Sunday 16 September 2007

More experiments in pizza

I was reading a new cook book the other day and it gave this idea for pizza topping.

Instead of making a tomato sauce to cover the base, finely slice some tomatoes and spread them across the base.

I tried it last night. I sliced three of them, then flicked out most of the seeds and gave them a slight squeeze to get rid of some juice and then salted them lightly and left them to drain in a collander for an hour. When I got back, there was a reasonable amount of water under the collander, so my draining theories seemed to be working.

I then made two lots of dough with just white flour - no wholemeal and no semolina. Just white dough - kind of how you get it at your local pizza restaurant.

I rolled out the first bit of dough, brushed the top with olive oil that had been infused with garlic (ie, I crushed a few cloves and bunged them in a small pot of oil for an hour) and then laid out the tomato.

I was planning on doing two pizzas, but soon realised that I had underestimated the amount of tomato required by half. It was the worst estimation of food required since Napoleon woke up one day and said, "I understand Moscow looks delightful in the snow. Let's go. Gather then lads - we march in the morning".

I managed to cover most, but not all of the base in tomato. I was planning on lapping the tomato slices over each other, but had to give that idea up pretty quickly and spread them around with gaps in between the get the required coverage.

As for topping, I grilled a zucchini on the BBQ, along with two baby eggplant, and added some leftover baked leek and capsicum from the night before. I then threw on some goats cheese and pine nuts and hoped for the best.

It was absolutely superb. At least that's what I thought. J gave it a mediocre score, but then it's not her type of pizza.

I just know that next time I try it, I will fuck it up completely and it will be a disaster.

No comments: