Pizza: Potato Pizza & Bacon, Mushroom and Pineapple Pizza.

For us, pizza is a pretty common mid-week meal. It takes about an hour to make from start to finish, but 45 minutes of that is waiting for the dough to be made in the breadmaker, so really it's about 10-15 minutes work - even less if you have prebought bases, but they're nowhere near as good. We roll out the pizzas on the bench and then dust with semolina before placing them on baking paper to assemble the pizzas. Once assembled we transfer to a heated pizza stone and slide the baking paper out by sliding a knife between it and the base while pulling on the paper.

Potato Pizza

1/2 quantity of pizza dough (recipe to come)
Semolina for dusting

2 desiree (purple skinned) potatoes
1/2 sliced red onion
Fresh Rosemary
Sea Salt
Olive oil
Parmesan Cheese
Mozzarella or Bocconcini

Preheat oven as hot as it will go.

If you have a mandolin (slicer) slice the potatoes with it at about 2mm thick and then boil for about 2 minutes and dry on paper towels. If you don't have a mandolin, boil them whole till just done, then slice them as thin as possible afterwards. Put potato slices into a bowl and add all the other ingredients except for the Mozzarella/Bocconcini and toss to combine. Arrange on the the pizza base (which you've rolled out and dusted with semolina) and top with Mozzarella and an extra drizzle of olive oil. Put in the oven for about 15 minutes till cheese is browned, but remove before crust burns. Some mushrooms or bacon also work pretty well with this pizza.


Bacon, Mushroom and Pineapple Pizza.

1/2 quantity of pizza dough (recipe to come)
Semolina for dusting

3 tbsp Tomato Sauce (see recipe)
Bacon
Sliced Mushrooms
1/2 sliced red onion
some tinned pineapple
Parmesan Cheese
Mozzarella or Bocconcini

Preheat oven as hot as it will go.

Apply tomato sauce to pizza base with the back of a spoon, then layer the pizza in the order of the ingredients listed. Place in oven for about 15 minutes till done.


Enjoy!

Mushroom Tortellini with Burnt Butter, Sage and Proscuitto Sauce.

Pasta

400g all purpose flour

4 eggs

pinch of salt

Extra flour for dusting

Stuffing

300g mixed mushrooms

1 medium brown onion

Some butter + olive oil

Parsley and Thyme

Salt and Pepper

Splash of wine

250g Ricotta

Handful of Parmesan

Sauce

75g Butter

70g Proscuitto

Extra Mushrooms

Small Bunch of Sage

Splash White Wine

1 Tbsp of Lemon Juice

Start by making the pasta. Process the flour, lightly beaten eggs and pinch of salt until the pasta forms into large crumbs, similar to something like an apple crumble in texture. Tip out onto a lightly floured, dry surface and press together until it forms a cohesive ball. Cover with glad wrap and set aside in a warm place for an hour or so to let it bind.

While that is happening, prepare the stuffing. Chop your mushrooms (we only had regular button mushrooms on hand, so used those, plus a packet of dried porcini reconstituted in hot water) finely. Then get some cloth (we used muslin, or cheesecloth, but a clean teatowel would do) and place a handful of mushrooms in the centre at a time and twist to remove as much liquid as possible. Repeat this until you have done this to all of the mushrooms.

Chop the onion finely and put in frypan with olive oil and butter over medium heat, once onions are soft, add mushrooms and keep lightly frying until they have expressed and then reabsorbed all their liquid, splash a little wine in, toss over parmesan/thyme and let wine reabsorb. Set aside to cool. Once this is cool, mix with Ricotta and Parmesan and taste for seasoning. Set aside while rolling out the pasta.

Get out pasta machine and roll out pasta onto a dry, floured surface to the thinnest setting, one sheet at a time.

Once a sheet has been completed, lay out on the bench and cut into squares, about 5x5cm. Using two teaspoons, place a small amount on mushroom stuffing on the middle of each square, when you have done the lot, brush two edges with water and fold over to form a triangle, then pick up the triangle, long edge facing you, press into the middle and bring the two edges of the pasta together to make a boat shape, you may also need to slightly wet the tips to stick them together. Repeat until you are all out of pasta and stuffing. If you have leftover pasta, cut into strips for parpadelle or keep as is for lasagne sheets.

Get a large pot of salted water onto the boil. In a separate frypan (I actually prefer a wok for this), heat the butter on a medium heat and add the proscuitto, mushrooms and sage. Add the pasta into the boiling water and keep watching the butter sauce, just when it starts to brown and smell nutty, add a splash of white wine and a splash of lemon juice. The pasta should be just about ready now, so transfer from the water to the wok and toss to combine, throw a handful of Parmesan over the top and toss some more. Plate, top with a little more Parmesan and eat!

Serves about 4 hungry people.

Simple Tomato Sauce.

Ok, so we've moved house and just bought a new Camera and wanted to test out both the camera and kitchen, so here's a really simple, yet also very yummy recipe that we do all the time. This sauce can be used for pretty much anything, it's awesome as a pizza sauce, you can add abit of cream and sage to it and use it as a sauce for chicken or you can use it as a pasta sauce, which is what we ended up doing this time.

Ingredients:

2 x cans tomato (or 1kg fresh)

one onion

one garlic clove (optional)

one knob of butter

pinch of salt and sugar.

Method:

Ok, if you're using fresh tomatoes, put them in a pot with a little bit of water and cook them for about 5-10 minutes just to soften them up abit. Next, put tins or fresh tomato into a blender or food processor and blitz them until they're completely smooth and then pour into a saucepan.

Now, slice the onion in half and peel it, and place both halves into the saucepan and add the garlic clove if using.

Simmer down for half an hour to 45 minutes, you'll see the oil just start to separate from the tomatoes, that's when it's ready. Remove the onion and garlic, stir in your knob of butter and season with salt and sugar.

And that's it! So easy! You'll be suprised how damn good this tastes! You can use it as is or add extras to it to embellish it. In this case, we added some fried sliced chorizo, shredded silverbeet, capers and of course Parmesan.