Pizza, pesto and ciao to 2013!

I was ACTUALLY playing (read: losing) Scrabble when this was taken aka it wasn't set up for kitsch blogger photos

As I touched on in my last post, 2013 has been good to me. I feel more settled now than I ever have done as an adult and during a walk to Lidl to buy some yeast and strong bread flour for this recipe, I had a good think about why.

I think happiness has a lot to do with what age you feel. I never enjoyed the “young person” thing and up until now, being an adult has been the shittiest crawl through a sewer I have ever experienced. A lot of this has been down to me and how I have approached my life – laziness, being a coward, selfishness and self-pity – but some of it has been down to the STUPID things we are expected to do in this ridiculous, horrible young adult path that is meant to be enjoyable.

Between the ages of 18 and 24, I felt like I was forced to sit on a rollercoaster with a hangover every day. The idea that we are meant to enjoy going out in heels and small dresses and drinking stupid amounts of alcohol. The idea of meeting strangers in grotty, sweaty cavernous rooms with migraine-inducing music and GETTING ON WITH THEM when in reality, the majority of people I meet, I would be happy never to see again. The amount of times I have sat alone in a club, surrounded by hundreds of people but feeling as lonely as hell.

The shared living and the poverty-with-iPhones BECAUSE WE SPENT ALL OUR MONEY ON BOOZE BUT OMG WHY ARE WE SO POOR, the confusion of wrong relationships and strained friendships. The stupid pseudo-intellectual-babble debates that we have again and again and again. Religion, politics, current affairs, charity, war, poverty, the press. All these fucking ISSUES that we argue about like a bunch of car tyres stuck in the mud…as if our arrogant opinions expressed loudly in a middle class hippy pub are suddenly going to change everything. As if we are going to go out into the night half-sloshed and build some new affordable housing.

This is what my brain was like from about 2006 – 2012. Six years of anxiety-ridden hell.

But this year, I changed. I think that I have finally become the age and the person that I was so desperately frustrated to be. It’s in no small part thanks to some kind-hearted, beautiful friends I found again. It’s not that these people have DONE anything exactly. More that…everything just feels right and because it all feels so right, I feel right too and I want to do right.

And that feeling is so refreshing, so carefree and so precious that I want to breathe it forever and ever.

In reality, there are still loads of things I will do wrong and even if I don’t, most people fuck up this Zen-thing by having children and replacing all the contentment with perpetual anxiety, guilt and tiredness. So yeah, things will probably go wrong again and I don’t expect to live in this dream-state forever (just in case people think I am boasting or naïve, I’m not, I’m not!)

Anyway, I’ll be quiet about everything that might go wrong in the future because seize the day and all that shit.

Another thing that makes me super, super happy is pizza. The closest I have ever come to making a pizza is grating extra cheese onto a gourmet Co-Op Margareta. So this is pretty big.

I got the recipe from Rose and the highlight, for me, is the pesto which is soo tasty and so satisfying to blitz up.

 Start by making your dough. This recipe will make enough for 4 medium, super thin pizzas.

500g strong white flour (and a bit extra for kneading)

1 tbsp salt

A 7g sachet of dried yeast

A sprinkle of caster sugar

2 tbsp olive oil

330ml tepid water (or the same amount of grams if you’re weighing it all)

Put the flour and salt in a bowl. In a separate jug, mix up the rest of the ingredients and leave for one minute. Whilst you’re waiting, pre-heat your oven to a tiny temperature (like 100c for about 3 minutes or some shit…unless you have the heating on or it is summer – in which case, don’t worry about this step).

Pour the wet stuff into a little well in the middle of the dry stuff. Use a metal spoon to gently incorporate the whole lot together. Persevere: I thought that I had used way too much flour but after a few minutes, it all comes together to make a sticky dough.

By now, you can turn your oven off if you decided to put it on.

Flour a work surface and tip your dough out. It’s time to knead! I have always failed at this – never, ever have I had dough DOUBLE in size – the thought was laughable. But this time, I had a nice warm area (the pre-heated oven) and I kneaded my ass off.

Spend about 5-6 minutes or maybe even 7-8, pulling the dough, like stretching it and then putting it back together. Also knead it in a massage-y way. Basically, just keep that shit moving until it’s smooth and slightly less sticky. You can use quite a bit of flour without it being a disaster.

Now, lightly flour a bowl and put your dough in it. Sprinkle with a little more flour and cover with a damp tea towel. Put it in your nice warm oven and shut the door. Seriously, the oven needs to be warm…and no more than warm….for this to work.

Leave for an hour. While you wait for the magic to happen (seriously, it’s actually magic!), get making your pesto. It doesn’t take THAT long to whip up and it is amazingly tasty – properly beautiful.

A basil plant (99p from Lidl)

50g raw pine nuts

88g grated parmesan (the stuff I had was veggie friendly so any kinda hard cheese will do)

2 cloves of garlic

110g or ml of olive oil (seems a lot but this makes quite a lot of pesto)

A large pinch of salt

Tear off all the leaves from the basil plant and chuck them in a blender (or a bowl if you’re using a hand blender). It’s fine if a few stems go in there too. Add all the other stuff – whizz – hey presto! Store it in the fridge, perhaps in a little jar.

 Tick tock, tick tock.

Okay, after an hour, take your dough out. I really am still in shock that this stuff doubled in size. Break the dough into half and half again. I made two pizzas so am storing half of the dough in the fridge for later this week (it’ll be fine for up to a week).

Put two (or how ever many pizzas you are making) baking trays into your oven, upside down. Now, pre-heat that oven again. 200 fan, 220 no fan.

Roll out your pizzas. I used a wine bottle (thoroughly washed, label scoured off) as I don’t own a rolling pin. Worked FINE. Make it super-duper thin – like if I was a person and I had gone through a breakup and lost LOADS of weight from never eating because every time I ate something, I cried NOT SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE – that thin. Put each pizza base onto a sheet of tin foil.

 Now, OMG, there is so much to do. Top your pizza.

A box of passata

Dried oregano

Mozzarella

Whatever else you like – sundried tomatoes, artichokes etc. etc.

Pour on a bit of passata and spread it around with a spoon. Sprinkle the oregano over your base and swirl on some of the pesto. Top with a few slices of mozzarella.

Take an upside-down baking tray out of the oven and sliiiiide the tin foil onto it. Place in the over. Repeat for additional pizzas. I waited about 10-12 minutes and although the cheese was bubbling, the middle was still quite doughy. I guess just wait until the middle looks firm. I wouldn’t have thought it would be more than 15 minutes.

 Serve with sweet potato chips, a crème fraiche dip and a leafy salad.

Satisfying, healthy and messy. MY FAVOURITE.

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Great British Bake Off: Cottage Loaf

Recently, and perhaps because I am now burdened with the millstone-like new year’s resolution to “update this blog regularly”, I have become the baking equivalent of a new person at work.

I arrive on my first day at the new office, feeling all positive and breezy (“Morning guys! Would you like a coffee? I’ll photocopy that enormous file for you! No, of course I don’t mind! Walking 2 miles in the rain to collect your bespoke £5 hot chocolate? Absolutely! I love walking!") because compared to the last shithole I worked at, this can't possibly be as bad!

Meanwhile, the existing, disenfranchised employees all roll their eyes and patronise me. They’ve been here before but are too polite to spoil it for me and of course they know that I'll soon realise for myself that the job is shit and all the bosses are bastards.

But here I am, the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed dough puncher, at the beginning of my breadmaking career! My mum, you see, is the disenfranchised current employee because she knows that it’s not worth the effort and she knows that you may as well just buy a loaf or use the breadmaker. It comes out much better, so just give up right now and admit defeat.

However, because she isn’t a massive bitch like I would be in her situation (“STOP FUCKING AROUND AND BUY A TIGER LOAF”, I say to my future daughter) she humours me and sits patiently, answering my idiotic questions and demands: "I need a damp tea towel! A clean one! Quickly! It’s time-sensitive!” and nurtures my new-found sense of enthusiasm for something new.

Interestingly enough, the highlight of this bread was the crust and that, I think, is a huge accolade for the crust community because usually crusts are treated with nothing but contempt. They’re repeatedly slagged off, cut off and blitzed into a void to make way for their much more highly respected brothers, the breadcrumbs.

The trick to having the best crust in the world is a simple one. Firstly, don’t be too penny-wise by brushing a thimble-full of milk over your dough prior to baking; instead, fork out for an egg. You might even have a little left to make a tablespoon-full of scrambled egg like I did!

Secondly, heat an empty roasting tray in the oven, before putting your bread in. As soon as you do come to put your bread in, fill the tray up with cold water and WATCH the steam rise. Close the oven door as soon as possible. These are both tips taken from the Great British Book of Baking but I dutifully employed them and they worked a treat.

I have written out these instructions for those of us who have access to a mixing machine and dough hook (thanks mum!). I would have written the by-hand instructions too but I’m just too lazy.

You will need…

675g strong white bread flour

1 ½ teaspoons sea salt

1 x 7g sachet easy-blend dried yeast

400ml water, at room temperature

1 egg, beaten, for brushing

1. Mix the flour, salt and yeast in your food mixer bowl. Make a well in the middle and pour in the water. Use the dough hook attachment to gradually work into a firm dough.

2. ‘Knead’ for a further 4 minutes in the bread mixer, on the lowest possible speed. The dough should be very smooth and workable.

3. Take the bowl (with the dough in) to a warmish place and cover with a damp tea towel. It needs to double in size, which takes about 1 ½ hours. However, mine didn’t double in this time at all. It barely even changed!

4. Punch out all the air from the dough (if there is any) and knead by hand for another minute. Chop off one third of the dough and shape both parts into balls. Place them onto a greased (with butter) baking tray.

5. Cover the tray with a damp tea towel and put in a warmish place for about 40 minutes, so they double in size again. Mine did double in size at this point, hurrah!

6. Preheat the oven to 230c. You can put your empty roasting tin into the oven at this point.

7. Uncover your dough and gently flatten each ball. Put the smaller one on top of the larger one and use your index and third (what is that one called?) fingers to poke down in the top, to join the layers together. Leave for another 10 minutes.

8. Brush with milk and score around the edge of each loaf, using a sharp knife. Quickly put the bread in the oven and fill up the roasting tin with cold water. Shut the oven door ASAP.

9. Bake for 15 minutes before reducing the temperature to 200c and bake for 20-25 minutes more. The loaf should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. Cool your loaf on a wire rack. Hey presto! 

Look at that STRUCTURE!

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Carrot and Hummus Crunch on Sourdough (or Irish Soda Bread)

The final sandwich, complete with my mangled hand.

The national airline of Belgium is called SABENA. I know this because when I was 9, my family took me on a coach trip to the Black Forest in Germany. Obviously, it would have been very tiring to do the trip all in one go, so we had little overnight stops along the way. One such stop was in Brussels, where we stayed in a hotel that was rather close to the airport.

Upon arriving at the hotel, you couldn’t help but notice a big fuck-off sign spelling out SABENA on the side of the terminal. Obviously spotting a good opportunity for a quick quip, the coach driver’s sidekick announced “That’s the Belgian airline. It stands for Such A Bloody Experience, Never Again!”

Oh and how everyone chuckled. Especially me because a) that is what you do when a grown-up joke is made, to show that you “get it” and b) I was still at the stage where “bloody” was a bit risqué, as was “piss”.

Anyway, as I was making this sandwich and everything was going wrong, I thought about SABENA. I mean, the final deal was, well, okaaay…although perhaps my enjoyment was thwarted by the various disasters along the way. I have lots of leftovers so have a few more opportunities to work out whether I actually do like this meal or not.

I was initially attracted to the recipe, by Nick Sandler and featured in the Meat Free Monday cookbook, because it was very short. For a lazy cook, this is always a deciding factor (along with How Much Washing Up Will This Create?). The meal used soda bread (can be bought ready made), hummus (can be bought ready made) and some carrot/garlic/seedy thing, which I would of course make by myself.

However, I had read on Twitter and stuff that soda bread was really easy and that homemade hummus was in a completely different league to the supermarket stuff! So, in an attempt to impress my readers (ha ha), I boldly decided to make everything myself….from scratch!

Off I toddled down to Rotherham town centre to pick up the ingredients. I already had most of the stuff that I needed for the soda bread and the only outstanding ingredient, buttermilk, was surprisingly in stock. I also soon had everything I needed, in my basket, for the hummus, until I went off to find the tahini (ground sesame seeds and olive oil).

Buttermilk sourced from Rotherham!

 After a long, drawn-out search involving various staff members, every aisle in existence and Tesco computer databases, my search ended with a “Sorry love, this one is new on me. If it’s not with the curry stuff, I don’t think we will have it.” So, I put the chickpeas and other hummus-y stuff back and picked up a tub of ready made stuff. SABENA.

Back at home, it was time to make the soda bread. This actually wasn’t a disaster at all, despite the finished goods looking somewhat like the elephant man’s head. This is the easiest bread IN THE WORLD. The recipe says it takes an hour (including cooking time) and usually these timings are ambitious because not everyone has ingredients measured out in endless mini bowls. Anyway, it actually DID take an hour because it couldn’t possibly take longer!

Dah-dah!

I used the Irish Soda Bread recipe from Good Food and it was great. The method urges you not to overwork the dough and so my “loaf” did go into the oven looking more like a collection of pieces of dough, although it did work out well in the end.

Before cooking (a hodge-podge of bits of dough)

 To add another complication to the most complicated sandwich I have ever attempted, I had decided to join a band. Not in a serious way (eg; no one in this band would ever consider music as a career) but in a “let’s hang out in some really cold practice rooms and jam!” sort of way. Which is basically an excuse for some guys to smoke doobies…and that is why everyone joins a band, isn’t it?

My boyfriend was going to pick me up at 6.45pm and it was 4.45pm, so there was plenty of time BUT I had no carrots. “Don’t worry,” my Dad said “I’m going out, so I’ll pick you some up!” All was good, so I began to cut up my chilli and garlic. Over an hour later my Dad finally arrived home because there seemed to have been some kind of northern carrot shortage, so it was all rush rush rush and then, for some INSANEEE reason (self-sabotage), I decided to a) double the quantities and b) manually grate the carrots instead of using the food processor because I thought it would be too much washing up. SABENA.

Look how much fucking carrot there is and I STILL had more to do :-(

 The root vegetable God had forsaken me because the carrot grating step took just over half an hour. My hand was about to fall off, a bit of finger had been grated into the mound of orange stuff and wet carrot was sticking to every surface, towel, tap and floor tile in the house. This shambles went on for such a ridiculously long time that I missed band practice and spent another boring half an hour washing up instead. SABENA.

A literal MOUNTAIN of hand-grated carrot.

 So, feeling all sweary, sweaty and frustrated, I bundled the sandwich together and gobbled it down. SABENA! SABENA! I think, what with the sophisticated ingredient of caraway seeds, I was hoping to be a bit more bowled over by the taste than I was. I didn’t let the carrot mixture fully cool, so that may have been a problem. Like I say, I think I should try it all again another day, when I’m feeling a little less besieged, and then make my final judgement.

The carrots, cooking (obviously).

 Serves 2 (I doubled these quantities) (SABENA)

“Fry 2 coarsely grated large carrots in a pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil, 2 chopped garlic cloves, ½ chopped red chilli and 1 teaspoon caraway seeds over moderate heat for 5-8 minutes, stirring frequently. Cool before using in the sandwich. Cut 4 slices of sourdough bread. Spread 100g hummus onto the bread, followed by the carrots. Remember to scrape in the caraway seeds and chilli. Add 2 tablespoons Greek yoghurt to the bread in blobs, followed by a handful of chopped coriander. Season with freshly ground pepper.”

I just mixed the coriander into my carrot mix and I also forgot to season with pepper. Please note also, that after watching Jamie Oliver on (I think it was) the Jonathan Ross show, I jazzed up my lame supermarket hummus with cumin and paprika, plus a little parsley. It tasted a bit nuttier, I think. SABENA. Also, this dish is super garlicky, when you consider the hummus (which is enough to repel all people for at least a day aka very useful) AND the cloves added to the carrots. So handle with care, my friends.

Pimped hummus (cumin and paprika).

 NB: OH MY WORD, I JUST READ THAT BACK (proof-reading, you see) AND SAW THAT IT SAID SOURDOUGH, NOT SODA BREAD!!! What an unmitigated DISASTER! I baked and wrote about the wrong bread, which just shows how completely and unreservedly SABENA the whole thing is.

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Paul Hollywood's Focaccia Bread

A close-up of the focaccia (disguising a lack of depth)

When I was growing up, I was a “nothing” and now I am fully grown up, I am still a “nothing” but just a bit more comfortable about it. By a “nothing”, I mean not an “anything”; I just didn’t fit into any group: popular, unpopular, LGBT, goth, sporty, geek (honestly!).

These days, I generally accept that I am not a part of any subculture. Instead, I know what I like and my friends all have something in common with what I like, even though they are all very different. 

However, back in the days of school, I was desperate to be a something and I tried many times to make myself into a something. This first happened when I tried to become a heavy metal fan. I mean, I did become a fan: I saw Metallica twice and bought loads of albums and t-shirts and I did genuinely enjoy it, for what it was.

It soon became apparent though, that I wasn’t as serious about metal as all the other metal fans. I just thought “I like it but this isn’t serious stuff, it’s just some music and they all look a bit silly getting so serious about it”. Anyway, I think they rumbled me and I was ousted from the community.

When I was about 16, I tried to become an “emo”. I’d heard about emos on the internet before and they seemed to be the new cool thing (all former emos are now hipsters so they’re always pretty cool). My friend knew some people in emo bands and so I tagged along with her to go and see them play in Leeds. Again, I thought it was all a bit silly but they did have loads of fun, so I bought a studded belt and some really tights jeans and started getting to know emos.

Before long, word got round that the king of the emos (Oli Sykes from Bring Me The Horizon) was having a party at his house. It was advertised on MySpace and I think you had to become “friends” with the “house party” to ensure that you would be admitted. The band we sort of knew in Leeds knew Oli and so we somehow managed to wangle an invite.

Everyone was to meet at Sheffield train station at a specified time. We would then all get on a bus together and travel to his house (we filled the whole top deck, a bunch of emos!).

And again, I didn’t really understand. I was desperate just to say “shall we switch back to comfy jeans now and stop pretending we like this music where all the lead singer does is scream really loudly?” I didn’t say this but I sort of hinted at it to various people “on the scene”. They each had the same sort of reaction: an eye roll, a bemused look. They pattered off, looking like a matchstick with a black olive on top…as if I was the one being strange.

Feeling lost and a bit dejected, I fatally decided to take a nap on one of the beds in a spare bedroom. It was about 3am and even though everyone else seemed to be having fun, talking about bands like Thursday, FFAF and probably Cancer Bats too, I had had enough.

Drifting off, I finally felt as if I’d found myself: all alone, lost in my head, well away from this noisy, alien world of emos and scenesters.

And then, it hit me.

A water bomb. Straight in my face, followed by another and another and loads of them bursting all over me. Water going into my eyes, my ears and all over my stupid too-small jeans.

When anything unexpected happens during sleep, it is always very confusing and shocking. Is it a war? Am I being kidnapped? Is this the end of the world? I shrieked and called out for help: “Help! Where am I? Mum! Dad!” only to see through my blurred vision (a combination of tiredness and water) a group of emos laughing at me and walking off sharing their emo glee. Fucking emos. I didn’t even think they were meant to laugh, wasn’t that the point??

I had no choice but to wake up. I couldn’t go home because there was still two hours before the first bus. I tried to pretend to have fun but I was desperate to leave. Being an emo wasn’t for me. They were all still so awake and having fun and copping off with people without any kind or embarrassment or anxiety. Anything was better than this and so, looking like a drenched Kevin Khachaturian, I set off alone to sit at the bus stop for a couple of hours.

And that was the turning point in my life. I decided that I didn’t want to be in a subculture any more. I just wanted to like the music I genuinely liked and that was it. I wanted to think what I thought was right and I didn’t want to have to buy into a way of life that I couldn’t take seriously.

(This isn’t strictly true; it wasn’t a turning point at all. Instead, I had years and years of insecurity and paranoia about being a “nothing” until I just kind of accepted it because there were no groups left for me to infiltrate. To be kind to myself though, I would like to use my artistic license to assign those aforementioned very mature and rational thoughts to the bus ride home from the disaster-party). 

I have failed to rise in any group; I am a lone social drifter depending only on myself for survival (ha, ha). The other day, I baked some bread that also failed to rise in any subculture. In fact, it failed to rise altogether.

This was Paul Hollywood’s focaccia bread, which was featured on the Great British Bake Off one year as a technical challenge. Many contestants cocked it up because they didn’t believe the recipe, which called for an inordinate amount of water to be added to the dough. They were all wrong of course. Focaccia dough is meant to be really, really annoying because it is so sloppy and sticky that more of it tends to end up on you than it does in the oven. I knew this would happen and so I was prepared for the nightmare with olive oil already poured out into a dish (to avoid getting dough all over the bottle).

Before cooking (obviously)

I got the recipe from the wonderful Kerry at Kerry Cooks and if you would like to see how it should turn out, I urge you to click on that link. I followed all the instructions but the only thing I can think of that may have caused the lack of rise was that my dough was proving in a cold room. I’m not sure if this is an issue or not but to be on the safe side, make sure your room is of normal room temperature plus.

Either way, the bread still tasted good. So good, in fact, that we polished it off all in one go. I don’t think I’ll ever bother again because it really is a faff. However, if you’re up for a new experiment, definitely give this a go and let me know how you get on.

You can kinda see how flat it is...tasty though!

Ingredients

250g strong white flour
1 tsp salt
1 (7g) sachet dried yeast
1 tbsp olive oil
200ml cold water
olive oil, for drizzling and kneeding and resting and getting dough off your hands
fine sea salt (I just used some stuff that was in a grinder, not sure what it was)
2 tablespoons chopped rosemary – if you buy this from the supermarket, you probably won’t use it all. Make sure you take off all the other sprigs and put them in a little Tupperware. Pop this in the freezer and you will have fresh herbs on demand the next time you need them!

1. Flour, olive oil, salt and yeast into a large bowl. Kerry suggests keeping the salt and yeast at opposite sides of the bowl because the salt can kill the yeast. Good tip.

2. Add ¾ of the water and stir. Gradually add the rest of the water (yes, all of it).

3. Cover your hands in olive oil and begin the process of kneading the dough in the bowl. Put more oil on your hands if it gets too sticky (it will).

4. Now tip it out onto an oiled chopping board and knead for another 5 minutes (horrific). Plonk it all back into an oiled bowl. Leave to prove for 1 hour. It should double in size (mine didn’t).

5. Now put it into a lined tin and push the dough to the corners. Plonk your fingers in to give it an appearance akin to cellulite and cover with a tea towel. Leave to prove for another hour.

6. Preheat your oven to conv 220 / fan 200. Sprinkle dough with sea salt, speckle with rosemary and drizzle a couple of tablespoons of oil over the top (I may have used too much…I love oil).

7. It is done when golden brown. Maybe around 30 minutes…I can’t really remember!

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