Goats cheese sunblushed tomato and caramelised red onion pizza

 Having two days off in a row is great this time of year because I can spend one catching up with friends and family and the other I can have a nice lazy day in front of the TV with some nice home cooked food. Izi and I usually take it in turns with whose going to cook up something but with my brother coming over to stay for a couple of days I thought I would go for one of his favourite foods, pizza.

 

Everybody loves pizza and what’s not to love? You can pretty much have anything you want on a pizza, in fact when a few friends and I did our own come dine with me evenings, I went for a kids theme and for my starter I made a selection of pizzas: one with chilli chorizo and peppers, one with ham pineapple and avocado and also the one which I have decided to make today, my goats cheese, caramelised red onion and sunblushed tomatoes pizza.

 

You can make the sauce up in advance and keep in the fridge to be used not only for a pizza base but can also be used for pasta dishes and works well as a sauce to go with chicken or fish. To save time you can also make up the sunblushed tomatoes and the caramelised onions in advance too.

 

For the sauce:

Ingredients:

2 tbsp Olive oil

½ white Onion sliced

2 Garlic cloves pureed

2 tsp. Paprika

5 tsp. Tomato puree

1 tin of Chopped tomatoes

2 tsp. Mixed herbs

1 tsp. Dried oregano

2 tsp. Sugar

Salt and pepper

 Start off by sweating off the onion and garlic in the olive oil in a saucepan on a medium heat, after 5 minutes add the paprika and the tomato puree and stir.

Then add the tomatoes and bring to the boil, then add the rest of the ingredients and turn down to simmer for 30 minutes then take it off the heat blend it with a hand blender and leave to cool. Cover and refrigerate if you are not using it straight away.

For the sunblushed tomatoes:

Cut cherry tomatoes into half then in half again and lay them on a tray with garlic and extra virgin olive oil salt and pepper, cook them on the bottom shelf of an oven on 100c for an hour.

For the caramelised onions:

Slice a red onion and put in a saucepan with 50ml balsamic vinegar, 25ml red wine, 25 ml of red wine vinegar and 1 tbsp of brown sugar. Bring to the boil then turn down to a medium heat for 30 minutes stirring frequently.

For the pizza base:

 

Ingredients:

2 cups of warm water (43-46c)

2 cups of plain flour

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. white sugar

1 pack (7g) fast action dried yeast

 

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and leave for 10 minutes until mix becomes almost creamy looking.

Add the rest of the ingredients and start to mix well with a wooden spoon then once it has started to become dough knead it with your hands, make into a big ball and leave for 5 minutes.

Transfer the dough onto a floury surface and using a rolling pin, roll out and then place on a tray on some greaseproof paper.

When you are ready to top your pizza spread the sauce to cover the base then sprinkle some grated mozzarella, add the caramelised onions, some sliced soft goats cheese and the sunblushed tomatoes and bake at 200c for 15-20 minutes.When cooked top the finished pizza with some wild rocket and enjoy. ☺

 

 

 

Orange and cinnamon churros with a dark chocolate and chilli dip

So after putting my toblerone soufflé on last week I was keen to add another dessert on my blog and as I’m working in Spanish themed restaurant I decided to make some churros.

 

I’ve made churros (spainsh doughnuts) quite a few times in my last job and they have been a hit; not just with the customers but the staff too. The mix can be made up in advance then just piped and cooked when you need it.

Ingredients (serves 4)

For churros:

250ml water

35g butter cubed

2 eggs

1 tsp. baking powder

200g plain flour

1 orange

3 tbsp of Sugar and 1 tbsp of ground cinnamon to serve

For dip:

100g dark chocolate broken into squares

25g butter cubed

A pinch of dried chilli flakes

75ml double cream

Method:

For the churros put the butter and water in a pan and slowly bring to the boil, once all the butter has melted and the water has started to boil take off the heat and leave for a couple of minutes to cool

Sieve the flour and the baking powder into the pan of water and stir well then whisk the eggs and mix until mixture is smooth

Add zest from one orange as well as the juice and mix until it all has combined, the texture should be firm enough to pipe if it is a bit sloppy then add some icing sugar a tablespoon at a time until it is at the right consistency then cover and keep somewhere warm for one hour.

For the sauce put the butter and chocolate in a bowl above a pan of hot water making sure the bowl does not sit in the water, add a pinch of dried chillies and keep stirring until all the chocolate and butter has melted then stir in the cream.

Pipe a long line of churros mix into a fryer set at 180°c for about 3 minutes turning over half way through, once it has gone golden brown take out and put some blue roll or a tea towel drain the excess oil. 

Put the sugar and cinnamon on a plate and roll the churros in them and then serve with a pot of the chilli chocolate dip

Toblerone soufflé

So far in all my posts I have not done a dessert so I thought it was about time and it wasn’t hard to choose one to do. When you see the word soufflé you usually think of it being difficult and fancy but this toblerone soufflé really is simple to make and only uses half a dozen ingredients. I have made it a few times and it is so quick and tasty I’m a little surprised it’s taken me this long to share it. Most of these ingredients you may have already in your cupboards so for the cost of a couple of toblerone bars you could show off this recipe to your friends or family like I have many times.

Ingredients: (makes 2-3)

100g toblerone

4 egg whites

1 heaped tsp. plain flour

3 tbsp. caster sugar

Plus

Caster sugar and soft unsalted butter for coating

Method:

Start off by greasing inside the ramekins with the butter then pour some sugar in one of them and tilt it about to cover the sides then tip it into the next one and do the same.

Next put about 75g of the toblerone in a bowl over half a pan of simmering water and stir until it has melted the chocolate then add the flour and stir. Chop the rest of the chocolate.

Next whisk the egg whites (I would use an electric hand whisk if you have it) until it forms soft peaks then mix about a third in the chocolate then softly fold in the rest followed by the rest of the chopped toblerone.

 Finally divide the mixture into the ramekins and put on a baking tray into the oven for about 10-12 minutes on gas mark 6, serve as soon as it is cooked.

My recipe book collection

Like most people who love to cook I have quite a collection of recipe books, some of which I have gone out and bought but most of which have been gifts. You can never have so much recipe books and each one has many great recipes inside.

Nowadays almost every recipe you need you can find online with just a simple Google search but it’s great to have a nice collection of cooking books around that you could just sit and flick through and find a nice recipe to try, I hope one day I have enough of my own recipes to make a book.

As well as this collection of books I also have a number of notepads filled with recipes I have learned and jotted down, and a few that have been passed to me or that I have learnt in my time at college

My favourite recipe book has to be the one that my granddad gave me. He lives in Mexico and when he came to visit a few years ago he gave me two books which he had handwritten with recipes of his many of which were local to his hometown. All the recipes are written alphabetically and next to each recipe it says where the recipe originates from, it must have taken so long to write and these books are very precious to me.

My first cooking book was a book called comfort food and was a gift from a good friend of mine called tom it’s a nice book and it made me want to cook more at home rather than just at work as a job. I also was given The Larousse collection by my first head chef mark which has hundreds of recipes in and has taught me a lot.

Another of my favourite books is the Mark Hix fish book, I love cooking fish and it has so many great recipes in such as Cullen skink the pork stuffed bream with ginger sauce and the tempura prawns and asparagus. As well as this it also gives tips on things like how to open oysters and how to prepare squid. It is also great because Mark Hix attended the same college I went too.

I also love the Fat Duck Cookbook which although I have to admit I haven’t really attempted to cook much from it, I do just look at it in awe. It describes all about when the restaurant was first establishing itself and the recipes they do have are amazing. There are about 30 different ingredients to component of the dish and it all looks extremely mesmerising. It is the number one place I would go to eat if I ever got the chance.

Without these books I would not have had a lot of the inspiration for cooking that I do now, they are great to have around although whenever I get a takeaway for dinner I do feel like they are judging me.

Three ways to cook fresh mackerel

So after going mackerel fishing the other day (check out my link for my post on my fishing trip)  I wanted to go straight home and cook some off. Although I have eaten a lot of fresh fish before this would be the freshest fish I have eaten as I had only just caught it an hour before cooking it.

On my way home I stopped by Helens to grab some ingredients, Helens is one of my favourite shops in town, they are great for things like onions, chillies, lemon grass as well as sauces, nuts and local cereals. They also have a wide selection of gluten free products and things for people with allergies.

1.

The first dish I cooked with my fish was whole baked mackerel on a bed of fennel, garlic and shallots with watercress. 

I gutted, washed and scored the mackerel and placed it on a bed of sliced fennel, shallots and garlic on tin foil with a little olive oil, then sliced some lime and wedged it into the cuts on the fish and seasoned it with sea salt and cracked black pepper and baked it for about 12-15 minutes 

Once cooked I simply dished it up and scattered some watercress on, the fish absorbed the lime and it tasted so fresh and delicious.

2.

The next dish I had for lunch the next day was grilled mackerel on a bed of rocket with a lemon and dill crème fraiche

I stared by gutting, trimming, filleting and cleaning the fish, then I grilled it for about 8-10 minutes until the fish was cooked, whilst the fish was cooking I simply chopped up the dill, zested and juiced ½ the lemon and mixed it with the crème fraiche. Once the fish was ready I served it on the rocket with a big dollop of the dill crème fraiche

3.

For my dinner that day I had steamed mackerel fillets with a pistachio, basil and rocket pesto, crushed new potatoes with spring onions and steamed asparagus served with rocket and roasted baby tomatoes.

 I started off by putting the new potatoes in the steamer as they took longest then quickly made up my pesto by crushing a handful of pistachios then putting them in the food blender with a clove of garlic, a level tablespoon of grated parmesan and a small bunch of basil and blitz, then slowly add olive oil until it has got to the right consistency.

Then I prepared my fish and put it in the steamer in a little bowl to catch the juices and a wedge of lime for about 8-10 minutes when the new potatoes were not too far off being cooked, then put the asparagus in the steamer when the fish was a couple of minutes away. Once cooked I crushed the potatoes with a knob of butter and the spring onions then dished them up with the fish, asparagus and pesto.

After I had my fair share of mackerel I still had a few left over to give away and even a couple to cook off for the cats. It’s one of the best things I’ve done all summer and now its got me wanting to go out and catch bigger fish.