Pizza at home
Continuing on to try and show I know something about what I’m talking about (that’s for food, not life in general), here is my attempt at pizza.
A seemingly straightforward concept involving flour, yeast, oil, salt and a few other elements I was soon to learn appreciation for places that make this. Creating the dough was not too hard. Kneading it was a good way to get out some stress. It was the twirling where things got a bit out of control.
Getting sticky pizza dough off the ceiling can be a rather involved process.
When it was returned to earth, partially baked and ready for toppings that the real dilemma set in. How to dress it. I could have resorted to rooting randomly in my fridge for stuff which had been fermenting (such as that strangely coloured lump of diary at the back) to use up all those things you buy with the best of intentions but then like that birthday present for your long suffering significant other gets pushed back again and again with in hindsight entirely forseeable consequences. Similar to what happens when I get excited by foods I know I should give a miss.
Not wanting to jinx the process, I settled on something rather ordinary.
Tomato sauce with mozarella cheese, salami and fresh basil leaves. Mario and Luigi would be proud. When it came out looking like this, I would have tried their signature victory jump with one fist pumped high but I’m afraid of damaginig fixtures in my house.
It looked great. It tasted better. When my fellow eater tried it, I remarked that similar to how many things these days are created “with love”, this tasted better because of my blood, sweat and tears. Metaphorical of course, as I don’t think those would be welcome literal additions to food. Salami, basil, cheese and tomato came together in a fitting way but it was the dough, metaphorically and literally that brought it all together. It then promptly all came apart as I stuffed it in my face.
All in all, as someone with a more eloquent turn of phrase than me described this. It was a “do over”. I’m happy with that.