The Pizza Blog

Prawns on a Pizza

2011-12-05T20:57:00.000Z

We often put prawns on a pizza but occasionally they manage to make the base go soggy, because water often comes out of the prawns when they get re-heated. This even happens when we let the pizza stone get nice and hot first.
I always use cooked prawns on a pizza, so if we have raw prawns I will fry them first before patting them dry on kitchen roll.
If we buy cooked prawns, I try to remember to warm them up in a dry frying pan to get any excess water out of them before they go onto the pizza. There may be a slight danger of them going a bit tough or rubbery but that might be preferable to having a soggy pizza.

Calamari Pizza

2011-11-19T20:29:00.001Z

We first made a calamari pizza earlier this year but we ate it before I thought of taking a photograph. The sauce was passata, garlic, courgette and chilli which was liquidized then simmered until it had thickened.
The calamari was from Marks & Spencers and was chargrilled in a red pepper dressing. It was topped with lots of grated cheddar and shredded mozzarella.

Union Jack Pizza

2011-04-29T20:06:00.000+01:00

The base was topped with red pesto and grated mature cheddar, then topped with the union jack:

St George: turkey bacon

St Andrew: Courgettes dyed blue with mozzarella for the white diagonals

St Patrick: Strips of red pepper.

Crayfish and Goats Cheese pizza

2011-04-09T20:46:00.000+01:00

The pizza base was our usual recipe but with chopped sun-dried tomatoes added to the mix.

Above: the raw pizza before it went in the oven.

A slice of the cooked pizza.

Pizza Puttanesca

2010-11-07T20:03:00.007Z

This was a pizza version of a spaghetti puttanesca. The sauce was a mixture of red pesto and tomato puree with chopped chillies mixed in. The pizza was topped with tuna, capers, chillies, anchovies and cheese.

2 Goat Pizza

2010-10-12T20:47:00.009+01:00

The sauce for tonights pizza was watercress (or more accurately, land cress from our garden, which tastes almost identical to watercress) blitzed with cream cheese. Toppings were: red onion, cheddar style goats cheese, a traditional soft french goats cheese, and some diced mozzarella.

Naan bread pizza

2010-08-21T20:19:00.000+01:00

The pizza base was made using a naan bread recipe:

Make a yeast starter using 1 tsp of yeast, 1 tsp of sugar and a couple of tablespoons of warm water. Leave for a few minutes for the yeast to start working.
Add 200g of flour, 1 tsp of black onion seeds, 1tsp of chilli flakes 1/2 tsp of baking powder and a pinch of salt.
Add a couple of tablespoons each of milk and yoghurt and mix together to make a dough. Knead for a few minutes.

The pizza sauce was a mixture of tomato purée and curry paste.

The chicken curry pizza before it went into the oven.

The cooked chicken curry pizza.

The prawn curry pizza

Tuna and Garden Pesto Sauce

2010-07-09T22:32:00.000+01:00

The pizza sauce was a home-made pesto using herbs from our garden: rocket, land cress, oregano, parsley and basil. I added finely ground pistachio nuts, mature cheddar, vegetable oil, salt and pepper.

Toppings included red onion, leek, courgette, capers, anchovies, chillies and cubes of tuna, along with the usual mozzarella and more grated cheese.

Bella Italia

2010-06-19T22:15:00.001+01:00

The Selezione Classica we shared as starter.

The 'Cape Dutch' pizza I had: meatballs, red onions, peppers.

The Pollo Piccantina pizza Emma had: Chicken, peppers, chillies, smoked mozarella.

The pizzas were good - the base was the right thickness for a standard pizza base and had a nice texture. Both pizzas were slightly spicy, with just the right levels of heat.

Root Vegetable Pizza Base

2010-06-10T20:37:00.005+01:00

The pizza base was made using some root vegetable mash which was in the freezer. I can't remember which vegetables were there but I think it included carrots, sweet potato and possible turnip. The mash was quite coarse so I puréed it, added 3 quail eggs (or 1 small egg) and a splash of vegetable oil.
I gradually added plain flour and cornmeal until the texture became a bit dryer and more dough like. I didn't add any yeast.
I roughly shaped the base before putting it on a hot pizza stone, followed by a bit more spreading out. The pizza sauce was our usual favourite, red pesto. I topped the pizza with some thinly sliced onion, courgette and chilli pepper, then sprinkled on some assorted cheeses.

I cooked it for the usual 15 minutes at gas mark 7. The base was very similar to a shop-bought potato cake but with a lot more flavour.

Frankie and Benny's Pizza

2010-05-06T19:58:00.002+01:00

Two pizzas from Frankie&Benny's:
Top - Chicken Caesar Salad.
Bottom - Seafood Supreme.
The Seafood Supreme had anchovies, prawns and clams. The other pizza was a chicken pizza topped with tomato and lettuce in a caesar dressing. It was unusual to have a dressed salad on top of a pizza - we have often topped a pizza with a strong leafy salad such as rocket or watercress but we'd not thought of using a dressed salad. It was a surprisingly good combination.

Lobster Pizza

2010-05-01T19:24:00.000+01:00

We had a frozen lobster which we'd bought from Iceland a few weeks ago. The last time we had lobster, there was barely enough to cover a half-bagel each. There seemed to be slightly more meat in this lobster - it was sufficient for one pizza.

Other toppings included anchovies and capers. The photo above shows the pizza before the cheese was added. The photo below is the cooked pizza just before eating.

We recently bought a few tins of chunky crab meat - this is better than the cheaper shredded crab meat but I think it's actually better than the cheap lobster meat, which was a little bit chewy.

Pizza Express revisited

2010-01-13T20:50:00.002Z

The new Al Tirolo from Pizza Express.
The description from their website:

Creamy fontal cheese with a medley of mushrooms; porcini, portobello and closed cup topped with crispy speck ham, garlic oil and a sprinkle of parsley.

When they brought it to the table, there was a very strong mushroom smell. This was one of their extra-thin Romana pizzas, which often take a while to eat. The base had become a bit soggy by the time I finished but that wasn't too much of a problem.

Pizza with Rocket

2010-01-09T20:36:00.003Z

The pizza stone has now replaced our metal pizza trays for our Saturday Pizza Nights. The base cooks evenly and crisply, with far less chance of going soggy compared to using the metal trays.
We have to make the pizzas one at a time, eating the first one while the second is in the oven. We tried making the pizza on the metal trays and sliding them onto the stone but that was a bit fiddly. There was too much risk of toppings falling off. Instead we get the base rolled out ready, then spread the sauce and added the toppings. Of course this way you need to take care not to accidentally touch the stone.
We still cook the pizzas for 15 minutes at gas mark 7. We did try a shorter time at gas mark 9 but didn't notice any improvement. I felt a bit uneasy handling the pizza stone at the higher temperature.

Tonights pizzas were:

Anchovy, caper, chilli, vegetables (pictured)
Chicken, vegetables, more of the mature cheese from the Good Food Show.

Pizza Stone

2009-12-30T21:50:00.005Z

We received a pizza stone for Christmas - one of several kitchen related presents from my parents. We were going to use it for our first post-Christmas pizza but it needed a couple of washes and a while in the oven to drive off the fumes (presumably from manufacturing), so it wasn't ready at the time of our previous post.

The pizza shown here had the rest of the home-made spicy tomato sauce, mixed with red pesto because there wasn't enough left for 2 pizzas. The toppings were sliced courgette, anchovies, capers, grated cheddar and parmesan, and mozzarella. For the meat I had a selection from a Marks & Spencers Christmas pack which contained sausage, stuffing flavoured meatballs and rolled bacon. Emma had a selection of M&S 'party food' chicken pieces.
The stone needed heating up first - we placed it in a cold oven and slowly let it come to temperature, giving it at least half an hour before we used it. We had to make our pizzas one at a time, taking the stone out of the oven, quickly assembling the pizza, then putting it in the oven to cook.

Heston Blumenthal, the chef, tested different ways of cooking pizza on his TV programme. He didn't like the pizza stone, preferring to use an upside down red hot cast iron pan, putting the pizza under the grill to finish cooking.

I really can't see why he didn't like the pizza stone. He wanted to cook his pizza in 90 seconds whereas we give ours 15 minutes at gas mark 7. We like thin bases but we also like a lot of toppings so a very hot fast cooking doesn't suit our style of pizza. Sometimes the pizza base would go a bit soft when we used the metal trays, but the hot pizza stone starts cooking the base while the toppings are being applied so the base stays nice and crispy. It's a bit more fiddly than using our normal pizza trays but the improved crispy base makes it all worth while.

Sausage and Mushroom Pizza

2009-12-29T19:55:00.003Z

The sauce base was home-made, using tomatoes and chillies from our garden. The tomatoes had been frozen so I defrosted them, skinned then, then put them in a liquidizer along with a clove of garlic, some herbs, half a chilli, and a pinch of salt.

The liquidized sauce was poured into a pan and simmered to thicken. The chillies turned out to be hotter than I expected so I ended up thickening the sauce with cornflour instead of reducing it down. This avoided concentrating the chilli heat too much.

Anchovies, capers, quorn sausages.

Some fried onion and courgette were added, then a small sprinkling of cheese to hold everything together, before adding the mushrooms. More cheese was then put on top.

The cooked pizza.

Christmas Dinner Pizza

2009-12-29T19:34:00.006Z

Two Christmas inspired pizzas: one with sage and onion sauce, the other with turkey stuffing.

The ingredients for the sage and onion sauce. The onion and garlic were finely chopped and fried before being put into a blender with the herbs. After blending, the sauce ingredients were mixed with a plain cream cheese.

The sage and onion cheese, spread on the pizza base, with chicken added.

The finished pizza, with a mature garlic cheese and mozzarella on top.

The second pizza, with red pesto, stuffing, red onions and garlic. The stuffing was actually left over home-made turkey burgers, made using turkey mince, bread crumbs, onion, garlic and spices (full recipe here).

The second pizza, with the same mozzarella and mature garlic cheese as above.

The end result - both pizzas after cooking.

Calzone using a George Foreman Grill

2009-10-31T19:47:00.001Z

Our cooker is broken at the moment and while we are waiting for a new one to be installed, we have to cook everything using an electric wok, our George Foreman grill and a microwave. This was an experiment to see if I could cook a calzone using the G.F. grill.

The pizza base was the same as usual. I spread red pesto on the base, then added anchovies and slices of sausage, leek and courgette. I then added slices of cheese before folding the calzone and crimping the edges, a bit like a cornish pasty.

I cooked it on the G.F. grill until the base felt cooked to the touch and I could hear the cheese sizzling inside. I don't know how long it took because I didn't time it.

The end result was fairly good. The crimped edges were still a bit soft and doughy but the rest of the calzone was good.

Mid-week pizza (Garlic Yarg)

2009-10-22T21:31:00.003+01:00

Our main ingredient for tonight's pizza was Cornish Wild Garlic Yarg, bought from Waitrose at the weekend.

Both pizzas started off with red pesto and some finely sliced leek.

This pizza had a sprinlking of capers, then garlic yarg on one side and grated cheddar on the other.
The other pizza had red chillies sprinkled on top, then one half had grated horseradish cheese on one half and applewood smoked cheddar on the other half.

Pizza Express

2009-10-10T21:03:00.001+01:00

As usual we selected the extra-thin Romana base.
The Padana pizza - spinach, goats cheese and onion marmalade.

4-Seasons pizza. Each quarter of the pizza had a different topping:

Mushrooms
Pepperoni
Anchovies and Capers
Mozarella.

I had just started to sprinkle parmesan onto the pepperoni quarter when this photo was taken.

Country Show Cheeses

2009-08-15T22:10:00.009+01:00

Last weekend we were at the Wiltshire Country Show. As is usual when we attend these shows, we brought back a selection of different cheeses. We sliced them onto pizzas. We kept the recipes simple so that the cheese flavours didn't get overwhelmed.

1) Curry Cheese. Pizza sauce was actually from a jar of spicy nacho cheese. Other toppings: shredded chicken and chopped chillies.
2) Smoked cheese pizza. This was a half-and-half pizza, sharing the base with the Horseradish cheese. Pizza sauce was red pesto. Other toppings: capers and shredded chicken.
3) Horseradish Cheese pizza.

Spanish Sausage Pizza

2009-08-01T20:34:00.003+01:00

Pizza sauce: Red pesto (from a supermarket jar)

Toppings included: Capers, anchovies, chilli peppers, mozzarella, grated cheddar.

The main topping was slices of Chistorra de Pamplona sausage. This is a spicy pork sausage with a very soft texture, more like the Majorcan Sobrasada than the more familiar Chorizo.

Pizza Express, Coventry

2009-06-20T21:03:00.003+01:00

As a change from cooking our own pizza, tonight we went out to Pizza Express.
Pollo Ad Astra - chicken, peppadew chillies and red onions. We upgraded to the Romana base, which is wider and thinner. We prefer thin bases to thick bready bases and the Romana bases take this to extremes, being around 1-2mm thick. It would have been easier to eat if they provided steak knives but obviously this doesn't detract from the flavour.

Il Padrino - chicken, tomatoes and chargrilled vegetables. Again on a Romana base.

Bolognaise Sauce Calzone

2009-06-06T20:56:00.002+01:00

This was a similar idea to the chilli con carne pizza, to use up leftover food from a previous day. There was rather a lot of sauce so we decided to make a calzone rather than a normal pizza. We made the base as normal then added the sauce and a few pieces of mozarella.

Lazy Pizza

2009-05-31T18:48:00.004+01:00

With Mike being away the last few days and not getting home until late we decided to get takeaway pizza. Papa John's had sent a book of vouchers a week ago, so we decided to order from them.

First up is the new Margherita Raffaele, a fancy version with great big slices of mozzerella and splashes of pesto.

Very tasty...we need to find decent mozzarella to be able to do tis at home!

Second pizza was the Bianco Salmon, a white pizza with roasted salmon, asparagus and red peppers. Again, a really tasty pizza, and similar to some of the white sauces we've made at home.

Chilli Con Carne Pizza

2009-05-23T19:49:00.004+01:00

This pizza came about because we had left over chilli con carne. The sauce was very simple: onion, garlic, passata, fried mince and spices. There were no beans because I forgot to add them at the time.
After spreading the chilli sauce on the base, we sprinkled chopped chillies.

Next we added the mozzarella and grated cheese, then cooked for 15 minutes.

Posh sardine pizza

2009-05-16T20:03:00.001+01:00

I wouldn't normally spend a lot of money on sardines but the Fish 4 Ever tin was reduced in the supermarket so we thought we'd give it a try. Normal sardines have the skin still on, usually with some scales still attached. Not these fish. They had been well cleaned and unlike most other tins of sardines, the bones had gone soft and didn't need removing.
We buy the Marks and Spencers capers in salt because they are much better than capers in brine. We usually buy normal 'supermarket' anchovies.
The pizza sauce was from a jar of red pesto.
After topping with cheese, we cooked the pizza for the usual 15 minutes.

Jerk Chicken and Chilli Pizza

2009-05-09T21:06:00.003+01:00

Tonight's second pizza was a bit of a spicy one, but fairly simple. We used re-fried beans as the sauce, and then topped with chicken with a Jamaican jerk marinade and chillis.

Just plain chedder on top.

And mmm pizza...

Posher Tuna & Wasabi!

2009-05-09T20:35:00.005+01:00

This week we had decided to do another tuna pizza. We'd bought some Tuna steaks to barbeque for lunch, but the weather turned a bit cloudy so we saved them for pizza.

Again, we used the cream cheese and wasabi base, grilled the tuna and split into small chunks. We added grilled asparagus and some more of the nice M&S salted capers.

Topped with a bit of half fat M&S chedder, mixed with half fat Tesco chedder and a few slices of mozerella.

12 mins in the oven...and the finished product!

Bank Holiday Pizza: Tuna and Wasabi

2009-05-04T21:09:00.001+01:00

We normally do homemade pizza on a saturday night but we occasionally have extra pizzas during the week. We made two pizzas tonight - here is the first: tuna and anchovies with wasabi cream cheese and horseradish cheese.

The pizza base is the same one we use for all our savoury pizzas:

1.5 cups (6oz) of strong white flour
0.5 (2oz) cups fine polenta
1 egg
pinch of salt
large pinch of herbs
large pinch of dried chillies
yeast

Mix the yeast with a pinch of sugar and a little water and wait until it starts to 'bubble'. Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the salt, chilli and herbs. Add the yeast and water and mix to form a dough, adding extra water if needed. Knead for around 10 minutes before returning it to the bowl. Leave for about an hour until it has started to rise. This is enough for 2 pizzas.

The sauce was made by blending 1 tablespoon of powdered wasabi with a heaped tablespoon of low fat cream cheese.
Drain one small tin of tuna and crumble onto the base.

Top with anchovies and capers.
Finally, sprinkle with grated cheddar. We added some horseradish cheddar from Lymm Bank Farm Cheese. Cook in the oven, gas mark 7 (220 deg C), for 15 minutes:

Sandwich Chicken Pizza

2009-05-04T13:52:00.003+01:00

Spread red pesto on the pizza base:
Add some torn up sandwich meat:
Add some chopped chillies - these were from a jar.
Top with grated cheddar. We added some chilli cheese, bought from Lymm Bank Farm Cheeses.
Bake in the oven, gas mark 7 (or 220 deg C) for 15 minutes.