#32 VEGETABLE AND CHICKEN BBQ PIZZA + st. david's day

Today it's St. David's Day in Wales and I just thought I'd wish you all a dydd gwyl dewi hapus and I hope you had a great day whether you are in Wales or anywhere else in the world. I have been out and around town today joining the celebrations in Cardiff capital city of Wales and I have quite a few posts about all that coming up soon. 
But for now I have something italian/british for you, hope you enjoy it!



I've been posting a lot of Pizza related things lately, all the bits you need to make your perfect homemade pizza such as the dough and the sauce. 
but once you've got all those things figured out you need ideas what you actually want on your pizza. sometimes a simple Margherita is the perfect choice, but let's be honest, sometimes we just want something a bit more special.

Sometimes the most special thing about a pizza is to just get some ingredients together and let every member of the family or group of friends (or even just two people) choose what they like and put it on their part of the pizza. You end up with a random mixture of ingredients which can be the best thing ever and all you need.

For now however, (and since you don't really need a recipe for a random pizza) I want to share a pizza with you that me and my boyfriend made the other day, it's kind of what I said before about everyone choosing what they want on their half, just that we pretty much agreed on all the ingredients so there was hardly any difference between our halves.

Foodography by Geraint Photography

The habit of putting chicken on a pizza is something I've only really come across in the UK so far, we don't really do that in Austria and I haven't seen it in Italy either. So this is not a very original variation of a pizza but I have to say I rather enjoy it, and those of you living in the UK or the US probably find it weird that people wouldn't have chicken on a pizza. 

I however have been loving it and therefore thought I'd share this recipe idea for you, maybe it will be a little inspiration for when you have pizza next time.

Vegetable and Chicken BBQ Pizza

1 handfull pizza dough
4 tbsp pizza sauce

finely cut courgette
chicken breast
mozzarella
bbq sauce

make your pizza dough as described here

find recipe for your pizza sauce here
then start by preparing the chicken, roast it in the oven
until it's done and then cut up into chunks.

leave the oven on at around 200°C

roll out the dough as thin as you like it, line baking
try with paper (don't use tinfoil as we did, only did so
because we'd run out of paper, believe me, pizza isn't
the same when you use tinfoil!)
place your dough on the paper and start creating your
pizza by spreading the sauce all over it,
add chunks of mozzarella, then the courgette, and finally
the chicken.

put in the oven for about 7-10 minutes (depends how
thin your dough is). add bbq sauce once the pizza
is out of the oven.

cut into slices and enjoy! :)

Foodography by Geraint Photography

Magdalena.

my Twitter: https://twitter.com/lullabyforpies

my Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LullabyForPies

the foodography in this post has kindly been taken by Geraint Photography. 

find more of his pictures on his website http://www.geraintphotography.co.uk/

and on his blog http://foot-ography.blogspot.co.uk/

Eating Out: REVOLUTION - CHESTER

Chester is one of the places I always look forward to visiting when we go up to North Wales. It's just a lovely place, nice city centre with those english houses and nice shops. 
You can take a walk on the city walls and by the river (which is especially nice when it's a bit warmer or at least sunny). 

So on our last trip to Chester a few weeks ago, we found ourselves there on a monday, and monday means it's mega monday at Rev's. 
Rev's or Revolution is a chain of Bars, their main "dish" is supposed to be Vodka, I've never had Vodka there to be completely honest with you, but their food is absolutely amazing, you don't need alcohol do go with it! They have however found a way to include Vodka in their food menu aswell, you can find a list of their creations here. I haven't tried any but I'd imagine they are just as nice as the other food and certainly  something special if you happen to be a vodka lover.

But let's talk about the food now shall we.

Let me just say why you should go to Revolution on a Monday, well Monday means it's Mega Monday at Revolution which means ALL the food is 50 % off! (2 pounds extra for a steak). Their food isn't usually that expensive I wouldn't say, but if you get the chance to go there on a Monday, I'd definitely recommend doing it, you can try out so many lovely things!

We weren't going for a big meal since we were going out with the parents aswell after, but we thought since it was monday we'd pop into Rev's and see what took our fancy. Well it's not that easy really, because everything on the menu sounds really lovely and well, we had to tell the waitress about four times that we needed "a few more minutes, sorry". But in the end we agreed on two things to share, and I believe it is worth taking a bit longer to make a decision for it to be the right one in the end. Especially when it comes to food!

Foodography by Geraint Photography

As a starter to share we had these lovely Chicken Satay Skewers, satay are basically skewers served with a lovely only slightly spicy beanut(butter) sauce. My mum loves them and has them whenever she can, I shall definitely try and make my own soon as they are really lovely.
However, the Rev's ones were amazing, the sauce was perfect and the chicken really tender. I can only recommend trying these out!

Foodography by Geraint Photography

As a main to share we had the Caramelised Onion and Goat's Cheese Pizza, and wow! I just had to have this after I saw it on the menu, and I hadn't seen it on there before and I don't know, whenever I see something with Goat's Cheese I just have to have it! and when there's Caramelised Onions involved you just can't go wrong!
It was just as wow as I imagined it would be, probably even more to be completely honest. I've had a Pizza at Rev's before and they are just amazing really, you might not expect an amazing Pizza in a place that serves burgers aswell, but let me tell you these are amazing, italians would agree with me I'm sure. They add their own touch to it which makes it even better. I'd definitely have this Pizza again, and you know what, maybe I will.

weird picture of me eating Pizza!

So I hope you enjoyed my little review, since I am writing this a while after our visit, I can tell you now that we have been to Rev's in Cardiff the other day and there will be a post about that coming up in a few days time. 

There are Revolution Bars almost everywhere in the UK, you can find them on their website to see if there's one near you. Find the Chester one here.


Magdalena.


my Twitter: https://twitter.com/lullabyforpies

my Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LullabyForPies



the foodography in this post has kindly been taken by Geraint Photography

Best Basics #2 PIZZA SAUCE

There's nothing better than a lovely homemade pizza. It's one of the easiest and most fun dishes to make by yourself, with your family or friends. Kids love it and yes, adults love it just as much, it's always great to be able to add your personal touches to your food. It just makes us enjoy it more.

The two most important parts to Pizza are the dough and the sauce. There's no good Pizza without a lovely dough and a lovely sauce. You can add as many great ingredients it will always come down to how good the sauce and the dough are.

I have always loved tomato sauce and I found that to make a lovely Pizza you have to put a little bit of thought into the sauce too. Everyone thinks well let's just buy some sauce in the Supermarket because yeah that's easier and good I guess but as I said, it always comes down to the sauce and you'll want the base to be tasty for the whole meal to be amazing. right?

So I have created this Pizza Sauce which is really easy still but it's got some lovely fresh ingredients in it and some special things to it that make it even more tasteful and interesting.

My Pizza Sauce

1 can (250 g) tomatoes
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp honey
2 gloves of garlic
1 twig of rosemary

to make the sauce, chop the garlic intorough pieces. 

heat up the oil in a pan and
add the garlic and the rosemary.
leave it for fry for about 1 minute then
add the balsamic vinegar and the honey
and lower the temperature.
after about 3 minutes add the tomatoes and
cover the pan and leave to simmer for about
10 minutes.
before using it, take out the rosemary and puree
the sauce (even when you've used pureed tomatoes.)
to make sure it's all smooth and lovely.
add some salt to taste.

Magdalena.

my Twitter: https://twitter.com/lullabyforpies

my Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LullabyForPies

Best Basics #1 PIZZA DOUGH

This Pizza Dough was inspired by Jamie Oliver, I pretty much always use his recipe and it's brilliant, all I've done is adjusted the recipe a little bit mainly because I never make that much. But still, all the credit goes to Mr. Oliver who is one of my biggest role models.

I have done some Pizza variations on here before but now I wanted share some of the basics with you, and after all dough is what makes Pizza a Pizza.

Here are some lovely ideas of what to make with your dough. Do you fancy a simple traditional Pizza Pizza or maybe a Snack Calzone?

Also you could simply make some pizza bread with some garlic or just some lovely little italian rolls. it's a really simple dough and you can make so many things with it. so give it a try.

There's this lovely story I always think of when I think about Pizza dough, it's about a group of people who had to leave their home because of the Trojan War, they were on this ship trying to find a place for them to stay but they just never found a place because all they kept looking for was a place like home.

But there was this prophecy saying that they would find a new home at the place where they would eat the table.

They came to Italy then and they were served food on flatbread because that was what they did because they could afford proper plates, but they didn't eat the bread.

Well but our group of people didn't know that and they ate the bread too. That made the locals laugh and ask "were you guys so hungry you ate the table too?"

And that's when they're prophecy was fulfilled and Pizza was invented!

My Pizza Dough
for two
250 g all purpose flour
7 g sachet of dried yeast
200 ml lukewarm water
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
salt

To start preparing the dough sieve the flour on your
worktop and make a well in the middle (see
below) and add the salt to the flour.
mix together the water, yeast, sugar and olive
oil and carefully pour into the well.
take a fork and carefully work the flour into the
liquid. once it's all mixed you can knead the dough.
add some more flour if needed and make a smooth
dough. put it in a bowl with flour, cover with a 
tea towel, put it somewhere warm-ish (like room
temperature I guess) and leave to rest for at least 1 hour.

then you can roll it out or do whatever you want
with it. as long as you enjoy it! :)

I will be posting a pizza sauce recipe soon aswell, so look out for that, I'll be posting about updates here:

my Twitter: https://twitter.com/lullabyforpies

my Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LullabyForPies

xx