Antipasto Pizza

Making homemade pizza is a great chance to be creative, and use up ingredients in your pantry and fridge. I love nibbling on delicious morsels on an antipasto platter, and when combined on a pizza base they turn into a cohesive, yummy whole. Most of the toppings are out of a jar – which really cuts down on prep time. The only real bit of cooking (apart from baking the pizza) is sauteing the eggplant in harissa paste to tenderise the eggplant and add a chilli kick to the pizza. In keeping with the antipasto theme you could also add roasted red capsicum or kalamata olives.

The pizza dough recipe was from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty cookbook, and I have to say it produced the best pizza base I’ve ever made. I used a pizza stone as I’ve found they help to ensure you get a crisp base, but a normal baking tray would also be fine.

Makes 3 large pizzas.

Scrumptious Vegetable Lasagne

There is nothing more disappointing than biting into a vegetarian lasagne that is lacking in flavour, texture and most importantly vegetables. So this is my remedy to the sea of mediocrity…a rich, vibrant lasagne whose cheesy goodness will have you back for seconds in no time . As with other recipes, I’ve mixed and matched sauces from two recipe books; Food of the World: Italy and What’s Cooking: Vegetarian. The bechamel sauce recipe seemed more authentic in Food of the World, while the main vegetable sauce recipe in What’s Cooking had that bit of oomph that I wanted, so I went with having the best of both worlds.

This is a great antidote to the cold weather, so go on and share the lasagne love this winter.