Friday's team pizza

As is becoming somewhat of a tradition on a Friday night we were going to have pizza. It was Matt, my husband's, birthday so I had offered an array of alternatives to the usual (him making pizza) including:

• Going out for pizza
• Going out for something else
• Me making the pizza
• Me making something else

But Matt was pretty sure that he wanted to do the pizza and I wasn't going to argue too strongly (he makes a delicious pizza). So the ingredients for the dough went into the bread maker. I don't know the details of these ingredients - the bread maker being well and truly Matt's domain. Whilst that was whirling the plan was that we'd take a walk in the evening sunshine to our 3rd most convenient convenience store to top up on toppings. That plan was thwarted slightly because we became enthralled with a tennis semi-final. We finally made it to the shop once the dough was ready and we realised that we should use the pause function on the TV otherwise we would not be enjoying any of the late evening sunshine. And as it was getting late Matt decided that I'd better be his sous chef.

Almost anything else for the pizza could be improvised but clearly cheese is important. We had chosen this 3rd most convenient convenience store because it is the best source of grated mozzarella. After selecting a few mushrooms and some spinach we got to the cheese section. There was grated mature cheese; but no mozzarella. A shop person just happened to be going by at the point at which I was incredulously examining the cheese shelves. Upon questioning he told me that they no longer stock mozzarella. I muttered a few words of incredulity at him, but had to accept that there would be no mozzarella this evening. Never mind, it would just be a new type of pizza experience.

My main (or possibly only) role as sous chef was the preparation of the toppings - this involving chopping it is well and truly my domain. The dough recipe that Matt uses makes enough for two pizzas. He wanted one as a Greek and one as a multi-veggie. So for the Greek I pre-cooked the spinach (4 minutes on medium in the microwave) and chopped up some feta and tomatoes. To this Matt also added some pine nuts and black olives. The tomato sauce was half a jar of chilli pasta sauce that we had left over (worryingly I can't recall from when). For the multi-veggie I had more chopping. As well as the mushrooms I chopped up some green pepper. This is notorious for not cooking quickly enough on pizza so I pre-fried it in the little fried egg pan. There was some sweetcorn leftover from the previous night's jacket potatoes so that would go on too. As for the cheese (we may not have had any mozzarella but there was plenty of other choice) we went for a combination of goat's cheese and garlic and herb soft cheese. These should have been straightforward to prepare, but in doing so I managed to break a knife. It was from the notorious range of bubble cutlery which I frequently have bad fortune with. The tomato sauce was half a jar of basil pasta sauce, the other half of which will now most likely be forgotten in the fridge for a number of weeks.

Multi-veggie pizza mid topping addition

The demise of a bubble knife

The pizzas bake at the hottest the oven goes until the toppings looked cooked. This is very imprecise but the base always seems to come out ok too. I suppose you are basically baking bread. We were very restrained and had just a slice of each each - plus a load of hummous, the crusts are ideal for dipping. The mozzarella-less pizzas were a revelation - even to a cheese lover such as myself. We'll just have to see if they pass the cold pizza test at Matt's birthday luncheon.