Firezza pizza al metro

Following  an unfortunate accident on Saturday, I was incapacitated in the cooking department last night, so the boyfriend offered to order a pizza delivery. We are fortunate enough to have a Firezza pizza about 5-10minutes walk from our house, which is about as good as it gets in the delivery department; the pizza, not the distance. The fact that it is only a short walk to collect the pizza might also be seen as fortuitous, but we are lazy and pay extra for the privilege of being so. In fairness though, the delivery does arrive piping hot having spent barely 2 minutes in transit.

Firezza deal in pizza al metro, or pizza by the metre, a name which is almost literal but for the fact that each pizza is actually only half a metre (which for logistical reasons is quite understandable) and different toppings are ordered by the quarter metre.

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Dad's best-ever chocolate brownies

  

Since I am currently experimenting with an entirely new way of cooking (see my last post, measuring up), it may take a little longer to get my own recipes into a workable state, so I thought I would start with someone else's.  

The Flour Power City Bakery, which has stalls at all the major London farmer's market and some further a field, claims that their ultra chocolate brownies are 'Absolutely the best in town!'; a claim which I seek to challenge. Notwithstanding the fact that I think my Dad's brownies are the best-ever, I think many a brownie I have tried has beaten them by a mile. What the Flour Power brownie is lacking is that essential rich, chewy, fudgy quality which makes a brownie a brownie and distinguishes it from a slice of chocolate cake. And the secret? A sticky tar-like concoction made from butter, brown sugar and lots of it! 

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Measuring up

Well, now the time has come to write some recipes and I am realising that I don’t measure up. Not in the sense of feeling inadequate, but literally; I rarely measure anything when I’m cooking.

I am currently reading a book by Jenny Linford called Writing About Food and was relieved to discover that this is a challenge faced by many food writers. Linford introduces her section on measurements with the welcome news that “Some food writers feel that there is now too much emphasis on quantifying ingredients in recipe-writing” and that many feel constrained by the need to measure every ingredient, rather than improvising. Good, I am thinking, so a handful of this and a pinch of that will suffice, this is going to work for me.

Bad news.

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Humble beginnings

I thought I ought to start by introducing you to my humble kitchen:

 I would much prefer my kitchen to look like this:

Image source: http://media.onsugar.com/files/ons4/2010/01/02/627/6279064/f3c0b7d34810573b_homeremodeling1_modern-kitchen.jpg

But alas, living in London is expensive and that dream is a long way off. So I make do with what I’ve got and have learned to adjust reasonably well (so long as no one gets in my way when I’m cooking).

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