Recipe corner: Mussel and bacon pizza (jingle all the way!)

The thing about authentic Italian pizza is that tends to be pretty simple. Tomato, cheese and then a few, carefully chosen, toppings. Not enough of anything to create sloppiness: a crisp base and the structural integrity of the whole is important. No weird combos. No doughiness, no ten tonnes of cheese (that is the province of Domino's and their ilk). I get all that and I appreciate it. But SOMETIMES it is fun to play a little bit and end up with something which is somewhere between what an Italian Nonna would appreciate and what drunk people order at eleven pm with a side of chicken wings.

When I wrote this up in my notebook I called it "Pizza Bianca del mare e dell'odore" which means "A white pizza of the sea and the sty". And I like that title very much. It sounds so much more elegant than mussel and bacon pizza. But I've stuck with the English for the blog title because it's probably a bit more useful. 

This is a pizza that combines seafood and cheese, that is a little bit on the sloppy side and, to be honest, is a bit of a bloody faff if you're making it because it involves numerous processes. None of them difficult but it's not easy home cooking. Jamie couldn't squish it into a 30 minute meal. So I probably haven't sold it to 99.99% of the people who will come across this blog post. But for the rest of you, who are intrigued, you are in for a tremendous treat. I think this is the most delicious pizza that I've ever made.

When I wrote pizza 101 back in July 2016 (!) I was using Paul Hollywood's dough recipe, but I've fallen out of love with that recently after a couple of issues with the dough being just too sticky to practically use. So I turned to Dan Lepard and, sure enough, his recipe and method worked perfectly. I won't repeat it here but if you DO pop over to have a look I would note:

I used a tablespoon of malt extract and all water, rather than open some of D's precious beer

I went up to 200ml of water - 50ml fresh boiled and 150ml cold from the tap to get it luke(ish) warm.

I initially made the dough the night before using and left it in the fridge overnight before moving on to the stretching and folding stage. This has the benefit of spreading the effort a bit as well.

I was making personal sized pizzas, so divided this recipe into 6 (actually, I made a half batch and divided it into 3). This was a generous portion. If you're not greedy, you could reduce the portion size further.

And for the topping...

Ingredients

1/2 kilo mussels

Splash of white wine or Vermouth

150ml milk

3-4 garlic cloves, peeled and bruised

Large sprig of thyme

15g Parmesan

10g butter

10g flour

75g pancetta (or diced bacon)

Small onion, thinly sliced

100g firm mozzarella, grated

75g smoked cheese, grated

Makes 2 generous individual pizzas

OK, so firstly we want to cook the mussels with no more flavourings added than a splash of white wine. Clean and de-beard the crustacea then heat the wine in a large, lidded pan until it simmers madly, and tip them in. Cover the pan and cook for around 5 mins, shaking gently every so often. They'll be ready when the majority of the shells are yawning open. Incidentally: we tend to buy up bags of mussels whenever we make it the fishmonger, cook and freeze them for future use. But if you do this be sure to freeze them alongside their delicious liquor.

Make the white sauce by first infusing the milk with the garlic and the thyme. Place all together in a small pan, scald the milk (which means heating it until the edges are beginning to bubble) then turn off the heat, cover and leave alone for at least a couple of hours.

Then we make a roux - melt the butter, add the flour and stir briskly to make a paste. Pour in the infused milk, bit by bit, stirring vigorously every time to eliminate lumps. When you've added all the milk, add the mussel liquor - again, bit by bit. Gently bubble the sauce for a few minutes to ensure that all the flour is cooked out (the easiest way to check this is by tasting it - if you can taste even a hint of flour, cook for a bit longer) then season with the grated Parmesan, a tiny pinch of salt and a little pepper. This is the base of your pizza.

Fry off the pancetta until crispy and then remove from the pan with a slotted spoon. Then, turn the heat right down and soften the onion in the bacon fat.

Finally, assemble your pizza. Take your rolled out bases and spread across the white sauce. Top with the cooked mussels, bacon and onion and finish off with the mozzarella and smoked cheese. If you have any spare, sprinkle a few fresh thyme leaves over to finish. Bake in a very hot oven for about 12 minutes until everything is bubbling and beginning to brown. 

If you have any sense at all, you'll allow it to cool slightly (and, in doing so, begin to solidify) before eating.

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas

We bought a turkey this year. We never usually buy a whole turkey - just a crown or a breast joint. Regular readers may remember (indeed, why wouldn't you) that chez Seren, we do not eat turkey on Christmas day, but enjoy a traditional Turkey Curry on Boxing Day, for which a small crown is perfectly adequate. But this year we found ourselves (suitably be-masked and socially distanced) in Kirkgate Market and we saw what looked like a fairly modest bird for a definitely modest price. 

Well, apparently even modest birds produce great big piles of meat - we have OODLES (a technical term). But, perhaps even more pleasingly, we also ended up with a slow cooker full of delicious overnight turkey stock. Which is what got me to thinking about Christmas smells. For 12 hours, our home was filled with a mild turkey fug which scent, weirdly, took me straight back to childhood - Christmas Day, watching Top of the Pops and waiting for the grandparents to arrive for lunch. 

I also baked a banana and mincemeat loaf earlier this month (recipe in this month's Good Food magazine - providential indeed since I had a couple of bananas that were preventing the freezer door from closing properly and a rogue jar of mincemeat that appeared in a store cupboard audit and needed using before the 2020 batch arrives). And, again, the smell was incredible - that combination of spice and sweetness that just screams Christmas, even though I don't recall my mother ever baking mince pies when we were young. (She may well have done, in which case I am an ungrateful creature because my abiding memory is of puff pastry mince pies from the bakery, served warm with cream for lunch on Christmas Eve. We also used to have sausage rolls for lunch on Christmas Eve - it was a total pastry fest which was quite unusual for our household and regarded as a huge treat.)

I feel terribly nostalgic at the moment. It's probably to be expected, what with most of us having been shut away from family and friends for nearly nine months. And our family, like many others, has experienced loss this year that means that, even on those precious few days when we come together, there will be an empty chair in the corner.

But if there is one time of the year when nostalgia is OK, it is Christmas. And the smells and tastes of all those beloved Christmas foods, some traditions that span decades, and others more recent but no less precious, have been wonderful prompts. 

I hope to write again before the big day - I have an exciting pizza to share and I'd love to record the recipe for the aforementioned banana loaf - but, since promises are like (mince) pie crusts, I will avoid any guarantee. So I'll take the opportunity now to say to anyone reading - MERRY CHRISTMAS. I hope you all find some joy in this most joyful time of year, even if things are a little bit strange. Next year will be better. And, in the meantime, may all your beloved Christmas treats bring you comfort and remind you that there is always light in the dark. 

Recipe corner: garlic butter naan breads

As mentioned in my previous post, I've been turning to Dan Lepard a lot lately for baking recipes. This one is an adaptation of a recipe for coconut garlic naan that can be found here. Although the original works perfectly well, I did not find that you got much of a taste of coconut from the coconut milk, so tried it out with plain yoghurt (which we more usually tend to have knocking around the kitchen) and was pleased with the resulting soft texture. I also advocate garlic butter rather than garlic oil for the dabbing-while-cooking but you need to be careful not to allow it [the butter] to burn.

Dan Lepard has a slightly different approach to bread making which generally means much less hands on time, and although it feels counterintuitive, it does actually work really well. You just need to make sure you're keeping track of where you are in the instructions!

I think that these, as with most flatbreads, are best straight out of the pan but the good news is that can you make the dough up in advance, divide it up into balls and then leave them, covered in the fridge for a good few hours with no ill effect. I finished the dough at 6pm on Saturday and cooked up the last naan bread at 12pm for lunch on Sunday and it still worked like a charm, if, perhaps, it puffed up ever so slightly less. However, since I was using it as a wrap, this wasn't an issue.

Ingredients

25g boiling water

75g cold tap water

4g fast-action yeast

185g plain, full fat yoghurt

275g strong white bread flour

Tsp salt

Oil, for the worktop

Additional flour, for shaping

25g butter

2 cloves of garlic, crushed or finely grated

A sprinkle of nigella seeds

Makes 3 large or 4 medium naan

Measure out the water into a large bowl (I've given weight rather than volume as I think this makes life a bit easier). Test it when the two waters are combined - it should be warm but not hot. Whisk in the yeast until dissolved and then whisk in the yoghurt.

Shower in the flour, add the salt and, using your hand shaped like a claw, bring the dough together - it will be soft and not too sticky. Cover the bowl and leave for 10 minutes.

Oil the worktop, tip out the dough and knead gently for 10 seconds. Return to the bowl, cover again and leave for 1 hour. Wipe up any remaining oil while you remember.

When you return to the dough, lightly flour the worktop then tip it out and divide into 3-4 pieces. Shape these into rough balls, cover, and leave these again for 30 minutes (at this point, you can transfer the dough to the fridge until you need it. Just be sure to bring up to room temperature before using).

Roll the dough out - the teardrop shape is traditional for naan, but round will work just as well here. 

Put a frying pan over a medium heat. Crush or grate the garlic over the butter and then melt (I use a microwave but a small pan and a low heat will do just as well).

Fry the breads for about a minute and a half, dabbing the melted butter onto the surface with a silicon brush, and finish with a sprinkle of the nigella seeds.