Cooking on holiday

Marinated octopus, my favourite pizza and "dirty" pasta (alla zozzona)

Hello hello, it’s been a while!

I mean, in reality it’s been just over 2 weeks but somehow feels like much longer. It’s a sad side effect of being on holiday, which is exactly what I’ve been doing while my family were visiting from the UK and Cyprus. At the time it feels like it flies by, but as soon as it’s over; suddenly rendered a distant memory.

Of course I am super sad to have said goodbye to my family - living abroad is so hard sometimes, especially when you don’t have those closest to you… well, close by. But we persevere!

me

Anyway, back to the recent break and purpose of today’s post: cooking on holiday! While you might have thought I’d be cooking lots of pasta for the fam, you’d be mistaken - we made pasta together just once!

I’m not going to lie, it was kind of a welcome change. After all, I usually make pasta multiple times a week! Instead we cooked up lots of BBQs, Easter Sunday lunch, fired up some pizzas in the Goz, and generally had a delicious ol’ time. So I wanted to share some of that with you!

Below you’ll find recipes for three of my absolute favourite things that I shared with my family: marinated octopus (my favourite seafood), an iconic pizza with pesto and mortadella (and the Neapolitan style pizza dough recipe I’ve been using), plus a filthy Roman pasta otherwise known as zozzona.

PS: Pasta Sunday is back this weekend with a spring recipe that also suits the warmer climates we’re still experiencing down here - so keep your eyes peeled!

Marinated octopus

I used to absolutely relish going to my grandpa’s favourite taverna in Larnaca as a child and ordering the octopus. It is one of my favourite seafoods to eat, and I typically cook it one of two ways: grilled or marinated. This is such a simple way of preparing the octopus and I never deviate from this method - I mean, why would you? People never believe when I tell them: