Pizza and Cupcakes...

 ...a match made in heaven!

I haven't been very good at updating this blog, and I've only had it for two weeks! Unfortunately I haven't really had anything juicy to share...

Last weekend I made pizza. I never buy pizza - I always make it at home. Of course I do cheat and use pre-made pizza bases. One day I'll get adventurous and make my own, but for now store-bought is just too convenient.

I make the sauce by mixing more or less equal parts of tomato paste and tomato pesto, Italian dried herbs, a spoonful of crushed garlic, a dash of paprika, salt and pepper to taste, and a little water to thin it out. I always make two pizzas. One has thinly sliced and roasted potatoes, and the other thinly sliced and roasted zucchini. Beyond these two ingredients, I generally do the same toppings - mozzarella, salami, pepperoni, bacon, sun-dried tomatoes, and roasted capsicum.

I'm still not a hundred percent on photographing pizza, I'm afraid...

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A couple of days ago, I decided to bake. I was going to bake something from scratch, but then I got lazy and used a packet mix vanilla cake. The temptation was too great. I did, however, add my own touch.

I decided to make two-tone cupcakes. I mixed a teaspoon of instant coffee with some hot water, and added that to half the cake batter, along with some finely chopped pecans. I mixed a couple of teaspoons of cocoa powder through the other half of the batter.

 Then I just dropped a spoonful of the coffee and pecan batter into prepared muffin pans, topped with a spoonful of the chocolate batter. I sprinkled half of the cupcakes with more chopped pecans. The other half I iced...

I probably needed more cocoa powder to make the two-tone effect more apparent. Also, I don't think my halves were really halves. The cupcakes were still very tasty, though.

Until next time!

- Mark

A First Post and Gnocchi!

Well, I guess... hello! Welcome to my blog, Savour. It's quite new, and the first real blog I've ever had, so you're going have to allow a bit of a learning curve.


The idea behind this blog is to combine two of my passions - cooking and photography. I haven't done a lot of food photography, but it's an area I'd like to explore - and what better way to do that than to cook more! I tend to cook more savoury dishes than sweets, so much of what goes onto this blog will be meals of the lunch and dinner persuasion. I'm not big on recipes, so the entries are going to be light on step-by-step recipes, and will lean more towards description. Cooking is all about experimentation anyway, and it's hard to do that when you're following a recipe to the letter! I'll try and get a new cooking-related post up once a week, though I'm not going to make any promises. In between I'll see how I feel, and if you are real lucky I may post inane bits and pieces that are of little interest to anyone but myself. We'll see...


Anyway, I think that's enough by way of introduction... on to my first dish!


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Homemade Gnocchi with a Creamy Tomato and Mozzarella Sauce


I love gnocchi. I love all pasta, but I really love gnocchi. And the best gnocchi is homemade gnocchi. Trust me, if you've never tried it, you need to. It's relatively simple to make, and so light and wonderful you'll never go back to buying it ready-made.


You'll want to start with the potatoes, obviously. I used white coliban potatoes here, but in the past I've also used red-skinned varieties. Either seems to work well. Three fair-sized potatoes will make enough gnocchi for two people - adjust the numbers if you are feeding more. Peel, quarter and cook the potatoes - steaming is best, I've discovered, to keep the potatoes from becoming water-logged. Once the potatoes are just cooked through, remove them from the heat and allow them to cool a little, but mash them while they are still warm. I use a potato ricer, which I recently bought and love more than I probably should...

When you've mashed your potatoes, add salt and pepper to taste, then a good amount of plain flour. I've seen recipes that say a half-cup of flour for three potatoes, but in my experience you'll need more. A lot more. And the amount tends to vary depending on the potatoes and how you've cooked them - boiled potatoes are going to take more flour. Start with about half a cup, working it into the mash with a spoon or spatula. You'll begin to smell the gnocchi as the warm potato combines with the flour - pure goodness. Keep adding more flour while working the mixture until it forms a nice dough. At this point I'll start working it by hand, kneading in more flour until most of the stickiness is gone, and it looks something like this.

Time to make the gnocchi. You can divide the mix into portions and roll them out into long lengths, then cut off small pieces. Here I've pinched maybe a teaspoon or two of the dough and rolled them into small balls, then laid them out on a floured tray. After I've done this, I've pressed them down with a floured fork to make flat little ridged gnocchi. You might be able to get yours a little more evenly sized and shaped. You know, whatever works for you.

 
That's it for the gnocchi. If you aren't cooking it straight away, cover it and pop it in the refrigerator. This is a good idea in any case, as it firms up the gnocchi and makes it easier to handle when you come to cook it.

The sauce I made for this is simple. It's based on condensed tomato soup, but you could easily use pureed or crushed tomatoes, or even tomato pesto. I sliced two rashes of bacon and some sun-dried tomatoes and fried them with around a teaspoon of crushed garlic. To this I added just on half a can of the tomato soup. Reducing the heat to a simmer, I then added around half a cup of cream - add as much or little as you like to achieve the consistency you like. Once that had simmered down a little I stirred through a handful of mozzarella and half as much parmesan, about a teaspoon each of of fresh basil and parsley (I'd have added more, but that was all I had), and a grind of salt and pepper. Simmer for five or so minutes to let the sauce thicken, and that's that.

Cook the gnocchi in small batches in a large saucepan with plenty of boiling water. You'll know they are cooked when they float to the top. I scoop them out and drain them with a slotted spoon, then add them straight to the sauce. When all the gnocchi has been cooked and stirred through the sauce, serve it with some extra parmesan and crusty bread on the side!

Okay, so my food photography still needs a little work - I may have been in too much of a hurry to eat this. But trust me when I tell you it was delicious.

Until next time!

- Mark