I made pizza and so can you
My first experince with ‘home made’ pizzas was in cooking classes during high school. We were given trays containing carefully allocated ingredients: some ham, a piece of pineapple and a shallot. Instead of a base we used a split english muffin. A friend and I were particularly haute in our cuisine and sprinkled some oregano and chilli flakes over our ‘pizzas’. They were simple and delicious and I’ve made them countless times since.
But now! Here we are in the future. So today we make a slightly more sophisticated pizza. Get a base or make your own. Dough scares me, so I haven’t attempted my own. But if you can, is it much better?
Make some sort of tomatoey sauce. I use leggo’s pizza sauce—in those little tubs that are too small for two pizzas, but too big for just one pizza—with some added herbs and garlic and a splash of balsamic. As a saucy fellow, I like a saucy base, so I slather it on with a small trowel. It’s sort of calming, like raking a squishy red zen rock garden. For some reason this must be done with a spoon, which creates little saucy valleys. Impractical, but that’s tradition, capice?
Toppings! Thinly sliced rounds of gently bland bocconcini. Thickish moons of pepperoni. Wide slivers of semidried tomatoes. Olives split in two parts. A sprinkle of some sort of cheese, and a more generous sprinkle of chilli flakes. Somethings never change.
Put in the oven for however long it takes. I don’t like my base too crispy, so I use a normal baking tray. But we also have a circular pizza tray that has little holes in for the purposes of crispiness.
It was nice. The bocconcini was a little too hohum, especially with such assertive other ingredients. A dash of rooster gave it a nice kick. If you think this recipe sounds oddly similar to one featured in a recent Coles catalogue, you may be right. Unlike Curtis Stone, my lips are sealed.
