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Food blogger: Wendy Barrie shares a simple pizza recipe

Pizza with leftovers as toppings.

Is your pizza topping cormorant, goose or turkey?

When the inhabitants of Åland, the self- governed archipelago twixt Sweden and Finland, had an invasion of cormorants that were becoming as pesky as locusts, what did they do?

They made a national dish from them to sell to tourists – cormorant pizza!

A true story.

I’m reminded of this whenever I hear Scotland’s farming nightmares with greylag geese on our Western and Northern Isles.

Wendy Barrie.

There is always a solution, somehow somewhere, with a little ingenuity, dare and do.

We brought back four geese from our last Orkney trip and are working our way through them with great relish – who needs turkey when we have such delicious wild local fare as an economical and climate-friendly alternative?

So in the spirit of post-Christmas, with a nod to cormorant, greylag or indeed turkey leftovers, here’s our simple pizza recipe. It is a real favourite and I always make sufficient dough for four large ones although as a couple of empty nesters, I normally use half for pizza and the remaining for the basis of focaccia or a few breakfast rolls.

The sauce quantity is sufficient for half the dough.

Whilst we enjoy sourdough breads, I do not nurture a starter, instead opting to make yeast dough using fresh or dried yeast, selecting our choice of heritage grains with great care.

Make this simple pizza

Preheat oven to 220C Fan/240C/475F/Gas Mark 9 and mix together 450g flour, 1tsp sea salt and 2 x 7g packs of dried yeast (25g fresh yeast plus half teaspoon brown sugar*).

Make a well and add 300ml tepid water and 60ml rapeseed oil. Mix to a soft dough. Gather dough together with your hand and knead on a lightly floured surface for 10 minutes until smooth.

Add whichever toppings you’d like.

Knead and shape into pizza bases. Place on lined baking tray and place somewhere to rise for 15-20 minutes.

Make tomato sauce by simmering a drizzle of rapeseed oil, 1 medium can chopped tomatoes, seasoning, 1 tsp of mixed herbs and 2 tsp pesto until a reduced thick sauce.

Pre-heat oven. Spoon sauce over pizza bases, leaving a rim. Add toppings of leftover cooked meat, diced; Kedar mozzarella – supplemented with leftovers from Christmas cheeseboard; capers. Bake for 10-12 minutes until topping bubbling and dough golden.

  • For fresh yeast – crumble in the water with sugar. Set aside to froth, then add, along with oil, to dough and continue.

Wendy Barrie is the founder of award-winning Scottish Food Guide.


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