Friday's team pizza

As is becoming somewhat of a tradition on a Friday night we were going to have pizza. It was Matt, my husband's, birthday so I had offered an array of alternatives to the usual (him making pizza) including:

• Going out for pizza
• Going out for something else
• Me making the pizza
• Me making something else

But Matt was pretty sure that he wanted to do the pizza and I wasn't going to argue too strongly (he makes a delicious pizza). So the ingredients for the dough went into the bread maker. I don't know the details of these ingredients - the bread maker being well and truly Matt's domain. Whilst that was whirling the plan was that we'd take a walk in the evening sunshine to our 3rd most convenient convenience store to top up on toppings. That plan was thwarted slightly because we became enthralled with a tennis semi-final. We finally made it to the shop once the dough was ready and we realised that we should use the pause function on the TV otherwise we would not be enjoying any of the late evening sunshine. And as it was getting late Matt decided that I'd better be his sous chef.

Almost anything else for the pizza could be improvised but clearly cheese is important. We had chosen this 3rd most convenient convenience store because it is the best source of grated mozzarella. After selecting a few mushrooms and some spinach we got to the cheese section. There was grated mature cheese; but no mozzarella. A shop person just happened to be going by at the point at which I was incredulously examining the cheese shelves. Upon questioning he told me that they no longer stock mozzarella. I muttered a few words of incredulity at him, but had to accept that there would be no mozzarella this evening. Never mind, it would just be a new type of pizza experience.

My main (or possibly only) role as sous chef was the preparation of the toppings - this involving chopping it is well and truly my domain. The dough recipe that Matt uses makes enough for two pizzas. He wanted one as a Greek and one as a multi-veggie. So for the Greek I pre-cooked the spinach (4 minutes on medium in the microwave) and chopped up some feta and tomatoes. To this Matt also added some pine nuts and black olives. The tomato sauce was half a jar of chilli pasta sauce that we had left over (worryingly I can't recall from when). For the multi-veggie I had more chopping. As well as the mushrooms I chopped up some green pepper. This is notorious for not cooking quickly enough on pizza so I pre-fried it in the little fried egg pan. There was some sweetcorn leftover from the previous night's jacket potatoes so that would go on too. As for the cheese (we may not have had any mozzarella but there was plenty of other choice) we went for a combination of goat's cheese and garlic and herb soft cheese. These should have been straightforward to prepare, but in doing so I managed to break a knife. It was from the notorious range of bubble cutlery which I frequently have bad fortune with. The tomato sauce was half a jar of basil pasta sauce, the other half of which will now most likely be forgotten in the fridge for a number of weeks.

Multi-veggie pizza mid topping addition

The demise of a bubble knife

The pizzas bake at the hottest the oven goes until the toppings looked cooked. This is very imprecise but the base always seems to come out ok too. I suppose you are basically baking bread. We were very restrained and had just a slice of each each - plus a load of hummous, the crusts are ideal for dipping. The mozzarella-less pizzas were a revelation - even to a cheese lover such as myself. We'll just have to see if they pass the cold pizza test at Matt's birthday luncheon.

Friday's pine nut double bake

There are several things which indicate the arrival of a warmer season. This may include the outside eating of ice-cream, blossom on trees, turning the heating off, getting my legs out, hanging washing outside. 4 of the above have happened this week. Additionally the lip balm that I have been carrying in the inside pocket of my car door for the last couple of weeks melted today resulting in an unpleasant splodge of grease landing on my lips today during my new(ish) lip care routine. As well as making me reconsider my lip care routine this unexpected heat in my car made me think about summery cakes. Still having half a net full of small courgettes in the fridge my thoughts inevitably ended up with the “dolce zucchini cake”. A tried and tested recipe but one that just doesn’t work when the weather is cold.

I finished work late and had pretty much written off the possibility of making cake tonight. It wasn’t the end of the world; I could always make cake tomorrow. The plan for tonight was pizza with Matt, my husband, and Barbara, his mum; so my Friday night desire for carbohydrate would be met. Pizza is Matt’s realm (he even has a pizza chef hat) so while he was getting on with making it I decided to make myself scarce with a trip to the swimming pool.

It’s my big swim tomorrow and I hadn’t been for over a week. I didn’t want to exhaust myself but I needed to make sure that I could still 1. float 2. kick and 3. breathe etc. in order to feel confident for the 200 lengths. The breathing one was particularly worrying me as I’ve been having some upper respiratory tract symptoms for the last few days. 40 lengths later I had proved that all the above functions were fine. I also decided that the upper respiratory tract symptoms must be hay fever (yet another sign of the seasons beginning with “s” arriving), as they completely resolved whilst my face was mostly submerged in chlorine solution and didn’t come back again until I was exposed to teenage boys’ aerosol spray in the changing rooms.

Friday night is youth night. I have discovered that this mostly means that there are lots of teenage boys trying to impress teenage girls who are clearly not interested in them but find it amusing to tease them into thinking that they might have a chance. It also means that mostly the swimming lanes are empty as they do not lend themselves to teenage flirting. But the changing rooms are full of teenagers. Mostly I find their antics amusing but the one thing I cannot stand about teenage-boy behaviour is the excessive use of unpleasant aerosols. Quite how smelly they think they are after lurking around in a swimming pool is a mystery to me. As is how the smell of their aerosols is supposed to be (as the adverts would have you believe) alluring to the girls.

I was mildly impeded in my return journey from the pool by some dogs which seemed to find me alluring. The first was odd looking and had scary eyes. I didn’t have my glasses on which made it probably seem scarier than it was. The owner responded correctly to my verbal cues (yelping, which my friend who I was on the phone to mistook for back spasms) and called her dog back. The second was an imminent attack by two big bounding black labradors. The owner responded to my cries inappropriately with the words that dog fearers hate “they’re really friendly”. That’s as maybe but they may well knock me over / maul me before our friendship was consolidated.

I used my dog handling techniques – walking on, avoiding eye contact, not aggravating owners – to make it home safely. The pizza was well off being ready and Barbara was yet to arrive. The compulsion to bake summery cake was overwhelming. As well as courgettes the cake consists of butter (or lower fat alternative), sugar, flour, baking powder, sultanas, raisins and pine nuts. It’s a recipe that I would never have considered making in my before-food processor days as it requires 300g of grated courgette and courgette is very challenging to grate. But now I can grate all that in less time than it takes someone to go to the toilet.

The cake went in once the pizza was done. As usual the pizza was mostly Matt’s work – my contribution being a little bit of vegetable chopping (with a knife this time, not the food processor). Tonight we had “Greek salad pizza”: spinach, tomato, feta, black olives & pine nuts; and vegetable & tuna pizza. Both were amazing (not a term I use lightly in the description of pizza), but the Greek Salad one was my favourite. Matt pre-toasted the pine nuts which was very effective. There’s enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow which is just what I’ll need pre-swim. (At least it will taste nice. Unlike for running, there seems to be a lack of information about how one should approach a long distance swim from a nutritional perspective. Or from any other perspective for that matter.)

The cake should have been coming out about the time we finished our pizza, but my first skewer test suggested it needed a bit longer. So we put on some early 1990’s comedy-drama set in Kent to pass the time whilst waiting. Second skewer test indicated further cooking necessary. Further plot development / cringe-worthy character interactions. Third skewer test showed the cake was getting there but still not quite ready. I was getting inpatient by now (as was everyone else) so cranked up the temperature a bit. Bit more TV but couldn’t really concentrate due to thoughts of imminent cake. Fourth skewer test: success. This was fortunate as the top wouldn’t take much more browning.

Unfortunately it needed to cool before it could be cut safely. It was getting late and Barbara had to go. Matt and I should have gone to bed (I suppose I need to make sure I’ve got plenty of rest before my sporting endeavours and Matt’s supporting role) but now the cake was there it was just too tempting not to stay up so we could try some. So we let it cool just a little bit more before Matt sliced it. And it was worth staying up for. And given the lack of any other nutritional advice I can’t think of many better sources of energy for my swim tomorrow; but I will deliver a slice to Barbara first.