This week is groundbreaking as I've already performed two culinary experiments with a Cottage Pie and Pizza with alternative type of base - Whoopah!
Cottage Pie Recipe - secret ingredient
Believe it or not, this was the first time I've had a go at making Shepherds …ahem, COTTAGE Pie! As a non-liker of mash potato, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sceptical about the dish, but we went along with it anyway! To start with, yes it was remarkably easy to make - leaving me embarrassed this was my first attempt aged 28! Luckily, to get over my fear of ruining the entire dish with soggy topped mash potato, I used one of my Mother's secret ingredients from when I was a child to leave us with a Cottage pie with a lovely golden crisp topping.
Once you've put your meat sauce into an oven dish and topped with mashed potato, take a bag of plain/ready salted crisps and bash them into smithereens whilst still in the packet. Then evenly sprinkle them on top of the mashed potato before putting in the oven. You can use any standard Cottage Pie Recipe for this, so find one from a trusted source and add this little gem at the end to make your Cottage Pie stand out from the crowd!
Low calorie pizza base alternative
We've all been there when you have no food and you're scrounging around in the kitchen cupboards looking for anything you can find to make a decent meal out of! The other day we decided we had a good variety of scraps to whip together a pizza - minus the vital ingredient - a pizza base!
We had some Warburtons Brown Square(ish) Wraps in the cupboard and thought we'd give it a go and use them as a pizza base. I thought GREAT, they're low in calories, however, will they buckle under the weight of the pizza toppings? It's also possible using these wraps as a pizza base would re-introduce my fear of soggy/floppy food that I got from the Cottage Pie recipe!
Ever willing to give it a go, we layered our pizza toppings onto the wraps as we would normally with a regular pizza base, and then placed them onto a pre-heated pizza stone at 180c. 10-15 minutes later, we took the pizzas out and luckily they tasted sublime! I was really surprised at how sturdy the base became after cooking - comfortably supporting the weight of my pizza toppings. I'm pretty certain the pizza stone would have had something to do with it, and I'd recommend one to anyone cooking pizzas on regular or improvised bases - as they do a really good job at evenly cooking your pizza.
I guess the only question now is what am I going to find for dinner tomorrow (as appealing as a trip to the supermarket sounds)!
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