Another lazy night, sitting around, drinking, chatting, doing nothing imparticular, and once again it gets to be late at night and all I’ve eaten is half a bag of Nacho Doritos and two bottles of strongbow. So now to find a proper solution for dinner.

I quickly realised that the house was almost completely devoid of any real food, but did manage to find some cheese, bread, and a few grape tomatoes… So the choice was simple… Mouse traps !

Mouse traps were what my family has always called grilled cheese on toast. I have no idea where the name originated, however it’s no great mystery as to why. If i were a mouse i’d find it pretty hard to resist delicious golden grilled cheese oozing over crispy toast as well. Basically if it was Sunday night, and mum couldn’t be bothered cooking for 5 children, mouse traps were what we got.

The stock standard mouse trap was ham, cheese and tomato, however we also experimented with creamed corn, baked beans, spaghetti, and any else you could conceivably make fit onto bread, cover with cheese, and grill.

These literally took 5 minutes to make, including preparation time, and about 1 minute of cooking time under a hot grill.

I pimped mine up with grape tomatos, fresh basil, mozzarella, cracked pepper, and a liberal splashing of extra virgin olive oil.

The ultimate low impact dinner solution.

A quiet night in called for a low key dinner solution. I’m very much into dough at the moment. I’m not sure why, I just seem to be going through a dough phase. I get a very calming sensation from just kneading dough until its nice and soft, and the yeast makes it seem alive (which technically, it is).

So this was another home made pizza base consisting of:

500 grams flour
2 or so cups of warm water
1 tablespoon of fresh yeast
1 pinch of salt
2 drizzles of olive oil
1 dollop of honey

Combine dry ingredients, and then gradually add the wet ones and mix it all around until its a big ball of doughy goodness.

Leave it to rise in a covered bowl and then punch the air out it a couple of times, til its really malleable.

Then roll it flat, and you’re good to go.

The topping for this pizza was tomato paste, a nice fat slice of eggplant, some sliced “vine ripened” tomatoes, basil, and buffalo mozzarella.

The mozzarella is great… I’d been looking it for a while since having a Mozzarella di Bufala pizza at Pronto’s a while back, but for ages I couldn’t find it, and was told by the nice ladies in Restore that there was a shortage of it… Fortunately for me the buffalo must have been lactating more recently, and I happened to find some at Herdsman Fresh on my last trip.

Apart from being made from buffalo milk, I’m not sure how its different to boccocini… but I like it nonetheless.

The pizza was paired with a wine from my current favourite winemakers. It’s a 2002 Sangiovese/Merlot from Innocent Bystander. Spicey but delicate, with a fruity aftertaste… something different to try.

All in all a great meal to pass the time on a night where all you’re really doing is waiting to go to bed :)