Claire's Cake Bake & Other Foodiness

So our dinner last night was a roasted vegetable pizza. The veg had been the last batch in the freezer & I was intending to do a pasta sauce but we decided a pizza would be more of a Friday night in type dinner.

Pizza is normally something I’d make at the weekend because it does take a while even though its not labour intensive. Mid-week it is a bit of a push but on a Friday night it works very well. For example, last night we got home about 6.45 so I got in & immediately popped the kettle on for a few seconds to take the chill off the water & then got it into the airing cupboard with some yeast & sugar for 15mins. In the time it took the yeast to react I weighed out my flour & a pinch of salt and got everything ready to go.

At 7pm the yeast went into the flour and after a bit of mixing and kneading the dough was back in the airing cupboard for an hour. In that hour I threw some onion, garlic and chopped tomatoes into a pan with a pinch of oregano and 2 small bay leaves and left it simmering down into a tasty thick sauce.

At 8pm I took the dough out, knocked it back, split into two and left it under the bowl for 20 mins. In that 20 mins I put the oven on to heat up to 200°c and prepared all the ingredients – drained the juice from the defrosted roasted vegetables, chopped up the mozzarella and got the olives to the ready!

8.20pm and the doughs are flattened and stretch into the bases and the ingredients piled on top.

Thrown in the oven for 16 minutes and hey presto dinner is served at 8.45pm. And I really dont want to buy a pre-made pizza ever again

Tonight we used the last batch of my roasted vegetables.

I defrosted the veg during the day & at tea time I slowly reheated it in a pan with a small amount of olive oil. Once warmed through I threw about 200ml couscous in, followed by 200ml of marigold vegetable stock & some black pepper. I left it to soak up & then threw some butter in.

I dished it out & left it to cool slightly before serving with yoghurt & coriander. We had a side serving of garlic bread as we would have only gone to waste (any excuse, believe me!). Anyways, this is how it looked:

Verdict: Very tasty & very quick.

Earlier in the week we used up the second batch of vegetables by heating them through with a tin of chopped tomatoes & hey-presto we had a roasted vegetable sauce & pasta.