Gourmet Pizza making

Peter and I love to cook. It was a joint interest which we have developed across the years of being together. However, both of our mothers never really taught us how to cook when we are young. I suspected it was because they scared that we will trashed and burnt their precious kitchen. Hence, we grew up thinking that cooking was only meant for housewife, and the only cooking skill which we mastered was boiling instant noodles.

Then somewhere in between our instant noodles and scramble egg (which supposed to be sunny side up in the first place), Jamie Oliver started his naked chef series, and then Gordon Ramsey's Hells kitchen came along, and then Nigella Feast.... Suddenly, cooking seems like a cool and posh thing to do. Man who gets his hand dirty kneading pasta dough looks masculine, and ladies in apron oozing a sense of sexiness all over. So weeks after weeks, Peter and I were fixated on the cooking shows showing on Travel Living Channel.  And strangely enough, the cuisine which caught our attention was the Italian. 

Peter loves anything and everything when it comes to Italian cuisine. At first we went shopping around for herbs. Rosmary, dill, basil were the common items in our shopping cart whenever we went to Cold storage. Then Dolmio or Prego was forever vanished from our dictionary when Peter started to make his own pasta sauce. Before we even realizing it, Italian words/ phases dominated our vocabulary - al dante, il prosciutto, al fungi, pomidori etc. And it was really fun, it felt like we are learning another culture itself through its food. 

A month ago, Peter and I subscribed to a 3.5 hours of Gourmet Pizza making class at The Cooking House. We enjoyed the whole process as this is the first time we make our own pizza from scratch! 

Here comes the stainless steel worktop and my happy husband who is eager to start! 

Mixing, kneading then the dough was left for setting (for around 20 mins), no picture of kneading as its impossible to take picture with the flour sticking on our hand. The dough puffed up nicely after a while and it was used for 4 different type of pizza. Basically its just mixing different type of ingredient either on top / into the pizza bread. 

Pizza Dolci is a sweet pizza with orange marmalade and fruits. We use alot of mashmallows, preserved can fruits such as peaches and the binding element was cream cheese. It was something new for us as we didnt know that the same pizza dough can be used for fruits top ups as well.

Pizzete Fritte is mini fried pizza with tomato salsa and shaved parmesan cheese. Its basically bruchetta but with pizza dough instead of baguettes/ French bread. The freshly prepared salsa was superb and i like the acidic taste of balsamic vinegar along with the salty taste of the parmesan cheese.

Calzone Al Salmone Affumicato is the infamous folded or stuffed pizza with smoke salmon, tomato, cheese and capers. Out of the pizzas, we love this the most as its easy to make (basically its a BIG curry puff except its filled with salmon and cheese instead of sardin with potatoes). The calzone tasted so good and I love the crunchy bready texture and the fragrant smoke salmon with chives.

Before and after (baked to perfection)

Calzone Al Salmone Affumicato, yummy.

The last but not least was the Pizza Quattro Stagioni (4-in-1) - Mushroom-cheese, Tomato-anchovies, cheese-basil and artichoke-olive. The chef (cant remember his name) basically dump all the leftovers material into a big pizza dough outlined into 4 quarters, as easy as that. Since we didnt get the chance to do the Pizza Quattro Stagioni, the chef used our leftovers (some tomato / salsa sauce) and cook together with lots of garlic, basil and pepper to make the topping for middle eastern bread with no cheese. 

I have to say its not rocket science to make pizza, and both of us are inspired to make our own pizzas once our kitchen is renovated. So, next time if you visit our home, we will make sure no more cold dominos, it will be homemade fresh from the oven Pizza! :)