A Look at the Menu

I'd hate for you all to think that all we cook are long, slow, luxurious things like roasts and stews, or labour intensive meals like pizza. So just for the sake of it, I'd like to run through our menu for a normal week - last week, to be specific.

Saturday

Menu Said: Stew with Dumplings
Actually Cooked: Stew with Dumplings

Sunday

Menu Said: Roast Chicken with Veges
Actually Cooked: Roast Lamb with Veges

Monday

Menu Said: Leftovers with Veges
Actually Cooked: Lamb and Roast Vege Wraps

Tuesday

Menu Said: Bacon & Egg Pie
Actually Cooked: Soup and Bagels

(No photos here - the soup came from a can and the bagels from a shop. All very nice but no bragging allowed)

Wednesday

Menu Said: Soup and Toast (Fresh Bread)
Actually Cooked: Bacon & Egg Pie

Thursday

Menu Said: Corn Fritters
Actually Cooked: Wedges with Bacon

Friday

Menu Said: Wedges
Actually Cooked: Risotto

So apart from the slow stuff on the weekends and the Bacon & Egg pie, which C had cooking by the time I got home from work on Wednesday, everything else was pretty much easy, quick and reasonably healthy. As for the menu, as the working week gets on, things break down a little, but we stay pretty close to the plan most of the time.

I'll keep the Risotto up my sleeve for next week, since tomorrow the big plan is to make a Lasagne, using freshly made pasta sheets and an old family recipe for meat sauce (not one that I will be making up as I go along, unlike the Top Secret Pasta Sauce debacle), as well as C's famous Cheese Sauce. But tonight's Risotto was a first for me, and it came out rather well, we thought. More on that later.

And for anyone who was wondering, no, the Pumpkins haven't sprouted yet. Will be sure to keep you posted.

Friday Pizza

Firstly, a big cheer cheer to Morgue for the Linky.

Every week before we go shopping, we make a menu and try to stick to it. It was partly our desire to reduce the amount of red meat we were eating, but also a way of cutting down on having excess food in the fridge and freezer and never knowing what we were going to eat when I got home from work. So the menu became a habit, and it has been a Good Thing.

Of course, sometimes there are deviations, like yesterday's. We also allow a little flexibility, depending on what might happen to be on special at the supermarket. Long story short, tomorrow's plan for fish became roast pork (hanging out for that already), and tonight's soup with fresh bread turned into pizza. I felt a tiny pang of guilt when deciding to make pizza after having FnC last night, but reminded myself that home-made pizza is much healthier than the bought stuff. Honest.

There's one thing that makes this an easy Friday night feed, and that is a breadmaker. I only ever use the breadmaker to mix up dough, and I use the same recipe for bread, buns, or pizza dough. If you don't have a breadmaker, you can always do it the old-fashioned way (it's worked for hundreds of years, after all), or you can ask for one for your next flatwarming/wedding/birthday/christmas/mother's day/father's day present.

So whether you machine it or massage it, here's the basic recipe:

300g Hi-Grade Flour,
200g Semolina Flour,
2 T Surebake Yeast,
1 T Sugar,
1 t Salt,
315mls tepid water (should be warm to the touch, a bit cooler than you might wash your hands under).

Optionally, you can add in a T of dried mixed herbs or about 3 T of chopped fresh herbs, or a T of Paprika, or a 1/8 cup of raisins and a bit of freshly ground nutmeg and cinnamon. Do this right at the start, not when the mixer beeps as suggested. In my experience waiting for the beep tends to leave the extras unmixed.

Putting it together:

The next most important thing you can have for good pizza is a pizza stone. There are good ones available commercially, but you can also get a plain ceramic tile from a tile shop that should do that same thing. Make sure its not glazed, about 15mm thick, and big enough to hold the size of pizza you want to cook. (PS: the author hereby admits no responsibility for instances of exploding tiles based on this information. Blog advice should not replace the wisdom of a true professional.)

Once the dough is done, remove it from the pan and place it on a floured bench. Preheat the oven to 200c, placing one tray about 1/3 of the way up. Place your pizza stone or pizza tray in the oven to heat up too. With a long sharp knife cut the dough into 2, or 3 or 4, depending on how many you'd like and how big you'd like to cook them. We cook two big ones, but you might like to do little ones for the kids, or whatever. Then the fun bit: Rolling out the dough. With floured hands, push the dough outwards from the centre, turning with every action so that the dough spreads evenly. It should press down to about 1cm high. Toss it if you like, and add extra flour if it feels too damp or sticks to the bench.
What I then do to make life easy is rip off a piece of baking paper and place it on a large chopping board, big enough for the pizza. Place your dough on the paper and spread with a light coat of olive oil. If you like, crush a clove of garlic with a knife and rub it over the dough as well. Nom nom. We use pre-made pizza sauce, spreading about 1/2 a pottle over one pizza. As time allows, I'll investigate a home-made sauce. It can't be that hard, can it?
What you add for toppings is then up to you. We tend towards the less is more theory. We were in NY a few years ago, and it is the next best place in the world to Italy to see how pizza should be. Our favourite toppings tend to be a sprinkle of chopped salami with fresh chopped tomato, or simply ripped basil leaves, or chopped red onion.
Then the cheese, with a good grate of Parmesan and pepper.
I make one pizza at a time, otherwise the second pizza goes soggy waiting to go into the oven. Unless you've got one of those super wide ovens, I only ever cook one at a time, because if you try cooking them 2 high then one won't cook on the bottom, while the other doesn't brown on the top. And swapping them over doesn't seem to alleviate this. So pull your hot stone/tray from the oven and slide the baking paper with its pizza on and pop it straight back in for 20 mins.
When the first pizza has about 10 mins to go, start on the second one, repeating the process and juggling the pizzas across chopping boards and the hot stone.
Slice and eat. Nom nom.

Oh, and if you'd like to make this a healthier option, try putting a little salad on the side.

Things to look forward to: Roast Pork!!