Sorry, but I have a random pizza for you with potatoes and thyme

Do you know what I don't understand? Arabic. Eh ... honestly? Yes, I do understand a few words and phrases, but I really don't understand Khmer, not even a single word. Stop joking! I don't understand the way English movie or book titles are translated into German. Movies often have a completely different title, although it would be quite funny and understandable to simply translate it. However, the biggest mystery comes to my mind, when I think about a particular cookbook in my collection. It's the number 40 when you count it alphabetically. The book is from Ravinder Bhogal. Maybe you know it. The title is: Cook in Boots. Now I don't know whether you are fluent in German, but the title should be Kochen in Stiefeln. No big deal. You could do that, although it wouldn't sound too lovely. But, hey, now let's have a look at what they made of it. By the way, the book was published by a publishing house called 'Christian'. Fine, that was the reason, why I bought this book in the first place (you know, that's my name). Another reason was, the book was highly reduced. Anyway, originally we wanted to get to the German name of the book. Just repeat, the German name of the book. Wait, here it comes: Love to Cook. A little note on that. I didn't translate the name back into English, but that's the actual name of the book in ... wait ... German, although this is obviously English, too. So, I really don't understand things like that. I don't know, so I really feel more comfortable with the English language and all, although it should be different. I don't know what's wrong with me. Right, obviously a lot of things, but that's not the reason, why you endure reading all this ... eh ... stuff ... no ... things ... no ... ah, forget it, we should be concentrating more on food.
But it wasn't for no reason I mentioned this book. I already hinted to it, it's number 40 of my collection and if you have any idea about the food blogging world, this will connect you to the random recipes challenge from Dom over at Belleau Kitchen.

For the current challenge we have to go to page 40 of the book number 40. That is what we do and what is it that we get? Pizza sauce. So, what is it you have to do, when you get a recipe for pizza sauce? Sorry, I have no idea. Maybe choose another recipe?

Sorry again, I'm not 100 % sure what I did, but on page 41 there was a recipe for a pizza, too. Somehow I couldn't get all the ingredients for the sauce at that time, so I thought, if I do the pizza recipe on the following side, it will rectify everything and things will be good again for my karma. Ah, no such thing in my world. Fine, things will be good. I'm good!

So the next page had a recipe for pizza with potatoes and thyme. Before I get messed up in more details, I show you my uncut version.

Right, that is the pizza just before I cut it for eating. So, that is ... he he he ... indeed the uncut version. I don't know what you expected. 

Again sorry, but I am not sure anymore whether I was supposed to use the pizza sauce with this version of the pizza. I suppose not! However, I did it anyway. At least I used the slices of potatoes, which I blanched first and then mixed with olive oil, garlic anthem before I put it onto the pizza. The dough was just my standard home-made pizza dough.

Additionally to the potatoes with thyme there was some goat's cheese going to ... eh ... yes ... to go onto the pizza. Yes, yes, goat's cheese. Wonderful!

So, finally, standard pizza dough, tomato sauce, slices of potatoes mixed with olive oil, thyme and garlic and goat's cheese. Delicious! Oh, I had no choice, I had to add some mozzarella as well.

Now, here I give you the cut version ...

Apart from all this, I just want to let you know, I am having a Caipirinha right this moment while I write this down .... maybe I slightly confused the measurements of the cachaca and all this, but things will be fine. Oh, right, things will not be fine for Italy in the World Cup for they have missed their chance to be among the last 16. However, I don't want to miss my chance to add an Italian recipe to the Bloggers Around the World World Cup challenge. Accordingly, besides for adding this post to the random recipes challenge this as well goes to the Bloggers Around the World challenge. 

Well, you don't know exactly what I am doing here at this time of the day writing up a weird post for my blog, so neither do I. Therefore, before any major tragedy occurs, we finish it all here.

Ravinder, Jamie and trying a few recipes

In the last few days I have been thinking again ... yes ... for a change. Since I have a few cookbooks it wouldn't be bad to try some recipes again. So I had a look through some books and made a list of what to try. Then I went shopping and after not getting everything on that list, cancelled a few projects again.
Anyway, there still remained something on the list. Let us start with Ravinder Bhogal and her book Cook in Boots. Actually, Ravinder Bhogal is the only person I have a cookbook from, which I met already. That was this year in London, when she was doing 9 course meals at a restaurant in Aldgate.
The first dish I selected from the book was pork roast with grenadine glazing.

I just had to get some pork and the remaining ingredients were already on stock. I took the grenadine from the bar and the rest was mainly spices and things.
On the side I wanted to have some potatoes and fry them, but they ended up being mashed. To have some vegetables I tossed in some carrots with the roast into the oven.
Overall I liked it very much. It was sweet and spicy for some chilli and garlic was included as well.
There was another recipe from Cook in Boots on my list, but before I tell you about this, let us move over to Jamie Oliver.
I selected something very simple from the book Cook with Jamie: chicken breast wrapped in bacon with leeks.

It goes all in one dish, is for one person and really not complicated. Well, on the picture it looks like there was a lot leeks, but it was alright. It all could have been a bit more spicy, but you don't have to use chilli on everything, although you can. After all it's good to get in some other flavours as well.
Now back to Cook in Boots. On the program now: Cappelini with garlic, chilli, lemon and olive oil. That again sounds like quite some flavour.

It doesn't look very spectacular. That's because I didn't bring out the chillies and apart from that there is no much colour in it due to it's simplicity. The whole things doesn't even take ten minutes to prepare. Of course, a little bit depends on your speed in chopping the garlic and the chilli and grating the lemon zest and the cheese, but the parmesan is just for serving. The boiling of the pasta itself takes just three minutes.
I can say, that pasta dish tasted very lovely. Since I refused to just cook the pasta for one person and didn't have anyone for dinner, there were bound to be some leftovers. No worries!
Inspired by a recipe from Jamie's Italy I went for fries pasta at another day. You just need the leftover capellini (you could use spaghetti for that as well) and added some chopped cherry tomatoes, a bit of bacon, chopped parsley, an egg, some extra salt and pepper just to make sure and then you go and fry it in a pan.

That was very lovely as well. I should go through the books again and make a new list ... but I guess I should rather go for some Caribbean dishes, since we still have our Bloggers Around The World going on this month with some Caribbean inspired dishes. Are you in for it this month?