for longer, which produces less impressive crusts.  I fear that trying to slide a pizza off a peel onto a blazing hot rock would only result in catastrophe, so I've not tried going down that route just yet!

For the sauce, I again cheat a little.  Dollop of passata in the middle of the pizza.  Add copious amounts of garlic, oregano and basil to this dollop.  Swirl around with the back of the spoon until mixed, then spiral outwards until you reach the edge of the pizza.  Sure, you could mix this in a bowl somewhere else, but lazin^H^H^H^H^Hefficiency is a virtue.

 Toppings!  Here you are pretty much free to go nuts. This time we made one with onion, mushroom, capsicum, cherry tomatoes, pineapple, ham and corn (no, seriously, trust me on the corn), and the other with onions, shallots, chives, capsicum, extra garlic, chilli, prawns, cherry tomatoes and feta.

 Assembled and ready for en-cheesinating.  Note the thin covering of flour over absolutely everything.

Cheese! You could use mozzarella for this, but I actually like the extra flavour from a nice tasty cheddar. That would probably get me knifed in Napoli, but I stand by my choice.

Into a hot (200C, or 170-ish fan-forced) for 30 mins or so or until cheese browns.  The less toppings you have the higher heat you can use and still have the cheese brown before the crust gets hard. The more toppings you have the lower heat you have to use and the less impressive the crust will be - faster cooking = better crust. But I love toppings too much to go with the sparse Neapolitan style of just tomato sauce, mozzarella, basil and anchovies.  If you have a good grill in your oven you can put this on as well to help brown the top - although if you're doing multiple pizzas don't forget to switch them around halfway through!  I find swapping places to be a good idea in general - ovens are never quite even. This is where a pre-heated stone would be a winner - you could use lots of toppings and a high heat and the base wouldn't still be uncooked and doughy when the top and edges were done. More sciencing is required!

Some more post-oven shots. This post is already ridiculously long, so why not make it longer?

And the obligatory plate-shot.  Steph put one piece of each pizza on her plate and arranged them nicely for the camera.  However, that's not quite going to cut it for me...

Ahh, that's more like it. Poorly arranged, perhaps, but that's what a plate of pizza should look like!

Roo & Peas II: Electric Boogaloo

So, I had a second go at a chucked-together recipe I cooked and posted a month or so ago, but this time made some upgrades.

The basic idea is the same, but I steamed-then-mashed some potatoes and sweet potatoes, and just threw the green beans and peas into the simmering sauce rather than serve them as a side.  So sear the roo on high, reserve and lower heat to med-high.  Saute onion, garlic, capsicum and carrot until they brown, then lower heat again and add passata, red wine, oregano, green beans and peas and simmer covered for a bit.  Reintroduce the roo about five minutes before you're done so you can slightly de-rareify it.

Serve roo pieces and pea/bean sauce over the mash (to which I added a little butter and a spoonful of cayenne pepper, because hotmash is bestmash).

I attempted to nicely plate this, but from this angle it just looks like there's an ugly clump of fat underneath the steak. Let's try another angle.

Nope, that's even worse.  Oh well, I'm no Masterchef contestant, screw plating. It was delicious!

Black Pepper Pork

This is a fairly easy and quick stirfry. Put some pork and onion in a wok and cook on high heat until the pork is browned, then set them aside. Put in some garlic and pine nuts and cook them for a bit on their own, then add vegetables - I used carrot, broccolini and snow peas. For the sauce, I made a mixture of soy sauce, oyster sauce and fish sauce. I don't really know what quantities, but it was mostly soy. Once your vegetables are nearly cooked, add back in the pork and onions and then add a metric buttload of freshly ground black pepper. Serve with rice.

I've also previously made this with chicken and with kangaroo, both of which work quite well.

Dumplings

Today was a karate day and I got home late and tired, so a fast, easy meal was in order. These are just frozen dumplings out of a packet. I have it on good authority that actually making dumplings is difficult and time-consuming, so meh. Unfortunately, a normal supermarket will typically not have much choice when it comes to dumplings and the ones they tend to have aren't that great but you can do better if you go to an Asian grocery store. These were just pork and chive ones from Woolies though.

I'm pretty sure the way I cook dumplings is not in keeping with tradition but whatever, it's fast and tasty. I basically fry them in some oil for a bit, then add water so they kind of steam to finish cooking - if you just fry them, I find the middle doesn't cook before the outside burns, especially if they were frozen. If you do it the way I do you can throw frozen ones straight in the frypan and they cook fine. The only trick is that you need to stir them constantly or they stick; I neglected this a bit this time and some of them broke open. :( You can also just boil or steam them but then you don't get tasty Maillard reactions on the outside.

I also cooked some rice and choy sum to go with them. I cooked the choy sum in kecap manis with some garlic and ginger and then poured the excess sauce over the rice. I added sweet chilli sauce to my dumplings but of course you could use soy or whatever you like.

Tortilla Pie

This is a dish that lemnisca normally cooks.

You cook some beef mince and onions, then you add in taco seasoning, beans and corn and mix.

You place a couple of tortillas in a pie dish and then place the mixture, plus tomato salsa and cheese on top. Put down some more tortillas and repeat the process, creating 3 or so layers and running out of mixture, then cap it off with a couple more tortillas and place a bit more cheese and salsa on top then put the dish in the oven for  about half an hour on 120 degrees.

I didn't put quite enough cheese in this one, the cheese is the key binding agent, so make sure you put plenty in.

Air-cooked chicken

My mum is the queen of random yet excellent gifts. She's given us roof cleaners, waterproof carseat covers and flight simulator experience vouchers that while at the time made us go "wtf" eventually proved awesome. So when she gave us a Tefal air-cooker we expected something special, which was delivered. The thing only needs about a tablespoon of oil, and then (much like a slow cooker) you just put the ingredients in and leave it for the required time. It spins around and magically in a few minutes the food is well cooked.

First I wrapped chicken breast around sticks of cheese, and tied them up so the goodness wouldn't escape.

Then the chicken was brushed with half of the oil and some paprika to make a glaze. After that it was popped in the cooker, which for the past few minutes had been cooking some onions and garlic. Combine all this together with a glass of tomato juice to stew in for about 10 minutes and you get:

Served with a light salad and toasted Turkish, it was a light, healthy but incredibly tender and flavourful meal. I can't recommend the cooker enough, although with the caveat that you definitely do not want to disregard the cooking times listed in the recipes. If it says 5 minutes, that's how long to put it on for. Although it doesn't look like it's cooking fast it will definitely do a quick thorough job, and if you leave it on a minute too long you will dry out whatever you're cooking (a consequence of the lack of cooking oil). Only a minor problem, but one to watch out for.

Roast Lamb

The weather over the last week or two has very definitely been roastworthy, as evidenced by the delectable-looking roast-post immediately prior to this.  But Steph and I have a post-roast boast-post of our own!

We marinated half a lamb shoulder in garlic, rosemary, kiwifruit*, thyme, salt, pepper and a little oil for most of a day, then plunked it in an old roast-rack-thing I appropriated upon moving out, surrounded by a variety of veg (potatoes, pumpkin, carrot and a few heads of garlic sliced in half - carrot added halfway through to prevent overmushification). The whole thing was given a solid salt-and-peppering, then chucked in the oven for about 45 mins. Gravy was then rapidly assembled in the pan, due to me being too lazy to simmer it for a while.

And plated:

* Yes, kiwifruit.  Apparently it tenderises meats in some way, I have not actually investigated whether there is science behind this claim, but it is also tasty, so science can wait!