Finger Fun

I have posted before about not liking recipe books, or rather of much preferring food books that focus on the history and culture of food. It's not just that the recipe ones are dull - and they are - but that I don't believe (other than in very exceptional circs) that a recipe is ever 'done'.

My continual tweaking of the pizza recipe given to me by Ron Mackenna is a case in point. The basics (for four thin crust bases) are still there - 500g flour, 325ml water, 13g salt, 7g yeast - but I have added two tbsp of olive oil to make the dough more elastic. And I now put the naked pizzas in the oven as it is turned on, giving them 10 minutes pre-cooking to ensure they cook through once the toppings are added, and by forming a skin the toppings don't soak in as much. And the flour is now 200g plain 300g white bread flour, the plain making the cooked base crisper.

The toppings have evolved too. I use a tin of toms mashed up and cooked so some of the liquid is steamed off. That's enough to coat two bases, the next stage being to cover the tomato with loads of grated Parmesan. This has the double boon of making the paste dryer still, so it doesn't ensoggify the bread, and is an excuse for using the world's greatest cheese.

OMG as I would say were I not far too old mature. This has become a recipe. So to sidestep that fate I'd ask a question: is there any better finger food than pizza? Anyone eating pizza other than in a restaurant too posh for pizza anyway should be shot for using a knife and fork with this. It's meant to be eaten with the hands. The bread cools more rapidly than the topping (a generalisation but like most generalisations, including this one, true) so you can hold the thing without burning, but get a hot mouthful. With the basic cheese and tomato version you have a balanced mini-meal with carbs/protein/veggie fibre, anything else being a dietary bonus.

All that said, my home-cooked version is still not up to the standard of a good pizzeria pie. My wife frowns on the idea of spending £500 on a pizza oven for the garden. So the next step is to invest in a pizza stone as an approximation. And if that doesn't do the trick, I'll try the man-stuff route and see if a mate or two will help me build my own with fire-bricks and clay. Or we could walk down the road to Checco's.