Mushroom, Spinach and Ham Pizza

I have a confession – I cannot make bread. Any I make is truly rubbish. But I have a trick to making pizza dough – I leave make it the night before and leave it to prove in the fridge for the best part of 24 hours. It requires a bit of forethought but is fairly simple and easy. It would probably work for bread but, oddly, I’m not so organised on that front.

I usually have home-made tomato sauce in the freeze, but shop bought or even tomato puree would do the job. Obviously ham is not vegetarian but really you could top the pizza with anything you fancy.

Dough
300g flour
200ml water – hand hot
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp quick yeast
2tbps olive oil

Topping
3 tbsp tomato sauce
6 mushrooms, sliced
Knob butter
1 handful spinach
2 slices Serrano ham (optional)
1 ball mozzarella

To make the dough – mix the yeast, sugar and water in a jug and leave for a couple of minutes. Put the flour and salt in a bowl and pour in the water. Scrap it all together into a rough dough, add the olive oil and knead for about 10 minutes. Put it into an oiled bowl, covered with cling film and stick in the fridge overnight.

When you are ready to make the pizza, preheat your oven to about 230C.

Slice the mushrooms and fry in a little butter until just soft. Set to one side and then wilt the spinach in the same pan (for no reason than to reduce washing up).

Dust a work surface with plenty of flour put the dough in the middle and top with a layer of cling film. Roll out as thin as you can and as best you can (it has a tendency to shrink back). Place (carefully) on a large baking tray m- I always struggle and stretch the dough at this point to if you have any clever ways to do it please let me know. Smear with tomato sauce right up to the edges, then top with the spinach, mushrooms and Serrano ham. Finally finish by tearing the mozzarella over the top.

Place in the hot over for about 20 minutes, until golden.

Serves two.

Vegetable Fajitas

This is surprisingly quick and very tasty. I make the fajita spice mix by the jar – I then forget the exact quantities make up another batch which is slightly different. The vegetables also vary – onions, pepper and garlic are pretty much a requirement, but the rest changes depending on what I have, what’s in season, what I fancy. Sometimes I add a tin of beans, sometimes tofu, usually some mushrooms, then courgettes, aubergine, tomatoes…take your pick.

I do take a few shortcuts – a bottle of lime juice, frozen coriander, bought tortillas (of course) and a grinder filled with dried chilli, garlic, pepper and salt, but on a Thursday night speed is of the essence.
To serve you need about 6 tortillas, some grated cheese and soured cream and lettuce if you want.

Fajita spice mix
Paprika
Oregano
Mild chilli powder
Salt

Fajitas
1 tbsp oil
150g tofu, cubed
1 small red onion, sliced
½ red pepper, sliced
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
½ courgette, cut into about 1cm chunks
6 mushrooms, quartered
8 cherry tomatoes
1 chilli, finely chopped
Cube frozen coriander or a small handful of fresh
1 tbsp fajita spice mix
Salt and pepper
1 lime or about a tablespoon of juice

Guacamole
1 ripe avocado
1 tsp fajita spice mix
Squeeze of lime juice
Grind of salt, pepper, chilli and garlic (or each separately)

For the fajita spice mix - mix about equal quantities of all the ingredients – make as much as you like, store it in a jar and use as required.

For the guacamole - mash all the ingredients together with a fork, taste for seasoning. The lime juice should stop the avocado going brown.

For the fajitas - start by frying the tofu in a wok until golden brown then set aside.

Turn the heat down to medium, add the onions and fry until soft and just going golden. Next add the peppers and garlic, and fry for about 4 minutes. Add the tofu, vegetables, beans if you are using them, and the coriander (if you are using fresh add it with the lime juice). Fry for about 5 minutes, add the fajita spice mix, season and cook for another couple of minutes.

To finish add the lime juice. Stir one last time and check the seasoning.

To serve smear a tortilla with guacamole and soured cream if you want, add a bit of lettuce, pile in some of the vegetables, top with some grated cheese and roll it all up in the tortilla. Eat with juice dripping attractively down your chin.

Serves 2.

Lemon Linguine

In the bleak mid winter…you need a bit of sunshine. You know when you leave for work, and it’s dark, and set off for home, and it’s dark, and you barely see sunlight in between. This is the food for those days, in my book at least, this counts as sunshine food. I think it’s because of the lemons - all yellow and happy – and the rocket - a crown of green loveliness…I think the lack of sun might be going to my head!

3 tbsp olive oil
1 medium potato, in about 1 cm cubes
Linguine – for two
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 small handful of sunflower kernels or pine nuts
1 lemon, zest and juice
50g Parmesan, grated
Bag of rocket

Start by putting a pan of salted water on to boil and heating a tablespoon of oil in a frying pan. Once the oil is hot add the cubes of potato to fry and turn the heat down to medium hot – stir frequently.

Once the water comes up to the boil add the linguine and cook according to packet instructions. Drain when cooked, reserving a cup of the cooking water.

Once the potato is golden brown and cooked right through – about 5-10 minutes - turn the heat down to medium and add the garlic to the pan. After about a minute add the sunflower kernels or pine nuts and fry briefly. Next add the juice and zest of the lemon and the remaining oil. Plonk the linguine in after them, season well with salt and pepper (remembering that the parmesan is quite salty) and give everything a good stir and adding some of the reserve liquid if its needed.
Serve in two warmed bowls, sprinkle liberally with the parmesan and top with a good handful of rocket – sunshine in a bowl.

Christmas pudding muffins

Bizarrely I don’t cook over xmas, I eat lots but it is always at other people’s houses, in restaurants or a quick snack of cheese and biscuits. So when my few quiet days before new year came around I took the opportunity to do some baking.

I’d ended up with some left over Christmas pudding, and, much as I love it, didn’t fancy the full on richness of it on its own. Just before Christmas I had half seen Rachel Allen (I think) making Christmas pudding muffins so I thought I would do the same by tweaking my usual muffin recipe.

As an aside I claim not to like muffins – but as there are two muffin recipes on here I think that might be a lie. Instead I think I don’t like shop bought blueberry (yuck) muffins – what a snob I am!

300g Christmas pudding, chopped/crumbled into small pieces
100g caster sugar
300g flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
200ml milk
100g butter, melted and then cooled

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Sift the flour into a bowl and mix in the sugar and baking powder then stir in the Christmas pudding. Beat the eggs, milk and butter together. Roughly combine all the ingredients.

Spoon the mixture into 12 muffin cases and bake for 30 minutes.

Eat with a big mug of tea or with warm with brandy butter.

Mushrooms with rice and dill

Been very bad at updating this – life has just been a bit crazy and I’ve not had time to cook let alone write about it!

This was one of those use-up-all-the-left-over-bits-in-the-fridge meals which either turn out to be amazing or awful. This, thankfully, was the former.

I do have an admission to make, the rice was a couple of the Uncle Ben’s heat-up-in-the-microwave jobs. Very lazy but on the plus meant this only took 10 minutes from start to plate. I realise that cooking rice wouldn’t have taken much longer but it would have doubled the washing up!

1 tbsp oil
1 large potato
250g Chestnut mushrooms
2 spring onions
1 clove garlic
Splash dry vermouth (or white wine if you refer)
150ml crème fraiche
Salt and black pepper
½ a pack of dill
Enough rice for two

Start by heating up the oil in a frying pan, and putting on your rice (if you are cooking it rather than just reheating it!)

Chop the potatoes into approx 1 cm chunks and put them in the frying pan. Stir them occasionally, while you prepare the other ingredients.

Slice the mushrooms and spring onions fairly thickly and finely chop the garlic. Once the potatoes are golden and just cooked through (check with a skewer), turn the heat down a bit and add the mushrooms, onions and garlic.

While everything is cooking, stir frequently and finely chop the dill (discard the thick stalks). When the mushrooms are soft, add the vermouth and let it bubble away to about half.

Stir in the crème fraiche, season to taste and warm everything through. Add most of the dill and give it a final stir before serving with the rice. Garnish with the remaining dill and enjoy.

Serves two.

Spinach, chickpea and tamarind stew

It’s November, so, quite rightly, it’s cold, dark and a bit wet. I have been counterbalancing this with hot, bright, delicious food. Stews are kind of ideal November food however, veggie stews can be a bit bland and dull. Yotam Ottolenghi’s swiss chard, chickpea and tamarind stew is anything but.


The tamarind adds a sharp, sunny-ness to everything, and the colours - the green spinach, golden chickpeas, red sauce and white yoghurt - are bright and cheerful. It’s wonderfully exotic while also being fantastically warm and comforting. It is also one of those things where you can have 90% of the ingredients in the cupboard and freezer (the only things I needed to buy were yoghurt and coriander).


This is something I make fairly regularly, this time I made it with spinach, rather than swiss chard, and baked potato ,rather than rice. I then followed it up with Felicity Cloake’s Perfect Rice pudding - which is well worth a try. All the kind of food to banish the cold, miserable month on the other side of the curtains.

This makes enough for four – (or two and two portions in the freezer)

Mushroom and onion pie

I was in M&S the other day (stocking up on Vanilla Fudge bars which t-o-h buys, and eats by the dozen) and the person behind me was buying a roast mushroom and onion pie. That sounds good I thought, I reckon I could do that …so I did.

250g mushrooms, cut into mouth-sized chunks (I’ll let you decide how big that is)
2 onions, sliced
2 tbsp oil
2 small knobs butter
1 tbsp flour
400ml stock
Splash red wine
1 star anise
1 tsp marmite (or tbsp soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce)
3 largish potatoes, mashed with a little butter (i.e. ‘baked’ in the microwave, scooped out and mashed with a fork)

Start with a tablespoon of oil and knob of butter in a hot-ish pan. Throw in the mushrooms, season and leave them to get a bit of colour. When they are soft and just golden (about 5 minutes) scoop them out and put them in an oven proof dish.

Next, put the remaining oil and butter in the same pan and reduce the heat to medium-low. Add the onions and cook until golden and sticky, stirring regularly, which will take about 15-20 minutes (a pinch of sugar and salt will help everything along).

When they are golden brown add the flour and stir for a couple of minutes to cook the flour (add a drop more oil if you think it needs it). Pour in the wine and allow it to evaporate before adding the stock, marmite and star anise. Cook for 5 minutes and check for seasoning.

Remove the star anise and pour the onion mix over the mushrooms. Top with the mash, roughing up the top with a fork. Cook in a preheated 210C oven for about 25 minutes until browned and bubbling.

Dole out onto two plates and serve - with pickled onions and beetroot if you like.