Food (well...pizza...)!
Well, since everyone else seems to be doing it, I'm going to start a food diary of some sorts. I don't have much on at the moment and it's something to do and to put my new camera to use as well. I bloody love food and it'll be good to look on over what I've eaten. I'm also hoping it will encourage me to try some new recipes and vary my diet a bit - I tend to cook the same recipes over and over again and never try anything new, so I'm hoping it will get me out of a rut if I can look back and see I've already eaten that last week or month (or that same day!) and stop myself from being repetitive. I'm not a particularly great cook, I do a lot of things wrong and make as many total disasters as meals that turn out ok - I very rarely come out with something outstanding. I hope to change that and maybe recording my mistakes will help me to learn as well. This is a personal food diary, NOT a blog, so don't expect it to be anything it isn't - this may well be the first and only post on my LJ with this format (I was going to say that mentions food but that's a blatant lie).
So anyway, for my first food-only related post I'm recording something I've been making a lot lately, have never got 100% right, but is still pretty good all the same - onion pizza. Our neighbours had catered for a wedding and were left with a lot excess food, some of which they gave to us, including a lot of red onions so it was a perfect chance to use up some of them. Nam nam nam.
The thing I love about making this pizza (and I suppose baking most things in general) is that you start with a couple of ingredients, do very little to them, leave them for a little while and then come out with something that's completely different to what you started. For example, you start off with dough looking like this, small and oily:
then you come back to it an hour later and it looks like this, all big and squidgy, I guess it's hard to tell from the photos:
the same with the onions, add them to a pan with melted butter and oil, add a little bit of balsamic vinegar and a teeny bit of brown sugar and they'll look like this:
after an hour in the bottom oven of the Aga, they'd sweated down to this:
to be honest, I could have left them for a bit longer I think but I was hungry by this point!
I got a bit overexcited with the garlic and herbs in the sauce, so ended up having to add an extra tin of tomatoes to dilute it a bit. I've made it with fresh tomatoes before and it was much more tomatoey but I'm lazy and I don't really like raw tomatoes at all so I'm more than happy using tins. It's just one of those things I like to keep in the cupboard and get stressed if I don't have, even if I'm not using it that day (like stock or garlic).
And this is what I came out with, who says pizza has to be round? It wasn't the best pizza I've made, but it wasn't the worst either. Usually I'd top it with goats cheese (which is just made for pizzas) but I didn't have any so I just grated some cheddar on top and it was fine. As usual, I put too much sauce on so it was a bit overwhelming and the leftover pizza is going to get soggy. It also had a strange bitterness that I can't explain, it didn't make it inedible and I could hardly notice it after a few bites, but it's a problem I've had before and I wish I could work out what it was. That's the trouble with most of my cooking, I'm able to eat it happily and enjoy it, but I wouldn't feel so comfortable serving it to other people. All in all, it was nice enough, I just wish I could make it better.
So anyway, for my first food-only related post I'm recording something I've been making a lot lately, have never got 100% right, but is still pretty good all the same - onion pizza. Our neighbours had catered for a wedding and were left with a lot excess food, some of which they gave to us, including a lot of red onions so it was a perfect chance to use up some of them. Nam nam nam.
The thing I love about making this pizza (and I suppose baking most things in general) is that you start with a couple of ingredients, do very little to them, leave them for a little while and then come out with something that's completely different to what you started. For example, you start off with dough looking like this, small and oily:
then you come back to it an hour later and it looks like this, all big and squidgy, I guess it's hard to tell from the photos:
the same with the onions, add them to a pan with melted butter and oil, add a little bit of balsamic vinegar and a teeny bit of brown sugar and they'll look like this:
after an hour in the bottom oven of the Aga, they'd sweated down to this:
to be honest, I could have left them for a bit longer I think but I was hungry by this point!
I got a bit overexcited with the garlic and herbs in the sauce, so ended up having to add an extra tin of tomatoes to dilute it a bit. I've made it with fresh tomatoes before and it was much more tomatoey but I'm lazy and I don't really like raw tomatoes at all so I'm more than happy using tins. It's just one of those things I like to keep in the cupboard and get stressed if I don't have, even if I'm not using it that day (like stock or garlic).
And this is what I came out with, who says pizza has to be round? It wasn't the best pizza I've made, but it wasn't the worst either. Usually I'd top it with goats cheese (which is just made for pizzas) but I didn't have any so I just grated some cheddar on top and it was fine. As usual, I put too much sauce on so it was a bit overwhelming and the leftover pizza is going to get soggy. It also had a strange bitterness that I can't explain, it didn't make it inedible and I could hardly notice it after a few bites, but it's a problem I've had before and I wish I could work out what it was. That's the trouble with most of my cooking, I'm able to eat it happily and enjoy it, but I wouldn't feel so comfortable serving it to other people. All in all, it was nice enough, I just wish I could make it better.