Mushroom and Taleggio pizza with oregano pesto

Pizza is my slow food. I respect the pizza and do not get acquainted with it through a rough board, shop-bought base. I think pizza time is cherished time. Time well spent, I'd say. It's an afternoons work; a consequence of some serious dough and topping grooming. If it's just straight out of a packet and in the oven I feel a bit cheated. I need to have witnessed yeast do it's lively work on flour, honey, and warm water; turning a dense dough-ball into a planet sized airy mound of springiness. You know when parents never tire of seeing their new-born children doing the same thing over and over again? I'm the same with dough. After it's sat for three hours in the airing cupboard, puffing up in size, I am (pathetically!) always beyond delighted by its vastness and love popping a finger in the top to see it slightly deflate and then spring back again, ready for some action.

This particular pizza saw a lot of action and is a result of pure indulgence in the topping arena. I didn't think 'what would make a nice sophisticated topping here'. Instead, I removed all rules and asked myself: 'well, what would the most uber-deluxe, the Dualit toaster or the Smeg fridge of the pizza world, taste like?' For me it meant: whole baked garlic cloves with sprinkled chilli flakes, lashings of melted taleggio cheese, fresh oregano leaves lovingly bashed into a pesto with lemon juice, pinenuts, and mushroom mounds galore. Yes, this is a big old hunk of a pizza, but it's worth it. Each slice a delicious meal in itself. Not to be served with a side-salad. This one is good enough all by itself.

Dough:
350g / 12 and half oz 'OO' flour
half tsp salt
185ml warm water
7g sachet fast action dried yeast
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp olive oil (a little extra for oiling the bowl)

Topping:
Bulb of garlic
3 tbsp of olive oil
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
1 red onion
300g field mushrooms
10g pine nuts
Taleggio 180g / 6 and half oz
Mozzarella 125g / 4 and half oz

Pesto:
15g (small bunch) Oregano
1 lemon
3 tbsp olive oil
50 pine nuts
Sea salt and black pepper

Make the dough way ahead of time. Mid-day for an evening pizza is perfect. If you have a processor with a dough hook you can sieve the flour in there and add the liquid and it does all the molding together for you. The good ones do it really well without having to flour up all your work surfaces.

Otherwise, sieve the flour into a large mixing bowl with the salt. Measure out the water and add the yeast, stir and until it dissolves.

Gradually mix in the honey and oil, folding it together with your fingers until you have a fully-formed dough ball. Add more flour or water depending on the texture. It should be firm and springy.

Turn it out on to a lightly floured surface. Give it a quick kneed with the base of your palms. Roll it up into a ball. Rinse out the bowl you just mixed the dough in and lightly brush with olive oil, sit the dough inside and cover tightly with cling film.

Leave in a warn place for an hour or so to rise. Take it out and bash it about again on a floured surface. Shape back into a ball and return to the bowl for an hour or so more.

About an hour before you intend to eat pre-heat the oven to 190 C / 374 F. Get the bulb of garlic and gently slice off the top, only slightly so it exposes the cloves. Drizzle with 1tbsp of the oil and the chilli flakes wrap in tin foil. Cook in the oven for 1 hour.

Clean and roughly chop the mushrooms. Peel and finely slice the onion.

Make the pesto: tear off all the leaves from the oregano. Put in a bowl and blend with a hand held blender, (if you don’t have one you’re going to have to do it the authentic way and get bashing in a pestle and mortar). Add the oil and lemon juice, pin nuts and seasoning. If it’s too thick add a little bit of warm water.

Heat the remaining 2 tbsps of olive oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and add the onion. Cook for a minute. Add the mushrooms. Cook for a further 8 minutes. Set aside.

Once the garlic is allow to cool whilst you roll the dough out. Leave the oven on but turn it up to 240 C / 464 F.

For this amount of dough you can make a huge pizza that would feed two-three hungry people. I roll mine out in to a large rectangle shape to fit in the parameters of a baking tray, you may only need to use half the dough if you want it thin and crispy the rest will keep in the fridge for 1 week.

Start to roll the dough on a floured work surface then transfer to the tray to shape it. Roll out right to the edges until you have quite a thin even pizza base. Carefully fold over 1cm of the dough back over and inwards to make a crust edging all the way around. Brush the base with olive oil. Bake alone in the hot oven for 5 minutes.

Remove and spread the mushroom and onion mix over evenly. Use scissors and a teaspoon to scoop out the squidgy garlic from their cloves. Drop these garlic dollops amongst the mushrooms.

Tear up the mozzarella and Taleggio and fill any gaps with the cheeses. Sprinkle over the remaining pinenuts. Return to the oven, turn down to 140 C / 275 F and bake for a further 20 minutes. Now drizzle over the pesto and return to the oven for a further 15 minutes; until the edges and cheese are a nice golden brown. Cut in to rectangles and serve.

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Home-made Garlic Bread

I've never known one of these, fresh from the oven, to sit around for more than a minute irrespective of any fussy taste buds hovering close by. It's the one thing that unites fuss-pot eaters world-wide, is it not? There are few culinary combinations that go together as well as garlic, butter, parsley and bread. If it couldn't get any better than that, it's also one of the easiest things to make yourself from scratch. Forget the sickly, gloopy, fake-garlicy shop bought ones.

Nobody really needs a recipe for how to make it but a quick check on a fool-proof method for the very best garlic bread is handy and a good excuse to make some of your own.

Multiply the butter ingredients by as many as you like wrap it in cling film and keep in the fridge for a week or so, making the next one you make even easier.

Ingredients:
1 small baguette
5 cloves of garlic
Small bunch of parsley
70g butter
Salt and pepper
Grease proof paper

Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees C

Slice the garlic bread using a bread-knife into smallish 1-inch sections almost all the way down but leaving a join at the bottom of the baguette to hold it all together.

Peel and roughly chop the garlic, tear up the parsley, put in a bowl with the butter and a few pinches of salt and pepper. Whizz with a hand held blender until it makes a lovely bright green colour. You might need to turn this off a scrape out round near the blade with a spoon as the butter will stick quite a bit. (If you don't have a blender just bash them about with a pestle and mortar or something else heavy until they have combined well).

Now spoon the parsley butter right down into the gaps cut in the bread using a teaspoon. Keeping all the butter locked inside beneath the surface ready to infuse the bread as is bakes.

Cut a large rectangle piece of grease-proof paper or tin-foil and wrap the baguette up tight. Place in the middle of the pre-heated oven for about 20 minutes or less if not fan-assisted.

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Sweet Potato Curry

We've heard it all before - but there really is no excuse to go about buying ready made curry paste or sauce when you can make curry this good this quickly. Don't be shy on coming forward with the garlic in this one as it really adds to its glory. Boiling the sweet potatoes in water with a spoon of honey stirred in takes away the starchy edge to sweet potato and draws out a beautiful, delicate and sweet flavour of this orange yam type creature. Blending the chilli's, garlic, onion and lime in a paste beforehand is a great way of getting the rich creamy texture within the sauce which will coat the vegetables beautifully. If you haven't already got a hand-held blender go out and get one immediately as it makes life so much easier. This really is a cook-by-colour recipe; the vivid orange and yellowy texture of the vegetables and sauce make it a bit of a common sense composition more than anything else and this usually works as a way of improvising when cooking.

Ingredients:
7 cloves of garlic
1 medium white onion
2 red chillis
1 lime
2 tbsp olive oil
Sea Salt
3 medium sized sweet potato
1 tbsp honey
100g / 3 and half oz Organic Creamed Coconut
300ml of boiling water
3 medium vine tomatoes
1tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp ground coriander
1 can organic chick-peas (400g)
2 tablespoons single cream
Handful of fresh coriander

Prep all the vegetables. Peel and finely chop the garlic and the onion. De-seed and chop the red chillies. Whizz the garlic, chilli, onion, lime juice and olive oil into a fine paste with either a hand held blender or a food processor. Season well and set aside.

Peel the sweet potatoes and roughly chop them in to cube shape pieces about 2cm x 2cm. Get a large pan of boiling water on the hob and stir in your spoon of honey and some sea salt. Then add the sweet potato and let them simmer for about 8 minutes. Drain when the potatoes are tender enough to push a knife through easily.

Get another large, heavy bottomed, pan and add the turmeric, cumin seeds, and coriander and dry fry over a low heat for a few minutes until they become really aromatic. Rub a pestle over the top of them in the pan whilst they are cooking to break up the seeds a little to release the flavours.

Tip in the garlic paste and give it a good stir. Don't rinse out the bowl you need it again. Chop the creamed coconut roughly then add it into the paste jug and add 300ml of boiling water and stir together so the creamed coconut melts through. Now stir this into the curry paste.

Fill a large bowl with boiling water and sit the tomatoes in for a few minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain, their skins should pop off pretty easily now.

Peel and remove any stalks, whizz with a handheld blender to make a tomato puree; add this to the curry sauce. Leave on a low simmer for 10 minutes. After 5 minutes add the drained chickpeas and stir into the sauce to warm through.

Add the cream and the remaining half a lime juice. After about 3 minutes fold in the cooked sweet potatoes. Cook together for a 3-5 minutes more.

Season to taste, sprinkle with the fresh coriander and serve with some plain boiled rice. Serves 4. Read more On 'Sweet Potato Curry'