Weekend cooking - Pizza sandwiches

If you didn't know by now, I don't like spending a lot of time in the kitchen. After all, there are more important things in life like....reading and organising!

Anyway, so this is one of my favourite things to make on the weekend and it takes all of 2 minutes to prepare.


Ingredients
Any bread - I use Slim Slice bread
30g lowfat cheese
Tomatoes
Mushrooms


Toast bread. I usually toast them a little harder than I'd normally do. You'll see why later.
Slice tomatoes and place on bread.
Divide cheese between slices.
Place sliced mushrooms on top
Sprinkle with spices - I put Italian pasta seasoning but plain old salt and pepper will do nicely



Zap in microwave for 30 seconds. This is when the bread softens and why I said toast more than usual.



Enjoy!

Weekend cooking - pizza pancakes

As you know, there are only the two of us, so when I make pancakes, I generally use 1 – 1 ½ cups of flour. My usual thing with pancakes is a ratio of 1:1:1 as in flour: eggs: milk/liquid.

Ingredients
1 cup flour
1 egg
1 cup fat-free milk
Onion
Mushrooms
Tomatoes
(use as much vegetables as you like – the actual recipe calls for green pepper but we don’t eat peppers so I skipped those)
About half a cup of cheese (or more, if you like)
Salt & pepper & Italian herbs, to taste
Oil for frying
A tomato-based sauce for spreading – I used the All Joy pasta sauce (I love, love, love these sauces)

you know how I like to prepare everything before I start?

Method
Mix the flour, egg and milk.
Add the vegetables and cheese.
Heat the oil and fry the pancakes.


I tried lots of ways to do this because I don’t follow cooking directions very well (except for baking – which I follow religiously since Nigella mentioned that baking is like science).

First, I tried to fry some of the veggies, and then I poured some batter, swirled it around and flipped when that side was ready. This didn’t work so well. So don't do this one!

Then I tried it the way the recipe intended :--)

However, the batter is so thick with the vegetables that it takes FOREVER to fry and frankly, I don’t have the patience for all that standing around.

Secondly, I tried frying it very thin and rolling it like a real pancake with tomato sauce and cheese on top. Looks a bit like an enchilada.

Third, finally I settled on a way that made me very happy.

I fried the pancake like normal. Then while still in the pan, I spread a teaspoon or two of the All Joy pasta sauce. I then grated some cheese and let the heat melt it.

Then it looks like a pizza and we ate it like that.


This is how I would do again, if ever I was mad enough to do all this work.

But please!!! Don’t let my laziness put you off. It’s just I’m not a fan of long meals. You know that anything I normally cook takes 30 minutes at most to prepare!

Wholewheat Spinach & Vegetable Pizza

This recipe has been on my Recipes to Try list for a couple of months so I decided to buy a big bag of spinach (I actually prefer swiss chard) and tackle a couple of recipes, all containing spinach :)

As I was making this, some of the quantities seemed way too much, so I changed them and these are the quantities I used.

Ingredients

• 1 cup cake flour
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 100 g spinach, finely chopped
• 3 ml sugar
• 5 g instant dry yeast
• 2 tablespoons sunflower oil

Topping

• 125 ml sweet chilli sauce (oooh, I think this makes the pizza special)
• 2 weigh-less viennas, chopped (the recipe calls for 250 g bacon but I didn't feel like buying bacon)
• 140g pumpkin, cooked (I sliced the pumpkin and microwaved it with about a tablespoon of water for 1 minute)
• 1/2 onion, chopped (100g)
• 60g mushrooms
• cheese

The recipe called for a whole onion and 400g butternut - that's a LOT of veg, even for me - so I reduced quantities.

Method

1. Mix the flour, salt, chopped spinach. Add the sugar, instant yeast and mix.
2. Add the sunflour oil and 1 cup luke-warm water to form a soft dough.
3. Knead for 10 minutes (I didn't bother, I just mixed and it still came out beautifully).
4. Cover and leave to rise in a warm place for 45 minutes, or until double in size.
5. Roll the dough into a large disc about 1 cm thick.
6. I used Glad baking paper (how did I ever survive without this?!!!) to roll the dough out on and then lifted the whole thing and placed on my pizza tray. You don't even need Spray and Cook - imagine that?!
7. Spread the sweet chilli sauce liberally with a basting brush.
8. Add the onion, mushrooms, pumpkin and viennas or bacon, and top with cheese (and I added a sprinkling of Italian herbs (my new favourite spice)
9. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees (350) for 15 to 20 minutes.
10. Enjoy - this is absolutely delicious and is going to be a keeper around here!

Do you also change recipes around and do your "own thing"? Or do you like to follow the recipe exactly? What do you think it says about you?