Category: basil

gorditas with apple salsa

I’d heard about these gorditas (“little fat girls”) ages and ages ago and then forgot all about them. I was recently reminded they exist and decided to make them straight away. They are little cornmeal pancakes that you can use to top with anything, but with some leftover veal from Farmers Choice to use up I went for a fruity, sharp salsa and a salty feta for a really zingy combo. This is one of those recipes you can dump pretty much everything from, the key part is the gorditas themselves – tasty little breads you can use for a canape, starter or main course as I did here!

Gorditas with apple salsa (makes 16 pancakes):

250g polenta

250g plain flour

1 heaped teaspoon baking powder

700ml hot water

200g cooked veal, sliced

200g feta, diced

For the salsa:

1 apple, finely diced

3 tomatoes, peeled and diced

4 spring onions, sliced

1 teaspoon hot sauce

Red wine vinegar

Mix the flours and baking powder together in a bowl with a pinch of salt. Gradually add the hot water until the dough comes together. Split into 16 and squash into small discs. Dust with flour and put aside while you make the salsa.

For the salsa mix together all the ingredients and balance with salt, sugar, vinegar and hot sauce until you get a lovely tang.

To cook the gorditas get a frying pan very hot and with a dash of oil cook them on both sides until puffed up. Serve with the veal, feta and salsa. If you have some a little shredded coriander would be great too.

basil bread capers cucumber red onion red wine vinegar tomato

panzanella

I’ve eyed up a panzanella for ages, spotting a particularly nice one in Tony & Giorgio. Yet I’ve not got round to it, until Simon Hopkinson chided me from the couch to give it a go. I have no idea why I’ve left it so long, it’s exactly the sort of food I love and the food I love the Italians for. It’s a Tuscan bread salad with onions, tomato and cucumber, mixed together with vinegar and oil left to marinate.

I’ve added my own tweak by roasting the bread first; I think you get more interesting flavours and the bread doesn’t completely break down. Sharp and fresh, yet rounded and satisfying at the same time. I can’t recommend it enough. Not bad for a peasant dish.

Simon Hopkinson’s original recipe can be found here.

Panzanella (serves 4):

5 slices stale sourdough bread

6 ripe tomatoes, peeled

1 red onion, finely sliced

1 cucumber, cut into chunks

1 tablespoon capers

Extra virgin olive oil

Red wine vinegar

Handful chopped basil

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Cut the bread into large croutons, drizzle with a little oil, toss over some seas salt and pepper and roast on a baking tray for 10 minutes until just starting to colour.

Add the toasted bread to a large bowl with the remaining ingredients. Stir well and add more oil, vinegar, salt and pepper until you’re happy with it. You can eat straight away but it loves to sit around and let the flavours mingle, so eat it the next day if you like.

Tags simon hopkinson

basil parmesan pesto pine nuts pizza

pesto pizza

I was set a challenge by Domino’s to come up with a home-made alternative to the newest addition to their online pizza menu – the Double Decadence Basil Burst. Their creation is a crazy double-decker affair of pesto-style sauce sandwich between two bases, then tomato sauce on top with the usual toppings. Layers and layers of complexity. Bonkers.

My response is to go the other way and pull it right back as simple as possible: a lovely chewy, crusty pizza base and a punchy pesto straight from the food processor. By mixing polenta in with the flour you get a pleasing honeyed colour to the dough and a sweet flavour too. The pesto is made in seconds and of course can be pushed in any direction you fancy on a given night.

It’s hearty and tasty, and pretty cheap too. Try it out!

Pesto pizza:

For the base (enough for 2 x 30cm pizzas – dough freezes well after first proving):

500g strong bread flour

100g fine polenta

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

7g dry yeast

4 tablespoons olive oil

300ml lukewarm water

For the pesto:

Bunch of basil, leaves and stalks

75g pine nuts

50g parmesan

Zest of ½ a lemon

Extra virgin olive oil

In a jug mix the yeast, oil, water and sugar together and leave for a few minutes while you get on with the other dry ingredients.

For the pizza base, bring the flour, polenta and salt together in a bowl. I use a food mixer which makes the next stage dead easy.

Pour the wet mix into the dry and let a dough hook do its work for about 5-6 minutes. If you’re doing it by hand push and knead it together until smooth and elastic. Cover the dough with a damp teatowel and leave somewhere warm for an hour – it should double in size.

When the dough has risen, pre-heat the oven as high as it will go. If you have a pizza stone, get it in now. Otherwise a cheap but conductive metal tray will work.

Push the dough into a thin, round shape on a floured surface. Go as thin as you can. When it’s ready take it to the oven – you may want to drape this over a rolling pin to help transfer it. The pizza will bake for anywhere between 8 – 15 minutes, depending on the thickness of your base and the temperature of your oven. (Quicker is better).

While the dough cooks, make the pesto. I do mine in a food processor, but a pestle and mortar works great. Chuck the basil in first and whizz up, then throw in the pine nuts. Add the cheese and keep on blending. When you have a lovely rubbly paste, scoop into a bowl and add enough olive oil to make it a smooth slush. Stir in the lemon zest and check for seasoning – add salt and pepper til it takes awesome.

When your pizza base is ready, spread the pesto over and leave for 1 minute to let the sauce warm slightly and soak into the dough. Grate over a touch more fresh parmesan and serve.

balsamic vinegar basil chorizo courgettes pasta tomato

seriously good pasta bake

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you might notice I do a lot of things “from scratch” (I really hate that phrase, like a badge of snobbish one-upmanship), because I enjoy it and I like knowing what goes into my dinner. In my time of course I’ve used pasta sauces and the like, and they range from OK to pretty good to truly vomit-inducing (usually ones that involve mascarpone).

I wouldn’t usually blog about such a jar but I happened to use a Seriously Good pasta sauce. These are Gordon Ramsay-devised with a 10p donation to Comic Relief for each jar sold. And no, Gordon doesn’t get a penny. There’s a bunch of flavours, and the one I used happened to be cherry tomato & balsamic. Peering over the ingredients list on the label is very surprising: you can pronounce everything. And I can buy all of them in any supermarket. That’s very reassuring.

I chucked it in a pasta bake with some chorizo and courgette, and it was lovely. Well worth a try – certainly if you find it on promotion, as it was in my local Sainsbury’s. At least bask in the glow of making a small donation to a good cause 🙂

Seriously good pasta bake (serves 4):

400g fusilli

100g chorizo, roughly diced

2 large courgettes

1 jar Seriously Good cherry tomato and balsamic sauce

Cheddar cheese

Some basil leaves, shredded

Splash of balsamic vinegar

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Get a pan of salted water on to boil and cook the pasta according to the packet instructions. Get on with the rest of the recipe and when ready, drain until needed.

In a large oven-proof pan, heat a little oil and add the chorizo. Cook briefly until it starts to colour on all sides, then add the courgette.

Continue to fry for 3-4 minutes, tossing frequently so the courgette gets coated in the rich chorizo juices and is starting to turn tender.

Add the sauce, then refill the jar half-full with water. Sloosh it around to gather up the dregs of the sauce and pour into the pan. Bring up to the boil and then add the drained pasta. Make sure everything is well-mixed and pop into an oven for ten minutes, or until the tops of the pasta sticking out are starting to turn dark-brown.

Scatter the basil over the top, grate some cheddar over and sprinkle with balsamic. Grind a little black pepper on top and a swirl of your best extra virgin olive oil, then return to the oven for a further minute or two, until the cheese has melted. Serve piping hot.

Tags gordon ramsay