So who doesn't like pizza then? OK - apart from my parents, who doesn't like pizza? - Just as I thought no-one, nada, nikt, ŻADEN, personne, никто. What's not to like? - Bread? Cheese? Tomatoes? Spices? Vegetables? Herbs? I made pizza this evening and my flatmates asked why I didn't just go to Domino's. For a moment I couldn't compute the question. The reason I didn't go to Domino's was - because it's cheaper, more fun, I get exactly what I want, I feel empowered, it makes me happy and because it never even occurred to me to go out and buy a pizza from Domino's. I could go on... Anyway - roll up your sleeves, stick on that comedy Italian mustache, gargle a slug of rosso and let's get started.
Sift 2 Cups of plain flour into a bowl. Using the same cup, add some quite warm water (not quite 'hot' and not quite warm but somewhere in between - use the calibrated thermal sensors in your primary digit) then stir in 1 teaspoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 2 teaspoons of yeast. Once it's well incorporated and has had 10 minutes to get over the shock/start to enjoy itself, add this to the flour. Stir it with a metal spoon and when it starts to get organised and form a ball, dive in and mosh it about. Put it on the work surface and kneed it well.
We all kneed a bit of love and dough loves to be kneeded too.
When it's nice and elastic, smooth and - well, I'm not quite sure I should say this on my blog, but... when it feels like a lady's breast it's ready! (I was at sea for a month a while back and when we made bread an Aussie bloke onboard told me that a nice ball of dough feels like a breast - I never forgot that! And I always enjoy making bread).
Leave the breast, er dough in a bowl for half an hour or until it's pretty much doubled in size. Gently pop it on a floured surface and roll it out with a handy wine bottle or even a rolling pin if you have such a machine. Turn it onto an oiled baking tray then go to work with your sauce and toppings.
For my sauce I usually reduce some good quality tinned tomatoes in a saucepan until thick and concentrated, add a bit of pesto, garlic, Worcester sauce then spread over the pizza base. The rest is up to you. I usually add olives, capers, anchovies and prawns, capsicum, mushrooms, red onion, basil and oregano. Grate a little cheddar (for the bite) and mozzarella (compulsory ingredient) ontop. Bake at 200'C for 20 minutes or until it looks cooked then - well you know the rest of the procceedure.
Smile while you eat it with your favourite friend.
Here's a simple little supper that is easy to knock up and doesn't need flashy ingredients. You'll probably have most of what's necessary in your larder and fridge, or at least some stuff you can work with. - Don't be afraid to improvise.
Teriyaki Chicken (incidentally - 'teriyaki' refers to a sweet soy sauce-marinaded Japanese dish).
Add a couple of tablespoons of sesame seeds to a bowl then add 6 teaspoons of soy sauce, 6 teaspoons of honey, 1 teaspoon of sesame oil, a minced clove of garlic and about an inch of minced ginger.
Add a couple of diced chicken breasts to the marinade and coat evenly.
It benefits from half an hour in the marinade, but no-one's going to give you a hard time if you want to go straight ahead and cook it up.
Grill or stir fry the chicken until done while you boil some basmati rice and in a fresh wok - your favourite green veg. I like stir-fried oinion, ginger, garlic, broccoli and bok choi. Add a couple of good slugs of soy and serve with a crisp, cold glass of New Zealand Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.
As I indicated - these sort of meals are pretty flexible (certainly the way I do them). Ingredients and quantities are open to taste and interpretation. Improvisation is very often essential.
Stuff like baking is generally more important in terms of quantities though. The next recipe is bread. Sometimes you may find yourself without some piece of equipment or something. It is good to develop those self-sufficient skills whereby you aren't completely thrown if you find yourself in an unfamiliar situation. I was at sea for a few weeks when I travelled and we baked bread, buns and chelsea buns while on the yacht. This was tricky sometimes and needed plenty of improvisation.
Another time - after I got back to England after travelling, I was living in a mobile home with no weighing scales so how did I measure correct baking proportions? Well I knew that 1 cubic centiliter of water equates to 1 gram so I got a 1 litre plastic bottle, guessed 100ml or 200ml or whatever mass I needed then hung it from one side of a wire coat-hanger. On the other side I suspended a plastic bag and added sugar or flour until the coat-hanger balanced. It was a simple but efficient set of weighing scales. - And as they say - the proof of the pudding...
Following on from my previous posting about enjoying food and appreciating it's value in our lives, I thought I'd add a feature about simple food. And what can be simpler, or indeed more ubiquitous than a loaf of bread?
It's so easy to nip out and buy a loaf so why bother making it? Well for the same reason as why we don't sit on our oversized bums, watching vacuous sitcoms while plunging our arms into dustbin sized buckets of popcorn all day long and every day: - just because we can and it makes us more interesting people (in my humble opinion, anyway).
But like lots of things that you do yourself, it takes longer than you think, takes a bit of a knack, but also gives you a lot of pleasure.
Actually some of the best bread I've ever tasted has been made simply and by hand. Whilst travelling in northern India we decided to get up early one day to climb up to visit one of the Buddhist temples. On our way through the quiet streets of Leh, we bought a jar of local apricot jam, and a stack of totally fresh flat bread straight out of the wood oven. The experience of eating this toasty bread while perched on the citadel walls high up in the Himalayas was superb.
Anyway - here's how to have a superb experience of your own!
Add 2 teaspoons of sugar and 2 teaspoons of salt to a cup of very warm water. Add and mix in a couple of nobs of butter. Sprinkle one large teaspoon (or a sachet) of yeast onto the water and once it has started to sink, give it a stir.
Leave this for 10 minutes.Meanwhile sieve 4 heaped cups of flour into a bowl then when the yeast has started to work up a lather (yeast is one of the most excitable members of the fungi kingdom) add to the flour. Stir together and then add anything up to another half cup of warm water so that the dough forms a nice, firm ball. Kneed well for a few minutes until you are happy that it's all well incorporated and a nice elastic constituency. This process is very therapeutic and a pleasant catharsis.
Place in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a towel and leave for 44 minutes. 44 minutes is only a guess - it depends on the ambient temperature. It might take 49 minutes or even 53 minutes - the best thing to do is to wait until it has doubled in size.
When it has doubled in size, put it on a work surface and give it a good punch to knock the wind out of it. Generally I don't advocate the use of violence against bakery products, but in this case - it is actually required. Kneed it again for a few minutes, place it in a baking tin then repeat the proving time.
When fully risen, bake at 180'C for 45 minutes - but check it after 30 minutes to see how it's feeling. Give the base of the loaf a tap with a wooden spoon and if it sounds crisp and hollow - it's done.
Leave to cool on a rack and brush with melted butter.
Why not make some lemon curd and spread this on your lovely fresh bread? See below for the instructions.
Just a word or two about dining etiquette.
This is not a feature about which fork to use when, or how to observe established protocols of dress, conversation or procedure when dining with officers of the mess or members of the nobility.
No, I believe it is actually quite important to eat with some degree of reverence. Such an attitude may appear somewhat archaic, but I am convinced that since we are not savages we should actually take some degree of composure and reverence while eating.
To eat is a profound event after all. We consume organic lifeforms to gain nutrients and succor to strengthen and improve our wellbeing. Whether it is a vegetable, a fruit, nut, fungi, a fish, bird or mammal, we owe a degree of respect to honour what has been sacrificed for our development.
Look at aboriginal people for instance: they have a healthy respect for the land and the Earth (often seen as our mother) who provides for our needs, they choose not to take more than they need - aware that tomorrow shouldn't be taken for granted, they see our food as a gift - not as an inexaustable supply to be taken for granted and that in the end we all return to the earth so this must be respected and treated as the most precious resource we have.
Anyone who has tried to grow veggies and failed will know how much energy, care and well...luck is involved in gaining a harvest. How much more do you enjoy those lovely little cherry tomatoes? How much better do those raspberries taste? How painful is it to care for and nurture those exotic lettuces only to find them munched by slimy midnight raiders ahead of your proud Sunday lunch with your friends? Yes, we've all been there.
The Chinese eat a mouthful of plain rice before tucking into the tasty morsels as a way of reminding themselves of the humility we should remember. We are only a couple of meals away from going hungry after all.
And what about a Christian viewpoint on food? Consuming bread and wine is a symbol of Christ's body and blood which was given as a sacrifice for us. Pretty powerful don't you think!
I worked on a banana plantation in Queensland and we had to run barefoot through the plantation with a 50kg bunch of bananas on our swollen, sore shoulders to deposit our precious cargo in the trailer to be processed and shipped overseas. It was dangerous (on several occasions I barely avoided skidding under the wheels of the tractor), painful and a poorly paid job constantly accompanied by verbal abuse and with the ever-present threat of swinging cane knives, poisonous snakes, spiders and scorpions. Now, whenever I eat a banana, whether from Queensland, Puerto Rico or the Philippines I always think of where it came from and I'm grateful for all that it's taken to get that banana.
But anyway, I reckon we should all remember what we have when we eat. Cherish those quiet moments when we eat.
Even if you have your dinner while watching the tele, care about what you eat and how you eat. Put your knife and fork down every now and then while you become aware of the food you are eating, the taste you enjoy, the contribution it will add to your life. Your digestion will be better too.
The opposite of such an attitude is to see people smoking outside office buildings in the rain while stuffing a plastic sandwich into their mouths. This can't be good for your digestion or happiness. It upsets me even to see such uncivilised sights!
No, to eat our choice every day is a real privilege and we should never forget how lucky we are.
My problem with making a colossal pavlova was that I was left with a bucket full of egg yolks.
Options? Well I could have used them to make egg-tempera - the classical form of paint used for illuminated manuscripts or murals such as the Sistine Chapel ceiling, or I could make something yummy such as Lemon Curd. Many recipes require the use of whole eggs, but I have one that involves just egg yolks. It makes a decadently rich, golden orange, sizzlingly zingy and dangerously moreish spread that is great in jam tarts, on cakes or commonly spread on buttered toast (not margarine please, we'll forget you ever suggested that, thank you very much!).
OK, team, here's what you'll need to do:
Zest a couple of lemons with a fine grater. (I really do mean the fine one, it takes no longer than the chunky one and makes the zest a million times better. My mum believes that she can save time using the chunky grater, but it means you spend ages chewing your way through great toenail sized chunks of lemon peel and it just shouldn't be that kind of eating experience! Sorry mum).
Liberate 4 large lemons of their juice and whisk with
1 Tablespoon of Cornflour.
Add 1 cup of sugar and whisk together.
Add the fine zest that you made so carefully.
Beat 6 egg yolks and combine with the lemon juice mixture.
Place in a glass bowl ontop of a gently simmering saucepan of water, known as a Bain Marie. (This is accredited to Mary the Jewess, a third century alchemist but I like to think of her using her Bain Marie (Marie's Bath) to make lemon curd.
Gently stir the lemon curd with a wooden spoon as it heats up. Keep stirring it and don't let it get too hot otherwise you'll get sweet, lemony scrambled eggs.
As it cooks, gradually add chunks of butter (half a cup in total) and when it has thickened enough to coat the back of the spoon, hey zingo - you'll have a batch of home made lemon curd.
Pour into sterile jam jars and store in the fridge.
It makes an excellent gift for someone, but make sure they are the calibre of person who'd really appreciate homemade lemon curd :)
The Russian ballerina, Anna Pavlova is now probably more famous for the eponymous pudding that was named after her when she toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926 than for her undoubtedly proficient balletic prowess. Well, maybe, but probably more people eat pudding than watch ballet so I reckon the pudding club just about pip the dying swans. But calling such a light and elegant dessert a pudding. in my opinion, is an inadequate description. It's akin to calling a lacey tutu a 'frock'. Pudding is also a less than flattering adjective given to slightly dense, thickset, dumpy people who a rather more familiar with a poorly sprung sofa than advanced ballet techniques.The other issue with pavlovas (or is pavlovae the plural?) is that there is much discussion whether it was invented in Australia or New Zealand. The already fierce rivalry between the two south Pacific nations is heightened by such contentious issues as the origin of ANZAC cookies, the racehorse Farlap, Crowded House, Split Endz etc. Such Trans-Tasman rivalry is already very strong and the understandable arguments as to which country originated this fluffy dessert can only add to the tension. We can only hope that such conflict can be settled peacefully through compromise and diplomacy than through out-and-out warfare.
OK, here's how to make one of these babies.
Separate 4 eggs very carefully and place the whites in a scrupulously clean bowl. To separate; crack the eggs over a cup and let the white pour out while holding the yolk in the shell. Tip the yolk back and forth between the shell halves to make sure all of the white drops into the cup. (I don't do it over the beating bowl incase I muck it up and contaminate all the bowl and egg whites with a broken yolk). Start whisking and once it starts foaming add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, 2 teaspoons of Cornflour and gradually add 1 cup of Caster Sugar. I've used two forks back to back when I haven't got a whisk - it takes more arm power, but it does work. - When you want a pavlova badly, you must be willing to adapt and use your skills. It's worth it.
When the egg whites are beaten to a firm peak dollop onto a baking tray that's got greased baking paper ontop. Start baking at 150'C and immediately turn down to 140'C for the next 15 minutes then turn own to 120'C. The recipe says bake for 1 hour 20 minutes but I tend to leave it in the oven for ages to get nice and crispy. I even turn it upside-down to let the bottom get crispy too. Leave it in the oven for 6 hours if you like.
For the topping - whisk cream and spread this ontop of the cooled meringue.
I dice about a punnet of strawberries and saute then adding some balsamic vinegar, maybe a bit of red wine and some sugar to get a nice jammy sauce. Slice fresh strawberries ontop and garnish with a sprig of mint. Serve to a chorus of oo's and ahh's.
This makes a pretty easy and tasty supper. It was named after English sailors in the mid 17th Century who consumed limes as a countermeasure to the dreaded scurvy. Once they'd run out of tonic water to have with their gin at 5 o'clock every day the limes were no use so they were forced to come up with an alternative use for them. Live chickens were kept onboard ship for their general comedy value but one day a certain certain Midshipman Kevin Babs accidentally killed one while carving a spoon. His knife slipped out of his hand and freakishly skewered 3 chickens who had been minding their business on the quarter deck. So the ship's cook, Halibut Birdseye knocked up the dish you see here - Limey Chicken KevBabs - which got shortened over the years to Limey Chicken Kebabs. True story.
Cut up some chicken breast into strips. Stick skewers through the poor things and marinade them with lime zest, juice, minced garlic, olive oil and chilli. Quantities are entirely at the cook's taste (and risk). But what the heck - go nuts.
Boil some basmati rice in water with a good quality chicken stock (don't buy those expensive Michael Jordon basketball shoes you've been perving over - get the cheap ones and buy good quality chicken stock). Chuck some frozen peas in for the last couple of minutes.
Start the chicken kebabs off on a barbecue, griddle pan or frying pan - circumstances will affect your choice of thermal cooking agent and the hardware apparatus you employ. Once the rice is cooked, drain and add to stir fried onion, garlic, capsicum, mushroom and courgette (or whatever's in the fridge). I always stick an anchovy or two in with the veg. Add the rice and stir fry it all together.
Scoop out dollops of avocado with a teaspoon and drizzel with lime juice.
Serve with the savoury rice and chicken kebabs.
Improvisation and innovation is permissible, just like Halibut Birdseye did all those years ago :)
