Warm pumpkin & goat’s cheese salad

Contains jap pumpkin (I took the skin off, contrary to instruction), olive oil, thyme leaves, firm goat's cheese, panko breadcrumbs (finally tracked some down several days after making this salad; instead used polenta, sparingly, and honestly it was fine), balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, baby mesclun salad leaves (used baby spinach).

Lovely. Lovely caramelised roast pumpkin, lovely goat's cheese, lovely simple vinagrette. Nicer with baby spinach than mesclun, in my opinion.

NB am filing under gluten free only because my version was. I can't answer for those panko breadcrumbs.

Welsh rarebit with leeks on sourdough

Butter, leeks, mature cheddar, Worcestershire sauce, egg yolks (no), Dijon mustard, cayenne pepper, Red Hill Brewery Golden Ale (used some random Belgian ale instead), sourdough bread.

Verdict: nice but nothing spesh. Don't think I'd bother again with the leeky chopping/cooking (not that it's onerous, just that I'm awfully lazy and the extra taste doesn't seem to justify the effort) for what is essentially a toasted cheese sandwich – and I love a toasted cheese sandwich, don't get me wrong. I would consider doing something similar – i.e. making a paste with grated cheese and beer and spicy things – sans leeks.

Caramelised pumpkin pizza

Mm, caramelised pumpkin. Is good.

The recipe says ready-made pizza bases but obviously I wouldn't recommend that. I used Tyler Florence's famous (in my little world) recipe and made one largeish pizza instead of individual ones.

Actually, if I'm going to keep referring to the TF pizza dough I'd better state how it's done.

So, for enough dough to make pizza for two people you first need half a packet of dried yeast, half a teaspoon of sugar and half a cup of blood-temperature water (i.e. same as your finger). In a large mixing bowl stir yeast and sugar into water to dissolve and leave it until yeast gets foamy (5-10 mins).

Add 1.5 tsp of flaky salt and 1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil. Then add, about a quarter of a cup at a time, 1.5 cups of plain flour. If you can, use electric beaters with dough hooks fitted for this bit.

After about 5 minutes of electric kneading, switch to kneading by hand. Do this for another 5 minutes, by which time the dough should be smooth and elastic (really). You may need to add a bit more water or/and flour as you go. I always knead more flour.

Form dough into a ball. Lightly oil a clean large mixing bowl and put the dough ball in, turning it to coat with oil. Cover with a damp clean tea towel and leave it in a warm spot to rise. Warm spots are hard to come by in my house, especially at this horrible time of year, so I heat the oven to 30C and plonk it in there. Leave it for about an hour or until 'doubled in size' (beats me how anyone can actually tell this, but if it looks full all puffy and the bowl is a lot fuller I say it's risen).

Turn the risen dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll it into a cylinder. Cover with the trusty tea towel and leave it for 15 minutes. This allegedly makes it easier to work with. While you wait, preheat the oven to 250C, or a bit less if you have a very enthusiastic oven. Sometimes I think 200C is enough for a very thin base and certain toppings.

Roll, stretch, pat, or do whatever you have to to form the dough into a thin (not narrow – thin) rectangle on a large baking sheet. Add the topping.

Pop it into the oven and keep an eagle eye (or a beagle nose) on it. I rarely leave a pizza in for more than 7 minutes. The original recipe says about 10 minutes.

Anyway, that's it. Back to the caramelised pumpkin.

For the topping for this you need unsalted butter, pumpkin (recipe says butternut but I used jap with much success), chicken or veg stock, dark brown sugar (muscovado), baby spinach, Taleggio cheese (I used some locally made washed-rind cheese, called something like 'brick' strangely but quite nice) and thyme (except that I have a thing about pumpkin and sage so I used sage), and olive oil.

Basically you caramelise the pumpkin with the butter and sugar and stock, then stir in the spinach and plonk it on the pizza with the cheese and erb. Very easy and quite lovely.

Minestrone

Indexed as a starter but it's hard to imagine wanting more than, say, a tiny ramekin of pannacotta after a bowl of this rib-sticker – even if you leave out a lot of things, as I did.

Ingredients: dried chickpeas (I used tinned because I lack moral fibre and organisational skills), dried borlotti beans (as above), olive oil, onion, leek, carrot, jap pumpkin, potatoes (replaced with little soup pasta that I'm still trying to use up), kumara (not allowed in my kitchen), vegetable stock, bay leaves, zucchini, broccoli or cauliflower (or neither), oven-roasted tomato halves (not found), basil pesto, basil

Verdict: simply pulsating with nourishment.

Goat’s-cheese-stuffed roasted pears with honey dressing

(Not sure we needed all those hyphens.)

soft goat's cheese (soft goats – how adorable), mixed fresh herbs (used parsley, basil and rosemary as suggested), pears, thinly sliced pancetta (used proscuitto), extra virgin olive oil, sherry vinegar (used balsamic), honey, rocket leaves to serve (pass)

All very noice. Loved the dressing. Definitely one to remember – especially as it combines stuffing and wrapping.

Schiacciate (little Tuscan pizzas)

yeast (used dried), caster sugar, plain flour, extra virgin olive oil, thin slices of various toppings (I used salami, smoked provolone, capers, black olives, oregano and sundried tomato), basil or sage or rocket to serve (I forgot this step but was planning to use basil)

My these were good, continuing my run of huge success with delicious. pizzas. The cooking time prescribed is far too long for my oven – I think I did about 7 minutes again. Truly divine – light and slightly crisp. Adding the toppings very sparingly is important, as is the final drizzle of olive oil. I am not good at drizzling so mine turns into more of a drenching but it doesn't matter at all.

Pizza bianca

olive oil, garlic, this very good bill granger pizza base, potato, rosemary, pecorino (used parmesan)

Super nice, super easy, gone in a flash. Oh, and this time I managed not to burn the base, by reducing time in oven to about 7 minutes.

Beef braciole, chargrilled zucchini, soft polenta, stuffed capsicums

Last night's delicious. dinner involved two of my favourite culinary diversions: rolling things up and stuffing things (not up). Sadly it also involved a small tantrum when the Scanpan containing the beef rolls spat at me rudely and made a very unnecessary mess of my surfaces. Must remember to ignore what the recipe says about burner heat when using this particular Scanpan, which gets and stays tremendously hot.

Beef braciole are flattened halved (in my case quartered, because it was easier for trimming) steaks rolled up with proscuitto and a mixture of flat-leaf parsley, garlic, parmesan and toasted pine nuts. After browning they're cooked briefly with red wine and tomato passata. Despite the spitty pan / spat dummy incident I was very pleased with them and so was the other taster.

Nigella's chargrilled zucchini (zucchini, olive oil and lemon juice) were made in my case not on a chargrill pan (add that to the list) but in a pannini press – sounds odd, I know, but it does work with things that aren't excessively liquid. Except for the lack of pretty grill marks they were absolutely fine. I wouldn't leave them lying around in the oil and lemon for long though – too soggy-making.

Jill Dupleix's soft polenta (instant polenta, milk, butter, parmesan) was a happy surprise. I'd never really got anywhere with polenta, which always seemed like a black hole for salt and flavour, but this method made it nice and creamy with actual taste. More proof that when in doubt one should always add more butter and salt. The parmesan helped too. The boring thing when you're busy with other things is that you're supposed to stir it a lot. However, I turned off the heat halfway through cooking and left it alone for a good 10 minutes at one stage and it didn't come to any harm. Perhaps because of the pause I used quite a lot more liquid than the recipe suggested.

Aldo Zilli's stuffed capsicums (unsalted butter; onion, i.e. eschalot; garlic; zucchini; canned roma tomatoes, in place of which I used chunky sugo from an already opened jar; long-grain rice; balsamic vinegar; pitted black olives; oregano and marjoram or other herbs; large red capsicums) were the most fun to make and tasted very fresh and healthy in a good way. They'd be lovely on their own for a tired person's supper, and could be stuffed in advance. I used basil and rosemary instead of oregano and marjoram. Also used some very dull olives and look forward to making it with marinated ones instead. I would add chilli next time too, especially if eating this dish on its own.

Pizza margherita

This recipe is from cherubic Bill Grainger, whose views about overtopped pizza I share.

Ingredients:

Dough: plain flour, dried yeast, honey, extra virgin olive oil (evoo)

Sauce: olive oil, onion, garlic, canned crushed tomatoes, balsamic vinegar

Other topping: buffalo mozzarella (I used the previously mentioned excellent locally made non-buffalo mozzarella – but, thrillingly, have ordered some of the buffalo stuff online along with many other Italianate things, too exciting), olive oil, basil.

Pizza is one of the things I make most often and – so modest – I'm pretty good at it. It's part of my love affair with yeast. As Jeffrey Steingarten (who, I seem to recall, almost burned down his house to prove it) and Nigella and various others have pointed out, the pizza you make at home is never going to be a good copy of the pizza you get from a place with a proper pizza oven. This doesn't mean it can't be an excellent different type of pizza.

On that basis I used Nigella's dough recipe for pizza casalinga (from Domestic Goddess) for several years and found it pretty satisfactory if nothing like a real pizza – which is her whole point: casalinga.

Recently a revolution occurred in my kitchen and Nigella was toppled from her floury throne. I found in one of last year's delicious.es a really outstanding pizza dough recipe by Tyler Florence. A character from The Bold and the Beautiful? No, apparently he's an American TV chef, and he definitely knows pizza dough. Since going all Tyler* my pizzas have been – more modesty – divine.

All this is a long way of saying that Bill Granger's pizza dough is quite similar to, and almost as good as, Tyler Florence's. Both come together almost effortlessly and feel all silky and springy, whereas with Nigella's I only ever achieved springiness and put in a lot more effort. I think it's a combination of sugar/honey content, pre-proving of yeast, and half-dough-hook-half-hand method of kneading. I only have a hand-held electric beater, not a food processor (oh the shame), but the dough hooks on the beater work perfectly for this.

So the dough: great.

The sauce: not different or unusual but definitely noice. Like the balsamic touch.

Overall: I've made better since Tylerising, but not much. The cooking time was too long for my oven and unfortunately I answered the phone at a bad time and got charred edges. My fault, not Bill's.

*The recipe is in April 2005 delicious. and is called something like 'grilled pizza'. I don't grill mine though.