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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Pea, basil and courgette rice

A simple vegetable rice for all occasions. If you live in a house with a rice-fanatic like I do you need to get busy on the rice creations. I love experimenting with all kinds of different vegetables, paste concoctions, and methods of which to cook different flavoured rice in a bid to make it a little more exciting than the usual plain boiled. I think this rice has a Mediterranean feel simply because of the basil, zingy lemon and courgettes remove it in flavour from the Indian spicy rice dishes. The basil paste I make to cook the rice in coats it beautifully and gives each little grain a lot of flavour.

Ingredients:
Bunch of fresh basil
Lemon
1 medium white onion
2 cloves of garlic
2 courgettes
3 tbsp of olive oil (a little more for frying)
250ml organic vegetable stock
250g / 9 oz basmati rice
100g / 3.5 oz pine nuts
200g / 7 oz garden peas (frozen)
Sea salt and black pepper for seasoning

For the dip:
200g / 7 oz creme friache
2 cloves of garlic
juice of half a lemon
1 tbsp hot water
1 tsp garam masal
Half a tsp cumin seeds
Half a tsp tumeric

Rinse the rice several times through cold water in a sieve, until it runs clear. Set aside.

Make the paste by putting a few handfuls of the basil, the juice of half the lemon, 3 tbsp of the olive oil, the garlic (peeled and chopped), the onion finely chopped, and a few pinches of salt and pepper seasoning into a mixing bowl. Whizz with a hand held blender, until you get a sludgy green paste.

Finely chop the courgettes into 2 cm long thin rectangles.

Get a large deep sided pan with a lid, add about a tablespoon of olive oil and get it hot over a medium heat.

Add the green paste and stir it around for 2 minutes until it becomes fragrant. Add the courgettes and cook for a minute more. Stir in the rice with the paste, add the hot stock, turn the heat down really low, put the lid on and leave for around 30 minute. Check it at 5 minute intervals, giving it a stir to make sure it isn't sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Whilst this is cooking put the pine nuts under a medium heat grill for 5 minutes or until they are just golden. Take out and set aside.

Make the dip by mixing all the ingredients together in a bowl and chilling in the fridge for 15 minutes, or until the rice is ready.

5 minutes before the rice is ready stir in the toasted pine nuts and an extra squeeze of lemon juice, a tbsp of olive oil, and plenty of salt and pepper to season. Serve in bowls with dollops of the fresh dip on top.

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Mushroom, feta and tarragon soup with pinenuts

This is a soup for all you mushroom worshipers who adore the vegetable in all its multiple forms. There are so many packed into this one; giving it a great diversity and richness. Use whatever type you can get of a good quality, but make some effort to keep it as varied as possible. Diversity gets the best results. There is so much liquid released when cooking mushrooms I figured it was much better to use their juices than a vegetable stock and so made a hybrid mushroom stock/béchamel sauce as a base for the soup, which was delicious. There is so much depth and thickness in this soup a small amount goes a very long way. We had this out of small cups with some toasted sourdough bread. The left-over soup got even better with age and was fantastic the next day as a sauce for orecchiette pasta, with olive oil, extra toasted pine nuts, and thin fine slices of Parmesan.

Ingredients:

80g / 2.7 oz butter

2 cloves of garlic

2 shallots

800g / 27 oz (approx) of mixed mushrooms, I used Buna Shimeji (small cluster), chestnut, portobello, and button.

large handful of tarragon

large handful of flat-leaf parsley

3 sprigs of thyme

1 lemon

60g / 2 oz plain flour

300ml milk

100g / 3.4 oz creme friache

100g / 3.4 oz feta, crumled

Sea salt and black pepper for seasoning

2 tbsp olive oil

100g / 3.4 oz pine nuts

Finely chop the shallots and garlic and roughly chop the mushrooms.

Start a large heavy based, deep frying warming off on a low-heat with 40g of the butter. When melted add 1 of the shallots, after a minute, add the garlic and cook for a minute more.

Add all the mushrooms and cook for 3 minutes, until they give off a lot of their juices. Squeeze over a juice of half the lemon and roughly chop all you herbs, (saving a small amount of tarragon for later), don't use the stalks from the thyme just shred the leaves off. Add to the pot with a teaspoon of salt and a few grinds of black pepper.

Cook for a further 2 minutes. Drain the mushrooms. You need to separate the liquid from the mushrooms here but keep hold of both. This can be done easily by pouring them into a large sieve or colander with a large bowl underneath.

In the same pot, (no need to wash), add the remaining butter. Once melted add the other chopped shallot. Then add the flour and stir to make a paste. Now begin adding, slowly, the milk and reserved mushrooms liquid, stirring all the time and turn the heat up slightly in order for the sauce to thicken more easily.

Turn the heat up to a boil then reduce to simmer. Stirring all the time. Now add all the creme friache.

You need to make sure your pan is big enough for this next bit. If not tip in to a larger bowl and whizz together with a hand-held blender, with 100-ml of hot water. You could, instead, turn these into a blender if you have one with large enough capacity. Either way, blend until smooth.

Return your soup to a large enough pan, hopefully the one you cooked in so you can retain the flavour, and return to a medium heat on the hob. Add the juice of the half of the lemon, the feta, the remaining tarragon and season a little more. Whilst this is warming through get a small frying pan and heat up the olive oil, once hot add the pinenuts and cook until golden brown. Drain on to kitchen paper.

Once the soup is hot pour into cups and sprinkle the toasted pinenuts on top. Serve with toasted sourdough bread.

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