Comfort Food

How often, when you crave comfort food, do you toddle off down the road and buy yourself some? Or pick up the phone to order it? Or order it online (damn you Just Eat for making it possible to pay for a Chinese online with my debit card!)?

Really? Just me?

Don't believe you for a second!

Anyway, as times is hard (far too hard) buying comfort food isn't exactly an option, so I've been coming up with cunning ways of eating comfort food without the excessive price tag (and if I can make it healthier but still as comforting - even better!).

My latest creation is one which I think will be made again and again. Yesterday, during film night, my lovely other half and I tucked into a home made pizza! Not just any old pizza...this one had a sweet potato pizza base that I also made all by myself :)

I hunted all over the internet for the pizza base recipe as I was sure I'd seen it somewhere, but I couldn't find what I wanted - there are so many different versions. Some used baking powder, some didn't. Some used eggs, some didn't. Some used wholegrain flour, some used a flour I've never heard of and couldn't pronounce if I wanted to! So I decided to wing it a little and make the base in pretty much the same way I make potato scones...it worked!

Would you like the recipe? Then keep reading chikadees! And erm...the male version of that if you happen to be a male ;)

1. Boil up your sweet potato and mash with butter and some seasoning - allow to cool
2. Mix with self raising flour. My potato was about 450g and I used about 200g of flour - I kept adding until the mixture was no longer sticky and could be rolled into a ball like this:



3. Mix in a dessert spoonful of olive oil.
4. Spread out onto a baking tray (greasing first if you need to) into whatever shape takes your fancy (who says pizza's have to be round?!)
5. Bake on 180 (fan assisted - adjust accordingly for your oven!) for about 15 minutes or until it looks like this:



And that's your base! How yummy does that look? Now for the topping! Again, times is hard, so we didn't have any pizza sauce in the cupboard. Instead, I blended up a tin of chopped tomatoes, added salt, pepper, garlic and a pinch of mixed herbs and bobs your uncle! Pizza Sauce! The left over that I didn't use on the pizza went into a jar to be used as pasta sauce for tonight's dinner!

Here is the finished article before it went into the oven:



And ten minutes later:



Nom nom nom....twenty minutes later it was gone.

Not bad for comfort food don't you think?

What do you think of my little recipe? Would you like more of them?