All-Day Breakfast Pizza

Yes, you read that right... All-Day Breakfast, but on a Pizza.

Oh, come on, it can't possibly be the most revolting pizza topping you've heard of unless you missed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the first time round, when they were cool (allegedly - I beg to differ), back in the 80s (or was it the 90s?). I'm pretty sure I remember one TMNT-branded pizza that involved ice cream, for crying out loud.

And surely I need not mention Iceland's doner kebab pizza?

So here's the thing: my girlfriend and I have been home-making pizzas once in a while - sometimes baking the bases (made from a Wright's flour mix or Supermarket equivalent, though we will eventually make our own from scratch), other times purchasing a ready-made base. Once the base is sorted, pizza is the easiest thing in the world to prepare: slather on the tomato purée, chuck on some cheese, apply toppings with impunity, bake for 10-15 minutes, then consume while still nice, hot and melty.

I hadn't originally planned to make an all-day breakfast pizza. Originally, I was just going to be topped with halves of the pork and bacon cocktail sausages I'd picked up in Morrisons... But when my girlfriend decided to experiment by cracking an egg over her artichoke, olive and goat's cheese pizza, the thought occurred to me that adding an egg to something that already contained tomato, sausage and bacon (of a sort) basically turned it into an all-day breakfast.

The egg element turned out to be rather more complicated than expected... but that's where being second in line for the oven came in handy. Typically, when making a pizza with a ready-baked base, one cooks the pizza just long enough to get the beginnings of browning on the cheese - generally about ten minutes. The egg, we thought, should only take about five additional minutes at pizza-baking temperatures, making a total cooking time of fifteen minutes.

Whether it was the combination of ingredients already on the pizza, or the fact that she checked its progress by opening the oven, the egg on my girlfriend's pizza needed an additional ten minutes... and even then, the white was still quite runny, while the yolk was effectively soft-boiled.

So, for mine, I cooked the basic tomato/cheese/sausage pizza for only five minutes, then cracked the egg into the centre and slapped it back in the oven for ten minutes. Still the same fifteen minute stay in the oven, but without interruption. The end result for me was a much firmer white, but pretty much the same 'soft-boiled' yolk. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair:

It turned out pretty good... While I'm still rather dubious of the idea of egg on a pizza - and, frankly, the whole concept of an all-day breakfast pizza - I'm going to call this a success... While we normally stick to Mozzarella as our formaggio preferito, I had noticed bags of "Four Cheese Mix" on Morrisons' shelves - a melange of grated Mozzarella, Edam, mature cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses which was just begging to be used as pizza topping. It melted nicely and evenly and had that little bit more bite, in and of itself, than Mozzarella on its own.

The flavour of both the sausages and the egg held up remarkably well against the tag-team of cheeses... the only caveat being that, in retrospect, it's rather an underachieving all-day breakfast. At the very least, it could have done with some seasoning - a little pepper, if nothing else.

The more I think about it, though, the more I wonder if it wouldn't have been better with plain pork cocktail sausages and separate bacon (strips or chunks)... maybe some mushrooms... chunks of potato... and possibly a base that's less tomato purée and more sliced tomato.

Though even I would probably have to draw the line before adding baked beans into the mix.

Home Brewed Cream Soda (First Recipe)

Yes, you read that right: Home Brewed. Because there's yeast in them thar ingredients.

On one of my whims, I decided to ascertain if it would be possible for me to make my own cream soda. I like cream soda. It's one of those drinks that doesn't tend to last long when I buy a bottle... Whatever size of bottle I find, it's generally empty in a couple of days, and that's when I'm struggling to ration it. Cream soda is lovely. Cream soda is moreish.

So, obviously, drinking any significant amount would be a rather expensive proposition, particularly where the good stuff is concerned..

The internet, thankfully, has a large number of recipes for making this stuff at home. Most of them seems to employ soda water or soda syphons, and the recipe is actually for a syrup concentrate rather than a full bottle of drink. That sounds like the easy/cheaty way out and, for whatever reason, I didn't feel like taking the easy/cheaty way out on this one. A bit more research turned up some recipes that can be adapted for all kinds of fizz, from Ginger Beer to Root Beer (another favourite of mine - I got addicted to the stuff when I first went to the States!) with plenty of room to manoeuvre in between. The trick seems to be in the use of a small amount of yeast...

Ingredients:

• Sugar (I used Waitrose Light Brown Muscovado Raw Cane Sugar)
• Vanilla extract (Ndali's - previously used on my Off-Key Lime Pie meringues)
• Yeast (a pack of 8 sachets weighed in at 82p at Tesco, but you only need a tiny bit!)
• Cream of Tartar (optional)
• Water

Tools Required:

• 750ml bottle (must have a good seal!)
• Funnel
• Teaspoon
• Tablespoon

Preparation Time: Less than 5 minutes to mix... but then at least two days to ferment!

The Process:
Stick your funnel into the neck of your bottle and dump in six tablespoons of the sugar of your choice. Yes, that's a lot of sugar. What did you expect? Turned out that my choice of sugar wasn't ideal because it tended to just clump and block the funnel. My solution? A bigger funnel. Processed sugar would be less inclined to clump, and would result in a clearer drink as an end result but, whatever kind you use, it should be as fine as possible.

Next add a tablespoon of your vanilla extract, and a tiny fraction of a teaspoon of yeast. Because such a small amount is used, it might be better to buy a tub or tin of yeast. It tends to be incredibly cheap, so the little used by this recipe will go an awfully long way. Hey, maybe I'll make some bread from scratch. At this stage you could also add some cream of tartar - approximately double the quantity of yeast - which. Finally, fill up the bottle with water.

At this point, I should make a point about what type of water to use. Tapwater should be fine, but the varying levels of hardness, the chlorination and flouridation all add up to make a bizarre chemical concoction which isn't necessarily ideal for this kind of thing. You could boil your water beforehand, or you could just use bottled water, though that tends to be just as high - if not higher - in mineral content as tapwater. Any amount of research into Coca Cola will show that the flavour varies quite considerably depending on where in the world it was manufactured/bottled, so the importance of your choice of water should not come as a surprise. I used bottled water this time, just to see how it would turn out.

Put the cap back on the bottle and shake the mixture up to dissolve the sugar, etc. Leave the bottle in a warm environment, out of direct sunlight, for at least two days. You may want to decant the resultant drink into a new bottle, hopefully leaving the yeast behind as a sediment.

The Results:
Well, after producing so much win with my truffles and minty-truffly tart, the universe clearly required that I deliver some fail.

Y'know, just for a change.

I'm not sure how much alcohol is produced by this method, but this first batch definitely had a slightly yeasty mustiness to it and the odour is, to be perfectly honest, more than a little beery.

The flavour of cream soda is in there somewhere, but I can quite honestly call this version a failure. Either there was just not enough sugar and vanilla extract, or I somehow managed to put in too much yeast... But then, after about 48 hours of fermentation, the only bubbles I got were in the initial fizz when I first opened the bottle, and the - admittedly very satisfying - head of foam I saw when I decanted the drink into a new bottle. On the tongue, it's about as effervescent as slightly flat beer. Does that suggest too little yeast, or simply the need for a longer fermentation period?

Further experimentation is needed... And the results are in on batches 2 and 3...

Miso Spaghetti Soup

You know how it is: It gets to be late in the evening, so you don't want to cook anything that takes ages, don't have much of an appetite anyway, but do feel the need to eat something... And all you have in your cupboards is basically leftovers.

So, what do you do? Dash down to the kebab shop, or go wild and throw something together at random?

OK, probably me too... but if all I ever ate was takeaways, I wouldn't have anything to write about, would I? So let's just assume for a moment that your first instinct is to consider which leftovers can go together, and start planning a quick, scrappy meal with what you have to hand.

Ingredients:

• Spaghetti (or any other dry pasta leftovers you have that aren't quite a full portion)
• 1 Sachet of Miso Soup Paste

Preparation Time: About 15 minutes!

Tools Required:

• Medium-sized Saucepan
• Stirring Implement des choix

The Process:
Very, very simple stuff. This is basically a combination of making miso soup (empty sachet into pan of boiling water, stir) and making spaghetti (add dry spaghetti to pan of boiling water, stir), with the intention of allowing the flavour of the soup to permeate somewhat into the spaghetti, thus removing the need to add salt to the water.

So... Half-fill the saucepan with water, bring it to the boil and add the miso soup paste. Stir it in thoroughly for a few minutes, then simply add the spaghetti, and treat it as if you're making it up for a bolognese, or whatever. Obviously, though, once the spaghetti is ready (10-12 minutes on the boil), you decant the entire contents of the pan into a bowl and serve, rather than straining the spaghetti and tipping the water away.

Neat, huh?

The Results:
There's a problem with this idea which I only now see in retrospect: the starch in the spaghetti. Even as I was eating it and noting that the soup was unusually bland, yet bitter, it didn't occur to me that I'd made a small oversight/error in judgement in my combination of ingredients: Allowing the soup to flavour the pasta is all well and good... but starch from the pasta will inevitably flavour the soup

It wasn't bad, really, but there was a noticable change to the taste of the soup, and I can only think it was the starch that did it. This could probably be remedied by using fresh pasta, as opposed to dry... or noodles rather than spaghetti.

Still, as quick, hot, soupy snacks go, this is one to keep in mind.

Ginger-Glazed Salmon & Wasabi Mash

No idea from whence this idea was sprung, but it occurred to me only today. Naturally, the Wasabi mash part is a previously documented idea, and I'm no stranger to sticking a salmon steak in the oven so, really, the defining element is the ginger 'glaze'.

I should possibly mention that, when I prepared the Sparky Onion Gravy at my parents' house recently, there were several differences in the ingredients and the process - namely, normal onion, mild chilli powder, cornflour and a ready-made ginger paste. The end result was an entirely different gravy (normal onions being far sweeter, mild chilli powder kinda defeating the object of the recipe), but it turned out rather well, and the recipe will now stand as a milder variation on the original, for those times when a head-explodingly spicy onion gravy is not wholly appropriate.

But I digress.

The ginger paste is really what got the ball rolling on this idea. I have a stack of salmon steaks in the freezer compartment of my fridge and, since they're no use for sushi or the Teriyaki stir-fry due to being heavily waterlogged, I tend to bake them. While I was last out food shopping, I saw all these pre-prepared 'such-and-such with thingumy glaze' main courses, and thought to myself that the ginger paste should be able to make a no-brainer ginger glaze for salmon... But was I right..?

Ingredients:

• Instant Mash (Sainsbury's - half a sachet per person)
• Clearspring Wasabi powder (2 teaspoons should be sufficient, possibly per serving)
• Salmon steak (1 per person)
• 'Very Lazy' Ginger Paste (1 sachet per steak)

Preparation Time: About 10-12 minutes

Tools Required:

• Bowl
• Stirring Implement
• Baking Tray
• Foil
• Kettle

The Process:
Preheat your oven to something in the region of 180degrees Centigrade. Open the sachet(s) of ginger paste and spread the contents over the top of the salmon steak(s). Wrap loosely in foil, place on a baking tray and into the oven for about 10 minutes. Towards the end of this time, stir the Wasabi powder into the instant mash powder, ensuring it's all lump-free before adding the appropriate amount of hot water. Stir until the instant mash is ready.

By this point, the salmon steak(s) should also be ready, so serve everything up... and enjoy...

The Results:
Well... Try to enjoy, anyway. This was not a roaring success, except inasmuch as the Wasabi mash was pretty good (probably far better suited to the sausage and mash idea, frankly), and the salmon was not half bad, considering how soggy it was when thawed (seriously, I had to wring it out before I could even think about slapping that thing in the oven!). The failures were that the ginger didn't glaze - I suspect grilling would have been the better option, and it's certainly what I shall try next time - and the salmon and ginger just didn't connect with the Wasabi mash... in fact, it clashed quite horribly.

It wasn't completely inedible - far from it - but, rather than being "a party on my tongue" (yes, sorry, I like those jokes almost as much as the S&M 'pun'), it was more like a 3am brawl in the pouring rain outside a club in west London. The mash was creamy, but bitter and spicy. The ginger-topped salmon was cooked to perfection (if I do say so myself - moist, but not soggy, and it came apart delightfully) and the sweet, ginger kick would probably have been truly awesome if it had actually turned into the glaze I was hoping for. Maybe grilling would do it, maybe I'd need to add something to the ginger paste to help it along... Who knows?

Further experimentation is called for...

S&M Rodeo #2: Wasabi Mash

I should say to begin this posting that I've not actually tried this... yet. Having woken up this morning feeling nauseous, I've barely eaten all day, but this idea had occurred to me a while back as another variation on the Sausage and Mash theme.

The drawback to this suggestion is that it would be far more difficult to achieve with freshly made mash because, with instant, you're basically mixing two powders, then adding hot water or milk. Working with real potatoes, you'd have to get the mash ready before you even add the wasabi, which would just increase preparation time and lead to the mash being cooler or overcooked, and so possibly not quite so appetising when it's served.

So. In theory, then...

Ingredients:

• Instant Mash of choice (I'll be using Sainsbury's, as before)
• Clearspring wasabi powder (1 heaped teaspoon should be plenty!)

Preparation Time: Mere moments!

Tools Required:

• Bowl
• Stirring implement

Process:
Mix up one serving/sachet/whatever of the instant mash, and the teaspoon of wasabi powder in a bowl, then add water or milk as directed in the instructions. Stir till you have the required texture of mash.

That's really it.

Now, I obviously can't do the traditional 'The Results:' bit because I haven't tried it... but I will make a couple of recommendations in lieu:

1. Use plain pork sausages, as per S&M Rodeo #1
2. Use a plain vegetable stock gravy

The reason for this is that any kind of seasoning in either the sausages or the gravy would play havoc with the flavour - not to mention the kick - of the wasabi mash. The mixture of potato and Japanese horseradish alone will season up you pork sausages quite nicely, I'd imagine... With any luck, if my stomach has cleared up tomorrow, I might risk giving it a try...

S&M Rodeo #1: Sparky Red Onion Gravy & Mustard Mash

There are two reasons this Blog is called snacks & the single man:

1. It's a cool name, and no-one else had got there first
2. I'm shit at first dates

Is this relevant? Who knows? Suffice it to say that, while this little experiment is all my own, the recipe is derived from something else, and the idea came from someone else. More specifically, from the overpriced, underwhelming Sausage & Mash served to them by a well-know London Bar/Restaurant.

I'll focus here on the gravy, since that's the complicated part and, to be honest, I didn't get it quite right on this run-through. The mustard mash was accomplished using Sainsbury's instant mash with a teaspoon of wholegrain mustard (Maille) and a small knob of butter. When I'm a bit more confident in the kitchen, I'll make the mash from scratch, too. Timings for each part will, by necessity, overlap somewhat... and I tend to get a bit skittish if I start thinking I need to to more than one thing at a time. Bad enough that I was cooking the pork sausages in the oven (Sainsbury's Taste the Difference 'Ultimate Outdoor Bred') while working on the gravy. That, and making the mash from scratch would have been... troublesome.

Ingredients:

• Red Onion (either one small one, or half a large one)
• Coriander Powder (2 teaspoons)
• Chilli Powder (1 teaspoon)
• Turmeric Powder (1/2 teaspoon)
• Ginger (reasonably sized blob)
• Garlic (2 decent-sized cloves)
• Vegetable Stock (Knorr Stockpot this time)
• 250ml Water

Preparation time: about 45 minutes, at a guess. More experimentation needed...

Tools Required:

• Chopping Board
• Knife (for chopping onion, ginger and garlic)
• Small/Medium Saucepan

Process:
I suspect a useful 'Step 1' would be to actually have some proper cooking lessons... or at least spend some time researching gravy before stepping into the breach and doing something as crazy as this.

Ah well.

So, start by chopping the onion. It's going to come apart, so chop according to your preferences - either slicing it or chopping it into fractions (quarters, sixths, eighths, depending on the size of the onion) then separating it into its layers - then dump it into the saucepan. Peel and finely chop the ginger, then add to the saucepan. Same for the garlic, as it happens. Makes it all seem really easy, doesn't it? Add the coriander, chilli and turmeric powders, then stir together in 250ml of water. Bring to the boil, then stir in the vegetable stock. Allow it all to simmer nicely, and hopefully thicken up.

The Results:
Now, bearing in mind that I used about twice as much water as I really needed (500ml! what was I thinking?) and also couldn't decide whether the saucepan should be on a high, medium or low heat (I suspect 'high' to begin with, then lowering to keep it warm once it's thickened up), so the end result was... rather runny... it actually turned out not bad at all... Again, largely due to the quantity of water involved (but also perhaps the amount of other ingredients), I ended up with at least twice as much gravy as I needed, which is a bit of a waste, but hey.

The recipe I based this on actually called for garlic and ginger paste... which might also have helped. Possibly I could have pulped, rather than slicing, the fresh stuff, but perhaps next time I'll follow the recommendations

The gravy itself was not half bad... very hot and spicy... and it certainly went well with the sausages. Though I do wonder in retrospect if it wouldn't have been better to add the onion later in the process. I'm sure it was in there somewhere, but it wasn't the most apparent flavour in there. It had certainly lost all of its crispness which, to be frank, is not what I was aiming for. Perhaps the idea would be to pressure-cook everything to begin with, then add extra onion to the end result and let it simmer for a while?

Addendum 9/2/11 - Forgot to mention that the recipe from which this is derived actually called for the wholegrain mustard to be part of the gravy. The idea of turning my plain old instant mash into Mustard Mash came from a recent S&M experience of my own (sorry, I will probably be milking that particular double entendre for all it's worth and more) while out on a day trip. I'm not completely certain I added enough mustard, or whether the sheer spiciness of the gravy overpowered it completely, but I suspect those little wholegrains would have been overloaded wherever they were, unless I'd made a mustard mash that was approximately 65% wholegrain mustard... and that would just be silly.

Sillier than everything else in this blog, that is.

The pork sausages didn't quite cook according to plan... or it could just be that I don't know what I'm looking at when it comes to cooking the blasted things in the oven. Normally, I'd fry them... but with a saucepan on the hob, I didn't fancy trying to balance it all with a frying pan as well. Of the three I cooked, one wasn't completely done within the time specified on the packaging, so I may have to rethink time and temperature next time.

Overall, though, for a complete novice like me, this experiment turned out reasonably well... And no signs of food poisoning yet...