No bake pan pizzas

A good friend of mine asked me to post some new recipes. To which my answer was "what would you like?" and here you have the answer to the answer to that question!! These are quick to make, don't require an oven and taste good even cold. Yes! Perfect for a school snack!

Preparation time: 45 minutes. Makes 6 small pizzas about 10.5 cm in diameter or one large one

Ingredients:

225 g	Flour
1 tsp	Baking powder
1/4 tsp	Salt
4 tbsp	Oil
4 tbsp.	Sugar Water, room temperature
400 ml	Pasta sauce, tomato
150 g	Cheese

Toppings: Mozzarella, peppers, spinach, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, Italian herbs, coriander leaves (and for those of you who are not veggie: any kind of cooked meat or fish)

Method:

Prepare your toppings first. Since the pizza will not be going in the oven your toppings won't cook very well. There are two things you can do to prevent a disaster. Either cut your vegetables very thinly so that they cook quickly (and use vegetables that you could eat raw) or cook your vegetables quickly before hand. You could just stir fry them or grill them very quickly. If you do use meat you will have to cook it first, you could use left overs and crumble, or cut, the meat/fish up.

Sift the dry ingredients together and make a well in the middle. Pour in the 2 tbsp. of oil and 4 tbsp. water and mix together to form a hard dough.

You might need to add some extra water depending on the type of flour that you use but the dough should be soft but not soggy. Knead it until it is smooth and then roll it out on to a board. Make the dough as thin as you possibly can without having any holes in it.

When you fry the pizzas the dough will expand due to the baking powder making it much thicker. My initial attempts gave me a dough that was too thick. It was tasty, and we ate it all up, but it was very filling and did not look pretty. I then used a large round cookie cutter to cut the dough into shape. Alternatively you could make it into small balls and then either roll it out, or just press it into shape in your hand.

Put 1 tbsp. of oil into your frying pan and fry gently for 5 minutes or until the base is cooked and slightly brown.

Turn the dough out of the frying pan. Put in the rest of the oil and reheat it. Flip the dough and put it back in the pan. Quickly put your sauce onto the pizza, don't go too close to the edges so prevent the sauce from dripping into the hot oil and making a mess. Then put the other toppings on. Finally sprinkle the cheese on top. Now if you happen to be somewhere in the world where you cannot just crack open a bottle of pasta sauce (or it is too expensive to do so) there are some options. You can make a pasta sauce out of fresh tomatoes or out of tomato puree. I have recipes for both of these, they are eiter in my head or somewhere  on a piece of paper. I'm pretty sure that the one with tomato puree is in my head because I made it last time I was in Sri Lanka. It is just going to take a while for me to figure out the proportions. The recipe using fresh tomatoes .... well it might be a while before I dig it out!!

Then cover the frying pan with a lid and fry until the cheese has melted. If you don't have a lid you can cover the top with aluminium foil or once the dough is cooked you can put the pizza under the grill to melt the cheese.

Serve the pizza hot or cold. The fried base tastes really good if you use a lot of oil because you basically have something deep fried!

Enjoy!

Rhubarb, Strawberry Crumble

This summer we spent a couple of weeks in England. While visiting good friends of ours in London we were introduced to their allotment. The English version of the German "Klein Garten". Among the vegetables there was a bed of Rhubarb. Our friend lamented that she didn't know what to do with them and wanted to uproot them and throw them away. My kids went a bit crazy and objected to throwing away rhubarb! They made me promise to make a rhubarb crumble for them and harvested some stalks.

The next morning I was bound to the kitchen to produce a rhubarb crumble. Now this would have been fine except I realized that I had not yet posted my crumble recipe and could not find anything even close on the internet. So I winged it!

This motivated me to write up the recipe so that next time my kids persuade me to bake while on vacation that at least I have a recipe!

Preparation time: 1.5 hours. Serves 8 

Ingredients:

750 - 1000g	Fruit (1/2 rhubarb, 1/2 strawberry)
3 tbsp.	Sugar
1	Lemon, zest
200 g	Butter (margarine if you are vegan)
200 g	Sugar
3 drops	Vanilla
200 g	Ground almonds
240 g	Flour
1-2 tbsp.	Powdered sugar/ icing sugar
1 tsp.	Ground cinnamon
2 tbsp.	Brown sugar

Method:

If you are using rhubarb, peel and cut it finely. Add the 3 tbsp. sugar and the lemon zest to it and set aside. Chop the strawberries coarsely, but do not add them to the rhubarb. The rhubarb needs to sit in the sugar. The time it needs to sit is the time that you need to make the mix for the pastry part of the crumble. You can use any other fruit with this recipe. If the fruit takes a long time to cook you might consider pre-cooking it.

Melt the butter at a very low heat. Take care not to get it too hot else it will cook the other ingredients and you don't want this. I suggest putting it in the microwave and heating it for 30 seconds. Take it out and stir it. If it is not completely melted put it back in for a further 10-20 seconds, take it out and then stir it again. By stirring it you are cooling it down and distributing the heat. The butter just needs to be liquid. If you happen to have over heated your butter wait until it has cooled to proceed.

Now mix everything together except the fruit, the brown sugar and the cinnamon. Mix it with a wooden spoon. Try not to smash it together. You are not forming a batter but crumbs. You could also use your fingers but be very gentle.

Press half of the crumbles on to the bottom of a 26 cm diameter round form. I use a tart case at home. You can also use a ceramic tart dish, it just takes a bit longer to bake. Also I can never get it out of the pan so I like to use a ceramic dish if I am taking it somewhere. If you are looking for something that looks good once served on a plate, this is not the recipe for you. This is if you want something that tastes amazing and is relatively easy to make.

Once the first half of the crumbles are in, distribute the fruit on top. Then put the rest of the crumbles on top of the fruit. Sprinkle the top with the brown sugar and the cinnamon.

Bake at 190 C (in a fan oven) for about 25 minutes.

Serve hot, warm or cold with ice cream, custard, whipped cream or clotted cream.