Homemade Pizza

Pizza #1 Slightly deformed, potentially incestuous. Still tasty.

I've been doing this blog for nearly two years now and in that time I've eaten a lot of pizza; and as we all know, with great eating comes great learning. A bit like how Vikings would drink the blood of their enemies in the hope they would absorb their fighting knowledge, like a more gruesome Highlander, I feel I've digested enough pizza to now know what I'm talking about. What I'm trying and failing and getting distracted by Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery to say is that I think I've now eaten enough pizza made by other people to have a go at making it myself. If my Father were alive and literate, I'm sure he'd be hugely disappointed that this will be the greatest achievement of my twenty-five years.

Pizza #2 Getting better, maybe the result of a coupling of greater distance. If the last one was brother-sister, this is maybe cousin-cousin? Maybe even second cousins, or is that me being big headed?

Whenever I'm feeling unsure what the right thing to do is, or lost like a lamb with no shepherd, there's one book I turn to for advice, spiritual support and hope for Mankind's salvation. I think we all know what I'm talking about, Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals. Seriously, the recipes in this totally make up for Jamie's multitude of sins. Which I've handily listed right here:

• He dresses like a rich, fat, fourteen-year-old on non-school uniform day (i.e. he's making an effort, but it's still gone horribly, horribly wrong).
• He calls everyone 'brother'. He is way too white to do this.
• His haircut is so, so awful, to the point that it almost excuses those dreadful trucker hats he keeps wearing.
• When he's tasting something he does that thing where he rotates his finger because he's concentrating on the flavours so much. This annoys me because I've started doing that when I cook, and I hate to think I'm that easily influenced.
• His wife is too beautiful.
• He cried a lot on his American show and made us, as a nation, look weak and badly dressed.
• He opened a shop near my Dad (who's not really dead or illiterate FYI) where people learn to cook a meal then buy all the ingredients for it. This feels too smug and makes me want to riot a little.

But, like I said, all those perhaps over zealous criticisms are forgiven because this book is so handy. Particularly it's recipe for Cheat's Pizza. I guess it's called 'cheat's' because you cook the pizza in a frying pan not in a wood-fired oven. This annoyed me because I only found that out after I'd bought and installed a massive wood fired oven in my tiny kitchen. It's huge, it blocks the kitchen door and I think my flatmate Jack is stuck in there because I haven't seen him for a few weeks and there's a weird(er) smell coming from the other side.

Pizza #3 This guy's parents met online, they're both really good looking and from entirely different countries. Actually one of them was black. Yep, that's right, this pizza was so good, it was mixed race.

Basically you fry the pizza for 10 or so minutes then stick it under the grill for 5 minutes. It tastes pretty good and is really quick to make. As you can see from the photos my pizzas, like my belly, are getting steadily rounder. I've tried to give these pizzas a fair and unbiased score, it wasn't easy, but I think you'll agree this is what they deserve:

10 out of 10