Not so frugal food

Because the FH wasn't able to attend the cook-off yesterday afternoon, I promised to re-create the winning recipes for him to taste here this afternoon.  

I went to chapel with the YFG this morning and then we and the EFG nipped off to Lidl's as I had a voucher to get £5 off when I spent £35 from an offer on their Facebook page.  With all that has been going on this weekend, this was my first opportunity to use it, and also the ideal chance to grab some mozzarella cheese, vine ripened tomatoes and some basil, in order to make these pizzas.

The winning recipes were Caprese Pizza from a Pampered chef book, and the White chocolate fudge cookies from Lorraine Pascal's book, Home Cooking.

To begin the pizzas, I made up a batch of pizza dough from a packet mix.  It had to be rolled out and then cut into three sections, like this:

I then pressed a garlic clove into some oil and brushed it over the dough, and sprinkled Parmesan cheese over that.  It was then set to one side to rest for about 15 minutes, whilst the tomatoes and mozzarella were patted with some kitchen paper to remove excess moisture and set aside.  Then the dough was baked for about 10 minutes.

When it came out of the oven, the tomatoes and mozzarella were layered up on it like this, and it went back in the oven for 10 minutes.  The aroma was lovely!

When it emerged the final time, some chopped basil in a tiny bit of oil was slathered over it, and it was served.

The FH is still ill, on his fourth day in bed, and with little appetite, so I hoped to tempt him to eat a little with this - so this was his portion.  He did manage to eat it and said it was delicious.

The other recipe was rather challenging.  The recipe says that the mix makes 6 cookies, but they were enormous - so I made more reasonably sized ones, and it turned out 16.  These use 200g of white chocolate, so they are quite heavy on the chocolate, but they are just like we used to buy when I was a child in a cookie shop in Cambridge - and again, the smell is lovely!  

They do spread rather as they bake!

And finally, since the EFG and my diets don't allow us to indulge in pizza, we had sticky chicken and green veg just in time to watch Call the Midwife at 8pm.  

And I think that will do for today.  Hope you have all had a good weekend, and we'll be back tomorrow - I have looked at January's figures and they can come in tomorrow's monitoring post.