The reason I haven’t been posting lots is because I’ve been too busy enjoying an amazing summer! This summer was the first time I went on holiday with friends, and was off frolicking around Europe – the culinary capitals of Paris and Florence, none the less. The focus of this post is therefore Italy, and my attempt at recreating the orgasmic experience of a blue cheese, walnut and pear pizza I encountered there.
But first; Italian food porn. I most graciously invite you to swoon over snaps of carbonara with truffle oil, fresh tomato pasta, glorious mountains of gelato and my fit friends below.
I think I must have tried about 20 flavours of late night gelato alone – coconut, creme brûlée, cookies, chocolate, mango, blackberry, raspberry, hazelnut, pistachio, panna cotta – okay, I know that’s only ten, but since it was a while ago my memory fails me. Our favourite place for a meal out was Zaza or in the Santo Spirito, and the best gelato was situated on the Ponte Vecchio, since us two girls got extra wafers (wink, wink). The solitary guy in the group was not as lucky. I shall say no more. At least he has the advantage of knowing how to eat a top-heavy and melting pile of ice-cream off a cone without getting it on his fingers, down his wrist (no, arm)…and into his handbag.
Yet alas, alack, my friends, I repeat once again – Italy was a while ago. And so after getting back into the everyday pattern of an office job, I decided to take one more day off a couple of weeks later to finally unpack, tidy my room, upload my photos, write a cheeky bit of blog and rustle up something nutritious for my Dad for lunch – as well as to satisfy my own painful cravings to taste Italy once again.
Above is the blue cheese, walnut and pear pizza I tried in Italy. You can see that it is made of white flour with a flatbread quality. Below is the wholemeal version I adapted, with the seriously juicy red william pears. I actually made two pizzas, but my Dad and I could only manage one between us. Although, having said that, he dove straight into the double chocolate digestives afterwards. Nevertheless: hooray for leftovers!
I just am head over heels in love with the classic combination of pears, stilton and walnut given a great twist on a pizza base. My dad’s feedback was that given the strength of the cheese, a wholemeal base stood up better than a plain one to combat the feisty flavours.
In case you want to try this concoction of utter seductive scrumptiousness for yourself (and I promise you you will), my creations were based on adapting the recipes below:
- Wholemeal pizza dough for two pizzas – you can also freeze one for a quick dinner later on in the week!
- Blue cheese, walnut and pear pizza
I used dried rosemary, powdered Colman’s mustard and Duchy wholemeal plain flour (and that’s posh nosh). Don’t stress yourself about cutting the pears perfectly thin as in the photos, because they shrivel a bit in the oven anyway Can’t wait to try and create another holiday-inspired dish! I think what I’ve realised is that it’s good to push yourself out of your cooking comfort zone, even if you’re not sure that the finished product will be quite like the original. It doesn’t matter, and it’s a great way to share a food experience I had hundreds of miles away with a loved one closer to home. With Google, all is possible. (Dad and I are the token blue-cheese lovers in the family. My first encounter with this long term obsession was at a New Years Eve Party as a child, where I ate so much blue cheese stuffed into raspberries I made myself sick. It seems I developed a willingness to experiment with food from an early age).
Adventures in Food 