We have mushrooms! Pizza for Sunday dinner!
The groceries arrived today. I was SO pleased to see there were fresh mushrooms. Still no fresh garlic, and still none of my favourite yoghurt (or any yoghurt), but plenty of everything else. I held up the bag of ‘shrooms. “We shall have pizza tonight,” I declared.
I’ve been making my own pizzas for years, ever since a friend (Izzy) shared her recipe for the dough, suitable for making in the bread maker. See below for the recipe. Toppings vary, depending on what we have in the fridge, but we usually have at least one garlic & cheese topping, and normally two or three pizzas, all with slight variations. Mushrooms are a necessity, though. In this house, at least!
To push the culinary boundaries a little further, I decided to experiment with some basic supermarket sausages that arrived today. I stripped the skins from 2 of them, ripped the meat into messy, little chunks, and fried them gently for around 10 minutes until crispy and cooked.
The little sausage-y nuggets tasted surprisingly good for a supermarket banger, and we’re now contemplating how else to use the sausagemeat. Anyway, I used the sausage chunks as a simple topping, along with thinly-sliced mushrooms and a little chopped ham, grated cheese and a sprinkling of fresh basil leaves.
Along with that one, we had a plain garlic butter & cheese, and 2 large pizzas with a combo of ham, mushroom and 2 types of salami.
I only used half the dough, and the rest is bagged up in the fridge for another night. Bonus!
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I caught up with one of my friends on Zoom, and we talked mainly about food, and the difficulties in finding certain ingredients – and buying in bulk from the local commercial supplier. While out shopping she was searching for cloves, and the only ones she could find came in a 3kg bag. As you know, they are tiny little things, and 3kg is a LOT of cloves. Her mum teases that she’ll probably still be using them in five years’ time! If I ever run out, I know where to get some from…
New Zealand is under Lockdown for at least four weeks. This blog intends to avoid the bad news about rising numbers of victims. It focuses instead on food, and the challenges of cooking fresh meals every day – with the ingredients from my larder. A much nicer message 😊
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Izzy’s Breadmaker Pizza Dough
Makes around 8 thin-based pizzas
1.5 cups of warm water
2 glugs of olive oil
0.5 teaspoon salt
4 cups of strong (bread) flour
3 teaspoons dried yeast
- Add the yeast to the warm water, and stir, then leave for a couple of minutes.
- Put into the breadmaker in the following order: Water (with yeast), oil, salt, flour.
- Put on dough setting.
- When cycle complete, punch down, and then roll into bases.
Sofia Grey 