Potato pizza

We'd tried a few approaches to potato pizza, but they'd never been quite like the real thing. I think my recent pizza experiments with thinly sliced apples/mushrooms made me think of potato pizza, so I read a bit and gave it another go. It came out brilliant.

1 batch pre-made pizza dough
some medium-sized potatoes
salt
olive oil
rosemary (fresh or dried)
black pepper

Wash the potatoes but leave the skin on. Slice them as thin as you can with a peeler or sharp knife (or mandoline, if you have one) - try to judge the right amount of potato for the amount of pizza you want to make - if in doubt, err on the side of too much. Mix some salt in a medium bowl with some water, stir until dissolved, then add the potato slices. Set aside - for at least a couple of hours, or longer - will be ok in the fridge for up to a couple of days.

When ready to make pizza, drain the potato slices, rinse and pat dry with kitchen roll or a tea towel. Put in a bowl with a good slosh of olive oil, some fresh-ground pepper, and some fresh or dried rosemary, and mix well. Set aside, pre-heat the oven to 220C and roll out the pizza dough.

Arrange the potato slices over the pizza base, letting them overlap and spreading them right out to the edges. Sprinkle any remaining olive oil / rosemary mixture over the top. Put in the oven and bake for c 20 min, until the potatoes are lightly browned and crispy in places.

If you have too much sliced potato, put them in a baking tin a few layers deep with a little cheese on top and bake together with the pizza - makes a tasty extra snack.

Blue+white pizza with apple, walnuts and rosemary

When the fridge gets emptier, my cooking often gets better and more creative... The other day saw the highly serendipitous meeting of the last  tub of cream cheese I didn’t use for sage’s birthday cake with rosemary and apple from our veg bag and a handful of the last of our 2018 walnut harvest... and some gorgonzola for good measure... It was rather a successful experiment!

(makes 2 pizzas)

1 quantity pizza dough (must be made in advance)
1 tub cream cheese
c 1/2 cup diced gorgonzola
1 large apple (Belle de Boskoop), cored and thinly sliced
handful of walnuts
c 1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary

Roll out half the dough, using some flour, and transfer to a baking sheet. Repeat with the other half. Prepare a white sauce by mashing the gorgonzola together with the cream cheese, and then spread it evenly over the two bases. Arrange the apple slices across the pizza bases, then sprinkle with walnut pieces and chopped rosemary. Bake for 20-25 min until done, take out of the oven and let cool for a few minutes before eating.


We made this twice, and the second time I did a little variation, using thinly sliced superfresh chestnut mushrooms instead of apple, and that was really good too. And then we started speculating about all sorts of other fruits and veggies that would be good in this combo instead of apple - figs? thin potato slices? etc...

Cabbage and spelt soup

I have never before made anything that was so much more than the sum of its parts: this was delicious! And the recipe was posted just after I picked up a big white cabbage, a huge bunch of rosemary and some shallots from our vegetable club, and a little rooting around revealed we also had some spelt in the house... It took a while but it was amazing - I've never enjoyed anything with long-cooked cabbage this much! Strangely reminiscent of pasta+chickpeas, which we also love.

1 lb cabbage, white, savoy or green
olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
salt and pepper
3 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
1 sprig of rosemary or thyme (used rosemary)
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup uncooked farro (not sure what farro is - used pearled spelt because that's what we had)
c 4 cups veg stock
parmesan rind (optional)
1 tbsp lemon juice
shaved parmesan, to finish (optional)

Cut out the cabbage core and finely chop it. Cut the leaves into fine shreds or about 1/8-inch ribbons. Heat c 3 tbsp olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and cabbage core, some salt and pepper, and cook, stirring frequently, until the onion starts to soften but is not yet browned, about 5-7 min. Add the garlic and cook another 3-5 min, until the garlic softens too. Add the shredded cabbage leaves and herb sprig, if using. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cover the pot and let it steam a bit to soften the leaves, then toss the cabbage to combine with other ingredients. Cook, covered, until the cabbage is very sweet and tender, approx 30 min. Stir occasionally.

Meanwhile, in a small frying pan, heat a glug of olive oil over medium and add the uncooked farro. Toast it, stirring, for a few minutes, until half a shade darker.

When the cabbage is ready, stir in the vinegar. Taste and season with more salt and pepper. Add toasted farro, stock, and parmesan rind. Bring mixture to a lazy simmer and cook for 25-35 min, until farro is tender and all the flavors are married. The soup will be very thick, but if you’d prefer more liquid, add another 1/2 cup stock or water. Taste and adjust seasoning again. Stir in lemon juice. Ladle into bowls and finish each with a drizzle of olive oil and a shower of parmesan (if using), with more parmesan passed at the table.

Soup keeps well in the fridge for 3 days, and for weeks or longer in the freezer.


I ended up making this twice! The first time we wowed over it at home, the second time I made double, and it was 3 meals - one dinner at home, one work lunch for seb and me, and I took the final portion for lunch with C and new baby M.

Pasta and chickpeas (pasta e ceci)

Our trip to Italy last winter got us excited about more foods than pizza. We did a cantina food tour in the village next to S+C's house. We had seven or eight little courses and glasses of wine in different cantinas (private cellar / bars opened up for the event) connected by a walking map. Far and away S's fave was pasta and chickpeas. It's really simple, like most of the best food we had in Italy: pretty much just pasta and chickpeas cooked in stock to make a hearty soup.

I saw these recipes soon after getting back, and then pasta e ceci went into heavy rotation in our house through the winter months. In the end, I think our fave version was a merger of those two versions: dried pasta, dried chickpeas, rosemary, garlic, olive oil, and perhaps some celery.

250g dried chickpeas
2 garlic cloves
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
1 stick of celery (optional)
6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
200g short pasta, stumpy rigatoni was usually what we ended up with - you're aiming for something chickpea-sized
Salt and black pepper
olive oil and black pepper / red chilli flakes to serve

Soak the chickpeas in plenty of cold water for 12 hours or overnight, changing the water twice if you can. Drain the soaked chickpeas, cover with 2 litres of fresh water, add a clove of garlic and a sprig of rosemary. Bring the pan to the boil over a medium heat, and simmer for 1½ hours or until the chickpeas are tender. Start tasting after one hour. Keep in mind you want 1.2 litres of cooking liquid, so top up with more water if necessary.

In a large heavy-based pan or casserole, heat the olive oil and add the remaining clove of garlic (peeled and gently crushed with the back of a knife), and the other sprig of rosemary. Fry gently until the garlic and rosemary are fragrant. Cook for another few minutes.

Add the chickpeas, and then add the chickpea broth, making sure there is 1.2 litres – make it up with hot water if there isn’t – and a pinch of salt. Increase the heat to bring the soup to the boil.
Add the pasta and cook until tender, stirring, tasting and adding more broth to keep it a nice soupy consistency. Serve with a grinding of black pepper (or sprinkle of red chilli flakes) and a little more olive oil poured over the top.

Note: this works well simplified to use chickpea broth from cooking any amount of chickpeas (the more you cooked, the more intense the broth flavour), and without any measuring - heat oil and fry rosemary and crushed garlic, add cooked chickpeas, add enough chickpea broth to cook pasta (top up with water if not enough) and some salt, add pasta and any additional veg desired (e.g. chopped celery, diced courgette), boil until pasta is done and eat with a drizzle of olive oil and some black pepper or chilli flakes... or even a spoonful of walnut pesto on top if you want to be fancy. Also good with chopped fresh tomatoes added at the end... And our fave pasta shape for this, after testing many, is oriechette.

Christmas: Nut loaf

Turns out S had never eaten a nut roast. So, almost as a joke, I made one for our Christmas lunch. I liked the idea of incorporating parsnips (double the Christmassiness) and when I came across this recipe I decided it was the one. I interpreted the ingredient list pretty loosely, using up various nuts etc we had lying around.

300g parsnips, peeled and roughly chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
100g walnuts
90g unsalted cashews (used mixture of cashews and almonds)
200g breadcrumbs
100g pine nuts (used mixture of slivered almonds and sunflower seeds)
~2 tsp crumbled dried rosemary
~2 tsp crumbled dried sage
~ 1/2 tsp nutmeg
salt and pepper
50g cranberries (used ~2 tbsp dried sour cherries, rehydrated by soaking in ~ 2 tbsp boiling water)
1 egg (or 1 tbsp ground linseed mixed with 2.5 tbsp boiling water)
another ~1 tbsp olive oil

cranberry chutney or sauce (and a few sprigs of fresh rosemary or parsley) to serve

Heat the oven to 180C / 356F. Bring a pan of water to the boil and cook the parsnips until tender. In a frying pan heat 1 tbsp olive oil, add the onion and garlic and cook until softened.

Meanwhile, pulse the walnuts and cashews in a blender until roughly chopped and then mix with the breadcrumbs in a large bowl. Add the onions, garlic, pine nuts, rosemary, sage, nutmeg, sour cherries or cranberries and seasoning to the mix. Then beat in the egg.

When the parsnips are tender, drain and mash roughly with ~1 tbsp olive oil. Add the parsnip mash to the rest of the mixture. Grease a large loaf tin (and maybe line the base*), then press the mixture into it. Bake for 50-55 min, until set. Let cool for ten min, then turn out.

To serve, warm up some cranberry sauce with some added fresh cranberries (or use cranberry chutney), spoon it over the top of the nut roast, and decorate with cranberries and fresh herbs (I used two cranberries and a piece of parsley to make some kitschy-looking pretend holly.


This was really surprisingly good - deliciously crunchy around the edges but tender in the middle. Quite nutty and appetising, although the parsnips got a bit lost - another time I might mash them less or not at all. Definitely needed some sauce - luckily I had some cranberry chutney squirreled away, which was perfect (suddenly I see the point of all that preserving through Summer and Autumn - instant food in Winter!).

*I didn't grease or anything at all and it stuck to the base a little bit - not horrendously but a bit (I suspected it might, but thought I'd try the minimal effort route first). To avoid this, I'd definitely try greasing; potentially also lining the base.

Chocolate rosemary biscuits

We went to the Pembroke sauna for the first time in ages. I wanted to take something in case we needed a post-sauna snack. Biscuits seemed like a sensible, easily portable, easily eatable, quick to make option. I didn't have much time before we had to go, so I had a quick look at ppk and immediately settled upon these. I didn't have fresh rosemary so I used dried.

(makes ~15)

1/2 cup refined coconut oil, solid state (room temperature - not cold)
2 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary (used 3/4 tbsp crumbled dried rosemary leaves)
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup fake milk
1 tbsp ground linseed
2 tsp vanilla essence
1 1/3 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 cup roughly chopped dark chocolate (or chips)

Heat oven to 350F. Lightly grease two large baking trays. In a large bowl, beat the coconut oil and rosemary with a fork until fairly smooth. Add the sugar, and beat a bit more. Add the milk and linseed and beat. Mix in the vanilla. Add about half the flour, as well as the salt and bicarb, and mix with a spoon. Add the rest of the flour, along with the chocolate, and mix to combine. Take out walnut sized pieces of dough, round them up, flatten and place on the baking trays (they will spread a little). Bake for 10-15 min, until bottoms are golden brown. Take out and let cool for 3 minutes or so, then transfer to cooling racks to finish cooling.


These were good - decent texture and taste. I find refined coconut oil a little dull (thus it needed using up!), might prefer these with real coconutty coconut oil. I'd also like to try these with olive oil - could imagine chocolate, rosemary and olive oil being beautiful together. Difficult to get the balance of rosemary and chocolate quite right - some bites I couldn't find the rosemary, others missed chocolate, others it was bang on. Quite salty - could reduce the salt. Nice and quick and easy though, and a pretty good post-sauna snack.

Roasted potato and herb focaccia

Since we love potato bread (and S loves dill and salt), this bread immediately looked like it would be a hit. Definitely a weekend bread, as the protocol is a bit long... We had most of the ingredients, including 00 flour and salad potatoes. But I didn't have dill, so used some herbs I did have from our garden instead - thyme and chives. Think next year I will try and grow dill and coriander (I did plant coriander seeds but they didn't sprout) - they are the two we use most besides the ones I'm already growing (mint, chives, thyme, basil, parsley).

450g salad potatoes, washed (used red-skinned ones)
olive oil and sea salt flakes
1 tsp yeast
100ml low-fat yoghurt (used coconut kefir)
50g honey
175g pitted green olives (used 1 tin of black olives in brine, drained)
1 small bunch dill, chopped (used chives and thyme)
625g Italian 00 flour
2 tsp fine sea salt

Chop the potatoes into cubes, toss them with oil and a little salt, roast for 30 minutes (@ 400F) until barely cooked, then leave to cool (did this a day in advance).

In a large bowl, mix 375ml water with the yeast, kefir / yoghurt, honey, olives, herbs and cold potatoes, then mix in the flour and salt to make a sticky dough. Leave for 45 min, then knead the dough gently for 10 sec. Repeat this three more times at 45-min intervals, then line a baking tray (used roasting tin) with paper and press the dough out so it half covers it. Leave another 45 min, then stretch the dough to cover the rest of the tray. Sprinkle with salt flakes and leave for about 30 min while you heat the oven to 200C / 390F. Bake for 35-40 min, until a deep golden brown on top. Let sit for 10 min when you take it out of the oven, then lift out of the tray and off the paper and leave to cool on a rack.


I think this was a real focaccia-type dough: it was very wet. Interesting to work with - hard to knead properly - was glad it was a minimal-knead protocol. Came out lovely and soft as a result, with a nice loose, moist crumb. The kefir was definitely a good yoghurt substitute - I love the taste of it (you can't taste the coconut in the finished bread). Glad to find a good use for the last of my 00 flour - had almost exactly the right quantity. The protocol was really, really long (~5 hours not including the potato-roasting time!) - it was fairly simple but I don't think this will become a regular bread for us just because of the time. Even though it was quite delicious and I am intrigued to try it with dill / other additions instead of potatoes...

Squash, chanterelle and sage flatbread / pizza

My lab hosted a pumpkin themed happy hour on Friday, and it was out of control. We ran a pumpkin carving competition, delivering pumpkins to each lab / group (17 in total) a week in advance and then fanning a wildfire of competing posters from different groups advertising why you should vote for them (in homage to the upcoming election). Then on Friday we made a feast of pumpkin based food, decorated the department in orange and black, ran the ballots for the competition and awarded the trophies (gold-painted gourds on pedestals). The food making was epic: I hacked up 11 butternut squashes with a crappy knife and I've got a blister to prove it. Everything we made contained something squash: pumpkin bruschetta (baguette slices with a smear of baked squash, plus some combination of goat cheese, cranberries, pumpkin seeds, fresh coriander and seasoning), 'squashamole' (dip made with mashed baked squash, lime juice, chopped red onion, ground cumin, chopped coriander and seasoning) with hexagonal multigrain chips (Paul's special request / invention), roasted butternut squash and tofu chunks with rosemary / sage, wild and brown rice mix with toasted pumpkin seeds and fresh coriander, roasted squash seeds with cajun spice, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin-white chocolate muffins. We bought the baguettes and the pumpkin pies but we made pretty much everything else from scratch.

So, I couldn't imagine eating another squash after all that, what with the blister and the overexposure. But a lazy Sunday rolled around and S popped up wondering what was for lunch, and I remembered an idea I had of using baked squash instead of tomato sauce on pizza... And also that I had a tub of baked squash left over from happy hour in the fridge, plus a batch of bread mix, the last of the chanterelles and some rosemary and sage from Andrea's yard - seemed like an irresistible plan!

2 orange-sized chunks of dough
1-2 cups of baked squash (peel removed)
1-2 tbsp olive oil
salt+pepper
1 small onion, finely sliced
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
8 black salty olives, pits removed, torn into quarters
3/4 cup chanterelles, checked for imperfections and torn into large pieces (sliced chestnut mushrooms would be a decent out-of-season substitute)
1 tsp chopped sage leaves
1 tsp chopped rosemary leaves
semolina / corn meal for lining the baking trays
(optional cheese - S is still eating his way through the cheese mountain his mum left behind, so he put some brie and parmesan on his bits)

Heat the oven to 450F. Roll or stretch out the dough as thin as you can - try to get down to ~2 mm thick.  Move the pizza base to a baking tray pre-sprinkled with semolina or coarse corn meal (this quantity is for 2 pizzas).

Mash the baked squash with olive oil, salt and pepper. Smear the bases with the squash mixture, making an uneven covering 2-3 mm thick. Scatter the onion, garlic, olives, chanterelles and herbs over the top, and season / drizzle a wee drop more olive oil over the top.

Put the baking trays in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes / until the crust is crisp and starting to brown around the edges and the toppings are cooked. Remove, let cool for a minute and then eat.


This was a very successful experiment all round. It was a lovely, rich, colourful pizza topping combination that tasted great, and the base came out really crisp. The high speed bread mix worked great as pizza base (which is brilliant news - that stuff is super useful); lining the trays with semolina / cornmeal was much better than using flour; and the squash made a wonderful, very seasonal sauce (less wet than tomato although still moist, perhaps this contributed to the crispness).

Roasted turnips with turnip greens

Another delivery from Alvin, another vegetable I rarely buy. This time a bunch of cute little white turnips, doing their best to disguise themselves as ping pong balls to escape being cooked. I didn't have much idea what to do with them, so decided to roast the turnips and saute the greens, with plenty of garlic and rosemary, then see how it all went together.

1 bunch of small white turnips, greens and roots separated
5 cloves garlic
olive oil
water
salt and pepper
small bunch of rosemary
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Heat oven to 350F. Wash the roots, top and tail them, chop into wedges (or leave whole, depending on the size), and arrange in a baking dish.  Add 3 whole garlic cloves (unpeeled) and 4 sprigs of rosemary. Pour over about 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp water, season and put in the oven for 30-40 minutes until the turnips are soft and savoury.

Meanwhile, wash and roughly chop the greens, and peel and chop the remaining garlic. Heat 1/2 tbsp olive oil in a frying pan and saute the garlic until just starting to brown. Add the greens, cover, and saute until wilted. Season.

When the turnip roots are done, remove them from the oven and add the balsamic vinegar to the pan, tossing to deglaze. Remove the skins from the garlic and any twiggy bits of the rosemary. Allow to cool, then toss together with the greens, checking for seasoning and oil / vinegar.


The greens were surprisingly good: very tender and tasty, slightly peppery. The turnip roots I may have overcooked a little, as I mixed them with some beetroot that might have needed a bit longer. Came out tasting fine, just a bit squishy. I tasted some turnip root raw and it was very good - kohlrabi-like crunch and juiciness and colour - would perhaps have made a good salad, lightly pickled / with coriander and chilli.

Rosemary and olive focaccia

Having for some reason rejected the breadmaker and started hand-making bread a while back, I thought it might be an idea to give the breadmaker another chance.  To ease back into it, went with a recipe involving breadmaker kneading and oven baking.


1 tsp sugar
1 tsp yeast
2 1/4 cup bread flour
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup warm water

~10 little sprigs rosemary
~6 black olives, pitted and halved
coarse salt and ground black pepper

Add the ingredients to the breadmaker in the order listed, then put on the dough setting and off it goes.

When ready, take the dough out of the breadmaker, pat into a circle 2-3cm deep and place on a baking sheet dusted with semolina or cornmeal.

Brush the bread with olive oil and push in pitted black olives and little sprigs of rosemary.  Sprinkle with coarse salt and grind some black pepper over it.

Heat the oven to 400F.  Leave the bread to rise for 15-20 min.  Bake for about 20 min, until golden brown.


Looks beautiful; the olive / rosemary / coarse salt mix on top is a winner; the bread is a bit dense and dryish though - the breadmaker has a way to go to convince me.

Baking produce

I have this thing where if I have the oven on I need to try and use it for a bunch of stuff to justify heating it up in the first place.  Sometimes this works, and sometimes it leads to hours in the kitchen...

Last night it worked.  I wanted simple, summery food - veggies / fruits and herbs / spices.

Baked courgette with rosemary and lemon

2 courgettes (super fresh from the farmers market), sliced into thick (~1in) rounds
olive oil
~6 cloves garlic, peeled but not chopped
salt+pepper
rosemary
lemon juice

Heat oven to 375F.  Rub the base of an oven dish with olive oil, then lay out the courgettes, cut sides down/up.  Slip the garlic cloves into spaces between the courgettes.  Sprinkle with a little more olive oil, salt+pepper and roughly chopped rosemary (fresh would be better, but I only had dried).  Put in the oven for about 45min, turning the courgette pieces about halfway through.  Take out and squeeze a little lemon juice over the top then serve.



Baked tomatoes with onion and basil

1 small tub cherry plum tomatoes
~4 cloves garlic, roughly sliced
1 onion, roughly sliced
handful fresh basil leaves, washed and roughly torn
salt and pepper
olive oil
balsamic vinegar (optional)

Heat oven to 375F.  Put all the veggies and basil in an oven tray, add salt and pepper and olive oil to taste and shake to coat everything with olive oil.  Put in the oven for ~45min, shaking about halfway through to keep things cooking evenly.  Add a little balsamic vinegar when you take it out if you like - it complements the tastes pretty well.



Baked, spiced plum and blueberry compote

3 large black plums
handful blueberries (fresh or frozen)
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 a star anise (optional)
sprinkling of sugar

Heat oven to 375F. Chop the plums into ~eighths and arrange in a baking tray.  Add the blueberries, a sprinkling of sugar and the cinnamon stick (and anise if using... a rosemary sprig also a good option).  Put in the oven for ~ 30min.  Careful to avoid eating the spice / herb bits.


Ate the veggies with some cous cous.  All tasty and simple, and pretty quick.  Wasn't that sure about the anise but S said he liked it.