Mama Mia - Pizza Making

The weekend of the Rugby World Cup finals, I was in St Albans with my cousin, S and her husband, D. She was absolutely mortified to hear the words, "But we ARE going to be watching the Rugby World Cup final tomorrow night and the Argentina vs South Africa match tonight, aren't we?" come out of my mouth. She thought that an alien had taken over and I was obviously an imposter standing in her kitchen. D, on the other hand, was plain gleeful that he had found an unexpected supporter for his cause. So because of the finals, we decided we were going to come home early on Saturday after our jaunt in the countryside, make pizza for dinner and watch the game in the comfort of their home, in front of their plasma big screen TV, instead of jostling with loads of England supporters at a pub (and with me rooting for South Africa in the finals, being in an English pub with a hundred or so enthusiastic (and probably tipsy) English rugby fans would not have been a smart move - as it was, D had threatened me with eviction to the garden for the night when he realised which team I was supporting in the finals)

Well, the crux of this post is not really about the rugby, which seemed to be the main highlight so far, but rather, the pizza-making. I had loads of fun reliving my pizza-making days (last encounter was in my early 20s to feed my younger sisters, who enjoyed eating my half-cooked dough base actually). S's easy-breezy pizza-making efforts inspired me to replicate the pizza-making when I got back to Sydney.

So the first weekend I got back, G and I decided to make a tri-funghi pizza. G had a special ingredient for the base which really added a nice texture and taste to what would have been a regular-tasting base. We used shitake, cap and enoki mushrooms on a pesto base and generously threw fresh coriander over the top. Result - a rustic-looking (G rolled out the base), yummy-tasting, home-made pizza. We rated our efforts "definitely superior to Love Supreme, better than Dimitri's, and maybe just below Pizza et Birra."

This weekend, fuelled by our success of the week before and the leftover frozen dough we had in the freezer, we tried our hand at another pizza - this time we used shitake mushrooms, zucchini and roma tomatoes on a tomato base. We floured the kneading board with wholemeal flour as we ran out of plain flour and that gave the dough a slightly mealy texture. That was a happy accident which will be filed away for future references.

With our successful pizza-making experiences so far, we shall persevere and experiment more creatively and beat the standard of Pizza et Birra!