Pre-pay-day-pizza

I know that February is a short month but it has felt to me like AGES since I was paid. So I've been trying to stay out of the shops and just live on the contents of our fridge, freezer and cupboards - none of which have seen much re-stocking recently.

Last night I made pizza which much be one of the cheapest dinners in the world. I loosely used the Jamie's Italy recipe for the pizza dough, but halved the quantities - although this still makes enough for 3 big pizzas - probably enough for 4-6 people:
400g strong white bread flour
100g semolina flour
Teaspoon of dried yeast
Teaspoon salt
Teaspoon sugar
Half pint of lukewarm water
I poured all the dried ingredients into a large mixing bowl and added the water. I combined the ingredients together with a fork until it looked doughy and then turned it out and kneaded it for about 10 minutes.  When it was smooth I popped it into a floured bowl and covered it with cling-film for a couple of hours until it had puffed up.

While the dough was rising I put a baking sheet into the oven at the highest heat. I then made the sauce:
About 25/30 cherry tomatoes (I'd bough them the previous week on special offer at Tesco because they were going a little soft)
3 gloves garlic
Pinch of dried oregano
Big bunch basil
Good peppery olive oil
Chunk of parmesan
Ball of mozzarella broken into pieces
I thinly sliced the garlic gloves and poached them in a tablespoon of good olive oil on a low heat for a couple of minutes. I halved the tomatoes and threw them into the saucepan with the garlic and left them to cook down for half an hour. When the sauce was ready I turned the heat off, I thinly shredded most of the basil and stirred it through the sauce.

When the dough had risen I took it out and put it on a floured  worktop and cut it into 3 chunky pieces and rolled each one out into a shape that would  fit my baking sheet. I took the hot baking sheet out of the oven, sprinkled it with Semolina Flour and placed the dough on top. I spread a big spoonful of sauce onto the dough and topped it with some pieces of mozzarella, a grating of parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil and put it into the oven, again, at the highest heat. Keep and eye on it as it can go from perfect to black in a few seconds but it should take 7-10 minutes. You should have enough here for 3 baking-sheet sized pizzas - so repeat until finished - I've put my leftover pizza dough in the freezer for another day.

I threw a couple of whole basil leaves on top of the pizza and then we ate them with our fingers, standing up in the kitchen while we ranted at Question Time on the TV - not dignified but delicious nonetheless!

Ice ice baby

I can't resist good ice cream.

I think it started when I was little. I have vague memories of visiting an Italian ice cream shop on the outskirts of Edinburgh when I was tiny. And I remember being awestruck by the enormous Knickerbockerglories bought by my Grandma in a little cafe in Haddington - it was my first encounter with Brain-Freeze, the terrible pain in the head associated with eating too much very cold food too quickly (something I can still get today from a particularly good Frozen Marguerita!).

I remember "going for a run" which, in those days, meant driving as a family to an ice cream shop in the next town, spending ages choosing the best flavours to have and then getting back into the car and eating them as slowly as we could to prolong the joy of eating ice cream. My sister was the weirdest ice-cream eater. Firstly she would only ever eat Mint Choc Chip ice cream which I have always believed to be slightly strange and toothpaste flavoured. Then, she also refused to eat an ice cream cone unless it had been "flattened" which meant my Dad had to eat a large proportion of the actual ice cream until it was flat and flush with the side of the cone. By the time I had finished my ice cream she was usually just getting started. I was, by this point, prepared to eat some of her Frozen Colgate too. Happily I could sometimes encourage her to give me some by seducing her into helping me make a tiny ice cream cone using the very end part of my cone. The charm of that soon wore off when she realised it was merely a ploy to enable eat her remaining ice cream long after after mine had finished. Ah well.

And then a few years later we moved to Greece and stumbled across ice cream Nirvana - a cafe which sold dishes of ice cream that had been piped in thin strands into a bowl, topped with red sauce and grated coconut on top having the effect of looking exactly like Spaghetti Bolognese. It was the best thing I'd ever seen or tasted. And it's only now, having Googled it, that I know it's actually a German speciality - have a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettieis. Food that looks like a completely different food - brilliant!

And of course Greece is also the home of the most elaborate, weddingy-meringue-y looking Ice Cream Cakes. You don't see anything like them in Britain really but in Athens they were the birthday cake of choice. They were just enormous piles of ice cream formed and piped and shaped into huge cakes and then decorated with chocolate, nuts and fruit and displayed in backlit free-standing freezers - looking exactly like ostentatious, elaborate hats.

And last year we were lucky enough to travel around Italy for a few weeks where we visited a carefully researched list of the best ice cream shops - we enjoyed delicious granità di caffè  with whipped cream for breakfast at the Tazzo D'Oro in Rome, we tried honey, crema, hazelnut and pistachio flavoured ice cream at the grumpy but gorgeous San Crispino and we adored the lemon sorbet in Cinque Terre. I loved the habit Roman office workers have of popping out for ice cream at some point in the day - the Italian equivalent of a swift half after work perhaps?

And back in East London I think I can safely say that we probably eat too much ice cream in our house. I'm not a massive pudding person but we do often nip out for post-dinner ice cream - I love Carluccios dark almost chewy sorbet-ish chocolate ice cream and the BF is happiest with a bowl of vanilla (or a guilty slice of Vienetta). So as an experiment and in attempt to be healthier I had a crack at frozen yoghurt today. I don't have an ice cream maker so I emptied a big carton of greek yoghurt, 2 dessert-spoons of Vanilla essence and 2 of caster sugar into a tupperware box, mixed it up and then popped it in the freezer. I took it out every hour and gave it a thorough mix up with a fork to try to get rid of any ice crystals. I'm afraid our camera was out of juice so there aren't any piccies but it was pretty good actually. It was a little too solid and needed some time out of the freezer before eating but it was creamy and tasty and a cheap (and slightly healthier...?) alternative to supermarket ice cream. I will definitely be investigating more frozen yoghurt recipes and will let you know how I get on.

Shin of beef ragu with gremolata & pecorino

You might have noticed that I'm a little bit obsessed with Ragu. No, not the jar of Dolmio-esque sauce of the same name which I believed was a very sophisticated dinner option when I was a student with one saucepan in the 1990s (but which I swiftly abandoned after the introduction of the much more glamourous and exotic Supermarket Pesto which I ate almost daily at university with pasta and, weirdly, either smoked mackerel or cottage cheese...). No no no. Ragu (or Ragout in France) is just the name given to a meat-based sauce - usually comprising of onions, carrots, celery, tomatoes & some kind of meat.

And proper Ragu ticks all my love-to-cook boxes:
1. It takes hours and hours and only improves with time.
2. It's the sort of rustic food you want to eat around a big table with rough red wine and country bread.
3. It's as cheap as you like.

I've made a Ragu out of all sorts. Leftover roast pork was pretty good - and frugal. Rabbit meat makes a delicious Ragu but it isn't a breeze to get hold of on your way home from work of an evening. I've made it with a mixture of pork and beef minced - nice but prefer chunks to mince. And tonight I made a Beef Shin Ragu which was unctuous and melting, flavoursome AND remarkably cheap.

So my mission this morning was finding shin of beef. I rushed out early and hot-footed it down to Smithfield Market to one of the butchers around the market which sells to the public. Smithfield is a beautiful covered market housing a wholesale meat market  - it's an interesting place to wander around, you see everything from crates of Halal chickens to half a cow being lugged about by men in gory-looking lab-coats. It is also home to a pub called the Cock Tavern which I always mean to take my Dad to, as it's a sort of blokey shrine to all things Meat. It's open all hours to cater for the market trading public and it serves an apparently amazing breakfast for less than a tenner of steak, sausages, liver, kidney and black pudding. That's all together on one plate you understand....a carnivore's carnival!

Anyway, I went to the butchers on the south side of the market and bought nearly 1.5 kilos of beef shin for about £6. I've put half of it in the freezer, so it works out as £3 for enough meat for a super-generous meal for two plus enough for a Leftovers Lunch for two tomorrow which I though was ridiculously good value.

I softened a red and white onion, 3 cloves of garlic 2 carrots and  2 sticks of celery in a little oil and butter. In another pan I browned the beef, adding half a bottle of red wine to deglaze the pan and then throwing the lot into the pan with the vegetables. I added a tin of tomatoes, a couple of bay leaves and then just left it to get on with it.

In fact I left it cooking from the end of Loose Women to the start Channel 4 news. For anyone who doesn't have a day off during the  week that's 6 and a half hours! So I cleaned the house, answered emails, did the washing, fake tanned and deep conditioned, sorted out what my boyfriend calls the "clothes bomb" (the pile of clothes left abandoned after a frantic "arghh-what-should-I-wear" panic last night) and just popped back to stir the Ragu about once an hour while I got on with my day. So although it seems like a pain to be cooking something for 6 hours, actually it couldn't be easier as you can just crack on with whatever you've got to do and let the sauce cook down for as long as you've got. There's also always a moment with any stew where I think "argh, the meat's not going to go all melty and stringy" but it always does if you leave it long enough, and this was no exception - after 6 hours it was a dark, delicious, slightly dry sauce which I served on Pappardelle with a sprinkling of zingy gremolata (finely shredded parsley, garlic and lemon zest) and a little pecorino. The gremolata was an idea from another food blog - I thought it was a lovely addition but the Boyfriend wasn't so keen - I think give it a try.

My best sort of food - really wintery comfort food.

Pasteis de Nata: Portuguese custard tarts

In my previous life I was lucky enough to do a tiny bit of traveling in my job. I worked at a bank and a couple of times a year I had to go off to another one of our European offices to have a chat to them about their marketing and how they might improve it. As you might expect, they were never delighted to have a bunch of Brits flying in to (in their view) criticise their work and tell them how they SHOULD be doing things. But, although I found the work a little painful, I still went to some great places I never would have been to otherwise - Moscow, Warsaw, Dusseldorf, Budapest, and on one occasion, lovely Lisbon.

Everything about the trip was lovely. The weather was glorious. Heaven knows how we'd managed to swing it but we ended up staying at the most beautiful hotel - the gorgeous Lapa Palace. We actually managed to squeeze in some sightseeing and sunbathing by the pool. In fact I retain an enduring memory of our little group making our way up an extremely steep hill towards a restaurant in the castle grounds overlooking the city after an all-day-meeting. We were a group of mainly female colleagues, most of us in stupidly high heels and some of us with the ubiquitous "wheelie-travel-bags" - we must have been a ridiculous sight and sound - stumbling, clattering and wheeling across the ancient cobblestones up to the castle!

And the people we'd gone to visit were lovely, friendly people working out of a really small, informal office. They had installed the most monstrous, high-tech, proper coffee machine in their little office - so throughout the 2-day meeting we had the most delicious proper coffee on tap. And each afternoon our hosts got in a pile of the delicious little portuguese custard tarts - Pasteis de Nata. I'd never really understood what the fuss was all about with these as I'm not a huge fan of either pastry or custard but one of these tarts was enough to make me think I'd been a little too hasty in my judgement... For anyone who hasn't tried them - you should. They're tiny pastry cups of cinnamon-y, vanilla-y caramelised custard-y joy - they are honestly amazing.

So when I found a pack of puff pasty in the freezer during a clear-out last week, I thought I'd have a go at making them myself. And actually they were fairly easy - you just make the custard first and then when the custard is cool pour it into the pastry cases and bake on a super-high heat so the tops blister a little.

Pasteis de Nata - makes about 24 tarts 
1 pack froze puff pastry - defrosted
4 egg yolks
Big carton of double cream - 600ml
2 tablespoons of plain flour
2 tablespoons of caster sugar
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
A little extra sugar and some cinnamon for sprinkling

First make your custard. Combine the cream, egg yolks, flour, sugar and vanilla in cold saucepan - use a whisk to combine. Turn the heat on very low and, stirring all the time, gently heat the mixture. This bit takes a little while but be patient, keep stirring and don't be tempted to turn the heat up as you'll end up with scrambled eggs. You'll see the mixture getting thicker and when it looks like custard take it off the heat and leave it to cool. Meanwhile roll out the pastry a little. Sprinkle the rolled out pastry with sugar and cinnamon, fold up and re-roll out so there's a layer of sugar and cinnamon in the pastry. Cut out pastry circles (using a wine glass in my case...) and use to line a muffin tray/yorkshire pudding tin - whatever you have to hand really. When the custard is cool, drop a blob into each pastry cup. Put into the hottest oven possible for 10/15 minutes - keep an eye as they burn quickly. You're looking for browned pastry and very slightly blackened custard. If you can bear to, wait until they are cool and serve with a really good strong cup of coffee.

Greece is NOT the word today: Afelia & a Made-Up Cake

I have to be honest, I never ate Afelia when I lived in Greece. I think it's actually a Cypriot recipe and I found a recipe for it in the lovely Falling Cloudberries book by Tessa Kiros. It's one of my favourite cookbooks - it's very personal and contains the author's recollections of her childhood growing up in different parts of the world - Greece, Cyprus, Finland, Italy and South Africa - and, of course, the food she ate in each place. Her writing is very evocative and includes some  lovely details about how she used to eat leftover slow-cooked lamb with oregano for breakfast when she lived in Greece or likening the hills in Italy to the curves of a voluptuous women wearing skin tight green velvet and corduroy.

Anyway, Afelia is basically pork slowly cooked in red wine with coriander seeds and it sounded so simple, delicious and cheap that I thought I'd better give it a go.

Well, mine couldn't have been duller.

It was quite watery and not very flavoursome - in fact I added quite a bit of salt at the table to try to make it taste of something! Very disappointing.

In an attempt to save the evening from the culinary doldrums I did something almost never do - I made a cake. It was a bit improvised (I didn't have much sugar...) based on what I had in the cupboard... so I ended up with a ground almond and clementine loaf cake. Here it is:

Honestly? It wasn't a triumph. It needed more sugar, more clementine zest and had it a freakishly crispy and bread-like crust on it.

Ah well. Best to forget about this one and look forward to tomorrow's project - the super-frugal Breast of Lamb.

Greece is the word Part 2: Spanakopita

I had been seeing my boyfriend for about 3 months when we decided to go on holiday together.  I remember some of my friends raising an eyebrow about the fact we'd rashly booked a holiday without ever spending a whole weekend together. But it was that early period in a relationship where you are both keen to impress so...in an attempt to appear relaxed and spontaneous (instead of the now-apparent reality of mild control-freakery and abject anxiety) I booked us a cottage on a far-flung Greek island. Having spent some time living in Greece as a teenager I thought I would be able to impress him with my rudimentary language abilities and knowledge of the country and culture. 


But, it soon became apparent just how rudimentary my knowledge was. Keen to demonstrate my bi-lingual abilities, I began showing off as soon as we stepped off the plane onto Greek soil. Spotting a Greek sign I began to translate; "So that's a G, then I think that's an R, an A, that one's an F I think and then E, I, A - so look it says Grafeia!". I was triumphant. The BF looked impressed...and expectant. "Wow, and so what does it mean?" he asked... Of course, I had no idea. In linguistic terms I was pre-school - I could barely read the alphabet and certainly couldn't identify many actual words. To his credit, BF only looked crestfallen for a couple of seconds. Undeterred, we looked for a taxi to take us from the airport to the port. I felt quite relaxed about this - I had taken 100s of taxis as a child and could even remember how to say left and right in Greek so I was brimming with Travel Confidence. We queued up for a taxi in the baking midday heat. The line moved quickly and we were soon as the front of the queue. In stilted English/Greek I requested the driver take us to the port. He nodded and directed us to a taxi where a large Greek family of 5 were packing themselves and a bird in a birdcage into the back seats. The driver escorted the bewildered BF and I towards this already over-occupied taxi. He motioned for us both to get into a single passenger seat. Along with our luggage. Flustered, we did actually attempt to do this until it became apparent that we would have to sacrifice either my suitcase or the lower half of my body. We sheepishly scrambled out of the taxi, back into the queue - all the while trying to appear nonchalant about the ordeal. 


Some time later, after having secured a whole taxi to ourselves, we arrived at the port. Our mission was to find something called a Flying Dolphin which would take us to the island we'd be staying on. We had 15 minutes to do this. In my youth I'd taken many a ferry to many an island so I felt sure I could bounce back here. Struggling across the harbour with our luggage, red-faced and damp with exertion but purposeful - I was looking for anything that would float. I headed for what, with hindsight, appeared to be a Russian Super-Tanker. "This'll be our boat" I gasped as I half-ran, half stumbled along the water-side. For anyone trying to reach Skopelos in a hurry it is worth noting the following: 
This is a super-tanker: 

This is a flying dolphin: 

No need for further details here really but after some complicated Anglo/Greek/Russian negotiations we narrowly avoided a trip to Minsk and were safely aboard the correct form of transport headed for the correct Island. 


I regained my composure on the boat and after disembarking in the pretty harbour and getting into a taxi to our villa I was in good spirits again. The taxi headed up hill towards some sun-dappled olive groves. And it carried on and on and on until we'd been driving for about 30 minutes, seemingly vertically up the side of a mountain. I only mention this because I specifically booked a villa that was within walking distance of the little harbour town because neither the BF or I drive a car. The villa itself was gorgeous but, later that evening, as we walked down the mountain torch-in-hand, we nervously took photos of landmarks along our route to ensure we could find our way back home again. 


Later still, we relaxed with a glass of Ouzo in a seafront taverna and I confidently ordered a selection of mezze dishes. "You'll love Spanakopita", I enthused, "spinach pies - delicious little triangles of fillo pastry filled with spinach and feta cheese". When it arrives it looks like a cumberland sausage made of puff pastry. Weirdly this seemed to be the final straw for the BF. "Sorry Lyssa but did you ever actually live in Greece? Did you you make it up?" the BF, quite reasonably, asked. In my defence, it had been 15 years since I'd lived there so, yes, my memories of Greece were perhaps a little too vague to be helpful but, frankly, things had changed too. Well the pies had anyway. 


In the early hours of the morning after a long, lovely dinner we stumbled home up our mountain. The only light for miles around was the flickering light of our torch and the fireflies that lit our path through the olive grove. The Cicadas were silent and the faint tinkle of a goat's bell was only interrupted occasionally by our wheezing as we climbed the steep incline home. This (and probably the ouzo) made me forget the humiliation of the day and it all seemed rather charming and whimsical and, well, just Greek.  


Anyway, long introduction to a short recipe.  


Spanakopita.  
Pack of fillo pastry 
Large knob of butter melted melted butter 
2 big packs of spinach 
Pack of Feta 
Half pack of ricotta 
Half nutmeg, grated 


Pre heat the oven and a baking sheet to 200 degrees. Wilt the spinach in boiling water and squeeze out all the water. It's worth being anal about this bit otherwise you'll end up with a soggy bottom. When all the spinach as wilted crumble in the feta and ricotta cheeses and grate over the nutmeg and mix thoroughly. Take the baking sheet out of the oven and start to layer up the pastry sheets one by one, brushing melted butter generously onto each sheet. After you have layered half the pack of fillo pile the spinach/cheese mixture on top pressing the mixture to the edges of the pastry. Then layer the rest of the fillo pastry on top of the spinach mixture - again brushing each layer with butter. Then put into the oven for 20-30 minutes - keep an eye on it as it burns quickly. Unfortunately there's no tidy way to cut the pie into pieces so just dive in - like this:

This is yummy served hot but equally good the following day served cold for lunch with a salad.