Pizza anyone?

We like nothing better in this house than a home-made pizza, they are a firm favourite and get requested often.

Back in June, we were on our way to the British Museum for the day to see the Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition, (bear with me - you'll get the gist in a minute!), and Michael always insists on getting his Saturday morning Times newspaper to read on the train.  I nabbed the middle section where the foodie bit is and lo and behold that week's special was pizza's; I read on with interest.  It wasn't the actual ingredients that intrigued me, it was the way they were cooking it - on the hob, then under the grill - I'll explain as we go.

Remember that bread recipe I made a couple of weeks ago, well I use the same mix to make the pizza bases.  One 300g mix will make four pizzas, plus I then use the tomato sauce recipe to put straight on the base.

It's best to have all your pizza toppings ready to go, ie. cut up, sliced etc, before you start cooking.

Heat a large non stick frying pan on the hob, with a tiny splash of olive oil in the bottom until really hot, turn on the grill too.
Cut the dough into four pieces and roll out into rounds about 5mm thick.

Place a pizza base in the bottom of the hot pan.  Keep checking the bottom of it by lifting up the edge, you don't want it to burn.
Spread your tomato sauce over the base, then add your toppings.  A note on adding the mozzarella - rip it into small pieces rather than slicing it, it will cook quicker.

Michael's one with Chorizo and chillies

Once the base is cooked, swiftly place under the grill, under the cheese is bubbling and the edges are brown and crispy.

Michael's one cooked

My one cooked - with proscuitto and basil

Eat straight away.

They taste delicious and are so quick and easy to make, the only down side to them is, that I can cook only one at a time as I only have one large frying pan, so Michael has usually eaten his by the time I put mine on the plate!

Enjoy!

Leftover Beef Sturry

Tonight's delight is using up leftovers together with what we have available in the garden.  What true smallholders we are!

Seriously though, I hate wasting food, although I must admit not much gets wasted here, what with seven dogs, two pigs, sixteen hens and a cow.  But with the increase of food wastage always in the news and yesterday Natalie Coleman (winner of Masterchef), was on BBC Radio 2's Steve Wright in the afternoon, talking about her new campaign, 'Love food, Hate waste,' I always try and do something edible for us to eat with leftovers.

So tonight's leftovers being beef and it being Friday, well it had to be a curry - well sort of!  I am renowned for not sticking to recipes's, so I put my own twist on this 'curry'.  Michael likes lots of vegetables in his curries, not just a meat and onion curry with rice, so I raided the garden and collected - a large handful of french beans, a yellow courgette, a kohl rabi, one small carrot, half a dozen shallots, about twenty tomatoes and two chillies.

Collected from the garden

Plus, the already chopped tomatoes and shallots

I chopped all these up and placed them in a large casserole dish, along with the chopped up beef (minus any fatty bits - the dogs ate these!), added some water and a good shake of Bisto gravy granules, just to up the 'beefyness' and to thicken the sauce and put it in the oven for about an hour and a half.

 and this is what it looked like when it came out -

I served it with turmeric and parsley basmati rice and a shop bought naan bread each (which were horrible) -

It tasted delicious, you could taste all the vegetables and the beef was soft and succulent.  The two chillies were enough if you like it quite spicy.  I do think that this type of dish is best cooked in a slow cooker all day, left to bubble away and develop the flavours even deeper, it was a mistake not to do it with this I think.

Stats today -

Eggs produced = 9

Sales -
Nil

Expenses -
Nil

Peppers V Peppers

The battle of the Peppers!

Now, I've always been told that you cannot grow Peppers and Chilli peppers in the same greenhouse / polytunnel at the same time, because they are too closely related and will not produce fruit if you do.

That sounded like a challenge to me, and always up for a challenge, I decided to see, more out of curiosity than anything, what would happen if you did plant the two plants side by side.

Sweet Peppers

Chilli Peppers

These two plants are less than half a metre away from each other and seem to be thriving, (that's the same yellow leaf of a cucumber plant in the photo's).

Having read several books on the subject of growing peppers and chillies, I find that nowhere in these books does it say that you cannot grow them together, in fact they are both in the same family as tomatoes, potatoes and aubergines and should be treated as such for rotation purposes.  Both are reasonably easy to grow, suffer from little problems - the usual slugs, aphids and red spider mite; the main problem being blossom end rot, ie. lack of sufficient water, but if you're seeing that on peppers then you'll be seeing it on your tomatoes too and bells should start ringing in your head to give them all more water.

So I shall continue to plant all my peppers and chillies together and not listen to other people's ideas until I have thoroughly checked them out.  To think I had been panicking about not getting any peppers or chillies - that'll learn me, as they say here in Norfolk!

Stats today - 

Eggs produced = 12

Sales -

1 dozen eggs £1.80

1 x 500g Carrots £0.75

1 x Oregano plant £0.50

Expenses -

Nil