Pepperoni & Mozzarella Millefeuille - or pie!

I suppose it all depends on how much you want to befuddle your audience, as to whether you call this one a "Pepperoni & Mozzarella Millefeuille" or a "Pepperoni & Mozzarella Pie".

Because I'm feeling quite classy today - and it doesn't happen often, so it's good to make the most of it - I shall be calling the dish a Millefeuille.  However, don't be thinking of layers of crisp pastry interspersed with common old pepperoni and squishy mozzarella - oh no.  Be thinking of lovely golden puff pastry, filled with a luxuriant mixture of pepperoni, mashed potato (oh, sorry, did your expectations just crash and burn? *chuckle*), mozzarella cheese and spring onion.

Whatever you call it, it was flipping lovely.

The filling, before the top layer went on

This was another one of hubby's creations, in that he knew we had a pack of pepperoni and two balls of mozzarella in the fridge, left over from an expected pizza voyage that never happened.  The mozzarella is used up easily at lunchtimes, but the pepperoni was a different matter.  So he devised a use for it - and very nice it was, too.

All pleated up and egg washed - ready for baking

For simplicity, we bought some ready-made puff pastry and even a tub of ready-made mashed potato.  Now shop bought mash isn't my favourite by any means, but I have to admit that it did make what could have been a right old palaver a lot easier.  Of course, the best thing of all would be to make a bit extra the day before (presuming you have a dinner with utilises mash the day before).  For us, our meal plan that week had gone completely to worms and the rhythm of our dishes was completely up the creek - hence the shop bought mash.

The only two changes we'd make when making this again, would be to use a better quality of mozzarella - which would give better flavour, plus to use a small quantity of grated cheddar, just to increase the cheese flavour by a tiny bit.

The addition of the spring onion to the mixture was a stroke of genius, though.  Far nicer than straight chopped white onion, or a sweated off onion.  It gave a lovely bite to the texture plus a welcome splash of colour - not to mention the sweet, mild onion flavour which of course went so well with the other ingredients.

Mmmn, squidgy!

This is a recipe that I suspect would appeal to menfolk everywhere - and you could even get away with serving with a little salad, so long as you promise that there's lots of cheese involved in the pie!

Son & heir definitely approved and even ate his salad without complaint.  Hubby was, of course, super critical of the dish as it was his own creation - but agreed that it was definitely one that he'd do again.  I was pleasantly surprised by the flavours as I'm not the biggest fan of pepperoni outside of a pizza and found that the pepperoni flavour was muted by the mashed potato, which allowed the cheese to come through most agreeably.

One note that is worth mentioning, is that the fat content of this dish is off the scale.  It would be impossible to substitute chorizo, for example, as the fat that chorizo brings would just swamp out the texture.  If you consider that every single ingredient - the pastry, mashed potato, pepperoni and mozzarella - all contain a significant amount of fat, this is very definitely a dish for "once in a blue moon".  I'm sure it has a place, though - perhaps as a sharing dish for a mixed buffet, or as a picnic dish (it was very good cold, too!).  Something where you don't need to have a huge slab of the stuff.

Definitely one of those meals that are naughty, but very nice!

PEPPERONI & MOZZARELLA MILLEFEUILLE  (serves 4-8)

Ingredients :

400g puff pastry, rolled out into two sheets approx. 15" x 8"
120g sliced pork pepperoni
400g mashed potato (leftover mash is best)
250g mozzarella, grated
50g cheddar cheese, grated
5-6 spring onions, trimmed & chopped into quarter inch pieces
freshly ground black pepper
1 egg, beaten.

Method :

1.  Prepare a baking sheet with non-stick aluminium foil and pre-heat your oven to 180degC/350degF/Gas4.

2.  Slice the pepperoni into strips and place into a good sized bowl.  Add the remainder of the ingredients and season with a good pinch of black pepper.  Mix with a fork until evenly combined.

3.  Place one of the sheets of pastry onto the baking sheet.

4.  Tip the pepperoni mixture out onto the pastry piece and form into a rectangle, at least an inch in from the edges of the pastry.

5.  With a pastry brush, brush a little of the egg wash around the edges of the pastry.

6.  Lay the second piece of pastry across the top and press down around the edges, to seal.  Make sure you're not trapping air inside the pastry, by cutting two or three slots into the top of the rectangle.

7.  Pleat the edges of the pastry, to seal and neaten.  Then give the pastry a good coating with the egg wash.

8.  Place into the oven for some 35-40 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown.

9.  Serve with a side salad.

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Spanish style chicken & prawns

For absolutely ages, hubby has had a yen to make a paella-style dish.  Of course, he'd have absolutely loved to have made true paella, but I fear that's beyond our purse at the moment.

I've got to say, though, that the dish he made last night - Spanish style chicken and prawns - is so "after the style of" a paella, that he got as close as he could have done.

He'd obviously spent some time thinking about how he was going to approach the cooking of the dish, having decided to marinade the chicken and cook it separately, so as to preserve the flavours of the marinade.  He absolutely achieved that, as the chicken was discernibly flavoured differently to the rice.  This made for interest in a dish which could very easily have been one overall flavour.

He used pepperoni sausage, as we had some left over from some Calzones he was going to make last week.  I think I probably preferred the pepperoni, as the paprika from the chorizo, together with the two paprika's used in the dish could very easily have been too much for me.  I seem to have become quite paprika-sensitive in my old age!

We were both agreed that it would have finished it off perfectly to have had a sprinkling of chopped parsley to serve - so you may want to add that if you try this dish.

One thing that is worth saying about the meal, is that Son & heir started it suspiciously but was very soon tucking in and polished off the lot!  So that was a seal of approval as regards its kid-friendliness.

It is now March 2015 and I have just made the dish again.  (See photograph above).  It was a late addition to the menu plan, as son & heir's lady love was coming for dinner.  Everyone declared the dish was delicious, son & heir gave it the best accolade by having two enormous platefuls!

SPANISH STYLE CHICKEN & PRAWNS  (serves 4)

Ingredients :

2 tbsp olive oil, used separately
2 chicken breasts, sliced into small pieces

half a lemon, juiced

freshly ground black pepper

half a tsp smoked paprika
sea salt

a small knob of butter

1 large spanish onion, chopped

1 red pepper, de-seeded and chopped

1 yellow pepper, de-seeded and chopped
4 mushrooms, sliced

1 red chilli, de-seeded and chopped very fine

2 clove garlic, chopped fine
100g skinless chorizo, cut into small half moons

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp of paprika (not smoked)

300g long grain rice, rinsed in warm water until the water runs clear

1 litre chicken stock (2 stock cubes are fine)
pinch of saffron

2 handfuls of frozen peas, defrosted

200g prawns, defrosted

1 large de-seeded tomato, chopped.

Method :

1.  Place the chicken into a bowl and squeeze over the juice of half a lemon.  Add a few grinds of fresh pepper and the smoked paprika.  Stir and marinade for half an hour.

2. Add the olive oil to a frying pan and fry the chicken until golden brown all over.  Remove from heat and set to one side to keep warm.

3.  Add the knob of butter and more olive oil to the pan and saute the chopped onions, chopped pepper, sliced mushrooms, chopped chilli and garlic until soft.

4.  Add the chorizo pieces and cook for several minutes, until they have begun to release their oils.  Return the chicken to the pan.

5.  Add dried oregano and paprika, then add the rice and stir until coated with the seasoned oil.

6. When the rice is hot, add the chicken stock and saffron and stir through.

7.  Cook until the rice has absorbed almost all the liquid and add the peas.  Cook until the peas have warmed through.

8.  Add the prawns and tomato.  Stir and cook until the rice is tender and everything is heated through.

Serve.

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Home made Pizza

The final articles

In days gone by, when we still lived in Kent, I would make pizza from scratch on a regular basis.  However, with the advent of frozen pizza becoming £3.00 for 3 in Asda, I just couldn't compete with that kind of price and home made pizza became too expensive to produce.

Recently though, the frozen pizzas have become sickly and more than a little bit yuk, which has put us off from buying them and leaving us pizza-less.  With a 12 year old boy in the house, this is something of a critical situation to be in.

So, hubby decided to have another go at making them from scratch.

Three pizza bases, ready for action
They look alright to me!

I won't go into the pizza bread base, as I know that hubby wasn't terribly pleased with it, although both son and myself had no problem with it and declared the whole thing just gorgeous.  However, I know there's no point in giving you the recipe until he's completely happy with it.

Ooooh, you saucy things!

He made the tomato sauce himself, comprising a tin of tomatoes to which he added a teensy bit, like a quarter of a teaspoon, of dried mixed herbs, dried oregano, salt & pepper to season, a teaspoon of tomato ketchup and a couple of drops of Worcestershire Sauce.  He then simmered it until it had reduced to the consistency of a thick passata and allowed it to cool.

Of course, everyone had different ideas about what they wanted on their pizzas.  Son was the easy one, as he just wanted pepperoni, plus mozzarella and cheddar cheeses.  However to make it a bit more meaty, we'd bought a Pepperami which hubby had sliced up for adding to the pizzas.

Mine (left) and hubby's (right)
all ready for the oven.

Hubby had pepperoni, pepperami, green pepper, mushroom, green olive, mozzarella and cheddar.  I had all that, plus a leetle bit of black pudding, sprinkled here and there.

Gosh, but they were good.  :)

I don't mind having Pizza more often, if they're going to wind up being THIS good.