Rice and Mushrooms

Wednesday, 7th May 2014

My first vegetarian meal for longer than I can remember. Steamed rice, miso broth, spring onions and sliced shiitake mushrooms fried with a little salt and lemon juice. Very enjoyable.

Pizza - take 2

Monday, 5th May 2014

Second attempt. I tried dough based on a Jamie Oliver recipe, but he uses a kilo of flour to make 8 pizzas in one go, so scaling down for one small one was tough. This time my dough started very sticky and I had to add a lot of flour to get it workable.
Again, it rose nicely, but the dough was so elastic I had a devil of a job getting it rolled out, hence the unusual shape! My toppings were tomato sauce (not a patch on Monika's), roccolo cheese, bacon and parma ham. Not a good choice as it turns out, as the flavours had just power and no subtlety.
This time I heated the stone first, which clearly helped, but I should have taken it out of the oven sooner. The base was hard rather than crispy, and the toppings a little burned. Somewhere in between the first two attempts is needed.

Pizza

Friday, 2nd May 2014

We decided to have a crack at homemade pizza. I have visions of making small ones for myself of an evening occasionally, instead of buying a frozen one.
Much time was spent researching flour, and dough recipes, and then shopping for ingredients (and a pizza stone!).
The dough I made came out much to dry at first, so I ended up adding quite a bit more liquid. It did rise nicely though and was easy to roll out on the stone. Monika made up a great tomato sauce, we put on mozzarella and then ham, mushroom, salami and anchovies in overlapping halves. The cold stone with pizza went into the hot oven for 15 minutes, as suggested by the recipe.
The sauce near the edge burned a bit, but the pizza base was far from cooked when it came out. To the extend that we decided to put a bit of foil over it and stick it back in for another 10 minutes. It still was pretty pale but quite edible. The flavour of the dough and the toppings was lovely and fresh, only the un-crispiness of the base was disappointing. I think this needs practise!

April 2014 Food Roundup

I left it far too long to do these posts individually, so here's a summary.

31 March - 13 April 2014

Grilled swordfish with croquettes made from left-over mash. Very good, but the croquettes are a bugger to kepp in any kind of shape during cooking.
Salmon Teriyaki style. Always tricky to get a teriyaki sauce sticky enough without being too sweet.
Chicken "curry". Not really a curry but more of a oniony stew with a few spices. Quite good with the fresh coriander.
Pork cutlets and risotto with morels. Sadly not very good. Pork overcooked although tasty, crackling inedible, risotto strangely flavourless.

25 April - 27 April 2014

Rabbit in red wine and mushrooms with Pappardelle. Two rabbit legs cooked slowly with mushrooms, bacon, leeks and fennel. Tasted way better than it looks. The meat was deliciously tender and the flavour of the sauce just right.
Fish and black bread. Smoked salmon and matjes with a little horseradish. Great!
Pot roast pork with tomato and leeks and fries. Very tasty meat and sauce, but failed crackling again. My chips have not be very crispy lately but these still tasted OK.
Swordfish steaks on the teppanyaki. The only thing I had big enough to cook these huge steaks. A little overdone, to be honest. We had them with just bread and salad.