Salsa verde (v. physalis)

One of the downsides to moving to Europe after living in California is the difficulty in getting tomatillos here - which I especially need for making salsa verde. Usually they are hard to come by, and when I do them they are outrageously expensive. As it turns out I wans't the only person in Europe who was frustrated with this, so one day I picked up the tip that physalis add some of the same notes. This tip I combined the inspiration from one of my California friends who based a green salsa on grilled peppers.

Ingredients:
- 400 g carli peppers (mild Turkish pepper)
- 400 g sivri peppers (hot Turkish pepper)
- 400 g dolma pepper (mild Turkish pepper - I guess it's good for stuffing..)
- 375 g dehusked physalis
- 2 tsp salt
- juice of 2 limes
- about 1 dL of water

All the peppers are rinsed and baked at 250 degrees C. The dolma need 30 minutes while carli and sivri need only 20 minutes - all the peppers are turned over halfway through their time. The skins blacken in spots.

The physalis are baked for 30 minutes at 250 degrees C in a foil-lined oven-proof bowl.

All peppers, physalis and the juice from the physalis are transferred to a blender and added salt and lime juice. After liquidising, the total volume was adjusted to 1,2 L with water.

Pizza with grilled fennel and anchovies

We can file this one under experiments - experiments of that truly classic kind: what do I need to use from the fridge today.

Ingredients:

- 1 portion pizza dough
- durum flour for rolling
- 1 portion tomato reduction^[1]
- 1 ball mozzarella, sliced
- 1/2 bulb fennel, sliced and broiled
- mushrooms, sliced
- 10-15 anchovy fillets (¹/₂ jar)
- oil from anchovies
- sprigs of fresh rosemary

The half bulb of fennel was sliced in 5 mm (¹/₅ inch) thick slices and broiled in the oven on maximum heat until starting to char.

The pizza dough was rolled out to fit my baking sheet using durum flour. After transferring to a baking sheet lined with baking paper, I spread out the tomato reduction, then slices of mozzarella, broiled fennel, some 10-15 anchovy fillets, mushroom slices, fresh leaves of rosemary and the oil the anchovies came in.

It was baked at 225 degrees C with the fan on for about 12-15 minutes.
It was quite good, but some of the fennel slices were quite hard to bite, so I need to work on that.

^[1] Made from cherry tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil, salt, pepper .. I really should write that recipe down.