Surprise pizza bites

Do you love Pinterest? I totally do.
It's such a fun way to wander through other people's homes and kitchens and thoughts even to see what people like.
When I first went on Pinterest I couldn't believe how many types of foods were being made in mason jars. You can now add to that food made in plastic cups for individual serves such as Mexican dip or individual desserts. This is such a great idea for parties - if you are a super patient person who is really going to go through and layer seven types of dip into fifty plastic cups and add corn chips or if you only have less than ten people at your parties. That idea rocks if that's the case.
Another idea that is popular which I love is the "cupcakes" in the won ton wrappers - taco cupcakes, lasagna cupcakes and tequila shrimp cupcakes. I totally love these for parties and look forward to making them.

Somewhere along the line I am pretty sure I saw pizza bites on Pinterest. Although I now can't find them there but here is a link:
http://annies-eats.com/2010/02/01/pizza-bites/

And I then saw this version which is what I tried to replicate today with a twist:
http://www.jasonandshawnda.com/foodiebride/archives/7195

However when I started to fill the bundt tin it became clear my dough wasn't going to stretch far enough so...we switched back to a pie plate but used a recipe closer to the 2nd one. Are you with me?

We like the following things on our pizza - ham, salami and mushroom. So I used baby bocconcinni which I halved and then we put either a piece of ham or salami or a quarter of a mushroom in the dough ball so each one is a surprise. Hence the name...

Surprise Pizza Bites
1 quantity pizza dough
6 mushrooms quartered
50g ham
50g salami
about 1/2 a tub or 100g baby bocconcinni
1 clove garlic crushed
50g butter melted.
Italian herbs (you could use dried basil or oregano instead)
Pasta sauce for dipping

1. Grease a pie plate with combined melted butter and garlic.
2. Take marble-sized dough balls, flatten then and then place salami/cheese, ham/cheese or mushroom/cheese inside. (You can see this is when my daughter and I were still on the bundt pan concept).

3.Pinch closed. Brush with butter and place in dish until done. Brush with extra butter and sprinkle with Italian herbs.

4. Let rise for 20-30 minutes while oven heats.
5. Bake in moderate oven about 30-40 minutes until golden.

6. Let sit 10 minutes and serve with warm pasta sauce for dipping.

Enjoy!

Pizza dough

I posted about home-made pizza a while back so I thought now I would post my pizza dough recipe.

I must confess that I stick pretty much to the recipe but my lovely husband likes to ad-lib a bit so sometimes the fluffiness of the dough varies according to his mood. We have cooked this dough in the oven and on the BBQ. We have made mini pizzas, large rectangle pizzas to feed a crowd and also done our usual 2 round pizzas for our family. We have doubled this recipe to with no negative side-affects.

What I do know matters about making pizza dough (or any dough) is USE FRESH YEAST. If you think it isn't fresh, hasn't been stored properly or is past it's best then don't bother. The other thing I do when I use yeast is add it to warm water - I do this when making bread in the bread machine too - not BOILING water but warm, because it activates the yeast.

so here we go

Pizza Dough
1 1/2 teaspoons of yeast or one 7g sachet (that's how I buy it)
Pinch of sugar
1/4 cup lukewarm water
1/4 cup of flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 and 3/4 cups of flour
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup of water

1. Combine yeast, pinch of sugar, water and 1/4 cup of lour in a large bowl. Leave to proof for 10 minutes.
2. Add remaining ingredients and combine with a wooden spoon.
3. Turn onto floured work surface and knead 7-10 minutes until smooth and elastic. Dough should be smooth to the touch.
4. Place in an oiled bowl and turn to coat. Cover with plastic or a warm cloth  for 1 - 1 1/2 hours until doubled in volume. Now it is ready.

Enjoy!

Pizza Night and Italian Night

As part of our no take-away pact that has been going for 2 years now we regularly replicate take-out food at home.

The most successful attempts at this include meat pies, sausage rolls, Chinese food, sushi and of course pizza!

Lots of people do home-made pizza night and we're no exception. The trick is to get a good pizza base that suits your taste. I know people who swear by pizza stones and cornmeal crusts. We do a basic dough which we throw in the oven on cheap metal trays. However we have a gas oven and I think the way it heats is quite like a pizza oven...it heats from below. Whatever we've done we've had Italian nights in the last few months with two groups of friends who make their pizzas differently to ours who found ours entirely delish!

Italian night is easy...4 pizzas (make double quantity of bases) and then spaghetti and meatballs done in the crock pot/slow-cooker, add salad and garlic bread and it's a very yummy family-friendly feast.

Here are some of our favourite toppings:
- ham and pineapple
- ham and mushroom
- proscuttio and grilled asparagus
- BBQ meat lovers (BBQ sauce base, mini meatballs or Italian sausage filling, salami, ham, cabanosi)
- supreme - ham, salami, mushrooms, onions, olives, sausage, anchovies

All of course with fresh basil and mozzarella!!

Scrolls two ways - savoury and sweet

Sometimes a get on a bit of a baking binge. I really like being able to take one recipe and get more than one thing out of it. Like taking a basic batter and make more than one cake or a universal muffin recipe and getting more than one type of muffin. It gives more options and I don't know why it just appeals to the multi-tasker in me.

One the weekend I decided to make pizza scrolls for the lunch-boxes this week. I cheated and made a quantity of bread dough in the bread machine using a bread mix that had been lurking there forever. (A bit of a tip but if you do that use fresh yeast...yeast expires and expired yeast means no rise and that's not what you want)

Then we halved the bread dough and made pizza scrolls with one half and choc-chip scrolls with the other. There is so much sugar in a choc-chip scroll that nobody needs a sweet dough with them in my opionion.

So this week the first few days my daughter and husband had savoury scrolls as their main lunch item and on Thursday and Friday they will have a sweet scroll. Easy.

A scroll is made by taking a sqaure of dough, covering it with filling, rolling jelly-roll style and slicing. In the US they call them cinnamon rolls...in Australia we used to put he jam-filled ones in acirle and call them Chelsea Buns.

Here's my version

Pizza Scrolls
1/2 quantity of bread dough
1/4 cup tomato paste
100g chopped tinned pineapple
125 chopped ham
1 cup grated mozarella

1. Roll dough into a rectangle
2. Spread with tomato paste, leaving a 1cm boarder. Cover tomato paste with other topping.
3. Roll. Jelly roll style. Cut and arrange in baking pan. Let rise in a warm place. bake moderate oven about 30 minutes.

Choc Chip Scrolls
1/4 cup softened butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup choc chips
1 teaspoon of cinnamon.

1. Roll into  rectangle.
2. Spread with butter, leaving a 1cm boarder. Cover with other toppings.
3.  Roll. Jelly roll style. Cut and arrange in baking pan. Let rise in a warm place. bake moderate oven about 30 minutes.

This week's menu in review

This week we ended up adding two new meals to our menu.

This month's Australian Good Taste magazine has a Chicago-style deep dish pizza on it's front cover. You can see it here.
http://www.taste.com.au/good+taste/

I varied the recipe to use ingredients we had and char grilled our own capsicum and zucchini on the BBQ.  I used my pizza dough recipe not the one in the magazine. Also we actually put the skillet on the BBQ and cooked it with the hood down because Monday night was actually the hottest day Sydney had seen in a year so I really didn't want to run the oven. Here is our version. I think it looks pretty good. It certainly tasted good.

Another recipe we made this week was a Gnocchi Bake. My daughter wanted to make a recipe from her cookbook back in January and so I bought 2  potato gnocchi packs at the fruit shop for $5 in anticipation. For some reason this is a product that is half the price at the fruit barn that it is at the supermarket.I was still waiting to see this culinary masterpiece when February rolled around.

I very simply cooked the gnocchi as per the instructions on the pack. I think it's very important not to overcook them or they become gluey and not so tasty.

Meanwhile I made a basic bolognese sauce. I mixed the two poured into a glass baking dish and topped with a bit of ricotta i needed to use and a combination of grated tasty and parmesan cheeses. baked for 35-40 minutes until bubbling and browned on top.

I forgot to take a picture (sigh) but this was yummy and a nice change from regular pasta. My family has requested we have it again so I will take a photo next time.