Pizza

On the main road near our house there's a "Domino's" pizza outlet. We often get leaflets from them - pushed through our letterbox. Mostly, I don't even give these mailings a cursory glance before sticking them in our paper recycling box. They alert pizza lovers to special deals. And as well as "Domino's" there are numerous other purveyors of takeway pizzas in our city - all jostling for the pizza pound. Posh people might even visit "Pizza Express" for expensive sit-down pizza meals.

In larger supermarkets, there are entire freezer sections devoted to pizzas of different varieties and in the chilled sections there are stacks of "fresh" pizzas for sale..But I have a confession to make - I don't like pizzas - in fact - and please keep quiet about this - I am almost anti-pizza.

Okay I could eat pizza without vomiting but I'd never go out of my way to buy pizza and I'd certainly never order one from "Domino's". To me pizza is just an unleavened dough base with some gunge smeared across it - including tasteless cheese and tomato pulp and maybe a spoonful of oregano scattered over the surface. Then they stick the rubbery dough discs in a hot oven to crisp the edges up a bit and half melt the cheese. Why would I waste a healthy appetite on stuff like that - even if some bits of sausage or pineapple might have been chucked on as well?

Given what pizza is, I am amazed at the normal takeaway prices. The mark up on pizzas must be enormous. I'd much rather have a cheese and tomato sandwich. Even a bowl of cornflakes has greater appeal. And I cannot understand why pizzas are so popular or why anyone would arrange a pizza delivery - obliging underpaid young men to risk their lives on the roads to bring a cardboard box to your door - a box that would probably be more nutritious and appetising than the slab of horrible stuff inside it.

A popular urban legend maintains that the archetypal pizza, Pizza Margherita, was invented in  Italy in 1889, when the Royal Palace of Capodimonte commissioned the Neapolitan pizza baker Raffaele Esposito to create a new pizza in honour of the visiting Queen Margherita. Of the three different pizzas he created, the Queen strongly preferred a pie swathed in the colours of the Italian flag: red (tomato), green (basil), and white (mozzarella).  Hence - Pizza Margherita. 

The Yorkshire Pudding pizza would surely be far more appealing than that. In this recipe, the pizza base is merely used as a heat retaining shield. When the plate reaches the table, the diner discards the inedible pizza base like a frisbee to reveal two or three slices of delicious beef top rump, roasted potatoes, carrots, peas , gravy and two golden Yorkshire puddings. Yes - that's my kind of pizza folks! You're welcome to the other sort.