LEMON CURD

I love how food can invoke a memory of a moment in time, a spoonful of luscious lemon curd transports me straight back to my Nan’s kitchen where Nan would make me lemon curd sandwiches, my love for lemon curd was established and is still as special to this day.

Makes 6-8 Jars

8 lemons halved and zested

1 ltr water

2 kg marrow peeled and diced

1 eggs beaten

4 egg yolks

300g butter

700g sugar

Pre heat your oven 180 C / 350 F.  Place your clean dry jars and lids in the oven for 5 minutes to sterilise.  Remove from the oven and leave on the side.

Remove any seeds from the lemons then place the lemons and zest in the water and bring to a simmer, cook for 30 minutes until completely softened and around 2/3 of water has evaporated.  Leave to cool slightly then in a food processor blitz until smooth, return the lemons to the pan, meanwhile place the marrow on a roasting tin and roast for 30-40 minutes until really soft, blitz to a puree in a food processor and add to the lemons, bring the pan to a gently simmer, add the sugar and stir in to dissolve, next add the beaten egg and yolks one at a time continually whisk in very quickly so as not to scrambled the eggs but to emulsify into the lemon sauce, add the butter, continually stir and cook the sauce for a further 2-3 minutes to fully cook the eggs, remove from the heat and pour in to your sterilised jars, pop on the lids and leave to cool on the work top, once cooled store in the fridge and use within 3 weeks.

WOOD FIRED PIZZA COOKING - GARLIC BREAD

Glorious Garlic Flat Bread Pizza

This is one of those great appetisers and time buying (ie: stress free crowd cooking) for anticipation of the greatest wood fired pizza’s to come when cooking for your family or a crowd with your wood fired oven, I say oven because I cook every thing in our wood oven, slow braised dishes to scrambled eggs to wood fired roasts, tandoori chicken, Yorkshire puddings and of course THE best wood fired pizzas and breads !

I have a great dough recipe I learned in the trade that allows you to prove the dough for 24 hours in the fridge, yes proving in the fridge.  This gives the dough a better texture and flavour as the slow prove in 3-6 degrees improves the flavour.  This in my world also gives me more freedom of time, as when we through a pizza or wood fired dinner party it really can be quite involved when offering all your guest 20 or so choices of ingredients, this we gave navigated with a great pizza bar of ingredients, all we do is roll out the dough, place them on semolina dusted wood paddles (lots of them) and say Wahoo Go For It, Build Your Own.  The only disadvantage is when a pizza dough base is overloaded with fillings it is not so easy to place in the oven or turn!  Hence my Dad’s overloaded pizza creations 🤣

Best Dough Recipe

(six portions)

500g 00 caputo flour (Italian)

15g yeast

10g Himalayan sea salt 

50g Olive oil

320g room temperature water

Place the flour, yeast, salt, olive oil and water in a large bowl or mixer with a dough hook and combine together, at this point I like to turn out and knead manually for the next 10 minutes, but you can leave this mix with a dough hook in the mixer for 7 minutes.  I love working with dough I find kneading very satisfying how the sticky dough becomes smooth and elasticised.

You can divide the dough in to six or leave whole and place in a tray or bowl covered in the fridge to slow prove for 24 hours, even up to 48 hours!  When ready to use bring the dough out and leave for one hour to come up to room temperature before rolling out.  

Garlic Butter

250g butter room temperature 

1 whole blue garlic chopped

1 small bunch fresh parsley chopped

Mix together and generously spread over the pizza dough cook and enjoy.