Tomato Pesto

Ah pesto, I properly fell in love with this in New York in the first restaurant we went to. We had freshly made open sandwiches which were amazing. Mine had both tomato pesto and normal pesto, these were both so fresh and colourful they tasted amazing 🙂

Ingredients:
2 packets of fresh basil
1 Clove of garlic
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
10-15 Sundried tomatoes
25g Grated Parmesan

Estimated time: 15 minutes

Directions:

Get a pan of water and bring it to the boil, fill another bowl with cold water. Once boiling put all of the basil in for 30 seconds, once the 30 seconds is up fish out the basil and place it into the cold water. Blanching the basil like this prevents it from looking its colour later on.

Now your basil is blanched do the same with your peeled garlic, blanch the garlic for 1 minute and then put this in the cold water with your basil.

Using your hands squeeze the water out of the basil and place it into a blender or food processor along with the garlic and start to blend them together.

Slowly pour in olive oil a small bit at a time so that it starts to form a paste. To this add a handful of the Parmesan and allow to come together. Add more oil if needs be.

Now add your Sundried tomatoes and allow to blitz completely, you’ll see the colour change as they blend together. Now’s the time to add salt and pepper before tasting to see if any more is needed. If the pesto is quite thick then slowly add more oil 🙂

And there you go some unbelievable tasty tomato pesto for everyone to enjoy whether its in a salad as a dip or cooked with pasta! This can be used for everything and anything, although I wouldn’t recommend it for breakfast :p I ope you enjoy this guys 🙂

Pizza!

Homemade pizzas are so tasty , you can tell how fresh they are by the dough! These are so easy to make and to be honest for a dough based product so quick, great after a long day at work believe me 🙂

Ingredients:
250g Plain flour
250g Strong white flour
7g Fast action yeast (1 sachet)
1tbsp Salt
325ml Warm water
1tbsp Olive oil

Tomato sauce:
1 tin chopped tomatoes
2 Cloves of garlic
1 White onion
1 Handful of chopped basil

Estimated time: 60 minutes

Directions:

First weigh all of your flours, salt and yeast into a mixing bowl. If your making this by hand then make a well in the middle and slowly stir in the warm water, once mostly mixed in it will be come really sticky, at this point use your hands to mix the rest in as well as the olive oil. If not doing it by hand then using a dough hook mix everything together and slowly pour in the water and oil until a sticky dough forms.

Once this dough has formed knead until it becomes a nice smooth dough, this should only take a few minutes in both the mixing bowl and by hand! As soon as the dough reaches this stage cover the bowl in cling film and place somewhere warm to rise.

Whilst the dough is proving make your sauce. This is really easy and so tasty 🙂 start off by putting your tinned chopped tomatoes into a small saucepan, start heating this gently.

Roughly chop your onion and add it to the tomatoes, don’t worry too much about the size as this will all get blitzed once cooked! Now chop up your garlic and add that to the tomatoes.

Bring the tomatoes up to a simmer and leave to cook, stir occasionally. While waiting for the onions to cook use this time to prepare your toppings. I grated 400g of mozzarella but you can use what ever cheese you want. I also cooked off some bacon chunks and chopped some tomatoes ready to cover my pizzas.

As soon as your onions are cooked add the chopped basil along with salt and pepper to taste. Now blitz the sauce in a liquidiser, whether its a food processor or a smoothie maker it doesn’t matter, you’ll get the same result!! You just want to make sure there aren’t any lumps left in the sauce.

By now your dough should have doubled in size! Carefully turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Roughly shape it into a circle and cut in half, now cut each half in half again so you end up with four pieces of dough.

Work with one piece of dough at a time and roll them out into rough circles. Once into a rough circle shape(don’t worry about getting it to the right size) lightly oil your trays. Place the dough onto the oiled tray and gently push out to the edges. Repeat for the other three pizzas.

Now the fun bit 🙂 spoon some of the tomato sauce onto each pizza base and carefully spread out to the edges of the dough. Sprinkle these with cheese and what ever toppings you desire! Even sea food goes well with this sauce (my dad always ruins pizzas with it :p) .

Place the pizzas in a hot oven at 200c, ideally you’d have a wood burning oven, but who really has one of those at homes?! Cook these for 10-12 minutes, they will be done when the cheese starts to bubble and looks so tasty!! If in doubt the bottom of the base should be a light golden colour and the edges will be golden too!

And enjoy!! These are brilliant to make for a tasty easy dinner, awesome to make with children as well 🙂 I hope you all love these pizzas as much as we do, they are such a good comfort food!!!

Insalata Caprese Salad with a French Twist

This is my favourite salad!!! I love this salad, I fell in love with it two years ago on a family holiday to France, we stayed in Erdeven in a beautiful house big enough for all 10 of us! Anyway we went to some amazing restaurants and in one I had this as a starter, it was so fresh and amazingly tasty! Since then I have tried to incorporate aspects of France into this Italian salad, finally I have done it!

Ingredients:
5-10 Tomatoes
750g Mozzarella
Handful of Basil
8tbsp Olive oil
4tbsp White wine vinegar
1 Clove of garlic
Salt and pepper

Estimated time: 10

Directions:

This is such an easy salad, just what you want to go with an evening meal or a nice BBQ on the weekend! We’ll start off with the hard bit, the French style dressing!

Start off by measuring your olive oil and white wine vinegar into a bowl. You can make as much as you want, or as little as long as you remember the ratio of the olive oil to vinegar. If you work in table spoons it is easier, just remember twice as much oil to vinegar!

Now peel your clove of garlic. Carefully slice and chop your garlic, you want quite small chunks as no one really wants a mouthful of garlic, especially as its raw!! Once chopped add this to the oil and vinegar.

To this now add a pinch of salt and pepper, stir it together with a fork until combined. Make sure you taste the dressing so you can decide whether more salt or pepper is needed! Once you have the flavour that you want leave the dressing to one side while you get everything else ready!

Tomatoes, I’ve given a rough idea because it simply depends how many people its for. The idea is to have rows of tomato and mozzarella creating a nice pattern 🙂 so slice your tomatoes and leave to one side.

Now slice the mozzarella into similar thickness as the tomatoes. If the mozzarella is too big you can cut them in half.

Once all of these are sliced you can start placing them in your serving dish. Place these in turn until the dish is filled and you have used all of you tomato and mozzarella.

Now mix your dressing again and pour over the tomatoes, try to get an even covering so that everyone will get some! Now sprinkle with some roughly chopped basil!

Ta-daa!!!! There you have a wonderful summery tomato and mozzarella salad that everyone will love. This is such a fresh salad it will go with anything! Simple salads are often the best and this one certainly is. Enjoy everyone and lest hope this weather lasts!! 🙂

Chicken Roulade

This is just amazing! I absolutely love this, it is a bit time consuming but so good for a dinner party or a special evening meal. Everyone will love this, the sort of dish you’d get in a restaurant!! All of your friends and family will like this!

Ingredients:

4 Chicken breasts
Salt and pepper
Ball of string

Stuffing:
2 Chicken breasts
2 Cloves of garlic
6-8 Sun-dried tomatoes
1 Handful of fresh basil

Estimated time: 1 1/2 hours

Directions:

We’ll start with the stuffing 🙂 firstly take your 2 chicken breasts and dice them into small squares, put the chicken pieces into a food processor (if you don’t have one then a normal drinks blender will work, or a handheld one, or even a stick one!! If using one of these then place the chicken into a bowl.)

Roughly chop your garlic (remember to peel before hand :p ) and add this to the chicken chunks. Now the tomatoes, the amount is really up to you. I have found that the best sun dried tomatoes are ones that you can buy in oil, simply because they are often larger and have more flavour 🙂 roughly chop these tomatoes and add them to the chicken as well. I used 8 to make sure that the flavour came across well.

Now the basil (you don’t have to use basil, any herb will do such as rosemary or thyme as both of these go well with chicken), the last addition to the stuffing. Again take this and roughly chop it and put it in with the rest of the ingredients. Now the fun bit, blitz this all together on a medium speed until your left with a chickeny paste. This will take quite a while and you may have to keep scraping down the sides to make sure everything gets mixed in. Once finely blitzed it will smell amazing! Leave to one side for later.

So, as you can probably tell this makes enough for four people! Take your remaining four chicken breasts and carefully cut from one side into the middle so that they open up like hearts when you have go tot the middle, be careful not to make any holes in the meat as the stuffing will try to escape!

Now the really really fun bit, cover you chicken breasts with cling film on a chopping board (make sure they are all open like hearts)…and now bash!! Bash away, try to get them as flat as possible, obviously you won’t be able to get them flat but you will see them start to flatten out. This is so good if you are not in the best of moods you can get all of your anger out!!

This is the really fiddly bit and time consuming but will wow anyone! So take your stuffing and place spoonfuls along the middle of the breasts. Try and shape these into sausages. Carefully fold one edge over the stuffing and continue to roll until the ‘seam’ is on the bottom. Do this for all of the chicken breasts.

Sadly now you have to tie the chickens up! For this you need to cut a length of string that will wrap round the chicken breast. Carefully edge this under the chicken breast, only about a cm from the end and tie it in a knot, make sure you tie it quite tight so that the chicken will keep its shape! Repeat this all the way down the chicken breast before cutting a length that will be able to go round the length of the breast and tie this tightly, this helps to keep the shape 🙂 repeat this for all of the chicken breasts before placing them on a lightly oiled tray.

Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper before cooking in the oven at 180c for roughly 35-40 minutes or until the chicken is a nice golden colour on top, if not sure whether its cooked you can always use a probe to check( it should be at 75c). Once cooked enjoy with a lovely meal 🙂 if serving for a party remember to cut the string off :p

I really hope you enjoy this, I know it is a bit more work than needed for an every day meal, but believe me this is just amazing and you can change it around with different stuffing to your hearts desire! This is a brilliant thing to do with chicken and so worth it!

Tomato and Basil Soup

Traditional, simple and amazing! This is such an old soup, everyone has had it at some point in their life, and to be honest I think everyone has fallen in love with this soup. It might not be as exotic as other soups, but it is always there and always hits ‘the spot’ .

Ingredients – this makes enough soup for 5 people
1500g Tomatoes
3 Large onions
A handful of fresh Basil
Salt and pepper to season

Estimated time: 80 minutes

Directions:

To start with get a large roasting tray, lightly oil the tray so that the tomatoes won’t stick. Now cut all of the tomatoes in half, it may look like a lot of tomatoes but as you don’t add any other liquid to the soup the more the better! Once halved put them, in the pan/tin trying not to have them piled up. Now peel the onions and cut them in half, roughly chop the halves into chunks and spread them in the tin with the tomatoes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper then cover the whole tray with tin foil, this will help to prevent them from burning. Put the tray in the oven at 180c for roughly half an hour. Once the half hour is up take the tin out and shake it so that the tomatoes don’t stick and burn, now put back I the oven for another half hour.

Once the tomatoes are roasted to your liking, (As long as you keep shaking the tomatoes every so often then you can roast them for almost as long as you like!) scrape half of them into a blender, or food processor and blitz them until there are no real lumps. Pour this into a large saucepan before finishing the rest.

Before you blend the rest of the tomatoes and onions you need to roughly chop the basil. This can be as rough as you want as you can then blend it with the remaining tomatoes until they are the texture that you want them to be.

Once everything is blended pour it all into the sauce pan and stir it together on a low heat. Add a pinch of salt and pepper and stir in well, keep tasting the soup to get the right balance, because even though people say how bad salt is for you it hugely changes how food tastes. You’ll be amazed at how much just a small amount of salt will add to the flavour of this soup!!

And that’s that! A beautifully easy and tasty soup. It might not be the quickest soup, but once the tomatoes are in the oven you can forget about hem and go about your day, so really nothing to complain about :p Enjoy it everyone, this soup is brilliant for lunch!!