Easy Flatbread Pizza

These pizzas are a great last minute dinner. So easy to make and a great (healthier) alternative to takeout pizza. You need to start with flatbreads rather than tortillas (try a turkish corner shop for the best) as they are sturdier and will hold up to the toppings better.


I often make an absurdly quick tomato by sizzling some garlic and chilli in olive oil, pouring in a can of chopped tomatoes and simmering for 15mins or so until thick and seaoning well. But you could just as easily use halved cherry tomatoes.

Top with whatever you like and bake for 10-15mins until the cheese is bubbling and golden. The key here is restraint - keep it simple and don't pile on the toppings if you want to keep your pizza crisp otherwise, and I'm speaking form experience here, you end up with a soggy mess.

Some ideas for toppings:

• A thin layer of tomato, a little mozzarella and some pine nuts. Top with shredded basil when cooked.
• Top with rocket and avocado
• Goats cheese, walnuts and a few dollops of onion marmalade
  
• Chargrilled aubergine and pine nuts (a little oregano would be good here)
  
• Any combination of anchovies, capers and olives
• Thinly sliced pear, gorgonzola and pine nuts, topped with some rocket or watercress.
  

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Spinach and Anchovy Tart

I've been lusting after this baby for a while now, everywhere I look in food magazines, there are beautiful tarts made in this rectangular tart tin. Not only was I won over by the elegance, I also hoped it might be easier to line with pastry and blind bake (I ALWAYS get holes). So, it was with great delight that I wandered around John Lewis homewares department last week and came out clutching my tin.

We seemed to get an explosion of green in the veg box this week, a bag of beautiful baby spinach, earmarked for nothing more than a salad and big bunches of spring greens. In my quest for tart inspiration, I came across this recipe on BBCGoodfood.com, except I used stirfried sping greens, chopped finely instead. The anchovies are not overpowering at all, but lend a salty savouriness, that perks this up and stops it being bland.

I also skipped the potatoes and made a potato salad instead. Slice new potatoes into thick coins and roast with olive and oil and salt until cooked through and golden, make sure you scrape them off the bottom of the roasting tray every so often to stop them sticking. Once cooked, add pepper, a squeeze of lemon juice, finely chopped onions and parsley. My new favourite way to eat new potatoes.

As you might expect, this is delicious eaten at room temperature so leftovers won't last long as I discovered when we devoured them at 4am after a night of dancing. The crumbs were quite a depressing sight the following morning.


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Jansen's Temptation

I saw this recipe in this month's Olive for a Swedish dish of potatoes and onions layered, covered with cream and anchovies and baked with a crunchy breadcrumb topping. How can you go wrong?

I ended up using this recipe from Hollow Legs and it was pretty good, although I'm not sure I was completely turned, possibly too many onions for me. We had it with a delightful salad of veg box ingredients as the cream makes it pretty rich.

It reminds me of a Jamie Oliver recipe that my friend Rose makes all the time, now that is a good fish bake. Read more...

Spaghetti Puttanesca

Ah, the holy trinity of capers, olives and anchovies, they go so well together. You can't really beat a puttanesca, I used fresh tomatoes in this recipe, but that's mostly because we had lots. I think this is perfectly fine with chopped tomatoes. The intensity of flavour in the anchovy, capers and olives see to that.

I've included a recipe here, but once you made it once, you'll never the recipe again, its so easy. Just fry onions with garlic, chilli and anchovies, (I love anchovies so use loads), add the tomatoes, simmer for 10-15 mins until the sauce is thick, then add some capers and chopped black olives. done! I had mine with parsley, but you could have basil or nothing. Cheese is somewhat unorthodox but also good with this. Read more...

Bread and Dips

The parents came over for dinner this weekend to see my new flat, so in between frantic cleaning, I had to plan what to make, the perfect excuse to spend some time cooking new things!

I recently went for dinner at the Portobello Organic Kitchen, which was fabulous, thankfully, we knew the chef so got a bit of a discount, but this just meant that we ended up eating twice as much as we would have. Anyway, for starters/canapes, we had homemade bread and dips.

The above was our attempt to recreate this and it was AMAZING, even if I say so myself.

We used Delia's pizza dough recipe, except we mixed in a handful of black olives too. Make up the dough, leave it to prove once, knock it back and then split in two, roll each ball out to about 1cm thickness, place on a baking tray, drizzle with oil and bake at 180C for 20mins

The dips were homemade hummus and tapenade. Both are really easy to make, especially if you have a little blender, and so much better than the ready made version. For the hummus, I get my chickpeas from one of the shops on the way home in brixton, they're much bigger and softer than the little bullets the supermarkets seem to be selling these days, I also use a bit of yoghurt to loosen my hummus, it means you have to use less oil and adds a little creaminess. For the tapenade, I used good quality kalamata olives, those cheap you can buy in a tin, are really just green olives dyed black and not worth bothering with, especially as the quality of the olives really affects how the tapenade will taste.

Hummus

1 can chickpeas, drained
1 clove garlic
1tbsp tahini
juice ½ lemon
1 tbsp yoghurt
salt and pepper

Put all the ingredients in a blender and whizz, add more yoghurt if it seems a bit stiff. Drizzle olive oil over to serve. If you don't have a blender, you can mash the chickpeas first with a fork and then mix in the finely chopped garlic and the rest of the ingredients.

Black Olive Tapenade

200g black olives
1 garlic clove
4 anchovy fillets
juice ½-1 lemon
2tbsp olive oil

Add all the ingredients to a blender and whizz, adding more lemon juice if needed. Don't whizz too much as you want to keep a bit of texture. If you don't have a blender, just chop the olives, anchovies and garlic finely and mix with the oil and lemon juice. Read more...

Pistou

All the tastiest things (olives, anchovies, capers, garlic, parsley) blended into a paste and eaten with pasta. What could be tastier?

This will keep for a few weeks in the fridge, if you cover it with a layer of oil.

Ingredients

200g spaghetti
grated rind and of 1 lemon and juice of ½
small bunch fresh flat leaf parsley
1 tbsp capers
large handful black olives
pinch crushed chilli flakes
4tbsp olive oil
1 large garlic clove
3 anchovy fillets
salt and freshly ground black pepper
parmesan cheese, to serve

Blend everything apart from the parmesan and stir through pasta.

The first night I made this, I had it on its own with spaghetti. The next night, I had lots of things to use up in the fridge. I chopped some tomatoes, added a couple of tablespoons of the pistou, some creme fraiche (my new favourite ingredient), basil and pine nuts. Delicious with pasta.

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Pasta with Anchovy and Tomato Sauce

More pasta and more anchovies. You may be forgiven for thinking I'm obsessed, which is partly true, but you can't can't really go wrong with pasta can you? And anchovies are the perfect storecupboard ingredient.

Having spent most of the Bank holiday watching Jamie Oliver on BBC Food, I had a hankering for pasta, I found this in his Jamie's Italy book. You basically cook down some garlic, pine nuts and anchovies, add some red wine and tomatoe puree and stir through some breadcrumbs at the end. It sounds a bit strange, but I made it because it was the only recipe I had any ingredients for. Anyway, as you can probably guess, it turned out pretty damn tasty. I've specified less anchovies than I actually used to give a salty depth of flavour, rather than anything overpowering. If you love anchovies as much as me, use more!

Pasta with Anchovy and Tomato Sauce

Serves 1

Ingredients
1 clove of garlic, finely minced
2 anchovy fillets, roughly chopped
1tbsp pine nuts
1tbsp tomato puree
60ml red wine, or a slug of red wine
1tbsp breadcrumbs
100g pasta (linguine works best)
cheese to serve

Cook the pasta in plenty of salted boiling water. Cook the anchovy and garlic slowly in 1tbsp olive oil. As the anchovy dissolves, add the pine nuts, cook until they start to brown. Add the wine and tomato and cook for a few more mins until the alcohol had bubbled off. Add the cooked pasta, stir to coat and sprinkle over the breadcrumbs and cheese. Read more...

Herby Pasta

This was borne out of post pub hunger and trying to assemble something out of what was in the fridge. Thankfully you can't really go wrong with garlic, capers, anchovies, olives and herbs (we had oregano and parsley). For some reason, we decided to stir in a bit of creme fraiche at the end, but it was actually really tasty. Certainly soothed our boozed filled tummies...

Herby Pasta

Ingredients

Serves 2

Olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 anchovy fillets, chopped
2tbsp capers
2tbsp olives, chopped
200g pasta
1 bunch chopped herbs (any combination)
2tbsp creme fraiche

Cook the pasta in plenty of boiling salted water. Meanwhile cook the garlic and anchovy in a slug of olive oil slowly until the anchovy dissolves. Add the pasta to the pan with the rest of the ingredients and season to taste. Read more...

Fish Stew

I've only just started eating fish, I gave up after reading one too many depressing articles on over-fishing. I'm dipping my toe in the water again, as it were, as I realised I could eat fish every so often as a treat as long as it is well sourced. Rules that I work by are I don't buy tuna or cod, I avoid farmed fish, I try to buy fish caught in the UK and preferably line caught. Fish online have a fantastic website with a really useful guide on the fish to eat and the fish to avoid.

Preaching over, we made this stew as a bit of fishy treat. Its based on a wonderful recipe by Nigel Slater and is sort of a cheats bouillabaisse. The idea is to start by making a fragrant tomato broth, that I've actually eaten on its own as a sauce for pasta, then gently cook your fish in the liquor, sprinkle with parsley and enjoy. Its good to have a mixture of white meaty fish and mussels, clams and prawns. Buy whatever is sustainable and looks good, most combinations work well. Oh yes and serve with plenty of bread and butter to mop up the juices, we had Wholemeal soda bread.

Quick Fish Stew

Serves 4

Ingredients
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 anchovy cloves, sliced
2 red chillis, finely chopped
2 bay leaves
A couple strips of orange peel
2 bay leaves
1 glass white wine
2 cans chopped tomatoes
500ml vegetable stock
1.5kg assorted fish (plus some mussels or clams a handful per person)
1 bunch chopped parsley

Cook the anchovies, chilli and garlic slowly in a generous slug of olive oil until soft, add the bay and orange and cook for a few mins to release the aromatic orange oil. Add the white wine and let the alcohol bubble off for a few mins. Now add the chopped tomatoes. (If i were going to eat this sauce with pasta, I'd stop here and simmer for about 20mins and maybe throw in a few capers before serving). Add the stock and simmer for about 30mins until all the flavours have melded, carefully drop your fish in and simmer until the fish turns opaque, add the clams and mussels, cover and cook until they open. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.

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Pasta with brocolli, anchovy and chilli

This was inspired by a fabulous italian restuarant in Bloomsbury called Ciao Bella. They do really tasty reasonably priced Italian food. Anyway, I had this dish and it was amazing! Loads of garlic, anchovy and oil, everything you need for a good meal!

So, a week or so later, when deciding what to have for lunch, I recreated that dish, only this time with lovely purple sprouting brocolli. The key with this dish, I think is not overcook the brocolli, it needs to be soft but not mush

Pasta with brocolli, anchovy and chilli
Serves 4

• 350g short pasta
• 200g brocolli, cut into small florets, the stems sliced finely
  
• 6 anchovy fillets
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped finely
• 1 red chilli, finely chopped
• 75ml olive oil
• grated parmesan to serve

Cook the pasta in plenty of salted boiling water until al dente. Heat the oil in a frying pan and cook the garlic and anchovy until soft, add the brocolli and fry for a few mins. Now add a splash of water, cover with a lid and steam until the brocolli is cooked. Add the cooked pasta, some parmesan and seasoning, stir to coat the pasta and enjoy. Read more...