It's Always More Complicated

Have been quite culinary this weekend.

Friday supper: made a sardegnera, which is a pizza-type thing on an enriched dough: 6 oz wholemeal and white flour, salt approx 1 oz butter or margarine, either chopped into pieces and stirred in or roughly rubbed in, small amount of yeast activated in a a few spoonsful of warm water, 1 egg; mix altogether to make a rather soft dough, leave for about 2 hours, stir down, and then shape into pizza base in greased flan dish (dough tends to be a bit too soft to make unsupported base), add filling and leave for about 15-20 minutes to recover, and then bake in the middle of a 400F oven for about 20 minutes. I did just a simple tomato filling: soften some chopped onion and garlic in olive oil, add a tin of tomatoes, basil, bay leaves and seasoning, and simmer over a low heat until it attains a jam-like consistency; spread over the base, at which point you can add ham, salami, cheese, olives, anchovies, etc according to taste, sprinkle with oregano and drizzle a little oil over.

Saturday breakfast rolls: white blueberry, based on the same recipe as last week, but using all unbleached white flour, and dried blueberries instead of cranberries.

Saturday evening meal: Starter of roasted asparagus (which came out perhaps a little too crispy for timing reasons) with softboiled (5 mins) eggs. A sprinkling of dukka (crushed toasted seeds and nuts) would have gone nicely on this. Then turbot steaks cooked in foil thus, though using tabasco rather than Thai chili sauce, and I'm not sure I let the topping caramelise sufficiently, with a salad of little gem lettuces dressed in lime juice and avocado oil, and new Jersey Royal potatoes.

Today's lunch: monkfish teriyaki-ish, with stirfried green pak choi, green Marmara and red Romano pepper strips roasted in olive oil, and coconut sticky rice.

This week's bread: a version of the buckwheat loaf from Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads, made with the starter, but used less sweetening, also a percentage of wholemeal flour. Has turned out very well