Harveys At Home – The Harvey Circus

This weekend has been one of The Pizza. We have pizzas for dinner Saturday night, pizza for lunch today and backed it up with a side of garlic pizza with our spaghetti bolognaise for dinner! If you happen to follow me on Instagram (just look for meeganharvey) you will have seen a few of our concoctions over the weekend.

Obviously, the Circus loves pizza. Particularly homemade pizza. With homemade pizza bases. It’s the best! We have each have our own favourites, or try something a little left field without messing up someone else’s flavour combination.

We also have a favourite pizza base recipe. It is super easy and works every time. It’s not even really a ‘recipe’ as such!

Yoghurt Pizza Base

1 cup SR flour
1/2 cup Greek or natural yoghurt
That’s it!

Just mix together until it clumps together and you can easily kneed on a dusted bench. Or, throw it all in your mix master with the dough attachment and let it go until it’s all combined. I do find this way a heap easier and faster.

Roll out to desired thickness on a floured bench. This recipe is great for a thinner crust.

Now, this is where you have a few choices!
You can either -
1. Top and cook your pizzas at this step
2. Or you can store the dough in the fridge for up to a few days
3. Or you can cook just your bases until just golden in a moderate oven, and then freeze them to thaw and top another day
4. Or you can cook the bases until just golden and then top them with your favourite combinations and cook again until your cheese is all gooey and golden.

I have used all these options, and the dough works for all of the above!

Some variations…
1. I always add some sort of mixed herbs, or crushed garlic or parmesan. The base is good plain, but the extra kick of flavour just adds to the whole yumminess.
2. Less sauce is better. Too much base sauce makes for a soggy middle, and no one wants that!
3. I always sprinkle a little cheese on top of the base sauce and then continue with toppings, adding another teeny little bit of cheese on the top. You really don’t need a lot of cheese on a good pizza! This is a little trick I learnt from my little sister, who worked in a pizza shop as a teenager (Thanks Jodie!!)

My kids love patties.
Of any kind.
Tuna, turkey, beef or chicken.
Even vegetable ones? Yep!

To make these you basically find everything you want to get rid of in your crisper and either mash it or grate it up to make patties!

Mine always start with a combination of potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin or carrot. And then I add what I can find. Usually grated zuchinni and carrot, frozen peas and corn.

This is a very random ‘recipe’ that I don’t have accurate measurements for – it all depends on what I’ve got available. This time round, it made about 20 patties to feed the ever hungry Circus!

Ingredients
3 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 small-medium sweet potato or
2 carrots or
Approx 1 cup cubed pumpkin
1/2 zucchini, grated
1 carrot, grated
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/2 corn kernels
1 medium egg
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Approx 1 cup of bread crumbs
Approx 2 tablespoons of tomato sauce
Salt and pepper
Any spices or herbs you wish to add (I use either the Gourmet Garden Mediterranean Seasoning I am addicted to, or some herb and garlic seasoning)
Oil for shallow frying, or non stick spray for your health grill

Method
1. Cook and mash your potatoes and pumpkin / sweet potato / carrots. You don’t need to add butter etc to the mashed veges. Leave to cool.
2. While your mash is cooling, grate your selection of veges and half cook the peas.
3. Once the mashed veges have cooled down, gently combine with grated veges, egg, Parmesan, tomato sauce, half the bread crumbs, salt and pepper and herbs and spices of your choice.
This is where the amount are only approximate.
If you find your mix too wet, add more breadcrumbs.
Too dry? Add more tomato sauce or maybe an extra egg.
4. If you have time, pop your mix in the fridge for a bit to help it firm up a little. It helps when you start making the patties.
5. Have a bowl or a plate ready with the excess bread crumbs to coat your patties.
6. Use a tablespoon to scoop out even amounts of your patty mix as you make it into a ball shape and coat in bread crumbs.
7. Either heat your oil in your fry pan or heat your health grill and cook patty until they are golden, turning once. You are only really heating them through and crispy-ing up (is so a word!!) the bread crumbs.
8. If shallow frying, have paper towel on a cake rack ready for draining.
9. Serve with salad, or pasta or whatever meat you like, use them as a vege burger patties or just snack on them all on their own!

Tomato sauce smiley faces are optional ;-)

This is a recipe I have modified from Planning with Kids, one that has excellent reviews from heaps of readers and their families.

As per usual, I have tweaked it to suit our family. The basic method is the same, it’s mainly ingredients tweaking here and there from my end that made this a meal the whole Circus gave two thumbs up! My family doesn’t baulk at added veges in any meal, they are quite happy to eat just about anything (most of the time!) that I have topped up (or stretched out to feed more!!) with veges. But if you have ones that don’t like the chunky bits in with their meat, just omit or grate everything you want to hide in the sauce. On that note, I used the whole taco seasoning sachet, which for some littlies might be too much but I found that even my non spice loving four year old didn’t even make mention of any ‘piciness (won’t say his SP’s!).

Here’s the link to the original Mexibake recipe at the Planning with Kids website.

And here’s my version!

Mexibake with Turkey Mince

Ingredients
500 grams turkey mince
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 red capsicum, finely diced
2 celery stalks, finely diced
2 carrots, finely diced
1 zucchini, finely diced
olive oil for fry pan
410 grams crushed tinned tomatoes
1 packet Taco Seasoning Mix
1 large jar of your favourite pasta sauce
500ml natural yoghurt
1/2 – 1 cup grated tasty cheese
1 1/2 cups basmati rice (uncooked)

Method
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Cook the rice as per your usual method. (I had the rice going in my rice cooker while I chopped up the veges.)
3. Heat oil in large frying pan. Once at a medium heat fry onion for a few minutes until soft.
4. Add the turkey mince to the pan and brown, breaking it up as you go.
5. Once meat is cooked, stir in capsicums and carrot. Cook for few minutes to soften slightly.
6. Add tomatoes and the pasta sauce and stir well.
7. Add taco seasoning and mix into the sauce.
8. Let simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
9. In a large lasagna dish, spread rice on the bottom, until is a just under halfway. Don’t press the rice firmly in, as it will then stick to the bottom.
10. Spread the meat mixture evenly on top of the rice.
11. Spread natural yoghurt evenly on top of meat mixture.
12. Sprinkle cheese over the top. I don’t like a lot of cheese on top, hence the varied amount needed. Just sprinkle over the yoghurt layer to your taste.
13. Cover with aluminium foil or the oven safe lid of your dish and bake in the oven for half an hour.
14. Remove the foil/lid and bake for another 5 – 10 minutes to allow the cheese to go all golden and cripsy around the edges.
15. Serve either on its own or with a side salad and some extra natural yoghurt.

Notes
1. This quantity made enough for our family of five to have two meals out of it plus a couple of lunch sized portions.
2. Instead of the natural yoghurt, you could use sour cream, as stated in the original recipe from Planning with Kids. I find you can’t tell the difference between the two in baking things like this, so try to choose the yoghurt option over the sour cream!