Mother's delicious homecooked Pluto.

My kids just got Here Come Science by They Might Be Giants. All three love watching the dvd together, and it keeps them from completely being at each other's throats. As an introduction to the song How Many Planets? Old John was telling a story about how when he was younger, they remembered the names of the planets by saying 'My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas'. But now Pluto is longer a planet, they say 'My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nothing' "and we can longer enjoy the taste of Mother's delicious homecooked Pluto." That makes my kids giggle. So when I heard that intro today while these pizzas were in the oven, I knew what I was calling them.

When I saw this recipe for Funky Lime Pizza on the Menu Plan Monday at Pass The Beans Please I just had to try it. I loved the bright fresh flavours. The eldest two children didn't like the lime or feta, and Master One refused to take more than a single bite, making me get out the emergency Heinz can of pasta. DP thought it would have been ok without the lettuce on it. (He meant the coriander). This is what I get for cooking something innovative and "fancy". Well pfft to them. I loved it, and wasn't particularly phased that I ate almost a whole pizza to myself either.

Homecooked Pluto
pizza dough (or use your own favourite recipe)
500g grated Mozzarella
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
1/2 large zucchini, thinly sliced
1/2 cup frozen corn kernals
1 1/2 tsp of minced garlic (about 2 cloves)
feta cheese, crumbled
fresh coriander leaves, coarsely chopped
juice of 1 lime

Preheat oven to 230C. Cover two baking trays with baking paper. Divide your dough in half, and roll each half out to the size of your tray. Miss Three helped me with the rolling.

Here she is "rolling" out the zucchini too!

Leave a margin about an inch wide around the dough then sprinkle the bases with about half the mozzarella. Then top with onion, then zucchini. Miss Three quite liked this too. Then sprinkle the remaining mozzarella on the top. Add your corn kernals, and some crumbled feta, and little dobs of minced garlic. Mine came from a jar. Because the last four bags of garlic I've bought have ended up shrivelled empty husks right when I want to use them. I don't think we eat as much garlic as we used to. I digress. Bake for 8 minutes, then swap the bottom tray to the top shelf, and vice versa, and bake for another 8 minutes. Until the cheese is melted to your desired colour. As soon as they come out of the oven, brush the pizza rims with a little olive oil, squeeze over your lime juice, and scatter the coriander over the top.

This is a bit of a 'foodie' meal, so perhaps one to use more for Date night than Kids demanding pizza night. Unless your kids are foodies, or at least very fond of sharp flavours like lime and feta.

This was an entry for the Pizza Party Mix Up hosted by Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations. Happy 2nd Blogversary!








Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

World Bread Day: Cream Cheese Fruit Bread

Today is World Bread Day, and nothing is better than dragging out the bread machine and letting it make you some piping hot yumminess. Pity this bread wasn't really our cup of tea. Well, the boys wolfed it down, and Miss Three would have eaten hers, but it was so heavy and dense the slice broke when she tried to lift it, resulting in tears, and dried fruit mixed with vanilla yogurt. Not to worry, I ate hers. But I found that it was only the hint of cinnamon and the dried fruit that made it nice at all. Perhaps if you had fussy children that needed their dairy hidden, this would be great, but I don't see the point of the cheese except to ruin the texture of the bread. Still, it got rave reviews, so it could be just me.

Cinnamon Cranberry Cream Cheese Bread adapted from Allrecipes
1/3 cup milk
1 cup cream cheese, diced
1/4 cup margarine
1 egg
3 TBSP sugar
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups bread flour
2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
2 tsp Dutch cinnamon
2/3 cup dried cranberries
2/3 cup diced dried apricots

Place everything into your bread machine and select Sweet loaf, Light crust. Serve hot with butter. Then head on over to Kochtopf to check out all the other yummy entries.

Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

Chicken Pizza Braid

I first saw this recipe over at The Finer Things in Life and thought it was a great idea. I haven't actually used any of her recipe, but I used her idea, plus she's got some great step-by-step pictures of the method, so go check it out. Go on, I'll wait.

First, you'll need to make your dough. Use your favourite recipe, this is mine:
Pizza Dough
3 cups bread mix
1 cup water
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp yeast

Place everything in the bread machine and select dough cycle. Easy huh?

Once your dough is done with the rising and the kneading and the etc, roll it out into a rectangle the length of a baking tray. Line said baking tray with paper.
Spread the dough with pizza sauce, generously in the centre third, and more sparingly around the sides. Place your preferred pizza toppings down the centre third of the dough. We used chopped bbq chicken, cheese, baby spinach, and halved cherry tomatoes.
Then cut 8 even strips either side of the fillings. Start by cutting the middle mark first, then slice that part in half, and then half again, and then repeat for the bottom half, and the other side, ending up with 8 strips a side. (Amy has a good photo of this bit)
Starting at one end, cross the strips over to resemble a plait.
Bake for 15 minutes at 200 degrees C.

Ready for baking


Fresh from the oven

Cauliflower soup and Tomato Quinoa Bread

Very tasty

Now I've blogged upand down about my Cauliflower Soup, so I'm not going to do it again tonight. Besides, I menu planned this particular soup to go with the bread tonight, as that is the real star. I saw an intriguing recipe for Tomato-Quinoa Bread over at Kitchen Confit which I though would be balanced nicely by the tasty but not overly complicated soup. (It was)

Now, you all know me, I'm pretty lazy when it comes to doing things the old fashioned way, especially if I have a gadget for it. And I also never have bread flour in the house, buying, as I do, bread mix instead. So without further ado, I present an adapted recipe for:

Bread Machine Tomato Quinoa Bread
1 tsp active dry yeast
1/3 cup lukewarm water
1 cup seasoned vegetable juice - such as V8
1/2 cup quinoa
1 pound bread mix

Place all ingredients in bread machine and cook on your preffered setting. I used medium crust, but I think perhaps I should have done dark, as only the quinoa in the centre was cooked. Which is fine, if you are after a multi-grain crunch type thing happening, but I wasn't expecting that, and so was a little disappointed. Also a problem was I didn't remember to buy the V8 when I did my non-Aldi shop, and so I used the juice from a can of whole peeled tomatoes that is for tomorrow's lasagna. This didn't give much of a tomato-y flavour to the bread, just made it a delicate pink colour.

My dodgy camera could not do justice to the lovely pink colour

There is only two slices left, which I plan on having for lunch tomorrow. Master Four ate two pieces, Miss Two ate and and a half, and all the soft bits off the crust that she could scrape. So almost two full slices? Even DP said it was nice, but I don't know if he'd ask for it to be cooked again. I think I might, because quinoa is so good for you, and I have a whole packet here with only 1/2 cup taken out of it. Look out for some more quinoa dishes coming next fortnight! I might have some help finding these, at the Round Up to Let It Grain!. This is a brand new event from Baking A Sweet Life and I'm really looking forward to it. I used to cook with quinoa all the time when Master Four was only one, before we moved across the other side of Melbourne and I didn't know where to find it anymore. Now we are down in Geelong, and this was just the kick in the rear end I needed to go out and find a new source! Anyway, if you're a keen quinoa fan, (hehe) then post your recipes over thatta way until September 1st, and I'll see you at the round up on September 6th.

Calzones

I've been meaning to make pizzas or calzones from scratch for ages, you may have even seen them pop up on the menu plan from time to time. But I never seemed to have bread flour, or the weather was too cold for rising, and I was altogether too lazy. But then pizza was put up for this fortnight's Cook's Club Challenge. Not only that, but the other two challenges were things our household were unlikely to eat. So I felt obliged to finally do this.

Luckily for me, one of the other members of that forum had a new computer arrive on the day she was due to make her pizzas, and having told her family that's what they were getting for dinner, she had to deliver, even though she was running out of time due to messing about with... I mean, setting up, the new computer. So she made her stand-by bread machine pizza dough, and helpfully posted the recipe.

Pizza Dough
3 cups bread mix
1 cup water
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp yeast

This of course, was just what I needed. So I whipped that in my bread machine, dough setting, and an hour and a half later, had a lovely tin full of dough. I split it into five sections (later combining two to make DP's, since the housemate decided he didn't want dinner after all), rolled them out into circles, and got to work. The children and I had our standard, vegetarian with bacon. To make this I just spread some tomato paste over half the circle, sprinkled it with rosemary, bacon pieces, chopped mushrooms and capsicum, and some drained pineapple chunks. Topped the lot with grated cheese, then I wet a 1cm border (which I'd left clear) and folded the dough circle in half. I cooked them for about 20 minutes at 200°C and this is what we got:

Master Three's

Miss Two's

DP had his standard pizza topping of tomato base, cheese and pepperoni. All in all, not a bad days work. I've finally got a recipe we like for homemade pizzas, and when I was pounding out my circles, Master Three wanted to help... so I have another kitchen activity we can all do together, and I'm sure I can get him to top his own pizza too! He absolutely adores cooking "real" foods, like when they cooked the quiche for dinner, so this could become quite the family favourite. I didn't cost this out, so I'm not sure how it compares to the $5.95 per pizza we normally spend for myself and the children, or the $9.95 for DP's stuffed crust, but I'm sure the meal cost less than $30, which is the average we spend on a pizza meal once you factor in delivery and garlic bread and a drink.

Ah well, the meal was enjoyed, we were all full (to full for jelly for dessert even!) and I've finally got this meal crossed off my menu plan, and not transferred to the "you need to make this before the ingredients go off" list. Not that I have such a list. I have a place where unused ingredients for the fortnight go - it's called pasta sauce. I do however, have a list I consult when writing my menu plans for the upcoming fortnight, and that has sections for our favourite meals, new meals I've tried and we liked wnough to make again, and meals I'd like to try out. Calzones is one I can transfer from the "try" side, to the "make agains" side, and that's something at least.