This has been a long time coming. I think the last time we made pizza was probably more than a year ago one Saturday night with the kids. Husband did the dough, he's actually the expert. He used to have his own little pizza restaurant back in the day. I remember when we started dating and I stayed in his place his sofa was full of money. Not like millions of pounds, drug lord kind of full, but little wads stuffed under the cushions waiting to be banked, not that a lot of it ever made it to the bank  suspect, but ended up in the many West End clubs.

So back to modern time, with kids we then all filled our own pizzas with whatever we liked. Kids mainly went for onions and mushroom. No, not really. Mainly salami, chicken and cheese. We should do that again actually.

Whenever I'm away, they pester their dad into getting takeaway and usually it will be pizzas. Once I was away for the weekend and next time the kids came they told me with unmistakable satisfaction in their voices that while I was gone, they had ordered takeaway pizza twice. Not under my watch it wouldn't happen!


I have recently been reminded of the wonders of pizza by many Meal Planning Monday posts by other bloggers who have had lovely sounding pizzas on their menus. Another inspiration was a post about a chorizo and grilled vegetables pizza, which sounds and looks amazing. I love that blog not only for the wonderful recipes and photographs, but also because of the stories of life on the Shetland Islands. I have this strange fascination for remote northern islands. I would love to go to Jan Mayen, Svalbard, Faroe or Shetland Islands. The more remote and arctic the better. Persuading husband, son of the desert, will be an interesting task. I might try the Hebrides to start with,

I made the dough and tomato sauce completely according to Elizabeth's recipe, so won't repeat them here. My contribution to the topic of pizza dough is this great tip: If you are going out for the day and want dinner reasonably quickly when you're back, do the dough in the morning and chuck it in the fridge in a freezer bag. I did this because we were going to be out and I knew when we'd get back we wouldn't want to wait for the dough to rise. So while you're out and about the dough will slowly rise in the fridge and be ready to roll and raring to go when your back.

For the topping I used my Finnish Moose salami, which is not very different from normal salami, but a bit smokier and tastier. It also has some horse meat in it, so some people might not approve. In Finland horse meat is used and most people won't bat an eyelid. No horses are grown for that purpose alone, but when their time comes the meat will be used, mostly for sausages. That's where the saying sure give any horse a long face "Time to go to the sausage factory" comes from. It of course means the end is neigh.


I think it is good not to waste meat, but I do understand if people see horses as pets, or almost as family members and don't want to eat them, We wouldn't eat our dogs after all. I remember when we were kids we had 3 ducks one summer. That winter mum cooked Uncle Scrooge, Donald and Daisy. I remember it was a bit hard to swallow even though they were the stupidest birds that ever lived.


For the pizza I also grilled some onion, courgette and yellow and green peppers. For cheese I had mozzarella, gruyere, cheddar and goat cheese, but I only had a handful of each, so it wasn't overcheesy. And I also dolloped some of previous night's rocket, spinach and watercress pesto on it.

It turned out very delicious indeed, but I cooked it just slightly too long. Why is there no undo button in cooking. Just 5 minutes less and it would have been perfect, but I was so worried that the bottom wouldn't be crisp. It was crisp alright. Husband was very complimentary because he saw I was annoyed with myself and I suppose all in all it was a bloody good dinner.

Moose Salami, grilled vegetables and 4 cheese pizza recipe

Pizza dough and tomato sauce - link here

Toppings:

Tomato sauce
1/2 cup of Gruyere cheese
1/2 cup of goat cheese
1/2cup of cheddar
1/2 cup of mozzarella
1 red onion
1/2 green pepper
1/2 yellow pepper
1 small courgette
1/4 cup of pesto

Pre-heat your oven to 225C.


Grill or fry the thinly sliced vegetables on a griddle pan with a little bit of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Slice the salami and grate the cheese. Roll out the dough - I made a rectangle to cover a large baking tray. Spread the marinara on the pizza base. Spread the vegetables and salami slices evenly, dollop the pesto here and there and sprinkle the cheese on top. Bake for 10-15 minutes until cheese is bubbling and the edges of the crust are crisp and golden.

I was supposed to do some kale shit last night, but as I happened to walk past the local fishmongers I decided to look in. I only noticed this shop a few days ago and I don’t think they have been there for very long. It was a lovely hot day and I thought it would be a crime not to light the BBQ.

There was a big open counter in the front of the shop covered with ice and fish. They had all kinds of fantastic fish, which you kind of expect from a fishmongers. I was so excited being used to the supermarket sea basses and Greek sea breams, which are perfectly lovely, but it’s so nice to try something different. At the back of the shop there was a guy leaning back on a chair asleep.

I didn’t know what to do to wake him. I couldn’t very well go and poke him. I would have found that really embarrassing for both parties. In these kinds of situations I always pretend that I haven’t noticed that anything is amiss. I’m the person not to be around when you have spinach in your teeth, your fly's open or your skirt is stuck in your knickers, because I won’t tell you.


And sleep is such an innocent and vulnerable state. Plus sleeping at work – even more embarrassing. I have only done it once and it was fully intentional and therefore not embarrassing, maybe more incriminating in the eyes of the employer though. But I was young and reckless then. There was this fantastic riverside music festival in the town where I lived every summer and I had been out all night and was really hungover, so I locked myself in the marketing materials cupboard which was big enough for me to curl up on the floor on pile of babyfood posters for a little nap. I was the babyfood brand manager after all, so it made sense really.

With the fishguy still sound asleep I wanted to make some noise as if by accident, so that he would wake up and I’d then pretend that I just noticed him there (in plain sight) and say – “Oh hello, I was wondering if you have any fish”, or similar. But there was nothing I could use to make accidental noises with unless I started slapping two fish against each other. So I tried to shuffle my feet really loudly walking back and forth by the counter examining the fish.

After a few minutes of this zorbas action the guy finally got up, so appearing surprised I said “Oh hello, I was wondering if you have any nice fish for barbecuing?” He did! He told me what all the wonderful fishes were and I chose a lovely big wild sea bass, which originally I was against because we have sea bass so often, but he promised it is completely different than the non-wild ones. I also took a red grouper because it looked so much fun with it’s crazy face, which looked even crazier when the guy had cut it in half as he butterflied the fish beautifully.

It was way too much fish for just the two of us, but oh well. It’s one of those things, when you finally find something you’ve been looking for a long time, you sometimes go a bit over the top.

BBQ red grouper and wild sea bass

I wanted to keep things really simple. On our honeymoon last year in Santorini we had fantastic grilled fish a couple of times in gorgeous little seaside tavernas. And the fish was perfect, just served with grilled vegetables. I wanted to make my fish just like that. I seasoned them with salt and pepper and filled them with lemon slices, dill and parsley and brushed with oil before putting on the barbecue just so it wouldn't stick. I also tossed some asparagus, courgette, peppers and aubergine in olive oil. lemon, salt, pepper and dried Greek herb mix.

Ooh it was so lovely. The fish turned out absolutely fantastic, lookswise I think I can improve. My tong action was a bit clumsy and the BBQ was too full so I struggled turning the fish over. But overall a resounding success. The seabass was soft and melty and the grouper light and flaky. We actually ate it all, I am not ashamed to admit. I think when you are responsible for taking a life the least you should do is cook it with love and eat it all.

I will definitely pop back in and tell the sleepy guy how nicely it turned out and try some more of his fish. I might also ask a few questions about his daytime sleepiness, because it could be related to a serious medical condition. And I need to have a discussion about where he gets his fish (I bet nothing more exotic than Billingsgate market) and about the sustainability, carbon footprint etc. I just did some reading and I think this red grouper for instance was flown in and apparently is also overfished. So next time I will be a better citizen and friend of the planet and not just think about own belly.