What can be easier than pizza. Just roll the dough which you have bought from the local supermarket, top it with tomato sauce, cheese and ham and put it in the hot oven for about 10 minutes. But…this system does not work with the Daring Bakers. The October challenge was to prepare a pizza in the professional way, by tossing the dough. It was harder than I thought, so J had to help me out there.
We used one piece of dough as a “tool for practice”, which I was able to toss and turn as many times I liked, (also let if fall to the floor as often I liked) just to get the feel for it. I still did not quite get it. J however was pretty successful in this tossing-business (and also started to talk with Italian accent, while he was on it), so he’s mostly featuring in the slide show below. You’ll see that it starts with me placing my hands in flour and getting ready for tossing the dough and…well, that’s about it from my side, I only get as far as getting my hands into flour and semolina. J ends up doing the tossing, as I was not quite good at it, even after half an hour practice with the “practice dough”. But all in all, it was a teamwork. He prepared the dough and I topped it with goodies. The end result was a nice pizza Margherita, topping recipe from here.
As tossing was harder work than topping, J insisted in being called chef in the slide show. That is why I am only featuring as “soon to be chef”, somebody who’ll in the future maybe learns the tossing method…I guess rolling the dough is much easier and less messy, so I’m afraid I am not sure when (if ever) I’ll actually abandon the rolling method…
And the most important thing: the host of this months’ challenge was Rosa. You’ll find the recipe for the dough from her blog.
Another delight from this lovely new cookbook of mine, this time with goat cheese. J suggested to add something green to the plate, some iceberg or lettuce or other salad with vinegar sauce, just to balance the sweetness of this dish. I agree. I was also thinking of serving this dish in small spoons – a bit of lettuce in the bottom, topped with a piece of warm goat cheese and the walnut-fig mixture. I bet they’d taste yummy…will try them soon! Until then, enjoy the recipe, which serves two portions:
100 g of goat’s cheese
handful of walnuts
5 dried figs
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp honey
# Heat the oven to 180 degrees C.
# Cut the cheese into two and lay the chunks into a baking dish and bake for 10 minutes.
# Meanwhile, spread the walnuts out on a baking tray and toast in the oven for 5 minutes. Then chop roughly.
# Chop figs, place them in a small pan with the vinegar, and toss over a medium to high heat for 1-2 minutes until reduced and syrupy. Serve the goat’s cheese topped with the figs and walnuts, and drizzled with the honey.
Crunchy, sweet, savory – this dish has it all. Bear in mind that it is rather filling, so if you plan to serve it as a starter, have something light for the main course.
So the other day I decided to try a salad from this cookbook, the one my dear friends gave me as a present. I was looking for something easy to prepare and which would stay safely in a handbag for a couple of hours (so that I could take it with me to school and eat for lunch). I decided to give a try to “Roast squash and coriander couscous”.
The salad did not have a picture, so first I needed to figure out what is “butternut squash”. As not a native English-speaker, I had no idea what it could be. It sounded like a fish. So I went to the store and tried to look for it in the fish counter. Couldn’t find any fish called squash. Well, guessing has never been one of my strongest skills. So the dear friend internet helped me out. There it was, butternut squash. Not a fish at all (of course, had I carefully read through the instructions, I would have known that squash couldn’t possibly be a fish as it had to be “peeled, deseeded and diced into chunks”).
The second round in the shop was easier. I located the squash with 2 minutes and off I was to prepare the salad. Very embarrassing. But hey, at least I know now.
Serves four:
1 butternut squash (750g), peeled, deseeded and diced into chunks
200 g couscous
0.5 tsp salt
400 ml chicken stock
a little light olive oil or vegetable oil
100 g pumpkin seeds
leaves picked from 1 small bunch of fresh coriander, roughly chopped
sea salt and freshly milled black pepper
# Heat the oven to 180 degrees C. Oil a large baking tray. Spread the squash out in a single layer on the tray and season with salt. Roast for 20-30 minutes until tender and nicely colored.
# Meanwhile put the couscous and salt in a large bowl. Pour over the stock and mix well. Cover the bowl and set aside in a warm place to soak for about 10-15 minutes.
# Heat a little oil in a small frying pan over a medium heat. Add the pumpkin seeds, season, and fry for a few minutes until they begin to swell and look toasted.
# Fork through the couscous to separate the grains. Fold in the pumpkin seeds, squash, and coriander and taste for seasoning.
I have to say it tasted better the next day when the squash had had some time to absorb some of the stock. Or I just should have seasoned the squash a bit more, because it was a bit bland. But the pumpkin seeds rocked! Very taste, I have never had toasted pumpkin seeds and they were great! All in all, the salad was very filling and yet not heavy at all. Would do it again, just with more seasoning.
The book suggests that in the autumn and winter months you can use pumpkin instead of the squash. Maybe a good dish to serve over Halloween for example.
I have been an extremely good girl and tried one of the recipes from my new cookbook. Well, it is actually not entirely MY cookbook, in principal it was a present for me and J, but as Im the only one who uses it, I might as well call it mine. In any case, J enjoys the benefits of this book, so he should be happy anyway.
I tried a dessert from peaches, peppermint and rum. I really liked it, it was very refreshing and crunchy – a good dessert I would say. J was not so enthusiastic about it – according to him peaches were not ripe enough and peppermint leaves were too big and ice cream I served it with was weird…But what does he know? Well, he was actually right in the sense that the peaches were suppose to be softer because the recipe called for “ripe peaches”. So in theory this dessert was meant to be soft and smooth, but I did not have extra ripe peaches at hand…but I so very much wanted to try this dessert, so…sue me!
Will try with ripe peaches the next time though. Or with ripe nectarines or apricots. Should be just as good.
Serves two:
30 ml dark rum
1 tbsp brown sugar
finely grated zest and juice of 1 smaller lime
3 ripe peaches
a handful of peppermint leaves
# Warm the rum and sugar in a small pan over a low head until the sugar has dissolved.
# Bring to boil, then remove from the heat and swirl in the lime zest and juice.
# Halve and stone the peaches, and cut into chunky dices. Put them in a bowl with chopped mint (try to chop very small pieces), pour in the warm syrup, and stir gently to mix.
# Cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours before serving. Serve with ice cream or some whipping cream or without any supplement.
A good idea to serve as a dessert in the evening, when you have a busy day ahead but some friends are coming over for a snack (just prepare it in the morning – it takes only 15 minutes – and refrigerate until the evening). Remember to use ripe fruits, whichever you are using, and chop mint leaves into tiny bits.
Fritesis past now, as I have moved to the Fish and Chips land. I like it here already. As you can see, I have already tried the holy dish of the United Kingdom. When you are around, definitely visit the fish and chips place called Sea Shell at Lisson gorve. Be prepared for a proper meal, because they serve huge portions!
Before we left the city of eurocrats, our dear Irish friends, who kindly accommodated me and J (and all our stuff) for about 2 weeks, gave us a lovely present. Can you believe it? We stay at their place with all our things, eat their food and use their water and electricity and they give as a present. I can’t think of a nicer gesture. And what present it was!! A cookbook!!! I really am grateful for that, as I rarely buy them, although I love looking at them in the store, I find it always very hard to make a choice. I would buy all of them. And since I can’t afford it, I rather keep them in the shop and go and browse them once in a while, to get ideas. And now I have my own nice cookbook! It was really sweet of them.
I haven’t tried any recipes from there yet – you know, trying to settle in and don’t spend that much time in the kitchen – but will surely cook something from this book this week. I promise! However, since I’m studying now, I might spend less time on researching and trying new recipes and more time on reading communication regulation theories and academic journals…which means that I can’t promise very regular updating of this blog…but I’ll do my best.
Anyways, thanks for visiting this site. Until the next recipe then.
Will try with ripe peaches the next time though. Or with ripe nectarines or apricots. Should be just as good. 
