Liquorice Pizzas

(recipe)

I have long since planned to have a roast fennel, liquorice and blue cheese pizza on our opening pizza menu for the bakery next door, including a liquorice black lentil dahl (or ‘caviar’) that I first made when we had a restaurant at the art gallery in Middlesbrough.

As we launch our pizza takeaway next week, there’s a cool new romantic film on in the cinemas - called Liquorice Pizza and so this seems a serendipitous moment to post our Liquorice Pizza recipe.

Our Liquorice, Fennel, Blue Cheese Pizza

I had actually first created the liquorice black dahl in 2016 after picking up a jar of liquorice root as part of a job lot from the Grain Store restaurant at Granary Square in Kings Cross - next door to St Martin’s art college, (where I was also studying at the time).* The Grain Store was a fantastic natural restaurant by renowned chef Bruno Loubet - but in 2016 the restaurant was closing as he had made plans to move and open a new restaurant in Australia. I went along to the restaurant’s closing auction and picked up our beautiful rough-hewn marble serving counter for £80 (which was said to have originally cost £8000!) which I then took up to our restaurant at mima - at a cost of cost much more than £80. Alongside with this, Loubet and the auctioneer helpers parcelled me up some food crates of odds and sods; cast iron pots, utensils and some old jars of natural ingredients, including one of bees pollen* and one of rose buds (which we later used on our Game of Thrones Menu, when screening Jeanie Finlay’s making of documentary*) - cardamom pods etc. and another containing Liquorice Root.

The liquorice root took me back to when my Mum and Dad first opened The Waiting Room in 1985/6* when it included some shelves of wholefoods including yoghurt covered raisins and the like - and natural woody liquorice root, which I would often take to chew in the same way as I enjoyed chewing my pencils.

We made what turned out to be a really lovely black lentil liquorice root dahl for our Smeltery menu at mima… (recipe below)

Trying to remember how I made the liquorice dahl 5 years later, I realised how difficult and complicated liquorice root is as an ingredient. Soaking the liquorice root in cold water for several hours releases a beautiful complex sweet flavour - but soaking the natural root beyond a certain point releases a very sticky (as in stickish) bitter flavour, which is not so nice.

Embarking on this exercise again we bought both some whole roots and some chopped roots, which I had not seen before or thought of doing. Soaked for a similar length of time the chopped roots released ten times the flavour as the whole roots, BUT the flavour was very stringent and medicinal… and again not what we were after. And so, using the complicated liquorice root in the right way, and to the required, desired extent is the first knack to this recipe. Our liquorice dahl is supported with an array of similar aniseed flavours to liquorice - embedded in a blend of warm madras-like spices.

This pizza is crowned with fennel, which we use quite often in the restaurant, whether raw, braised or roasted… Given that we are using a wood fired pizza oven for the first time it took a couple of goes to realise that the best way to prepare the fennel for this recipe has been to slice and boil it in a little stock, as we don’t want it to have dried out at all before entering the dry 375 degree heat of the wood-fired oven.

Recipe:

Liquorice Black Lentil Dahl

(First draft, we will probably tweak this write-up and our measures again soon, please feel free to send me some feedback if you try this recipe - or even if you just proofread it)

Method:

Firstly break the natural liquorice root sticks in half and place in a litre of cold water to soak for 3-4 hours. (Leaving to one side)

Finely dice and saute the onions, cooking lowly and slowly in a little oil for at least 20 minutes to a sweet, softened translucency.

Add the finely sliced celery and fennel.

Next crush the garlic, or whizz it up in a little oil and add this to the onions, together with the bay and curry leaves, stirring through for 5 minutes on a medium heat.

Add a splash of Pernod and let this evaporate into and out of the onion etc. so that they are even softer, sweeter and stickier.

Next add the whole Star Anise, whole Cinnamon Stick and the Fennel Seed to the onion, stir and then add the dry beluga lentils stirring through rapidly

Add the ‘Madras’ blend of spices whilst the oily toffeeish onion and lentil mix is quite hot, and stir in rapidly - the warm bass notes of the cumin will connect with the bay leaf umami, and the earthy turmeric will give ground to the spicy chilli and ginger etc… that will connect nicely with the aniseed and liquorice flavours to follow.

Stir in the tomato puree and concasse until absorbed to the mix

Add 2/3 of the remaining pernod, stirring through until the liquid has soaked in, and then add the litre Liquorice Root Stock including a few of the half liquorice sticks into the pot (the litre of cold water in which the root has been soaking, which should by now have the warm sweet flavour of liquorice root).

As this liquid is soaked in then pour in the 3 litres of liquid stock, at a slow simmer allowing this all to soak in to be absorbed by the lentils - stirring occasionally to ensure that there is no sticking to the bottom of the pan. Simmer for about 45 minutes. Remove the liquorice sticks, cinnamon stick star anise and bay leaves - and the cloves if you spot them - as you stir the pot during this time.

Lastly, when the lentils are well cooked, take off the heat, yet while still hot add the remaining ‘Pastis’ and chopped fresh tarragon. Add a fair amount of salt (and some pepper) to taste.

Ingredients:

6 Large Onions

6 Cloves of Garlic

1.5KG Dry Black ‘Beluga’ Lentils

300ml Pernod/Pastis

4/5 Liquorice Root sticks

1/2 bunch of Celery including leaves

Equivalent of half a Fennel*

Spoonful of dry thyme

3 litres Stock*

Tomato Puree

800gm Chopped Tinned Plum Tomatoes

1 whole Cinnamon Stick

4 whole Star Anise

A few cloves

Fennel Seed

About a teacupful? of a ‘Madras’ blend of spices (in order of quantity) of (something like); Cumin, Turmeric, Ginger, Coriander, Fenugreek, Mustard/Seed, Black Pepper, Chilli

A small bunch of fresh Tarragon

Salt and Pepper

On the subject of blue cheese, for this pizza Personally I don’t very much like Danish Style Blue cheeses, where the mould is developed in the cheese from the get go within a sweaty wrap, and which are super tangy; but I love a rich creamy Stilton (where the wheel is pierced to create mould seams several months after the cheese has already ripened. We have just been advised by the award-winning Courtyard cheesemongers that the best vegetarian stilton we can try is Colston Bassett - so we’ve ordered some of this for our pizzas and for the shop.

We use a simple thin tomato and pastis sauce for the base of this pizza… I’ll elaborate with a recipe for this soon - but you know;- its pretty straight forward.