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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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...

Courgette Caponata

With the bounty from my weekend doing Farmer's Markets, I decided to try making caponata for when my friends came over. This is a very loose version garnered from reading several recipes and then making it up! The general premise is that you cook onions, peppers and aubergine sloowly and then add some vinegar, tomatoes, capers and olives and continue to cook into a delicious stew, sweet from the peppers and onions and a bit sour from the capers and vinegar. Eat topped with pine nuts and basil. We had our slathered on toast, but I'm thinking you could have it with couscous or mixed into pasta. Any carb vehicle would do really.

I made mine with fabulous yellow courgettes, instead of the usual aubergine. So for a more authentic recipe, click here. I also made mine the night before to allow the flavours to develop and in fact you could keep a tub in the fridge for a few days, the flavours will just get better. We also found that it tastes better when cooled to room temperature rather than hot.

I'm pretty pleased that I got to use some basil from the bush we have growing in a window box. We got some other herbs at the farmers' market, so we'll see how they do. Including orange thyme, any suggestions on how to use it? I'm thinking perhaps with fish...

Ingredients

Serves 4

2 onions, sliced
3 peppers, sliced into long strips
2 courgettes, halved and sliced diagonally
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
½ red chilli, finely chopped
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp capers
2 tbsp olives, sliced
200g cherry tomatoes, halved

To serve:
basil and toasted pine nuts

Cook the onions, courgette and peppers in a liberal slug of olive oil for 10mins until softened and catching in places. Add the garlic and chilli and cook for a few more minutes. Now add the rest of the ingredients, and cook slowly for 20mins more until the tomatoes have broken down and you have a thick stew. Season and serve at room temperature with the basil and pine nuts sprinkled on top. Read more...

Big Mack Cakes

I've become mildly obsessed with reading other people's blogs (a list of my favourites to go up soon) and fantasising about 1. taking pictures as good as theirs and 2. being given my own book deal. I soon realised that I need to get a much flashier camera in order to take those kind of pictures, in the meantime, I'm getting increasingly frustrated with my own. So whilst I don't like this picture (bad lighting), I had to post it as these were the BEST THING EVER when we had them for tea last night.

These are not your run of the mill fishcakes. Firstly we used smoked mackerel, fast becoming my favourite omega 3/protein/fishy source, these add much more smoky flavour than the traditional smoked haddock and are obviously the sustainable choice. We also used organic potatoes from the veg box, I'm not always convinced that organic tastes better per se, but with potatoes you can really taste the difference, even against all these strong flavours. After a little research, I also decided to add some capers, chopped boiled egg and chives (mostly because we had them and no parsley). And there you have it, the ultimate fishcakes.

We just coated them in flour, but there's a nigella recipe where she coats them in flour, then egg, then crumbled ritz biscuits for crunchy coating. The joy with these is that you can then bake them in the oven. A bit labour intensive for me and the flour and fry method worked out just fine for us.

The other key component was a lemony creme fraiche sauce that we had alongside and worked really well. All I did was add some seasoning, lemon zest and the juice of ½ lemon to a pot of creme fraiche and set aside.

We had ours with salad, a particularly good one is pea, spinach and avocado or an astringent salad of baby gem lettuce, capers and chopped gherkin, both with a mustardy dressing.

Ingredients
250g smoked mackerel, flaked into large pieces
250g potatoes
2 free range eggs
50g butter
milk (for mashing)
2tbsp capers

Chop the potatoes and cook in plenty of boiling salted water until tender. Add the eggs to the pan for 8mins and remove. One the potatoes are cooked, drain and mash with the butter, adding a little milk to loosen if necessary. Peel and chop the boiled eggs and add to the mash along with the capers, ½ the lemon zest, chives and smoked mackerel. Stir together and taste, you may or may not want to add some lemon juice at this stage. Now divide the mixture into roughly 8 and shapes into cakes, roll in flour and set aside in the fridge for 30mins to firm up.

Meanwhile add the juice and zest of ½ lemon to the creme fraiche along with slat and pepper.

Heat some oil in a pan and fry the fish cakes on each side on a medium heat for 4-5 mins until warmed through and crispy on the outside.

Eat with salad and the creme fraiche sauce. Happy food dance optional. 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...