Pizzas with the X Factor

You just can't beat a really beautiful thin crust homemade pizza. The ones that arrive in a box courtesey of a kamikaze moped rider just bear no comparison to these babies. This is now one of our favourite Saturday night family meals.
We eat early whilst viewing the magnificent X Factor, which is of course mandatory viewing for all five Cooks on a Saturday night.
It takes a bit of preparation but is worth it. All our gang love it, everybody gets a chance to create their very own perfect pizza and it provides the perfect kind of casual eating that’s just right for telly watching.
The real fun of this is getting a whole load of great ingredients and letting everybody choose.
Currently the boys fave rave is courgette, with chilli and mint (sometimes with Salami), Martha’s is Margherita (tomato and mozzarella) or the same but with the addition of Salami, capers and olives, Lisa is more of an anchovy, olives and capers girl and as for me its prosciutto and rucola all the way.
To make it less of a hassle I would make the tomato sauce and the dough in the morning or even the night before.
Also use really good buffalo mozzarella if you can and not cheap grated stuff

All recipes either stolen from or heavily influenced by King Jamie

Quick Tomato sauce

Ingredients

Olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
A small bunch of fresh basil, leaves picked and torn
1 x 400g tins of good-quality, whole plum tomatoes
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

Place a large non-stick frying pan on the heat and pour in a couple of generous glugs of olive oil. Add the garlic, shake the pan around a bit and, once the garlic begins to colour lightly, add the basil and the tomatoes. Using the back of a wooden spoon, mush and squash the tomatoes as much as you can.

Season the sauce with salt and pepper. As soon as it comes to the boil, remove the pan from the heat. Now blitz it quickly with a hand blender to give it some thickness

Pour the sauce back into the pan, bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for 5 minutes to concentrate the flavours. Allow to cool

If you want you can store the sauce in a clean jar in the fridge – it’ll keep for a week or so. Also great to freeze in batches or even in an ice cube tray, so you can defrost exactly the amount you need. But to be honest, it’s so quick to make, you might as well make it on the day you need it.

Making the pizzas

This pizza dough is straight from Jamie. Allegedly it's best made with Italian Tipo '00' flour, which is finer ground than normal flour, and it will give your dough an incredible super-smooth texture. Obviously it also feels cooler to do it with this flour which any good Italian deli (in my case Fratelli Kingston) or Waitrose will supply.
If you’re using white bread flour instead, make sure it's a strong one that's high in gluten, as this will transform into lovely, elastic dough, which is what you want.
Mix in some semolina flour for a bit of colour and flavour if you like"

This recipe makes at least 6 to 8 medium-sized thin pizza bases

Ingredients

1kg strong white bread flour or Tipo '00' flour
or 800g strong white bread flour or Tipo '00' flour, plus 200g finely ground semolina flour
1 level tablespoon fine sea salt
2 x 7g sachets of dried yeast
1 tablespoon golden caster sugar
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
650ml lukewarm water

Method

1. Sieve the flour/s and salt on to a clean work surface and make a well in the middle. In a jug, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes, and then pour into the well. Using a fork, bring the flour in gradually from the sides and swirl it into the liquid. Keep mixing, drawing larger amounts of flour in, and when it all starts to come together, work the rest of the flour in with your clean, flour-dusted hands. Knead until you have a smooth, springy dough.

2. Place the ball of dough in a large flour-dusted bowl and flour the top of it. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and place in a warm room for about an hour until the dough has doubled in size.

3. Now remove the dough to a flour-dusted surface and knead it around a bit to push the air out with your hands - this is called knocking back the dough. You can either use it immediately, or keep it, wrapped in cling film, in the fridge (or freezer) until required. If using straight away, divide the dough up into as many little balls as you want to make pizzas - this amount of dough is enough to make about six to eight medium pizzas.

4. Timing-wise, it's a good idea to roll the pizzas out about 15 to 20 minutes before you want to cook them. Don't roll them out and leave them hanging around for a few hours, though - if you are working in advance like this it's better to leave your dough, covered with cling film, in the fridge. However, if you want to get them rolled out so there's one less thing to do when your guests are round, simply roll the dough out into rough circles, about 0.5cm thick, and place them on slightly larger pieces of olive-oil-rubbed and flour-dusted tinfoil. You can then stack the pizzas, cover them with cling film, and pop them into the fridge


Loading them up and cooking them


Underneath are a few of Jamie’s combos augmented by some of our own but to be honest the trick is to get everybody involved and to experiment with your favourite ingredients.

My only other advice would be DON’T OVERLOAD THE PIZZA … firstly it’s not very Italian, secondly it makes for a wet yucky base … and lets face it we are not going for a Pizza Hut feel here, we’re looking for something much more sophisticated.
Also for God’s sake don’t put Chicken Tikka or pineapple or any other alien ingredient on them. …just think Italian


Salami, courgette, basil, tomato and mozzarella

Ingredients

4 tablespoons tomato sauce
6 thin slices of firm courgette, do them thinly…. A mandoline does this brilliantly
8 fresh basil leaves
10 thin slices of Italian salami e.g. Napoli, Milano or Finnochiona
85g/3oz mozzarella
Olive oil
Sea salt and freshly
Ground black pepper


Smear your tomato sauce evenly over the pizza base. Lay over your courgettes and basil, then your salami – you want this to go on last so it goes crispy. Place small pieces of mozzarella in between the gaps, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Cook until crisp and golden.

Anchovies, chilli, capers and parsley

Ingredients

4 anchovy fillets
½ a fresh red chilli, sliced (optional)
1 heaped teaspoon small capers, rinsed if salty
Extra virgin olive oil
Zest and juice of ½ a lemon
3 tablespoons tomato sauce
85g/3oz mozzarella
1 tablespoon finely sliced fresh flat-leaf parsley
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

Jamie says ‘make sure you get hold of good-quality tinned Spanish anchovies for this, otherwise it's not worth making it’ personally I would say that it will definitely be better that way but its still worth making with your bog standard waitrose ones

Cut the anchovy fillets in half lengthways and add to a bowl with the sliced chilli – feel free to use as much as you like – the capers, a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and the lemon zest. Squeeze over a little lemon juice as well and mix up. Let the anchovies sit in the marinade for 15 minutes. Smear the tomato sauce evenly over the pizza base and scatter torn-up pieces of mozzarella over the top. Evenly lay over the anchovy fillets, scatter over the capers and chilli, and sprinkle with a little parsley and seasoning. Drizzle with the leftover marinating oil and cook until crisp and golden.

Option: add a few stoned black nicoise olives torn in half


Parma ham and rocket

Ingredients

Handful of rocket leaves
3 slices of Parma ham torn into about three pieces per slice
3 tablespoons tomato sauce
85g/3oz mozzarella
1 tablespoon finely sliced fresh flat-leaf parsley
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

Smear the tomato sauce evenly over the pizza base and scatter torn-up pieces of mozzarella over the top.
Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Cook until crisp and golden.
Now add the Parma and rocket.