Two promises...

I seem to have started rashly promising to blog things that I post on twitter and in order not to end up promising lots but never producing the goods I thought I ought to write something - after all it's not as though I'm doing anything else (other than reading an epic series of fanfic - 400,000 words and counting...)!

So first up - I think my favourite discovery of lockdown so far has been homemade pizza! When I grew up my mum made us all (I have a younger brother and sister) responsible for one meal week once we got to 12...I think twelve because that's how old I was when she returned to work and it became more necessary? *shrugs* Anyway that was how it was and there are certain dishes that still remind me of those days - Chris's fabulous spaghetti bolognese started then, rice with beefy beans that we've recently rediscovered, pork tenderloin with mustard, mushrooms and pineapple juice and homemade pizza - though the dough was made from a packet and the topping was frequently sardines in tomato sauce (remarkably good) with olives and cheese. However I don't think I've made any for myself since then and early in lockdown I had a craving for pizza (tbh I could eat pizza at least once a week for eternity and not get bored) no pizza in the flat but yeast and flour and I had a recollection of a simple looking Nigella Lawson recipe in How to be a domestic goddess that I always meant to try but never had.

You can find the recipe as it is in the book here: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/recipes/nigella-lawsons-pizza-casareccia-127346.html

So three and a half weeks ago at the end of my first week of furlough I tried it out and it was very successful - I didn't have all the topping ingredients (I think this one was a passata base with mushrooms, red pepper, olives and mozzarella), and only had plain flour for the dough but it worked well. I've made it twice more since then and both have been delicious. My comment son Nigella's recipe are as follows:

1. The dough will be sticky, possibly very sticky if you accidentally add even ten millilitres too much water. Use flour to stop it sticking to everything.
2. Normal plain flour works perfectly.
3. Once proved and knocked out I shape the dough to baking tray and then give it another ten minutes which means it relaxes a bit and you can pull the edges out further without making holes in the thin bits.
4. The bit where she cooks it with just the tomatoes on it is important if your using tinned tomatoes or as I have passata otherwise it will end up too wet but I've gone for 15 minutes not twenty or the edges get too cooked.
5. Mushrooms on pizza are the best (in my opinion) but if you cook them first your pizza won't be soggy!
6. Make sure there's enough cheese. My first one was fine, my second a bit short, the third I added cheddar to the mozzarella. Nigella is right, it works.
7. She says this feeds four, it might with salad and perhaps garlic bread of some form but for me it does one dinner and one breakfast/lunch cold the next day!

The second promise was the oven baked gnocchi I made last night for dinner - which was thankfully delicious because I made enough for at least three people so will have it again tonight and probably tomorrow as well!

I bought gnocchi as a kind of spur of the moment thing and looking at recipes for inspiration decided on a variation of a oven baked gnocchi with puttanesca sauce recipe. What I ended up with was not exactly a puttanesca sauce but it referenced it!

In my lovely pale blue 20cm Le Creuset casserole, I fried a chopped red onion and some garlic (from a tube) and most of a yellow pepper and the not-mouldy/soggy bit of an elderly green pepper in some olive oil until soft. I added the rest of the passata I opened for the pizza on Saturday (about 2/3rds of a carton), enough water to rinse it out, a couple of vine tomatoes, a couple of handfuls of baby plum tomatoes (all chopped), the end of the jar of capers from the fridge, about a third of a jar of green olives, some tomato pesto, some chilli paste and cooked it all for about five minutes. I then added a bag of fresh gnocchi and cooked for a few minutes before adding a chopped ball of mozzarella and decanting into an oven proof dish, grating cheese, cheddar in this case, over the top and putting in the oven at 180C fan for twenty five minutes.

It was very hot, slightly more liquid than I'd have liked and absolutely delicious but probably not something our Italian friends would entirely approve of! Not sure how well the leftovers will reheat, I fear the mozzarella will not be at it's best.

That got a bit long, apparently my boss is correct, my style doesn't lend itself to being concise...