leftover pizza

No, I don't mean I had pizza last night and ate the last two slices this morning. As if, in my home, there would be any pizza left for breakfast.

Tonight, despite being Thursday, is the start of my weekend and I wanted Friday Food. (No Andy you do not have the copyright on this...). For the uninitiated, our Melbourne take on Friday food is that is has to be special, it has to be something you don't normally eat on a school night, it has to be comfort food, it has to be something you like to end the week with but doesn't take a Cordon Bleu chef to pull off.

I rode home from the city on the scooter in a strange high-temperature, high-humidity fog (really, is this still March?) and focused on pizza and red wine, my ultimate comfort food.

When I got home the Stanton and Killeen shiraz durif was hitting the spot and it was all I could do to call Pizza Hut - my favourite non-pizza pizza hit. (Let's face it: Pizza Hut is not pizza but it is tasty). As it was March, the month of Slow Food, I focused hard and changed my mind. I would have home-made pizza with toppings made of all the leftovers in the fridge.

Two mini pita breads. Two teaspoons of tomato base from a tub (OK, it was not all slow food sourced from the land, but give me a break). A stray rasher of streaky bacon from a Paddy's Butchers Sunday breakfast that just got too big. Some baby bocconcini from a weekend pasta dish, with about a week until sell-by date. Five cherry tomatoes and half an onion and a green chilli from the vegie drawer in the fridge. The heads off half a bunch of rapidly-failing broccolini. Spicy Italian herbs. All set.

Divine Thursday night dinner, nine points (Weight Watchers) instead of minimum 15 if I'd ordered in. OK, I would have ordered something meat-lovers and it would have been a train wreck - maybe 20 points which is more than I'm supposed to eat in a full day. But my dinner was a lot tastier and exactly to my taste.

And the fridge is a little emptier tonight because of me.

I thank you.

Chez Pim's 15-minute tomato sauce

Love it.

www.chezpim.com/blogs/2008/09/fifteen-minutes.html

Nat's baked beans recipe from Bill Granger

We met some friends at a Sunday lunch a few weeks ago, at Ann's house where everybody brought a dish. Nat kindly gave me her recipe for home-made baked beans, this one from Bill Granger.

Ingredients:
2 tbs olive oil
2 x 400g (14oz) cans cannellini beans
1 garlic clove, sliced
½ tsp chilli flakes
1 small red onion, sliced into thin wedges
250 g (1 punnet) cherry tomatoes

To Serve
1 tsp olive oil
8 slices prosciutto
1 Tbs fresh oregano leaves

Method
Preheat the oven to 200◦C (400◦F/Gas 6).
Place the olive oil, beans, garlic, chilli flakes, onion and tomatoes in a small baking dish and stir to combine.
Loosely cover with foil and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the onion is tender and the tomatoes slightly shrivelled.
Meanwhile, heat 1 tsp of olive oil in large frying pan over a medium to high heat and cook the prosciutto until lightly crisp.
Remove and place on paper towels.
Serve the baked beans sprinkled with fresh oregano leaves and the crisp prosciutto.
Serves 4.


Nat used bacon instead of prosciutto and just sliced it and threw it in with the beans to all cook together and it worked well, too.

fettucini pollo e funghi

This is one of my favourite comfort foods, derived from a recipe first taught to me by my sister Annette. It is quick, easy an delicious, and anything but low fat, but the taste is divine: rich and creamy. Works just as well without the chicken.

Ingredients
500g chicken, diced
400g button mushrooms or sliced mushrooms
250g broccolli florets, chopped as small as you like (frozen works well)
1 small tin of Campbell’s condensed chicken soup
1 glass of milk
200g grated cheese
garlic
olive oil

Method
Fry the chicken pieces with the garlic and olive oil until golden brown.
Add the mushrooms and cook until soft.
Tip in the chicken soup and milk and stir until warmed up.
Add the broccolli and cook until soft (this will obviously take longer if using frozen).
At this point put your fettucini (or rigatoni or whatever) on to cook.
Throw in your grated cheese a bit at a time and stir in until melted to make the sauce as cheesy as you want.
Serve immediately with lots of freshly ground black pepper.

tortellini with creamy pesto and bacon

Mena and I went to the Melbourne Food and Wine Show and went to a cookery demonstration. This dish blew us away. The creamy rocket pesto is to die for.

Ingredients
625g packet of fresh spinach and ricotta tortellini
6 rashers of streaky bacon, rind removed, cut into strips
400g mushrooms sliced
100g semi-dried tomatoes, thinly sliced
Shaved parmesan

Sauce
½ bunch rocket, ends trimmed
½ cup (firmly packed) continental (flat leaf) parsley leaves
2 garlic cloves
½ cup shredded parmesan
2 tbsp toasted pine nuts
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
125ml buttermilk


Method

Blend first five sauce ingredients till finely chopped

With the blender running add the oil and lemon juice to form a smooth paste

Transfer to a large bowl

Stir in the buttermilk

Cook the tortellini, drain and return to the pan

Cook bacon and mushroom over a medium-high heat for 5-8 minutes until the bacon is crisp

Add the tomatoes and toss through

Combine the pesto, pasta and bacon mixture until well combined

Serve topped with fresh parmesan

Italian tomato sauce

Ingredients
1kg ripe red tomatoes
1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion finely chopped
1 large clove garlic, chopped
12 large leaves fresh basil
Salt and black pepper

Method
Skin the tomatoes (pour boiling water on, leave one minute, drain and peel when cool).

Keep three tomatoes back.

Cook onion and garlic until soft.

Add chopped tomatoes and 1/3 of the basil.

Add salt and pepper and simmer for 1.5 – 1.75 hours.

Chop and stir in the reserved tomatoes and basil.

pork meatballs with spaghetti

My brother and his wife make the best meatballs and spaghetti in the world, but this is an acceptable alternative using pork (more authentic I guess).

Ingredients
225g minced pork
1 dessertsp chopped fresh sage
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
75g white bread, no crust, soaked in milk
1 large egg
A little grated nutmeg
Salt and black pepper

Oil for frying
Spaghetti
Tomato sauce (jar or fresh)
Parmesan cheese
Basil

Method
Mix top ingredients, make into walnut-shaped balls, chill for 30 minutes, then shallow fry 4-5 minutes.

Heat the tomato sauce and simmer the meatballs for 10 minutes.

Serve with spaghetti, parmesan and fresh basil.

sunblush tomatoes from the oven

When I first came to visit Australia, I was staying with my sister. I had no money and no job, so I contributed to the household by going to the market, buying cheap seasonal vegetables and making homemade soup and other dishes. This was one of mymore successful experiments.

Method
Core and half the tomatoes, sprinkle on some chopped garlic, dried thyme, salt and pepper.

Put on a baking sheet and drizzle on some extra virgin olive oil.

Leave in the over after you have finished cooking twice or three times, or alternatively roast slowly at the lowest setting for about 16 hours.

When they are finished they will be about 25% of their raw size.

Store in the fridge in an airtight container.