Going the Italian Route.

From making roasted tomato soup and penne pasta with seafood to gnocchi with roasted tomato sugo, I suppose it was only in due time that we tried our hand at making some thin crust pizzas.

So that’s pretty much in short how GT and I found ourselves in the kitchen on Saturday morning, covered in flour as we prepared our ingredients and rolled out pizza discs between laughing and teasing about our very amateur rolling skills.

As it tends to be with me and my having to make everything myself (I mean really, if I’m gonna make pizzas, I might as well make it all from scratch right?), I insisted that we make our own tomato sauce (glurgs of white wine stirred in some tomato paste, minced garlic, fresh rosemary and thyme) and barbeque sauce for our mixed mushroom and barbeque chicken with red onions pizzas.

The trick we found to rolling out the crusts as thin as possible, with much thanks to Peter Reinhart, was to work with a small amount of dough. We chose to take the easier route out and used rolling pins instead of tossing them in the air, like Peter Reinhart very impressively demostrates in the book, and pressed the dough gently with our fingers to stretch it even further.

Also, another thing that I think helped us get that crackly, paper thin crust we were after was baking the crust on an inverted baking tray, much like a pizza stone.

And that was in short how we came about to have two glorious thin crust pizzas, that between GT and my brother just flew off the plates, for lunch.

I’m truly pleased I can now have thin crust pizzas whenever I want, however I want.

Pizza Dough [Taken from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice]

Ingredients
4 1/2 cup bread flour
1 3/4 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp instant yeast
1/4 cup olive oil
1 3/4 cups iced water

1. The day before baking Combine the flour, salt, yeast, olive oil and water in a mixingg bowl. Stir well until a dough forms. Using an electric mixer with a dough hook, knead the dough on medium speed until a smooth, sticky dough forms. The dough should stick to the bottom of the bowl but should clear the sides of the bowl. Add more dough if the dough’s too wet or more water if the dough clears the bottom of the bowl.
2. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. Shape the dough into a flat disk and divide the dough into 6 equal portions. Place the dough balls in a lightly oiled pan and cover the pan with clingwrap. Place the pan in the fridge overnight. To freeze any excess dough balls you might not need, lightly coat the dough balls in oil and place them in individual freezer bags. They will keep in the freezer for up to 3 months.
3. On the day of baking Remove the pan from the fridge 2 hours before baking. Turn the dough balls out to a lightly floured surface and shape the balls into small, flat disks. Let the dough disks rest for 2 hours.
4. Preheat the oven as hot as it will go. Invert a baking tray and line the tray with baking paper. Roll the disks out to about 9 inches in diameter, making sure to loosen the base of the disc from the work surface regularly. Transfer the pizza dough to the lined baking tray. Lightly top it with sauce and toppings of your choice. Bake the pizza in the centre of the oven for 8 to 10 minutes until crust is lightly browned and toppings are cooked. Makes 6 thin crusted 9-inch pizzas

Cupcakes To Celebrate.

I first made these banana cupcakes for my best friend’s sister a couple weeks ago to welcome her back to our sunny island for the Singapore leg of her wedding ceremony.

Since then every time I’ve seen her, she has asked me for more before quickly changing her mind seeing as how she actually has an upcoming wedding dinner.

So no surprise what I delivered to her place the day after the wedding- her cupcakes with a special message, which were received with much delight and happily eaten within minutes.

Now all I need to do is actually give her the recipe so she can make them herself when she’s back in the US with her new family. Unless of course, she wants to fly me up to make them for her then I would be more than happy to oblige 

For the Love of Quails.

Much as I love the idea of cooking over the weekends, it very rarely ever translates into a reality.

My typical week goes something like this- I start the week dreaming of having the luxury of sleeping in over the weekend, rolling out of bed and into the kitchen where I spend a couple of hours chopping and stirring before sitting down to a nice, relaxing lunch. All sounds really good and optimistic right?

As the week progresses, I find my energy level sapping so much so that by the time the weekend actually arrives, that dream becomes a very distant, hazy dream that takes a backseat of my other pressing priorities like sleeping and hitting the books for my looming examination that I’m nowhere near prepared for. Before I even realize it, the weekend has flown by and it’s back to work.

Reality, pfft, what a killjoy.

But last week, oh I knew last week was gonna be different from the moment I laid eyes on this site (thanks to the magical wizard that is Google and seriously, have you seen the daylight robbery prices the local butcheries are charging for the tiniest of quails?). I knew come hell or high water, I was gonna be cooking that weekend.

So last weekend found GT and I in the kitchen.

Within an hour- most of it roasting time- we had ourselves rosemary (fresh from the garden!) and garlic marinated roast quails (with the pan deglazed with white wine to make a sauce), crisp roast potatoes  and a salad of sorts (basil, carrots, cucumber, lettuce and cherry tomatoes, tossed in a light vinaigrette) ready for lunch.

It really wasn’t much and certainly didn’t require much effort but with the clean, simple flavours and my sweetheart for company, it sure made for a really nice weekend lunch.

And hell, it really did feel good to be back cooking in the kitchen.

Next up? I’ve got my eye on that Japanese cookbook that has been by my bedside forever.

The Birthday Cake (Or How Plan A Isn’t Always The Best Plan).

When I thought about making an ice cream cake for my best friend’s birthday, one of my first thoughts I have to admit was that it didn’t seem so hard. I mean all there was to it was to make two cakes, sandwich them with ice cream and frosting. Really seems pretty easy doesn’t it?

Boy, is ignorance bliss.

What I completely didn’t factor in was the weather. I literally couldn’t take the filled ice cream cake out of the freezer two minutes before it melting over the sides of my cake and threatening to turn into an absolute mess on my hands. Long story short, a lot of cursing, swearing and wishing I had a walk in freezer later, I decided to just chuck it, run back to the supermarket to grab another tub of ice cream and fall back on Plan B.

Thankfully, Plan B- hollowing a sponge cake and filling it with ice cream before putting the top back on and frosting it-  was a lot easier and less painful- and really should have been Plan A had I been a little wiser. But that’s how we learn right? Or at least that’s what I tell myself to feel a little better.

So yeah the next ice cream cake I do (if ever), I’ll either have invested in that walk in freezer (and probably churning out ice cream cakes for a living) or go with Plan B. Plan A shall forever be damned in this weather.

In the meantime though, I’ll be enjoying what’s left of it in my freezer.

Happy birthday babe with tons and tons of love.